Commencement Speakers

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) which won the New York/New England Award, and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. Mixology was also a finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature. His third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), focuses on Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion of the world. The Big Smoke was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His most recent book, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017. Among Matejka’s other honors are the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, the Julia Peterkin Award, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Bellagio Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington and is Poet Laureate of Indiana.

Gregory Pardlo is the author of Totem (2007), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, and Digest (2014), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The Pulitzer judges cited Pardlo’s “clear-voiced poems that bring readers the news from 21st Century America, rich with thought, ideas and histories public and private.” Greg’s other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Gregory’s poems, reviews, and translations have been widely published. He is also the author of Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in American (2018). The book, which weaves together Pardlo’s family history—including his father’s role in the 1981 air traffic controller’s strike—with a larger exploration of Blackness and masculinity in American culture, was named to numerous top-ten lists, including the BBC, Vogue, the New Jersey Monthly, and the New York Times. Poetry editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review, Gregory teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers University in Camden New Jersey. He lives in Brooklyn.

Grace Lin, a New York Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and the Theodor Geisel Honor for Ling and Ting. Her most recent novel, When the Sea Turned to Silver, was a National Book Award Finalist. Grace is also a commentator for New England Public Radio, a reviewer for the New York Times, a video essayist for PBS NewsHour, and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, “The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf.” In 2016, Grace’s art was displayed at the White House where Grace herself was recognized by President Obama’s office as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling.

Bob Shacochis is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and educator. His work has received a National Book Award for First Fiction, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He graduated from the University of Missouri Journalism School in 1973, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1982. A former Peace Corps volunteer in the Eastern Caribbean, Mr. Shacochis currently teaches in the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and Florida State. He is author of two short story collections (Easy in The Islands and The Next New World) as well as the novel Swimming in the Volcano, a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, was published by The Atlantic Monthly Press in 2013 and received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Bob is a former cooking columnist for GQ magazine, writing its “Dining In” column, which combined often humorous anecdotes with recipes. Scribner published a hybrid cookbook/essay collection of those columns in Domesticity: A Gastronomic Interpretation of Love. A former contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine and Outside Magazine, Mr. Shacochis’s op-ed commentaries on the US military, Haiti, and Florida politics have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Harper’s sent him to Haiti in 1994 to cover the uprising against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the island nation’s first democratically elected President, and the subsequent intervention by US Army Special Forces, with whom Bob traveled for nearly a year covering the invasion. The experience resulted in The Immaculate Invasion, a finalist for the New Yorker Magazine Literary Awards for best nonfiction book of the year, and named a Notable Book of 1999 by The New York Times. His travel memoir of his journeys in the Himalaya, Between Heaven and Hell, was published by Byliner in 2012. At the 2015 Associated Writing Programs annual conference, Shacochis received the George Garrett Award for Service to the Literary Community. His most recent work, Kingdoms in the Air, a collection of his travel writing, was published in 2016. He lives in Florida and New Mexico.

Claire Messud was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady, and her book, The Hunters, were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; her second novel, The Last Life, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and Editor’s Choice at The Village Voice. All three of her books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her newest book, The Burning Girl, came out in August 2017. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Radcliffe Fellowship, and is the current recipient of the Straus Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

Vijay Seshadri was born in Bangalore, India, in 1954 and moved to America at the age of five. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Vijay has been an editor for The New Yorker, and an essayist and book reviewer for myriad publications, including The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review. He is the author of the poetry books Wild Kingdom, The Long Meadow, The Disappearances, and 3 Sections, as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. His work has been widely published and anthologized and recognized with many honors, including an NEA as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and, most recently, the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was educated at Oberlin College and Columbia University, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, where he has held the Michele Tolela Myers Chair.

André Dubus III’s most recent collection of fiction, Dirty Love, was named a 2013 New York Times “Notable Book,” a Washington Post Notable Fiction Pick, and received a starred, “Best Book of 2013” review by Kirkus. Its audio version, read by the author, was an AudioFile Magazine “Editors’ Pick” and received Audiofile’s “Earphone Award.” André’s book Townie: A Memoir (2011)—a New York Times “Editors’ Choice”—made it to #4 on the New York Times Bestseller List and it is now in development as a feature film. André is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories; and the novels Bluesman; House of Sand and Fog; and The Garden of Last Days, another New York Times bestseller. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994,
The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His novel House of Sand and Fog —published in eighteen languages —was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a BookSense Book of the Year, and a #1 New York Times bestseller. In 2003, the novel was made into an Academy Award-nominated motion picture. A member of PEN American Center, André has served as a judge for The National Book Awards and a panelist for The National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell where he is a full-time faculty member. Andre lives in Massachusetts with his wife, performer, Fontaine Dollas Dubus, and their three children.

Orlean graduated with honors from the University of Michigan and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003. In 2012 she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan. In 2014, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts/Nonfiction. She has lectured at Yale, New York University, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Kenyon College, The Breadloaf Writers Conference, Goucher College, and Harvard University, among others, and has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony and at Yaddo. She has frequently served as a literary judge for competitions, including the National Book Awards, Bellevue Literary Awards, and Iowa Review award. Orlean lives in Los Angeles and in upstate New York with her husband and son. She is currently writing a book about the Los Angeles Public Library.

