35th Annual Literary Festival, Old Dominion University, Sept 30-Oct 5, 2012

M.T. Anderson has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, and several books for older readers (both teens and adults). His satirical book Feed was a Finalist for the National Book Award and was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize. The first volume of his Octavian Nothing saga won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Prize. He writes: “I love writing for younger readers. I love their passion. I love their commitment to stories. I love the way their heads are exploding with all the things they want to say and do.”

Robin Becker, Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Penn State, has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Institute at Harvard. Her published collections in the Pitt Poetry Series include Giacometti’s Dog, All-American Girl, The Horse Fair, and Domain of Perfect Affection. Becker serves as Contributing and Poetry Editor for the Women’s Review of Books where her column “Field Notes” appears regularly. During the 2010-2011 academic year, Becker served as the Penn State Laureate.

Dustin Lance Black is a screenwriter, producer, director and social activist, having won the Academy Award and two WGA Awards for Best Original Screenplay for "Milk," the biopic of the late civil rights activist Harvey Milk. He is also a founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights which, with lawyers David Boise and Ted Olson, is leading the Federal Case against California Proposition 8, which eliminates rights of same-sex couples to marry. In 2012 Black merged his passions with "8," a new play based on the federal Prop 8 trial. Black's Los Angeles cast included George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly. The play was broadcast live and continues to break viewership records online. Hundreds of original productions are now scheduled across the United States.

Sean Thomas Dougherty is an “underground/sound.” Known for his electrifying performances, Dougherty was raised in a politically radical, interracial family by an African-American stepfather and a mother of Eastern-European Jewish descent. He is the author or editor of 12 books across genre including the forthcoming All I Ask for Is Longing (2014) and Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (2010). He has received two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry and a Fulbright Lectureship to the Balkans. He currently works at a pool hall and teaches creative writing part-time at Cleveland State University. Dougherty argues that the ancient and honorable art of poetry is the language of peace. As he says, “Poetry is the opposite of barbed wire.”

Merle Feld is a widely published poet, award-winning playwright, peace activist and educator. Her poems are included in numerous anthologies, in her memoir, A Spiritual Life: Exploring the Heart and Jewish Tradition (SUNY Press, revised edition 2007) and in a recent volume of poetry, Finding Words (URJ Press, 2011). A popular scholar-in-residence nationally, she has facilitated Israeli-Palestinian dialogue abroad on the West Bank and at Seeds of Peace, and has traveled to the former Soviet Union to support and collaborate with Jewish women leaders there. Since 2005 Merle has served as Founding Director of the Albin Rabbinic Writing Institute, guiding rabbinical students and rabbis across denominations to develop and explore their spiritual lives. Merle and husband Rabbi Edward Feld make their home in Western Massachusetts. To learn more about her poetry, plays, and for guidance to support your own writing practice, visit www.merlefeld.com .

Jan Freeman is the author of Hyena, Autumn Sequence, and Simon Says, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and several anthologies. She co-edited the acclaimed Sisters: An Anthology (2009). Freeman founded Paris Press in 1995 in order to bring into print Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. She has been its director and publisher since. Paris Press educates the public about groundbreaking yet overlooked literature by women. The Press has also championed the work of Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ruth Stone and literature by numerous other women writers of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Allan Gurganus’s novels, stories and essays include the international bestseller Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989) which has been translated into 12 languages and sold over 2 million copies. His first published story, “Minor Heroism,” appeared in the New Yorker in 1974 and offered the first gay character that magazine had ever presented. Gurganus is a 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. His other published works include a collection of stories and novellas, White People (Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and the novel Plays Well With Others. His latest book is The Practical Heart: Four Novellas (Lambda Literary Award).

Yona Harvey is a poet and writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When drafting new work, she often samples non-poetry texts like music reviews, fashion magazines, grammar primers, and cookbooks. She is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Hemming the Water (2013), and directs the undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon University.

