1998 Faculty

Nonfiction

ALEC WILKINSON has written five books: Midnights (a memoir); Moonshine (a biographical portrait); Big Sugar ( a piece of reporting); The Riverkeeper ( a collection of essays); and A Violent Act (also reporting). His writing is frequently anthologized, and his books have been hastily and artlessly translated into several languages. He has received a Lyndhurst Prize, a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and a fellowship form the Guggenheim Foundation. Since 1980 he has been a writer on the staff of The New Yorker. He is also a contributor to DoubleTake.

TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS is the Shirley Stutton Thomas visiting professor of English at the University of Utah, and the author of Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland; Coyote's Canyon; Refuge; An Unspoken Hunger; and most recently, Desert Quartet She is a recipient of Lannan and Guggenheim fellowships, as well as the National Wildlife Federation's National Conservation Award for Special Achievement. Her environmental work in conjunction with her writing has been recognized by her induction in the Rachel Carson Institute's Honor Roll. She lives with her husband Brooke in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo: Susan D. Lippman.)

Poetry

AGHA SHAHID ALI directs the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His 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 most recently, The Country Without a Post Office, which focuses on the current turmoil in Kashmir, Mr. Ali's native country. A translator (The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz) and critic (T.S. Eliot as Editor), he has received various fellowships, including the Guggenheim and Ingram-Merrill. (Photo: Neal Davenport)

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 and Johns Hopkins University, and is currently on the English and writing faculty at the University of Maryland. (Photo: Alan Jakubek)

ROLAND FLINT has published three chapbooks, six books of poems, and three books of translations from the Bulgarian. His books include Resuming Green: Selected Poems, 1965-1982; and, more recently, Stubborn, Pigeon, and the forthcoming Easy. Pigeon in the Night was published in Bulgaria in English with Bulgarian translations. Mr. Flint has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as two from the Maryland State Arts Council. He taught at Georgetown University for almost thirty years, and has also taught at Willamette University and the University of Singapore. He is currently Poet Laureate of Maryland.

CAROL FROST is the author most recently of Venus and Don Juan and Pure. Two other collections, Liar's Dice and Chimera, were noted by the Elliston and Poets' Prize committees. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and two Pushcart prizes. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, and APR. She has taught at the Vermont Studio Center, Sewanee Writers' Workshop, Syracuse University, and Wichita State, where she was distinguished poet last spring. Presently, she teaches at Hartwick College, where she directs the Catskill Poetry Workshop.

STEVE ORLEN has published four books of poetry: Permission to Speak, A Place at the Table, The Bridge of Sighs, and Kisses. He has won three National Endowment for the Arts Awards, The George Dillon Memorial Award from Poetry Magazine, and The Associated Writing Program's "Series Selections Award." Recent poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Gettysburg Review, The Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and The Yale Review. He teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

CARL PHILLIPS' three collections of poetry are From the Devotions; Cortège, a finalist for the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award; and In the Blood, the 1992 winner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. The recipient of grants and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mr. Phillips has taught at Harvard, Boston University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he is associate professor of English and African and Afro-American Studies, and director of the MFA program. This fall, he will join the visiting faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. (Photo: Doug Macomber)

C.D. WRIGHT has published eight collections of poetry, most recently Tremble and Just Whistle, a booklength poem. String Light won the 1992 Poetry Center Book Award from San Francisco State University. The recipient of a Witter Bynner Prize, Ms. Wright has also received Guggenheim, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest, and Bunting Institute fellowships, a Whiting Writers' Award, two NEA fellowships, and, in 1990, the Rhode Island Governor's Award for the Arts. In 1994 she was named State Poet of Rhode Island. She teaches at Brown University and, with the poet Forrest Gander, serves as editor for Lost Roads Publishers. Her new book, Deepstep Come Shining, will be out next fall. (Photo: Forrest Gander)

Fiction

RICHARD BAUSCH's eighth novel, In The Night Season, is due out this spring; other recent novels includeViolence andGood Evening Mr. & Mrs. America and All the Ships at Sea. His stories appear in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Playboy, The Southern Review and elsewhere; they have been collected most recently in The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a motion picture. The winner of many awards and fellowships, Mr. Bausch was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 1995. He is Heritage Professor of Writing at George Mason University. (Photo: Jerry Bauer)

CHARLES BAXTER is the author of four books of short fiction: Harmony of the World, Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and, most recently, Believers. He has also published two novels, First Light and Shadow Play, and a book of poems, Imaginary Paintings. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Awards. The recipient of grants from the NEA, Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, Mr. Baxter has taught in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson, and is currently on the faculty at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

DAVID BRADLEY received an M.A. 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 Award 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 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)