Richard Blanco is the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exiled parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity and place characterize his body of work. He is the author of the memoirs The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey; the poetry chapbooks Matters of the Sea, One Today, and Boston Strong; the poetry collections Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and City of a Hundred Fires; and a children’s book of his inaugural poem, “One Today,” illustrated by Dav Pilkey. With Ruth Behar, he recently co-created Bridges to/from Cuba: Lifting the Emotional Embargo, a blog providing a cultural and artistic platform for sharing the real lives and complex emotional histories of thousands of Cubans across the globe. Blanco’s many honors include the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center, the Paterson Poetry Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and two Maine Literary Awards. The Academy of American Poets named him its first Education Ambassador in 2015. He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Fresh Air. He has been a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, Colby College, and the University of Rhode Island. He has continued to write occasional poems for organizations and events such as the re-opening of the U.S. embassy in Havana. Blanco shares his time between Bethel, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts.

Joseph Bruchac is a writer and traditional storyteller whose work often reflects his American Indian(Abenaki) ancestry and the Adirondack Region of northern New York, where he lives in the house that he was raised in by his grandparents. He holds a B.A. in English from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse University,and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. Founder and Executive Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press, much of his own writing draws on his Abenaki Indian ancestry. A martial arts expert, he holds a 5thdegree black belt and Master’s rank in Pentjak-silat and in 2014 earned a purple belt in Brazilian jiujitsu. He and his two grown sons,James and Jesse, who are also storytellers and writers, work together in projects involving the preservation of Native culture, Native language renewal, teaching traditional Native skills and environmental education.

Author of over 120 books in several genres for young readers and adults, his experiences include running a college program in a maximum security prison and teaching in West Africa. His newest books include a picture book co-authored with his son James, Rabbit’s Snow Dance (Dial), a bilingual collection of poems in English and Abenaki co-authored by himself and his younger son Jesse, NisnolSiboal/Two Rivers (Bowman Books), and the young adult post-apocalyptic novel Killer of Enemies (Tu Books), winner of the 2014 Native American Librarians Association Award.

Multi-genre author Nancy Willard is the author of two short story collections and three novels for adults, including Things Invisible to See, Sister Water, and The Doctrine of the Leather-Stocking Jesus: Collected Stories. Her myriad novels for young adults include Island of the Grass King and Firebrat; her dozen books of poetry include Water Walker, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Swimming Lessons: New and Selected Poems; In the Salt Marsh; and—most recently— The Sea at Truro. In addition to her graphic novels, she has written nearly 20 picture books including The Moon Riddles Diner and the Sunnyside Café, Nightgown of the Sullen Moon, Sweep Dreams, The Well-Mannered Balloon, A Starlit Snowfall, and A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, which was awarded the Newbery Medal. Nancy lyrically adapted the traditional tale “East of the Sun amp; West of the Moon” into a play in 1989, which was published and illustrated in full color by Barry Moser. A documentary about Nancy and her work, “Uncommon Sense: The Art amp; Imagination of Nancy Willard,” was directed by Michael Mayhew and co-written with producer Ken Robinson in 2003. Awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in both fiction and poetry, her work has been widely anthologized. She teaches in the English department at Vassar College and lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with her husband, the photographer Eric Lindbloom.

Cornelius Eady is the author of eight books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Putnam, April 2008). His second book, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, won the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1985; in 2001 Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work in theater includes the libretto for an opera, “Running Man,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999. His play, “Brutal Imagination,” won Newsday’s Oppenheimer award in 2002.

In 1996, Cornelius founded, with writer Toi Derricotte, the Cave Canem summer workshop and retreat for African-American poets. More than a decade later, Cave Canem is a thriving national network of black poets, as well as an institution offering regional workshops, readings, a first book prize, and the summer retreat.

Cornelius has been a teacher for more than twenty years, and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The Writer’s Voice, The College of William and Mary, Sweet Briar College, and the University of Notre Dame. Formerly an associate professor of English and Director of the Poetry Center at State University of New York at Stony Brook and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the City College of New York, Eady currently lives in New York City and Columbia, Missouri with his wife, novelist Sarah Micklem, and holds the Miller Family Chair in Writing and Literature at the University of Missouri.

Widely considered one of the foremost American essayists and a central figure in the recent revival of interest in memoir writing, Phillip Lopate is best known for his supple and surprising essays, which have been collected most recently in Getting Personal: Selected Writings. He is the author of three essay collections, Bachelorhood (winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Award), Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body (a finalist for the PEN Best Essay Book of the Year Award). He has also published two novellas in the book titled Two Marriages; two novels, Confessions of Summer and The Rug Merchant; two poetry collections, The Eyes Don’t Always Want to Stay Open and The Daily Round; and a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children, awarded the Christopher Medal. He has also edited the anthologies The Art of the Personal Essay, Writing New York; Journal of a Living Experiment (recipient of a citation from the New York Society Library and honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society’s Brendan Gill Award); and a series collecting the best essays of the year, The Anchor Essay Annual. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize series. His most recent book of nonfiction prose is the urbanistic meditation Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan.

