Faculty

2008 Faculty, Special Guests, Administrative Staff, and Visiting Agents & Editors

Photos will be posted soon.

NONFICTION FACULTY

Ted Conover's Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Conover is also the author of Whiteout, Coyotes, and Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Nation, and many other publications. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is Distinguished Writer-in- Residence in the Department of Journalism at New York University.

Patricia Hampl’s latest book is The Florist’s Daughter, a family memoir. She is the author of seven other books, including Blue Arabesque, recently released in paperback, as well as A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, and I Could Tell You Stories, all named “Notable Books of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review.  She has also published two collections of poems, numerous essays, travel pieces, book reviews and short fiction in magazines and newspapers, and serves as co-editor of the Sightlines literary nonfiction series for the University of Iowa Press.  She is working on a book-length essay about Celtic spirituality, The Virtue of Heresy, and co-editing an anthology of essays on autobiographical writing, Who’s Got the Story?—Memoir as History/History as Memoir, to be published in early 2009.  She is Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, a former MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and is on the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program.

Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawai`i and grew up on the North Shore of O`ahu and in Los Angeles.  He was educated at Pomona College, the University of Michigan, and UC Irvine, where he received an MFA.  His work includes two books of poetry, three anthologies, and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai`i.  His poems and essays have appeared in New York Times Magazine, Parnassus, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, Honolulu Weekly, LA Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times.  Among his honors are a Guggenheim and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.  He teaches at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences. 

POETRY FACULTY   

Linda Bierds has published seven books of poetry:  Flights of the Harvest-Mare; The Stillness, the Dancing; Heart and Perimeter; The Ghost Trio (a 1994 Notable Book selection of the American Library Association); The Profile Makers (winner of the Pen West Poetry Prize); The Seconds; and First Hand.  Flight: New and Selected Poems will be published in September 2008.  Her awards include four Pushcart Prizes, Virginia Quarterly Review's 2005 Emily Clark Balch Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill, Guggenheim, and MacArthur foundations.  She is a professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Michael Collier, director of the Conference, is the author of five books of poems: The Clasp and Other Poems; The Folded Heart; The Neighbor; The Ledge, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and most recently, Dark Wild Realm. He is also co-editor, along with Charles Baxter and Edward Hirsch, of A William Maxwell Portrait.  His translation of Euripides’s Medea appeared in 2006 and a collection of essays, Make Us Wave Back, in 2007.  Collier has received Guggenheim and Thomas Watson fellowships, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Pushcart Prize. Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001–2004, he teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland.

Edward Hirsch, a 1998 MacArthur Fellow, has published seven books of poems: For the Sleepwalkers; Wild Gratitude, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Night Parade; Earthly Measures; On Love; Lay Back the Darkness; and, most recently, Special Orders.  He has also published four prose books: How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller; Responsive Reading; The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration; and Poet's Choice. He is the editor of Transforming Vision: Writers on Art; and co-editor of A William Maxwell Portrait and The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology.  He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

James Longenbach is the author of three books of poems, Draft of a Letter, Fleet River, and Threshold; his poems have appeared in Paris Review, Threepenny Review, New Republic, and New Yorker.  In addition, he writes widely about modern and contemporary poetry; his prose books include The Resistance to Poetry and The Art of the Poetic Line. The recipient of a "Discovery"/The Nation Award as well as awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim, and Mellon foundations, he teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program and at the University of Rochester, where he is the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English.

Heather McHugh was editor of Best American Poetry 2007.  The most recent collection of her own poems is Eyeshot. Previous books include The Father of the Predicaments; Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (National Book Award finalist in 1994); and a collection of literary essays, Broken English: Poetry and Partiality.  Her translations include Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, which she translated in collaboration with her husband Nikolai Popov, and Euripides’s Cyclops.  McHugh has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and others. She has served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  McHugh is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington and a regular summer faculty visitor for the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

Carl Phillips is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Quiver of Arrows:Selected Poems 1986-2006 .  Other books include Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry, and a translation of Sophocles’s Philoctetes.  Phillips’s awards and honors include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Library of Congress.  In 2006, he was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dean Young has published eight books of poems, most recently Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Embryoyo. A new book, Primitive Mentor, will be published in spring 2008.  He has received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.  He is on the permanent faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and also teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

FICTION FACULTY

Robert Boswell is publishing two books of nonfiction in 2008, a collection of essays on writing called The Half-Known World and a book about a real-life treasure hunt in New Mexico titled What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak.  His most recent novel is Century’s Son. He is the author of six other books of fiction: American Owned Love, Living to Be 100, Mystery Ride, The Geography of Desire, Dancing in the Movies, and Crooked Hearts. 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. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O’Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, Best Stories from the South, Esquire, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Colorado Review, and many other magazines. His sci-fi novel Virtual Death (written under the pseudonym Shale Aaron) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His play Tongues won the John Gassner Prize.

Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and A Seahorse Year, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday, and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction from 1995-1997. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review, and Ploughshares.  D’Erasmo is an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University. She is currently completing her third novel.

Lynn Freed's books include Reading, Writing & Leaving Home, a collection of essays; The Curse of the Appropriate Man, a collection of stories; and five novels: House of Women, The Mirror, The Bungalow, Home Ground, and Friends of the Family.  Her new novel, The Servants' Quarters, will be published in 2008.  Her short fiction and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New York Times, and Washington Post, among others, and are widely anthologized. In 2002, she received the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award for fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.  She is also the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation, among others.