ANDRÉ BRINK is Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. He began writing novels, plays, travelogues, and literary criticism in Afrikaans, but after a ban on Kennis van die Aand (Looking on Darkness) in 1974, he started writing in English as well. His many novels in English (which have been translated into 30 languages) include A Dry White Season, An Act of Terror, On the Contrary, and Imaginings of Sand. Intimate Lightning will appear in 1998. His second collection of essays, Inventing a Continent, was published in 1996 with an introduction by President Nelson Mandela. He has received the Prix Médicis Etranger (France) and the Premio Mondello (Italy). (Photo: Jakkie Pretorvis)

ROBERT COHEN is the author of two novels, The Organ Builder and The Here and Now. His stories have appeared in Harper's, Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, and other magazines. He has been awarded a three-year Lila Wallace Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Ribalow Prize for Best Jewish Novel of 1996. He recently completed a four year stint as Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard; before that he taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, the University of Houston, and Rice University. He currently teaches at Middlebury College.

DAGOBERTO GILB spent sixteen years making his living as a construction worker, twelve of those as a journeyman in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. He has taught writing at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, the University of Wyoming, and, currently, at Southwest Texas State University. His work has been honored by fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim and Whiting Foundations. The Magic of Blood won the Hemingway Foundation Award and was a PEN/Faulkner finalist. He is also the author of The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña. (Photo: Bruce Berman)

SHELBY HEARON was born in 1931 in Marion, Kentucky, lived for many years in Texas and New York, and now makes her home in Burlington, Vermont. She is the author of fourteen novels, including Footprints, Life Estates, and Owning Jolene, which won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award. She has received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fiction fellowships, and an Ingram Merrill grant. Her short fiction has appeared in Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Southern Review, and Southwest Review, and has won five Syndicated Fiction prizes. She has taught in numerous writing programs and is currently Visiting Professor at Middlebury College. (Photo: William Halpern)

URSULA HEGI is the author of six books. Four of them are novels: Salt Dancers, Stones from the River, Floating In My Mother's Palm, and Intrusions. She has also written a collection of short stories, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, and her first book of non-fiction, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America, was published in 1997. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including an NEA Fellowship and a PEN/Faulkner Nomination. She has been on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and has written reviews for The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. (Photo: Gordon Gagliano)

SIGRID NUNEZ is the author of the novels Naked Sleeper and A Feather on the Breath of God, which was shortlisted for the 1995 PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction. Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury will be published in May 1998. Ms. Nunez was born in New York City, where she now lives, and where she earned her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Barnard College and Columbia University. The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, a General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers, and a Whiting Writer's Award, she has taught creative writing at Hofstra University and Amherst College. (Photo: Jerry Bauer)

SARAH SCHULMAN is the author of seven novels: Shimmer (forthcoming); Rat Bohemia; Empathy; People in Trouble; After Delores; Girls, Visions and Everything; The Sophie Horowitz Story; and two non-fiction books: Stagestruck: Theatre, AIDS and Marketing (forthcoming) and My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years. Also a playwright, Ms. Schulman is currently collaborating on Red, White and Black, a musical. She was a 1997 finalist for the Prix de Rome and has recieved a Fullbright, an American Library Association Book Award, and a Revson Fellowship for the Future of New York City at Columbia University. (Photo: Helayne Seidman)

SPECIAL GUESTS


JOHN ELDER is the Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, where he has taught for 24 years. 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; he has also edited or coedited 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 most recent book, Reading the Mountains of Home, is forthcoming in March.

LINDA PASTAN's Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 will appear from Norton in April of this year. Her previous nine volumes of poetry include A Fraction of Darkness, The Imperfect Paradise, Heroes in Disguise, and An Early Afterlife. Ms. Pastan has won many awards for her poetry, among them the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine; in 1995 she received The Charity Randall Citation of the International Poetry Forum. She has had grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maryland Arts Council, and served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995. (Photo: Goodman/Van Riper)

STANLEY PLUMLY was born in Barnesville, Ohio, and grew up in the lumber and farming regions of Virginia and Ohio. He has published six books of poems, including In The Outer Dark (Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award), Out-of-the-Body Travel (National Book Critics Circle nominee), Boy on the Step, and most recently, The Marriage in the Trees. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Ingram-Merrill Foundations, two National Endowment for the Arts awards, and six Pushcart Prizes. He has taught at universities around the country, and is presently a member of the Department of English at the University of Maryland. (Photo: Star Black)

ALASTAIR REID is a poet, a prose writer, a translator, and a traveler. Since 1958, he has been a staff writer and frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He has published more than twenty books, and has translated the work of many Latin American writers, Neruda and Borges in particular. His most recent book is An Alastair Reid Reader, a selection of his poetry and prose, published in 1995.


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, and has been anthologized in 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 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.