Visiting Writers/Faculty
RICK BASS: President's Writers-in-Residence Series, Feb. 5, 2010
Rick Bass is the author of over 20 books, including non-fiction nature writing, essay collections, short story collections, novellas and novels. Why I Came West: A Memoir (Houghton Migglin 2008) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. His most recent book, The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009) documents the passing seasons in northwestern Montana's Yaak Valley. Bass has received a Pushcart and an O Henry Award.
BRIAN BLANCHFIELD (Visiting Faculty, Fall 2009 & Spring 2010) is the author of Not Even Then, a book of poetry published by University of California Press. He has taught creative writing and literature at Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn; in Los Angeles, at Cal Arts and Otis College of Art; and in Missoula, where he was the 2008-2009 Richard Hugo Fellow in Poetry at the University of Montana.
ROBERT BOSWELL: President's Writers-in-Residence Series, Nov. 11 - 14, 2009
Robert Boswell is the author of eleven books, including The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, a 2009 story collection with Graywolf Press. His novels include Century's Son, American Owned Love, Mystery Ride, The Geography of Desire, and Crooked Hearts. His other story collections are Living to Be 100 and Dancing in the Movies. Boswell has two nonfiction books: The Half-Known World, a book on the craft of writing, and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak, a book about a real-life treasure hunt in New Mexico (co-written with David Schweidel). His cyberpunk novel Virtual Death (published under the pseudonym Shale Aaron) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His play Tongues won the John Gassner Prize. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Iowa School of Letters Award for Fiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, and the Evil Companions Award. He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, Antonya Nelson. He can be found online at www.robertboswell.com
PETER FILKINS: Visiting Writer, Sept. 9 - 12, 2009
Peter Filkins is a poet and an acclaimed translator who received a Berlin Prize fellowship in 2005. Filkins is the author of two books of poems, After Homer (2002) and What She Knew (1998). His translation of H.G. Adler's Holocaust novel, The Journey, was published in 2008, and his translation of Ingeborg Bachmann's collected poems, Darkness Spoken, was published in 2006. (Click here to read Zephyr Press' review of Darkness Spoken.) Filkins is the recipient of an Outstanding Translation Award (1994) from the American Literary Translators Association and a Distinguished Translation Award (2007) from the Austrian government. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including The American Scholar, Paris Review, Poetry, Partisan Review, and the N.Y. Times Book Review. Filkins earned an MFA in poetry at Columbia University and was a Fulbright Fellow in German at the University of Vienna from 1983 to 1985. He has held residencies at the Yaddo Artists Colony, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. Filkins currently teaches and is the head of the Poetry & Fiction Series at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, MA.
ANNIE FINCH: Visiting Writer, Sept. 24, 2009
Annie Finch is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism. Her books of poetry include Eve, Calendars, The Encyclopedia of Scotland, and the forthcoming Among the Goddesses: A Narrative Libretto. Her music, art, and theater collaborations include two operas. Her poems appear in anthologies, textbooks, and journals including Agni, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Yale Review, and her books on poetics include A Formal Feeling Comes, An Exaltation of Forms, The Ghost of Meter, The Body of Poetry, and the forthcoming A Poet’s Craft. Her book of poetry Calendars was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award and in 2009 she was awarded the Robert Fitzgerald Award. She has performed her poetry across the U.S. and in England, France, Greece, Ireland, and Spain. Finch earned a BA from Yale University, a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and a PhD in English from Stanford University. She lives in Maine where she directs Stonecoast, the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.
PETER GIZZI: President's Writers-in-Residence Series, March 10 - 13, 2010
Peter Gizzi is the author of The Outernationale (Wesleyan, 2007), Some Values of Landscape and Weather (2003), Artificial Heart (1998), and Periplum (1992). He has also published several limited-edition chapbooks, folios, and artist books. His work has been widely anthologized and translated into numerous languages. Gizzi holds degrees from New York University, Brown University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. His honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Gizzi has taught at Brown University and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
EILEEN MYLES: Hugo Writer-in-Residence, Spring 2010
Eileen Myles is probably America's best-known unofficial poet. Her latest book is Sorry, Tree in which she describes "some nature" as well as the transmigration of souls from the east coast to the west. Bust Magazine calls Myles "the rock star of modern poetry" and Holland Cotter in The New York Times describes her as "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant garde." Eileen arrived in New York after college (U. Mass, Boston), gaining the friendship of Allen Ginsberg, working for poet James Schuyler, becoming a habitue of the household of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley and generally being a notable part of the turbulent punk and art scene that animated Manhattan's East Village, giving her first reading at CBGB's in 1974. A virtuoso performer of her work - she's read and performed at colleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across North America as well as in Europe, Iceland, Ireland and Russia. She's published more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, articles, plays and libretti including Hell (an opera with composer Michael Webster, 2004) Skies, (2001), on my way, (2001), Cool for You, (a novel, 2000), School of Fish, (1997), Maxfield Parrish, (1995), Not Me, (1991), and Chelsea Girls, (stories, 1994). In 1995, with Liz Kotz, she edited The New Fuck You/adventures in Lesbian Reading (Semiotext(e). In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. In the 80s she was Artistic Director of St. Mark's Poetry Project. In '97 and again in 2007 Eileen toured with Sister Spit, a post-punk female performance troupe. She has been a professor of writing at UCSD since 2002. In 2007 she received The Andy Warhol/Creative Capital art writing fellowship. She contributes to a wide number of publication including Bookforum, the Believer, and lately Cabinet, has written catalogue essays about Sadie Benning, Peggy Awesh and Nicole Eisenman. Eileen Myles can be found online at www.eileenmyles.com
PETER ORNER: Kittredge Writer-in-Residence, Fall 2009
Peter Orner is the author of the novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006--a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and the story collection, Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001--awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction). A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner. A book of oral histories, edited by Orner, Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, was published in 2008 by McSweeneys for the Voice of Witness Series. For more information, go to voiceofwitness.org. Orner's stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations. Currently, Orner is an associate professor at San Francisco State University. He can be found online at www.peterorner.net
MICHAEL PERRY: President's Writers-in-Residence Series, Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 2009
Michael Perry is a humorist and author of the bestselling memoirs Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time and Truck: A Love Story, the essay collection Off Main Street, and the upcoming memoir Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting. Perry has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, Backpacker, Orion and Salon.co and is a contributing editor to Men’s Health. His essays have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered; he has performed and produced two live audience recordings (I Got It From the Cows and Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow). Perry lives in rural Wisconsin , where he remains active with the local volunteer rescue service. He can be found online at www.sneezingcow.com
PETER RICHARDS: Visiting Faculty, Fall 2009 & Spring 2010
Peter Richards is the author of Nude Siren and Oubliette, both from Wave Books. His honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize, The John Logan Award, and a Massachusetts Center for the Book Honors Award. He has taught at Harvard University, Tufts University, and Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston. His chapbook Hibernal is forthcoming from Empyrean Press.