Ursula Hegi is the author of seven novels: The Worst Thing I’ve Done; Sacred Time; The Vision of Emma Blau; Salt Dancers; Stones from the River, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; Floating in My Mother's Palm; and Intrusions. She has also written a book of nonfiction, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America; a children's book, Trudi & Pia; and two collections of stories, Hotel of the Saints and Unearned Pleasures. Her books have been translated into many languages.  Hegi has served as a juror for the National Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, and she is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust.  She teaches in the MFA Program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Randall Kenan's books include Walking on Water, A Visitation of Spirits, and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, a collection of stories. The latter was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; it was selected as one of the New York Times Notable Books of 1992.   His most recent book, The Fire This Time, is a work of nonfiction.  The recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1997 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kenan has also written a young adult biography of James Baldwin. He currently teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Margot Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. After taking a BA in literature and philosophy at the University of York in England, she moved to America, where she has taught in a number of writing programs including the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Warren Wilson MFA Program. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and is the author of a collection of stories and several novels including Criminals and Eva Moves the Furniture.  Her new novel, The House on Fortune Street, will be published in the spring of 2008.  She is currently a writer in residence at Emerson College in Boston.

Thomas Mallon’s seven novels include Henry and Clara, Bandbox, and the recently published Fellow Travelers.  He has written nonfiction books about plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One’s Own), and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine’s Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).  His work appears in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Book Review, and other publications.  He has been the literary editor of Gentlemen’s Quarterly and has taught at Vassar College and George Washington University.  The recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for reviewing, he lives in Washington, DC.

Antonya Nelson is the author of three novels: Talking in Bed, Nobody's Girl, and Living to Tell; and five short story collections: The Expendables, In the Land of Men, Family Terrorists, Female Trouble, and Some Fun.  Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, TriQuarterly, and Story, and in anthologies, including The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rea Award for the Short Story, she teaches at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of eleven books, including The Devil's Highway, winner of the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Across the Wire, winner of the Christopher Award and a New York Times Notable Book; and Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction, named the 2002 small-press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine. His memoir, Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life, won a 1999 American Book Award.  Urrea's most recent book, The Hummingbird's Daughter, is the culmination of twenty years of research and writing.  A member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Helena María Viramontes is the author of two novels, Their Dogs Came with Them and Under the Feet of Jesus, and a book of short stories, The Moths and Other Stories.  Named a United States Artist Fellow in literature for 2007, she has also received the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a Sundance Institute Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Luis Leal Award. Viramontes is currently professor of creative writing in the Department of English at Cornell University.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Edward P. Jones’s most recent collection of short stories is All Aunt Hagar’s Children, a New York Times bestseller.  Other titles include Lost in the City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, was short-listed for the National Book Award, and was the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Award.  His first novel, The Known World, received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction; in addition, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award, the Lannan Literary award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Jones was named a MacArthur Fellow for 2004. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Essence, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Callaloo.  Jones has taught creative writing at the University of Virginia, George Mason University, the University of Maryland, and Princeton University.

Susan Orlean's books include My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere; The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Ordinary People; Saturday Night; Red Sox and Blue Fish; and The Orchid Thief. The Orchid Thief has been made into the movie Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze.  Orlean has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Spy, Vogue, Outside, and the New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 1992.  Currently, Orlean is writing a biography of Rin Tin Tin, and her children’s book, Shiftless Little Loafers, will be published in fall 2008.  Orlean lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.

Jay Parini has published six novels, including The Apprentice Lover, The Last Station, and Benjamin's Crossing; five collections of poetry, including The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems, Anthracite Country, and House of Days; biographies of Steinbeck, Frost, and Faulkner; a critical study of Theodore Roethke; and a volume of essays, Some Necessary Angels. He edited the Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, the Norton Anthology of American Autobiography, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, he is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College.

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF

Jennifer Grotz, assistant director of the Conference, is the author of Cusp, which won the Katharine Nason Bakeless Prize and the Natalie Ornish Best First Book of Poetry Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her poems, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Boston Review, The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and The Best American Poetry. A recipient of awards from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Camargo Foundation, she teaches in the MFA Program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Noreen Cargill, administrative manager of the Conference, has worked for Middlebury College since 2000.  Previous jobs include working for a library, a bookstore, and a small publishing house.  In addition to working for the College, she enjoys freelance writing when she can; publications include the Boston Globe, Better Homes and Gardens, and Vermont Magazine.

2008 VISITING AGENTS AND EDITORS

Miriam Altshuler, President, Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency
Julie Barer, President, Barer Literary
Stuart Bernstein, Literary Agent,
Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists
Jill Bialosky, Executive Editor and Vice President, W.W. Norton
Judy Clain, Executive Editor, Little, Brown and Company
Gary Clark, Development Director, Vermont Studio Center
Gregory E. Donovan, Senior Editor, Blackbird
Katherine Fausset, Literary Agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Laura Ford, Editor, The Random House Publishing Group
Ted Genoways, Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review
Amy Holman, Literary Consultant
Carolyn Kuebler, Managing Editor, New England Review 
PJ Mark, Literary Agent, McCormick & Williams Literary Agency
Alane Salierno Mason, Editor, W.W. Norton
Fiona McCrae, Editor-in-Chief, Graywolf Press
Martha Rhodes, Director, Four Way Books
Denise Roy, Senior Editor, Simon & Schuster
Anjali Singh, Senior Editor, Houghton Mifflin
Christina Ward, Literary Agent, Christina Ward Literary Agency
Mitchell S. Waters, Literary Agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Michael Wiegers, Executive Editor, Copper Canyon Press
C. Dale Young, Poetry Editor, New England Review