Yunte Huang is the author of Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History (2010), which won the Edgar Award and California Book Award and was also the finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A poet and translator, he has published Transpacific Displacement (2003), Cribs (2005), Transpacific Imaginations (2007), and other books. He is currently a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Karolina Karlic is a Los Angeles-based photographer, born in Wroclaw, Poland. Karlic’s work is invested in the representation of American culture, specifically focusing on labor, immigration outsourcing and their causes of displacement in today’s society. In search of the American dream, her family fled communist Poland in 1986, and her father found work in the U.S. auto industry. Her series "The Dee," "Close to Home," "Dear Diary" and "Elementarz" have been exhibited nationally. Most recently, her film “This Part of the Legend of a Dream” was screened at the REDCAT, Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in Los Angeles. In 2011 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Yunghi Kim, a Korean American photojournalist based in New York City, has covered some of the biggest global news events in the last 30 years. These include the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Hurricane Katrina, the Rwandan Genocide and the war in Kosovo. Kim has been published in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, LIFE, The Independent (London) and People, among others. Her professional accolades include over 35 Photographer of the Year awards and runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Somalia.

Dorianne Laux is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Book of Men. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon, is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry (finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award), and Smoke. She’s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Jamal Mohamed has presented percussion workshops at venues worldwide and has performed with Sting, Mark O’Connor, Giovanni Hidalgo and many other well-known artists. In addition, his music has been featured in the television documentaries "Ramses the Great," National Geographic’s "Lions of Darkness" (with D’Drum), and the film biography of bluesman Robert Johnson, "Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?" Currently, Mohamed performs with the percussion group D’Drum (named the 2010 winner of Drum! magazine’s award for best percussion group), the music group Brahma, and the jazz ensemble Jampact. He teaches at Southern Methodist University.

Cori Pepelnjak’s propensity for dissolving boundaries, situational immersion, and cultivating relationships not only preceded her use of the camera, but also was the catalyst that compelled her pursuit of photography. An astute observer who approaches situations and subjects with a level of guilelessness and compassion, she evokes a rare level of intimacy from her subjects. Cori’s projects elicit strong emotional responses and encourage viewers to reflect on their values and relationships. Primarily self-taught, Cori Pepelnjak began taking photos with real intention in 2008 by undertaking workshops with photographers such as Costa Manos, David Alan Harvey and Debbie Fleming Caffery. Cori was the recipient of the 2009 CENTER Project Competition Award for her ongoing project JoJo and received a generous Minnesota State Arts Grant in 2010. Her work has been included in group and two-person shows at the Rayko Gallery of San Francisco, Art of Photography Show 2010 in San Diego, Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle and IFP in St. Paul, MN.

Greta Pratt is the author of two books, Using History and In Search of the Corn Queen. Pratt’s works are represented in major public and private collections, including The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Pratt was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and worked as photography bureau chief of Reuters International in New York City. Her photographs have been featured in The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. Pratt is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Old Dominion University.

Alice Randall is the author of The Wind Done Gone, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Rebel Yell, and Ada's Rules. Born in Detroit she grew up in Washington, D.C. After majoring in English at Harvard, she headed south to Music City and founded Midsummer Music with the idea to create a new way to fund novel writing and a community of powerful storytellers. In the process, she became the first black woman in history to write a No. 1 country song. Four novels later, the award-winning songwriter with over 20 recorded songs to her credit and frequent contributor to Elle magazine, is writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University where she teaches courses on Country Lyrics in American Culture, Creative Writing, and Soul Food in text and as text.

Sheri Reynolds is the author of the novels Bitterroot Landing, The Rapture of Canaan, A Gracious Plenty, Firefly Cloak, and The Sweet In-Between. Her most recent novel The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb will be released this fall. Reynolds teaches creative writing and literature classes at Old Dominion University and lives in the town of Cape Charles on Virginia's eastern shore.

Patrick Rosal is the author of Boneshepherds, named one of the best small-press books of 2011 by the National Book Critics Circle, My American Kundiman, and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive. He has won, among other honors, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award. His writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Rutgers University-Camden and on the core faculty of Drew University’s low-residency MFA.

Tim Seibles is the author of several books of poems including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, and Buffalo Head Solos. His latest collection, Fast Animal, has just been released. He has been awarded a fellowship for poetry from the NEA and has been a workshop leader for the Cave Canem Writers Retreat and for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. His work has been featured in anthologies such as Black Nature, Seriously Funny, The New Guard, and Best American Poetry 2010. He is visiting faculty for the University of Southern Maine’s low-residential Stonecoast MFA Program. Seibles teaches in ODU’s English Department and MFA in writing program.