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MFA in Creative Writing

FACULTY & STAFF

PROGRAM FACULTY
Kathleen Aguero	An Na	Venise Berry
Laure-Anne Bosselaar	Joy Castro	Ray Gonzalez
Terrance Hayes	Laban Carrick Hill	Amy Hoffman
Steven Huff	Randall Kenan	Helen Elaine Lee
Dennis Lehane	Grace Lin	Laura Williams McCaffrey
Dzvinia Orlowsky	Sandra Scofield	Michael Steinberg
Sterling Watson	Jacqueline Woodson

DIRECTOR AND STAFF
Meg Kearney Director	Tanya Whiton Program Administrator

Kathleen Aguero — Poetry (July residencies/fall semesters only)

Kathi Aguero has published four collections of poetry: Daughter Of, The Real Weather, Thirsty Day, and—most recently—Investigations, a collection of poems inspired by Nancy Drew (2008). Kathi’s work has appeared in such publications as Poetry magazine, the Massachusetts Review, and the Cincinnati Review. She is also co-editor of three collections of multicultural literature: A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare. Her creative nonfiction essay, “Marriage Koan,” appears in the anthology Why I’m Still Married. Recipient of a Massachusetts Fellowship in Poetry and a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kathi also was awarded a writing grant from the Elgin/Cox Trust. She has taught at the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, as well as in the Poets in the Schools Programs of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In 2004, she held the position of Visiting Research Associate at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. In addition to teaching in our MFA program, Kathi is a professor of English in Pine Manor’s undergraduate program. She also teaches for “Changing Lives Through Literature,” an alternative sentencing program based on the power of books to change lives through reading and group discussion.
Visit www.kathleenaguero.com.

An Na — Writing for Children & Young Adults (January residencies/spring semesters only)

An Na was born in Korea and grew up in San Diego, California. A former middle school English teacher, pastry chef, and video-store clerk, she is currently at work on her fourth novel. Her first novel, A Step from Heaven, was a National Book Award Finalist and received the Michael L. Printz Award and the 2002 Children’s Book Award in Young-Adult Fiction from the International Reading Association. It was also named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Her second novel, Wait For Me (2006), was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Junior Library Guild Selection. Her third novel, The Fold, was released in spring 2008. In an interview after her NBA nomination, An Na said, “Writing for children is not easier than writing for adults. Nor is it a vehicle for teaching a lesson or moral. Some of the worst books out there for kids are the ones that preach. Kids, like adults, want to think and feel and come to their own conclusions.” An Na lives in Vermont.
Visit www.anwriting.com.

Venise Berry — Fiction (January residencies/spring semesters only)

Venise Berry is the author of three national bestselling novels: So Good, An African American Love Story; All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale –recipient of a 2001 Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association– and Colored Sugar Water. Her fourth novel, Pockets of Sanity, is expected in 2009. In 2003, she received the Creative Contribution to Literature Award from the Zora Neale Hurston Society; and in 2001, she was recognized with an Iowa Author Award from the Public Library Foundation in Des Moines. She has co-authored two non-fiction resource books with S. Torriano Berry, an associate professor in Film at Howard University: The Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema and The 50 Most Influential Black Films. Her book Mediated Messages and African-American Culture: Contemporary Issues, a co-edited, non-fiction project, won the Meyers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1997. Venise is at work on several new projects, including a cultural critical analysis of the media, I Used to be a Rap Music Fan: Racialism and the Media; a spiritual anthology series, What do you believe?; a fifth novel, Career Women; and a memoir, The Three of Hearts. She is an associate professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Visit www.veniseberry.com.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar — Poetry (July residencies/fall semesters only)

Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, where she worked as a talk-show host, commentator, and voice-over artist for Belgian and Luxembourg Radio and Television. She is the author of Artémis, a collection of French poems, published in Belgium. Her first collection in English, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, the National Poetry Series, the Ohio State University Prize, and the Nicholas Roerich Prize. Her second book of poems, Small Gods of Grief, won the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry in 2001. Ausable Press published her third poetry collection, A New Hunger, which was selected as an ALA Notable Book in 2008. A graduate from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she taught poetry workshops for the Writers in the Schools program in Colorado, directed a poetry workshop in Snowmass Village, Colorado, and co-directed the Aspen Writers’ Conference from 1989 to 1992. She was awarded a Fellowship at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and has served as a Writer-in-Residence at Hamilton College and at the Vermont Studio Center. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she also been awarded the McEver Chair In Poetry at Georgia Tech. As an anthologist, Laure-Anne edited Never Before: Poems About First Experiences; Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades; and Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City. With her husband, poet Kurt Brown, she also co-edited Night Out: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants, and Bars. Fluent in four languages, she is currently translating American poetry into French and Flemish poetry into English; in 2006, she and Kurt Brown published a book of translations from Flemish poet Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness. She lives in New York City and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at writers’ conferences across the country.
Visit www.laureannebosselaar.com.

