Nonfiction
GARRETT HONGO is the author of Volcano Journal: A Memoir of Hawai'i. He has also published two poetry collections: Yellow Light and The River of Heaven; the latter was the 1988 Lamont Selection of the Academy of American Poets. A recipient of fellowships from the Thomas Watson and Guggenheim foundations and the NEA, he has edited Under Western Eyes: Personal Essays from Asian America; Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Memoir and Plays by Wakaako Yamauci; and The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America. He is professor of English and creative writing at the University of Oregon.
SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS has published six books of nonfiction, including In Limestone Country, Secrets of the Universe, and Staying Put. His first volume of essays, The Paradise of Bombs, won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction, and his latest volume, Writing from the Center, won the 1996 Great Lakes Book Award. He has also published novels, collections of stories, and children's books. His writing has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the NEA, and the Indiana Arts Council. For his body of work in nonfiction, he was honored in 1995 with a Lannan Literary Award. He teaches at Indiana University.(Photo: Eva Sanders)
Poetry
AGHA SHAHID ALI is Director of the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts--Amherst. His seven collections of poetry include The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Belovéd Witness: Selected Poems, and The Country without a Post Office (forthcoming), a collection focusing on the current turmoil in Kashmir, where he is from originally. He is also the translator of The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and the author of T. S. Eliot as Editor. His poems appear regularly in leading journals, such as Paris Review, Poetry, and Yale Review. He has won fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
MICHAEL COLLIER, director of the Conference, is the author of The Clasp and Other Poems, The Folded Heart, and The Neighbor, and has edited The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry. He has received Guggenheim and Thomas Watson fellowships, two NEA fellowships, a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Antaeus, The Nation, The New Republic, and Poetry. Mr. Collier has taught at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is currently on the English and writing faculty at the University of Maryland.
EDWARD HIRSCH has published four books of poems: For the Sleepwalkers, Wild Gratitude, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Night Parade, and Earthly Measures. His new book of poems, The Lectures on Love, will be published next year. His poems and reviews appear frequently in leading magazines and literary periodicals--among them The Nation, The New Republic, and The New Yorker--and he has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.
TOM SLEIGH is the author of After One, Waking, chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of poetry of 1990-91, and The Chain. He is completing a fourth book, The Dreamhouse. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in Threepenny, The New Yorker, Grand Street, DoubleTake, Slate Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and other magazines. He has won the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund Individual Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA grants, an Ingram Merrill Foundation fellowship, and two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he is also a Writing Committee member. He teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
ELIZABETH SPIRES has published four books of poetry: Globe, Swan's Island, Annonciade, and Worldling, and a book of riddles for children, With One White Wing. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Criterion, and other magazines. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and a 1996-97 Whiting Writers' Award. Recently, she edited The Instant of Knowing: The Occasional Prose of Josephine Jacobsen. She lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College, where she holds a Chair for Distinguished Achievement.(Photo: Jerry Bauer)
ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT has published five volumes of poetry: Claiming Kin, The Forces of Plenty, The Lotus Flowers, Two Trees, and most recently, Kyrie, nominated for the National Book Critic's Circle award. She has co-edited a collection of essays, Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World. Her work has received the Emily Clark Balch Award, the Haines Poetry Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Voigt founded and directed the nation's first low-residency MFA Writing Program at Goddard College and teaches in its relocated incarnation at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Vermont.
C. D. WRIGHT has published seven collections of poetry, including String Light, which won the 1992 Poetry Center Book Award from San Francisco State University; Just Whistle; and this year, Tremble. In 1981 she received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which prompted a move to Mexico. She is the recipient of a Witter Bynner Prize; Guggenheim, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest, and Bunting Institute Fellowships; A Whiting Writers' Award; and, in 1990, a Rhode Island Governor's Award for the Arts. In 1994 she was named State Poet of Rhode Island. Wright curated a "walk-in book of Arkansas," a multi-media exhibition now touring her native state. With the poet Forrest Gander she edits Lost Roads Publishers. She teaches at Brown University, and is visiting professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.(Photo: Forrest Gander)
Fiction
JULIA ALVAREZ is the author of three novels, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and [exclamdown]Yo!;; and two books of poems, Homecoming and The Other Side. She has taught creative writing in grammar and high schools, colleges and universities, as well as in old age homes, prisons, and community workshops. She has received fellowships from Ingram Merrill Foundation, the NEA , and Yaddo, and has been the Jenny McKean Moore fellow at George Washington. She now teaches creative writing at Middlebury College.(Photo: Bill Eichner)
ANDREA BARRETT's most recent book is Ship Fever & Other Stories, which won the National Book Award in 1996; she is also the author of the novels Lucid Stars, Secret Harmonies, The Middle Kingdom, and The Forms of Water. Her stories have appeared in Mademoiselle, Story, and many other magazines, as well as in the anthologies American Voices; Best Short Fiction by Contemporary Authors, and Best American Short Stories, 1995. She has received a fellowship from the NEA and currently teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
MADISON SMARTT BELL is the author of nine novels, including Doctor Sleep; Save Me, Joe Louis; and Soldier's Joy, which received the Lillian Smith Award in 1989. Bell has also published two collections of short stories: Zero db and Barking Man. His eighth novel, All Soul's Rising, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award. His ninth, Ten Indians, will be published in 1996. Born and raised in Tennessee, he has lived in New York and London, and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1984 he has taught at Goucher College, where he is currently Writer-in-Residence, along with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Spires.(Photo: Jerry Bauer)
ROBERT BOSWELL is the author of seven books, including American Owned Love, Living to Be 100, Mystery Ride, 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 1995 PEN West Award for Fiction, and the 1996 Evil Companions Award. He teaches at New Mexico State University and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.(Photo: Marion Ettlinger)
DAVID BRADLEY received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972, and an MA in United States Studies from the University of London in 1974. He is the author of two novels, South Street and The Chaneysville Incident, which was awarded the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Prize and an Academy Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His nonfiction has appeared in such publications as Esquire, Redbook, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, Bradley was also Professor of English at Temple University for 20 years. He is currently completing a nonfiction book, The Bondage Hypothesis: Meditations on Race, History and America.(Photo: Joyce Creamer)
CAROLYN CHUTE is the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine; Letourneau's Used Auto Parts; and Merry Men. She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and a Thornton Wilder Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Best American Short Stories of 1983, Ohio Review, Agni Review, and Grand Street. She is working on a fourth novel, The School on Heart's Content Road. She grew up in rural Maine, where she lives in Kezar Falls.
