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Billy Collins

A typical Billy Collins poem opens on a clear and hospitable note but soon takes an unexpected turn; poems that begin in irony may end in a moment of lyric surprise. No wonder Collins sees his poetry as “a form of travel writing” and considers humor “a door into the serious.” In 2001, Collins was appointed U. S. Poet Laureate and in 2004, he was the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. Billy Collins has published eight collections of poetry; his most recent is Horoscopes for the Dead. His work has appeared in a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The American Scholar.

Included among his honors are fellowships from the New York Foundation for the
Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to
combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal.

Mark Halliday

Mark Halliday’s books of poems are Little Star (1987, a National Poetry Series selection), Tasker Street (1992, winner of the Juniper Prize), Selfwolf (1999), Jab (2002), and Keep This Forever (2008). Poems from Selfwolf and Jab were translated into French and published in 2006. Halliday’s book on Wallace Stevens, Stevens and the Interpersonal, was published in 1991. In 2001, he won the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2006, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Scott Heim

Scott Heim is the author of the HarperCollins novels We Disappear, In Awe, and Mysterious Skin, which was made into a 2005 film by Gregg Araki. He has won fellowships from the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and the London Arts Board. Originally from Kansas, Scott lived in New York for 11 years before moving to Boston in 2003. At present he is working on a screenplay and a new novel. His official website is www.scottheim.com.

Porochista Khakpour

Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran, Iran, and raised in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast and The Village Voice, and publications around the world. Her debut novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects — a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” Chicago Tribune “Fall’s Best,” and 2007 California Book Award winner — is now in paperback. She recently finished her second novel. She has been awarded fellowships from Johns Hopkins and Northwestern universities and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, among others. 

Young Jean Lee

Young Jean Lee has been called “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed seven shows in New York and toured her work to over 20 cities around the world. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P. Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group and by Samuel French. She is the recipient of a 2007 Emerging Playwright OBIE Award, a 2009 Creative Capital Grant, and a 2010 Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Adrian Matejka

Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden and Mixology, which was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. He is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Lannan Foundation. His work has been featured in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, and Ploughshares, among other journals and anthologies. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Yola Monakhov

Yola Monakhov was born in Moscow in 1974. She completed her MFA in 2007 and her MA in Italian literature in 1998, both at Columbia University, and worked internationally as a photojournalist in the intervening years. Her solo exhibitions include “Photography After Dante” and “Once Out of Nature.” Her awards include a 2008 fellowship from Greve in Chianti (FI) / Macina di San Cresci. She is on the faculty at Columbia, Pace University, International Center of Photography, and LaGuardia Community College.

Indigo Moor

Indigo Moor’s Through the Stonecutter’s Window received the 2009 Northwestern University Cave Canem prize for a second book. His first book, Tap-Root, was published in 2006 by Main Street Rag as part of the Editor’s Select Poetry Series. In 2010, Indigo directed the reading of his original stageplay “Live! at the Excelsior.” His work has appeared in the Arkansas Review, Xavier Review, LA Review, Mochila Review, Boston University’s The Comment, Poetry Now, The Ringing Ear and many other publications.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 25 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award), A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours. Her poems for young adults, Honeybee, won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the children’s/young adult category. Two new books are forthcoming in winter 2012: There Is No Long Distance Now (a collection of very short stories) and Transfer (a book of poetry and prose).

Renée Olander

Renée Olander’s poems, essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in publications including Verse and Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics, Artword Quarterly, Controlled Burn, Sistersong: Women Across Cultures, 5AM, The Café Review, 13th Moon and The Writer’s Chronicle. In 2010, A Few Spells, a chapbook collection of her poems, was released. Recipient of the Kate Smith Award for Poetry and a Pushcart Prize nomination, Olander has taught and directed programs at Old Dominion University for many years.

Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno

Best known for his biography of Paul Bowles, An Invisible Spectator (1990), Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno has also written numerous texts on learning or teaching the English language. His translations include the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, Chilam Balam and Rafael Alberti. He has also written The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1945-1950 (1992) and a biography of e. e. cummings (2004).

Elizabeth Searle

Elizabeth Searle is the author of a new novel, Girl Held in Home (2011) and three previous books of fiction: Celebrities in Disgrace, a novella which was produced as a film in 2010; A Four-Sided Bed, a novel nominated for an ALA book award; and a story collection, My Body to You, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. Searle’s theater works based on the Harding/Kerrigan skating scandal have drawn national media attention; a new production of “Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera” is being produced in Boston in 2011.

Megan Stack

Megan K. Stack has reported on war, terrorism, and political Islam from the Arab world, the Middle East and Southeast Asia since 2001. During a decade at the Los Angeles Times, she was based in Jerusalem, Cairo, Moscow and finally Beijing. Her first book, Every Man in This Village is a Liar, was drawn from her experiences covering the war on terror, and was one of the five nonfiction finalists for the National Book Award in 2010. For her coverage of Iraq she was awarded the 2007 Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper reporting from abroad, and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. She lives in Beijing with her husband, and is working on her next book – a novel set in contemporary Moscow.

David Swerdlow

David Swerdlow is the author of two collections of poetry, Small Holes in the Universe and Bodies on Earth. His poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Denver Quarterly, The Ohio Review, West Branch and elsewhere. He teaches literature and creative writing at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and has taught twice on Semester at Sea voyages.

Joy Williams

Joy Williams is the author of four novels, State of Grace (1973, a National Book Award finalist), The Changeling (1978), Breaking and Entering (1988) and The Quick and
the Dead (2000, a Pulitzer Prize finalist); three story collections, Taking Care (1982), Escapes (1990), and Honored Guest (2004); a collection of nonfiction, Ill Nature (2001); and a travel guide, The Florida Keys (1986). Her second novel, The Changeling, was reissued by Fairy Tale Review in 2008.