Read Laure-Anne Bosselaar's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Joy Castro — Creative Nonfiction and Fiction (July residencies/fall semesters only)

Born in Miami, Joy Castro is author of The Truth Book, which was reviewed as “an exquisitely powerful and beautifully written memoir” by The Boston Globe in 2005. An award-winning teacher, she publishes articles on innovative strategies for the college classroom, and her published literary scholarship focuses on experimental women writers of the twentieth century such as Jean Rhys, Meridel Le Sueur, Sandra Cisneros, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared such magazines as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and The New York Times Magazine. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have also appeared in the anthologies Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class; Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers; White Ink: Poems about Mothers and Motherhood; Faith and Doubt: An Anthology of Poems; and Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption. Joy teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Committed to broadening the reach of higher education to communities in need, Joy has offered free courses to at-risk teenagers, low-income adults, and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. She is currently completing both a collection of short stories and a book about the American Jazz-Age writer Margery Latimer.
Visit www.joycastro.com.

Read Joy Castro's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Ray Gonzalez — Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Fiction

Ray Gonzalez is author of The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape, winner of the 2003 Carr P. Collins/Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Book of Nonfiction. A finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in Memoir, Underground Heart was also named one of ten Best Southwest Books of the Year and Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and selected as “Book of the Month” by the El Paso Public Library. His other nonfiction books are Memory Fever, a memoir about growing up in the Southwest, and Renaming the Earth: Personal Essays. Ray is also author of ten books of poetry, including the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award winner The Heat of Arrivals; 2000 and 2006 Minnesota Book Award Finalists Cabato Sentora and Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems; 2003 Minnesota Book Award Winner The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande, and the forthcoming Cool Auditor: Prose Poems. His work has appeared in the 1999, 2000, and 2003 editions of The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses 2000. Editor of numerous anthologies, he has also written two collections of short stories, including The Ghost of John Wayne, winner of a 2002 Latino Heritage Award in Literature; and a cross-genre work, The Religion of Hands: Prose Poems and Short Fictions. He has served as poetry editor of the Bloomsbury Review for twenty-five years, and is founder of the poetry journal LUNA. In 2004, Ray received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature from the Border Regional Library Association. He teaches at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Terrance Hayes — Poetry (January residencies/spring semesters only)

When he was an undergraduate student at Coker College, Terrance Hayes identified himself primarily as a painter; it was only in 1999, after the publication of his first book, Hip Logic (the cover of which features one of his oil paintings), that Terrance first described himself as a poet. Hip Logic, selected for the National Poetry Series by Cornelius Eady, was finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize as well as the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Terrance is also the author of Muscular Music and Wind in a Box, published by Penguin Books in 2006. He has received many awards and prizes for his work, including a Whiting Writers Award, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Best American Poetry selection, a Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, the Chester H. Jones Foundation Poetry Award, the Red Brick Review Poetry Prize, two Academy of American Poets prizes, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Terrance has taught at the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine, the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Warren Wilson College, Xavier University of Louisiana, Columbus State Community College, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife, son, and daughter.

Laban Carrick Hill — Writing for Children & Young Adults

Laban Carrick Hill has written more than 25 books for children, young adults, and adults. His America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s won the 2007 National Parenting Publications Gold Award and has been selected as a 2008 New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. The book is a cultural history of the sixties and its legacy, and is also a starred selection of the Children’s Book Community of Bank Street College of Education. His young-adult novel, A Brush with Napoleon (2007), has been praised by School Library Journal as “subtle” and “dramatic.” In 2006, Laban’s young-adult novel Casa Azul was chosen by The New York Public Library as a Best Book for the Teen Age. His Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance (2004) received more than 25 awards and honors, including National Book Award Finalist, a Parent’s Choice Gold Award, and more than five selections for best books of the year lists. His book-length poem Dave the Potter is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2011, and will be illustrated by Bryan Collier. A poet as well as a fiction and nonfiction writer, Laban has written critical biographies on the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, the Southern novelist Bobbie Ann Mason, and the poet Jane Kenyon. His poems have been included in Contemporary Poetry of New England, an anthology edited by Jay Parini, as well as in numerous literary magazines. Laban has taught literature and writing at Columbia University, Baruch College, St. Michael’s College, and Vermont College. In addition, he has taught courses on the Harlem Renaissance at the University of Vermont. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.