GLORIA NAYLOR was born in New York City, and is a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale University. Novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, Ms. Naylor is the author of four novels, including The Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day, as well as a play for children, Candy. Her literary honors include The American Book Award and NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships. She has taught at New York University, Boston University, Princeton, Cornell, and Brandeis. She has written screenplays for American Playhouse and PBS's "Our 13."(Photo: Marion Ettlinger)
ANTONYA NELSON is the author of three short story collections--The Expendables, In the Land of Men, and Family Terrorists--and two novels, Talking in Bed and the forthcoming Nobody's Girl. She has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first book won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Talking in Bed was awarded the 1996 Heartland Prize in Fiction. She currently is an associate professor in the English Department at New Mexico State University, teaching literature and creative writing, and also is a member of the faculty of the Warren Wilson MFA Program. She lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Telluride, Colorado.(Photo: Shale Aaron)
JAY PARINI, a novelist and poet, is the Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. His five novels include The Last Station, Bay of Arrows, and Benjamin's Crossing, which will appear in the spring of '97. His four collections of poetry include Anthracite Country, Town Life, and House of Days (forthcoming). He has edited The Columbia History of American Poetry and The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, and written a biography of John Steinbeck. His reviews and essays appear regularly in The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere.(Photo: Thomas Victor)
JOANNA SCOTT is the author of four novels, including Arrogance and The Manikin, and a collection of short stories, Various Antidotes. Her fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, and other journals She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at the University of Rochester.(Photo: Emma Hansen)
SPECIAL GUESTS
RUSSELL BANKS is the author of The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986), Success Stories, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone, and other novels and story collections. He has also contributed poems, stories, and essays to The Boston Globe Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Harper's, and many other publications. Mr. Banks has won Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, an Ingram Merrill Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is married to the poet Chase Twichell, and is the father of four grown daughters.(Photo: Marion Ettlinger)
ANN BEATTIE's six novels include Falling in Place, Picturing Will , Another You; and My Life, Starring Dara Falcon. She is also the author of several short story collections, among them The Burning House, Where You'll Find Me, and What Was Mine. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, in 1992 she was inducted as a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
JOHN ELDER has taught at Middlebury College, for 24 years, where he is the Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies. In both his teaching and his writing he focuses on the relationship between literature and the natural world. His books include Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature and Following the Brush, while he has also edited or co-edited such volumes as The Norton Book of Nature Writing and The Family of Earth and Sky: Indigenous Tales of Nature from Around the World. His forthcoming book, Directive, combines personal narratives of hiking in the Green Mountains with a discussion of Robert Frost's poetry.
BARRY LOPEZ is the author of Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, which received the National Book Award, and Of Wolves and Men, for which he received the John Burroughs Medal. He has also written six works of fiction--most recently, Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren-- and two collections of essays. He contributes regularly to Harper's , The New York Times, American Short Fiction, The Paris Review, Orion, Outside, and other publications. His work appears in dozens of anthologies and has been widely translated. He is the recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Award, a Pushcart Prize in fiction, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award.(Photo: Mike Mathews)
PANELISTS, EDITORS, AND AGENTS
Guests from the publishing world will include: Alane Mason (senior editor, W. W. Norton), Dan Frank (senior editor, Pantheon), Amy Holman (Poets & Writers), Jordan Pavlin (Little, Brown), Lois Rosenthal (editor, Story Magazine), Carol Houck Smith (editor-at-large, W. W. Norton), Geri Thoma (Elaine Markson Literary Agency), representatives from the Heekin Group Foundation, Kit Ward (Christina Ward Literary Agency), Janet Silver (Senior Editor, Houghton Mifflin), Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner (poets and editors, Sarabande Books), Forrest Gander (poet and editor, Lost Roads Press), and James Longenbach (poet and critic).
ADMINISTRATION
DEVON JERSILD is administrative director of the Conference. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, New Virginia Review, The Kenyon Review, and North American Review. One of her stories was selected for inclusion in Prize Stories 1990: The O. Henry Awards. She has reviewed for The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The New York Times Book Review.
CAROL KNAUSS is administrative assistant to the directors and admissions coordinator for the Writers' Conference.
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