2004 Faculty

Ted Conover 's Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing describes his year as a rookie corrections officer. Winner of the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Newjack was excerpted in the New Yorker and banned by the New York State Department of Correctional Services. Currently a Guggenheim Fellow, Conover is also the author of the nonfiction narratives Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes, Coyotes, and Whiteout. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine and many other publications. He lives in Riverdale, New York.

Michael Collier, director of the Conference, is the author of four books of poems: The Clasp and Other Poems; The Folded Heart; The Neighbor; and, most recently, The Ledge, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He 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.  A William Maxwell Portrait, co-edited with Charles Baxter and Edward Hirsch, is forthcoming in 2004. Mr. Collier served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001-2004 and is currently the co-director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland. 

Brigit Pegeen Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her poetry collections are Song, the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a Finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and To the Place of Trumpets, selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize.

Tony Hoagland has published three collections of poetry: Sweet Ruin, Donkey Gospel (a winner of the James Laughlin second book award), and What Narcissism Means To Me.  He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of Arts and Letters. His poems and essays about poetry have appeared widely.  He currently teaches in the graduate writing program of the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

Heather McHugh's most recent collection of poems is Eyeshot. Previous books include The Father of the Predicaments; Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (National Book Award finalist and winner of the Pollock/Harvard Book Review prize 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' Cyclops.  She has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and PEN, among others.  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 seven books of poetry, most recently The Rest of Love (2004) and Rock Harbor (2002); other books include Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry (2004) and a translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes (2003).  The recipient of numerous awards, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Library of Congress, Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Alan Shapiro has published eight books of poetry, including Happy Hour, winner of the 1987 William Carlos Williams Award; Mixed Company, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Dead Alive and Busy, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and Song & Dance. His new book of poems, Tantalus in Love, will be published in 2005. Shapiro has published two memoirs, The Last Happy Occasion, a 1996 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Vigil. His translation of The Oresteia by Aeschylus appeared in 2003. A recently elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Shapiro teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Carol Anshaw is the author of the novels Lucky in the Corner, Seven Moves, and Aquamarine.  She has won the Carl Sandburg, Ferro-Grumley, and Society of Midland Authors awards for fiction, and three times been a finalist of the Lambda Literary Award.  Her short fiction has been anthologized, and published in various periodicals, including VLS and Story.  Her stories, Hammam and Elvis Has Left the Building were chosen for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1994 and 1998, respectively.  Hammam was read on NPR's Selected Shorts series.  Anshaw is on the faculty of the MFA in Writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Robert Boswell is the author of five novels (Century's Son, Crooked Hearts, The Geography of Desire, Mystery Ride, and American Owned Love), two story collections (Living to Be 100 and Dancing in the Movies), one play (Tongues), and one pseudonymous sci-fi novel. His stories have appeared in Esquire, the New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, and elsewhere. A recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he teaches in the PhD & MFA programs at the University of Houston, and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

Ron Carlson is the author of eight books of fiction, most recently his selected stories, A Kind of Flying.  His novel The Speed of Light was published in 2003, and the story collection At the Jim Bridger, in 2002.  His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Harper's, the New Yorker, GQ, and other journals, as well as The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, and dozens of anthologies.  He is Foundation Professor at Arizona State University.

Maxine Clair is the author of Rattlebone, a collection of short stories; October Suite, a novel; and Coping with Gravity, a volume of poems. She has received the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for fiction and the American Library Association's Black Caucus Award and has been a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Clair grew up in Kansas and now teaches creative writing at George Washington University. She lives in Washington, DC.

Robert Cohen is the author of three novels: Inspired Sleep, The Here and Now, and The Organ Builder; and a collection of stories, The Varieties of Romantic Experience. His work has appeared in Harper's, the Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Antaeus, and other magazines. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lila Wallace Writers' Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Ribalow Prize. He teaches at Middlebury College.

Antonya Nelson is the author of three novels: Talking in Bed, Nobody's Girl, and Living to Tell; and four short story collections: The Expendables, In the Land of Men, Family Terrorists, and Female Trouble.  Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, TriQuarterly, and Story, and in anthologies, including O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. She is a 2000-2001 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2003 Rea Award for the Short Story recipient.  She teaches at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

Cornelia Nixon is the author of two novels, Now You See It and Angels Go Naked, as well as a book of literary criticism. She has published stories in such magazines as Ploughshares, New England Review, Iowa Review, and Gettysburg Review, and her work has won two O. Henry Awards (one of them the first prize in 1995), two Pushcart Prizes, a Nelson Algren Prize, and the Carl Sandburg Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe. She teaches in the MFA program at Mills College.

John Elder teaches English and environmental studies at Middlebury College and lives in the nearby village of Bristol with his wife Rita. His two most recent books, Reading the Mountains of Home and The Frog Run, explore the meaning of Vermont's landscape and environmental history for him as a teacher, writer, and householder. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing.

Sue Halpern writes frequently for the New York Review of Books and is the author of a novel, The Book of Hard Things, and two books of nonfiction, Migrations to Solitude and Four Wings and a Prayer.

Devon Jersild is associate director of the Conference. She is the author of Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman's Life. Her short fiction has appeared in the Kenyon Review and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards. She has reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review, and the Chicago Tribune. She is also a doctoral student in clinical psychology.