To read about Laban's experience in Ghana, go to: www.penamerica.blogspot.com or www.labanhill.com.

Read Laban Carrick Hill's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Amy Hoffman — Creative Nonfiction (January residencies/spring semesters only)

A writer and community activist, Amy Hoffman is currently editor in chief of Women's Review of Books. Her first memoir, Hospital Time –about taking care of friends with AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s– was short-listed for the American Library Association Gay Book Award and the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and was a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection. Her second memoir, An Army of Ex-Lovers, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in Fall 2007. Amy's news stories, feature articles, essays, interviews, and book reviews have been published in Sojourner, Lambda Book Report, UU World, and MassHumanities, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities biannual newsletter. A former development director for Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Women's Lunch Place, a daytime shelter for homeless women, she has also been an editor at Gay Community News, South End Press, and the Unitarian Universalist World magazine.
Visit www.amyhoffman.net.

Steven Huff — Fiction, Poetry

Steven Huff is the author of a collection of stories, A Pig in Paris (2008), and two collections of poems, The Water We Came From (2003) and More Daring Escapes, published by Red Hen Press in 2008. His chapbook Proof was named Editor’s Choice in the 2004 Two Rivers Review Chapbook Competition. Steve’s poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, Kestrel, The Chatauqua Literary Review, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and other journals and publications. Garrison Keillor has also read his poetry on “A Writer’s Almanac” public radio program. A Pushcart Prize winner in fiction, Steve teaches creative writing at the Eastman School of Music and the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is creator and host of the weekly radio feature in Western New York, “Fiction in Shorts,” aired on public radio stations WXXI-FM and WJSL-FM. The former executive director of BOA Editions, Ltd., he is now director of adult education and programs at the Writers & Books Literary Center in Rochester, New York, and is founding a new publishing house, Tiger Bark Press.

Randall Kenan — Creative Nonfiction, Fiction

In researching his nonfiction book, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, Randall Kenan spent eight years traversing the United States, gathering more than 200 interviews that represent the wide range of experiences in black American life today. In Walking on Water, which was nominated for the Southern Book Award, Randall brings to his interviews, travels, and comments the deep heart, keen curiosity, and inquisitive imagination that make him one of America’s finest writers and commentators. A Visitation of Spirits was Randall’s first novel, published in 1989. His collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (1992), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was among The New York Times Notable Books of the year. He is also the author of a young-adult biography of James Baldwin and wrote the text for Norman Mauskoff’s book of photographs, A Time Not Here: The Mississippi Delta. His most recent book is a work of nonfiction, The Fire This Time (2007). Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Writers Award, Randall received the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in 1997. He was a member of the editorial staff at Alfred A. Knopf publishers in the mid 1980s. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, Vassar College, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Memphis. He now teaches in the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Read Randall Kenan's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Helen Elaine Lee — Fiction (July residencies/fall semesters only)

Helen Elaine Lee’s first novel, The Serpent’s Gift, was published by Atheneum in 1994. Her second novel, Water Marked, was published by Scribner in 1999. Her stories have appeared in myriad magazines and anthologies, including Callaloo; SAGE; Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present, edited by Gloria Naylor; and Ancestral House: The Black Story in the Americas and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell. She recently completed her third novel, Life Without, about the lives of eleven people incarcerated in two neighboring American prisons. The book earned her the Jeptha H. and Emily V. Wade Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Life Without was inspired by her volunteer work teaching writing and storytelling workshops with prison inmates—which she has done for more than six years—and many interviews with ex-offenders and people who work with prisoners. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, from which she graduated in 1985. Library Journal has said of Helen: “She has a storyteller’s sure touch that transcends real life while staying firmly rooted in the African-American experience.” She is Associate Professor of Fiction in the Writing & Humanistic Studies Program at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dennis Lehane — Writer-in-Residence, Fiction (summer residencies only)

Dennis Lehane is the author of Mystic River, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Novel, the Barry Award for Best Novel, and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; Mystic River was also a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, andwas released as an Academy Award-winning film directed by Clint Eastwood. A Massachusetts native, Dennis is the author of the Patrick Kenzie series of Boston detective novels: A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Prayers for Rain. His most recent novel is Shutter Island, which is being made into a movie directed by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Ben Kinglsey in the starring roles. His short story “Until Gwen” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2005, The Best American Mystery Short Stories 2005, and New Stories from the South 2005, and is the basis of his play “Coronado,” which premiered in New York City in December 2005. Writer-in-Residence at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dennis is the co-director of the Writers in Paradise Conference and was a staff writer for HBO’s The Wire. He has taught fiction and literature at the Harvard Extension School, the Stonecoast MFA Program, and Tufts University. His newest novel is The Given Day (fall 2008). The Cleveland Plain Dealer called Dennis Lehane “one of the best writers of his generation, period.”
Visit www.dennislehanebooks.com.