ELIZABETH WILLIS: President's Writers-in-Residence Series, March 10 - 13, 2010
Elizabeth Willis is the author of several books of poetry, including Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan, 2006), Turneresque (Burning Deck, 2003), and The Human Abstract (Penguin Books, 1995), which was selected for the National Poetry Series. She received a Ph.D. from the Poetics Program, SUNY Buffalo. As of 2002, she teaches at Wesleyan University.
Photo Credits: Rick Bass (Nicole Blaisdell), Robert Boswell (William Faulkner), Peter Filkins (Joanna Eldredge Morrissey), Annie Finch (Julian Brand), Peter Gizzi (Elizabeth Willis), Eileen Myles (A.L. Steiner), Peter Orner (Kristen Hepburn), Michael Perry (C.J. Shimon & J. Lindemann), Peter Richards (Jay Richards), and Elizabeth Willis (Edward Judice).
Past Visiting Writers, 2008-2009:
BRIAN BLANCHFIELD is the author of Not Even Then, a book of poetry published by University of California Press. He has taught creative writing and literature at Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn; in Los Angeles, at Cal Arts and Otis College of Art; and in Missoula, where he is the 2008-2009 Richard Hugo Fellow in Poetry at the University of Montana.
THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1988 and earned an MFA from Brown University in 1995. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Grand Street, Tin House, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry, 1997 and 2001. He has received fellowships and grants from The Fine Arts Work Center, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo, and The MacDowell Colony. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency MFA Program in Cambridge, Mass.
CRAIG LESLEY is the author of four novels and a memoir, along with numerous other works. He has received three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards, the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for Best Novel, and an Oregon Book Award. He has been the recipient of several national fellowships and holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Whitman College. Currently the Senior Writer-in-Residence at Portland State University, Craig lives with his wife and two daughters in Portland, Oregon. Both Stormriders and The Sky Fisherman were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
BEVERLY LOWRY'S (Kittredge Visiting Fiction Writer) most recent book is Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life, published by Doubleday in 2007. Lowry is the author of six novels and three books of nonfiction, Her Dream of Dreams, the Rise and Triumph of Madam C.J. Walker; Crossed Over, a Murder a Memoir; and The Track of Real Desires. She has also published works of feature journalism and book reviews in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta and other publications. She teaches at George Mason University and lives in Austin, Texas.
MICHAEL MARTONE is the author of several books, including Racing in Place, a book of essays; Double-wide, collected early fiction; and Michael Martone, a memoir done in contributor's notes. He also has edited a series of fiction and nonfiction anthologies. He currently teaches at the University of Alabama and has taught at Iowa State, Harvard, and Syracuse Universities.
ZAFER SENOCAK lives in Berlin and writes books in German and Turkish as well as essays for German newspapers and radio stations. He has published several poetry volumes Flammentropfen (Flamedrops) and Ritual der Jugend (Rituals of the Youth), and Selected Poems, 1980-2005. His novels include Die Prärie, Gefährliche Verwandtschaft, as well as Der Erottomane. His first novel written in Turkish, Alman Terbiyesi, was published in 2007 in Instanbul. Door Languages, a selection of Zafer Şenocak's sixth volume of poetry Fernwehanstalten, along with older and more recent work, was translated into English and published by Zephyr Press in fall 2008. Şenocak has been Writer-in-Residence at several American universities, among them M.I.T., Dartmouth College, Oberlin College, University of California at Berkeley, and Lafayette College.
BRAD WATSON was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and attended Mississippi State University and The University of Alabama, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts. He’s taught at Alabama, Harvard University, The University of West Florida, The University of Mississippi, The University of California – Irvine, and currently in the MFA program at Wyoming. He’s the author of Last Days of the Dog-Men, The Heaven of Mercury, both from W.W. Norton, and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, forthcoming from Norton in 2010.
JOY WILLIAMS is the author of four novels, State of Grace, The Changeling, Breaking and Entering, and The Quick and the Dead, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. She also authored three collections of short stories, Taking Care, Escapes, and Honored Guest, and a book of essays, Ill Nature, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the short story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has taught creative writing at the University of Houston, the University of Florida, the University of Iowa, and the University of Arizona, and currently in the MFA program at Wyoming.
PAST VISITING WRITERS, 2007 - 2008:
Stephen Amidon, Madeline DeFrees, Linh Dinh, Bryan Di Salvatore, Mary Gaitskill, Janet Campbell Hale, Andrew Joron, Frances McCue, Ed Roberson, Tomaz Salamun