Phillip has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School University, and Bennington’s MFA Program.

Widely considered one of the foremost American essayists and a central figure in the recent revival of interest in memoir writing, Phillip Lopate is best known for his supple and surprising essays, which have been collected most recently in Getting Personal: Selected Writings. He is the author of three essay collections, Bachelorhood (winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Award), Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body (a finalist for the PEN Best Essay Book of the Year Award). He has also published two novellas in the book titled Two Marriages; two novels, Confessions of Summer and The Rug Merchant; two poetry collections, The Eyes Don’t Always Want to Stay Open and The Daily Round; and a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children, awarded the Christopher Medal. He has also edited the anthologies The Art of the Personal Essay, Writing New York; Journal of a Living Experiment (recipient of a citation from the New York Society Library and honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society’s Brendan Gill Award); and a series collecting the best essays of the year, The Anchor Essay Annual. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize series. His most recent book of nonfiction prose is the urbanistic meditation Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan.

Phillip has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School University, and Bennington’s MFA Program.

Louise Meriwether was born in upstate New York and grew up in Harlem during the depression years. Shortly after graduating from New York University, she moved to Los Angeles where she worked for a black newspaper, the Los Angeles Sentinel, was a story analyst at Universal Studios in Hollywood, and wrote book reviews for the Los Angeles Times. At that time, she also penned her first novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner, based on the Harlem community that she knew as a child. The book is still in print and now considered to be a modern classic. Always fascinated by black history, which she claimed was often lost or vilified, Louise has written several articles on the accomplishments of black people and three historical children’s books: Don’t Ride the Bus on Monday is the story of Rosa Parks who sparked the 1960’s civil rights revolt; Dr. Daniel Hale Williams: The Heart Man chronicles the first doctor to successfully operate on the heart; and The Freedom Ship of Robert Smalls records the heroics of a slave who hijacked a confederate gunboat. Freedom Ship is also the genesis for Louise’s epic Civil War novel, Fragments of the Ark, its battles and personal lives told from the viewpoint of the slaves themselves. Her latest novel, Shadow Dancing, is a contemporary story set in New York City. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies.

Louise taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College for several years as well as at the University of Houston in Texas. Ever an activist, she traveled south in the sixties to participate in the non-violent civil rights movement; was active in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa that successfully kept Muhamad Ali from fighting there when he was heavyweight champion of the world; and she is a dedicated peace activist against all wars. She is the recipient of literary grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Council for the Arts, the Rabinowitz Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. She resides in New York City.

Walter Mosley is the author of thirty critically acclaimed books, including his latest, The Long Fall, and his work as been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, followed by several more novels in the series, such as Black Betty, A Little Yellow Dog, and Cinnamon Kiss (all of which were New York Times bestsellers). Other novels by Walter Mosley include The Wave; RL’s Dream (winner of the 1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s Literary Award and the NAACP Award in Fiction); Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; Walkin’ the Dog; The Man in My Basement; and Fortunate Son. His works of nonfiction include Workin’ on the Chain Gang; What Next; Life out of Context; and This Year You Write Your Novel. His nonfiction has also been published in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, and he was an editor and contributor to the book Black Genius. He was also guest editor for The Best American Short Stories of 2003.

Walter’s numerous honors include the O’Henry Award and the Anisfield Wolf Award, an honor given to works that increase the appreciation and understanding of race in America. In 2002, he won a Grammy award for his liner notes accompanying “Richard Pryor: And It’s Deep, Too!: The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992)”. In 2005, he was honored by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute with a “Risktaker Award,” given to him for both his creative and activist efforts. Two movies have been made from his work, including the 1995 TriStar release of “Devil in A Blue Dress,” directed by Carl Franklin, and starring Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals. “Always Outnumbered,” produced by HBO/NYC and Palomar Pictures films, was directed by Michael Apted and starred Laurence Fishburne, Natalie Cole, Cicely Tyson, and Bill Cobbs. He was also given an honorary doctorate by The City College of New York in 2005. With The City College, Walter founded a new publishing degree program aimed at young urban residents—the only such program in the country. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in New York City.

Nina Crews’ distinctive picture books for children draw inspiration from the people and neighborhoods of Brooklyn—her home for more than 25 years. Using photography and collage, her stories reflect the lives of today’s children. Her first book, One Hot Summer Day, was published in 1995 and is still in print today. Daughter of children’s book authors Donald Crews and Ann Jonas, Nina has received numerous honors. The Neighborhood Mother Gooose was selected as an ALA Notable Book for 2004, Kirkus and School Library Journals Best Books of 2004, and the New York Public Library’s 100 Books for Reading and Sharing. Below was an ALA Notable Book for 2006 and Junior Library Guild Selection. Her most recent books are Sky-High Guy (2010), The Neighborhood Sing-Along (2011), and Jack and the Beanstalk (2011). Nina lives in Park Slope with her husband and son.