Grace Lin — Writing for Children & Young Adults (July residencies/fall semesters only)

Author and children's book illustrator Grace Lin was born and raised in upstate New York. Her first book, The Ugly Vegetables, was published in 1999 and heralded as an American Booksellers Association's "Pick of the List" and a Bank's Street College Best Book of the Year. The Ugly Vegetables was also nominated for the California Young Reader Children's Choice Award and named a Growing Good Kids Book Award Classic. Grace followed that success with the publication of more than a dozen more books, including Dim Sum for Everyone!, Fortune Cookie Fortunes, and Olvina Flies. Grace's first young-adult novel, The Year of the Dog, was recently released with glowing praise. While most of Grace's books are about the Asian-American experience, she believes "Books erase bias; they make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal."
Visit www.gracelin.com.

Laura Williams McCaffrey — Writing for Children & Young Adults

Laura Williams McCaffrey was born and raised in Vermont. She attended Barnard College of Columbia University, then returned to Vermont and eventually became a school librarian, answering to the names “Ms. Librarian,” “Library Lady,” and sometimes simply “Ms. Library.” She is the author of two young-adult fantasy novels, Water Shaper, selected for the 2007 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list; and Alia Waking (2003), named an International Reading Association Notable Book. Alia Waking was also a nominee for the annual Teens’ Top Ten Books list and for Vermont’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. Laura now writes, speaks about children’s fantasy literature, and teaches writing fulltime. She lives in a small house in the woods with her husband, regionally acclaimed musician Colin McCaffrey, and their daughters.
Visit www.laurawilliamsmccaffrey.com.

Read Laura Williams McCaffrey's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Dzvinia Orlowsky — Poetry (January residencies/spring semesters only)

Pushcart-Prize winner Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which is Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted as a Carnegie Mellon University Contemporary Classic in 2008. Dzvinia’s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous anthologies, including A Map of Hope: An International Literary Anthology; From Three Worlds: New Writing from the Ukraine; and A Hundred Years of Youth: A Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry. Her translation (from Ukrainian) of Alexander Dovzhenko’s novella, The Enchanted Desna, was published by House Between Water press in 2006. A founding editor of Four Way Books, she is a contributing editor to Agni, The Marlboro Review, and Shade. She has taught poetry at the Mount Holyoke Writers’ Conference, The Boston Center for Adult Education, Emerson College, Gemini Ink, the Stonecoast Summer Writers’ Conference, the Stonecoast MFA Program, Writers in Paradise, and the Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference at Pine Manor College. Her poems have appeared in a number of magazines, including Columbia, Field, Diner, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and The Massachusetts Review. Dzvinia was recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Grant as well as a the Council’s Professional Development Grant. She lives in Massachusetts.

Sandra Scofield — Fiction, Creative Nonfiction (January residencies/spring semesters only)

Author of seven novels, Sandra Scofield won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Fiction Award in 1997 and was a 1991 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Her titles include A Chance to See Egypt, Gringa, Plain Seeing, Walking Dunes, and Beyond Deserving, a National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. She has also published a memoir, Occasions of Sin, and a craft book for writers titled The Scene Book. An experienced teacher with a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in Curriculum and Instruction, Sandra has served on the faculty of Southern Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University), and has been a visiting writer at Macalaster College, the University of Arkansas, Miami University (Oxford, OH), and Old Dominion University. Through the National Book Foundation, she has twice served as writer-in-residence on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. She has taught in private and public elementary and secondary schools, and has extensive experience as an educational planner, having worked with the Northwest Educational Laboratory, the Montana Department of Public Instruction, and school districts in Oregon and Alaska. Sandra is a regular faculty member of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and has been on the faculty of several other summer writers’ workshops. Sandra was born in Texas and educated there. A longtime resident of Oregon, she now lives in Montana with her husband, a retired high school teacher. Her interests, besides her work, are spiritual reading, travel, her dogs, and visits to museums and galleries. Lately, she is learning to paint while working on a book of essays.
Visit www.sandrascofield.com.

Michael Steinberg — Writer-in-Residence, Creative Nonfiction

A native New Yorker, Michael Steinberg is a memoirist, personal essayist, and founding editor of the award-winning literary journal, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. In 2003, ForeWord Magazine chose his memoir, Still Pitching, as the Independent Press Memoir/Autobiography of the Year. Other books include Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan; The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (now in its fourth edition); Those Who Do, Can: Teachers Writing, Writers Teaching; and The Writer’s Way. His essays and memoirs have appeared in many literary journals and have been cited several times in Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing. Mike taught writing and literature at Michigan State University for more than thirty years. Most recently he has been a guest writer/editor at several national and international writing conferences, including the Paris Writers’ Workshop, the Geneva Writers’ Conference, the Prague Summer Writing Program, and the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Alaska.

Sterling Watson — Fiction (Summer residencies/fall semesters only)

Sterling Watson is the author of five novels: The Calling; Blind Tongues; Deadly Sweet; Sweet Dream Baby; and Weep No More, My Brother, which was nominated for the Rosenthal Award of the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Sterling is the recipient of three Florida Fine Arts Council Awards for Fiction Writing. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Gulfstream Magazine, The St. Petersburg Times, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Director of the Creative Writing Program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, Sterling has taught courses in film in addition to fiction. He was the recipient of both the John M. Bevan Teaching Excellence & Campus Leadership Award and the Lloyd W. Chapin Award for Excellence in Scholarship for the 2006-2007 academic year. Before Eckerd, he taught at the University of Florida and in the Prison School of the Florida State Penitentiary. He lives in Tierra Verde, Florida.

Jacqueline Woodson — Writing for Children & Young Adults (Winter residencies/spring semesters only) On Leave in 2009

Jackie Woodson is the author of a number of books for children and young adults, including Miracle’s Boys, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (made into a six-part television miniseries on Noggin in 2004 – 2005, directed by Spike Lee); Feathers, a Newbery Honor Book; Hush, a Finalist for the National Book Award and the American Library Association (ALA) “Best Book For Young Adults”; Locomotion, winner of the Horn Book Award from the Boston Globe, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book, and a National Book Award Finalist; and If You Come Softly, named a Best Book for Young Adults by the ALA. Her picture book The Other Side has won many awards, including the Texas Blue Bonnet Award and a Child Magazine Best Book Award; it was also named an ALA Notable Book. She has received several additional honors, including two Jane Addams Peace Awards, three Lambda Literary Awards, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, a Granta Best Writer Under Forty Award, Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 1994, and a number of ALA Best Book Awards. A former drama therapist for runaways and homeless children in New York City, Jackie has taught fiction at the Vermont College MFA in Creative Writing Program; The City College, City University of New York; Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program; the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp; and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She resides with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Visit www.jacquelinewoodson.com.

Director and Staff

Meg Kearney — Director

Meg Kearney is Director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at PMC as well as Director of its Solstice Summer Writers Conference. For 11 years prior to joining Pine Manor, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation—sponsor of the National Book Awards and a number of educational outreach programs—based in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University. Meg is author of An Unkindness of Ravens (2001) and The Secret of Me, a novel in verse for teens, published in hardcover by Persea Books in 2005 and out in paperback in 2007. Her forthcoming collection of poems, Home By Now, will be published by Four Way Books in 2009. She also has a picture book, Trouper the Three-Legged Dog, coming out with Scholastic. Her work, featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” has been published in such publications as Poetry, Agni, and Ploughshares, and many anthologies, including Urban Nature (2000), Poets Grimm (2003), Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (2005), The Book of Irish American Poetry from the 18th Century to the Present (2006), and Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems (2007). She also has a creative nonfiction essay, “Hello, Mother, Goodbye,” featured in the anthology The Movable Nest: A Mother/Daughter Companion (2007). In addition, Meg is co-editor of Blues for Bill: a Tribute to William Matthews (2005). A native New Yorker, she now resides in New Hampshire with her husband, writer Mike Fleming and their three-legged black Labrador named Trooper.
Visit www.megkearney.com.

Tanya Whiton — Program Administrator

Tanya Whiton has published stories and poems in literary journals including North Dakota Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, Northwest Review and Crazyhorse 63. Her short story “Giving Her Away” was included in the 2006 anthology The Way Life Should Be: A Collection of Stories by Contemporary Maine Writers, and she collaborated on the adaptation of her story “The Deal” for an award-winning eponymous short film. A former contributor to Casco Bay Weekly, The Portland Phoenix, The Bollard, and Maine Public Radio, Tanya holds two New England Press Association awards and was recipient of the 2000 Martin Dibner Fellowship for Maine Writers. A resident of Portland, Maine, she has taught for the Lesley Seminars, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, the Stonecoast Writers’ Conference, and the University of Southern Maine.
Visit www.tanyawhiton.com.

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