ROBIN HEMLEY is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on DO-OVER! (Little, Brown, 2009), in which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments.  Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness (Graywolf) won the 1998 Independent Publisher’s Book Award and Book of the Year Award in Biography/Memoir from Foreword Magazine.  Robin is also the author of another nonfiction book, Invented Eden (FS&G, 2003), several works of fiction, and the craft book, Turning Life into Fiction.  His stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many literary magazines and anthologies.  He currently directs the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and has served on the faculty and as Faculty Chair for the VCFA Writing program.  He is the founder of the Nonfiction Now Conference at the University of Iowa, and the editor of Defunct Magazine.  www.robinhemley.com  

 

 

 

CONNIE MAY FOWLER  is the author of six novels—How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, The Problem with Murmur Lee, Remembering Blue (winner of the Chautauqua South Literary Award), Before Women had Wings (recipient of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award from the League of American Pen Women), River of Hidden Dreams, and Sugar Cage—as well as the memoir, When Katie Wakes. Three of her novels have been Dublin International Literary Award nominees, and her work has been translated into 18 languages. She adapted Before Women had Wings for Oprah Winfrey, resulting in an Emmy-award-winning film.  She writes extensively about the environment, family violence, multi-cultural identity, poverty, women’s issues, the American South and sumo wrestling. From 2003-2007 she was Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College, and is the founder of Below Sea Level: Full Immersion Workshops for Serious Writers. She serves on the faculty of The Afghan Women's Writing Project and at VCFA.  This will be her second summer at the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference.  www.conniemayfowler.com

 

LEE MARTIN is the author of four novels: The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, as well as Break the Skin (2011), River of Heavenand Quakertown.  He has also published two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones, and a short story collection, The Least You Need to Know. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper's, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, Story, DoubleTake, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. He has previously led workshops in both the novel and memoir at the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference.  www.leemartinauthor.com

 

 

 

ELLEN LESSER is the author of two novels, The Other Woman (Simon & Schuster) and The Blue Streak (Grove), and the short story collection, The Shoplifter's Apprentice (Simon & Schuster). Work from that volume has been performed in the “Selected Shorts” series on National Public Radio and anthologized in Houghton Mifflin's Images of Women in Literature. Ellen’s fiction, criticism and literary interviews have appeared in periodicals including The Antioch Review, North American Review, The Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Epoch, The Southern Review, New England Review and The Village Voice. Her essays on fictional craft have been featured in The Writer’s Chronicle and in anthologies including Words Overflown by Stars (edited by David Jauss).  She is currently working on a linked story collection about mothers and teenage daughters in crisis. A long-time member of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program faculty, she has taught yearly in the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference since 1996, and now serves as Conference Director. 

 

 

MATTHEW DICKMAN is the author of All-American Poem (American Poetry Review/ Copper Canyon Press, 2008), the recipient of The Honickman First Book Prize, The May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College and the 2009 Oregon Book Award. He has received residencies and fellowships from The Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas, The Vermont Studio Center, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and The Lannan Foundation, and been profiled in The Oregonian, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, and The New Yorker.  He has been a guest lecturer and teacher at institutions including Reed College, Writers in The Schools, Portland State University, Hamline University, and Smith College, and now serves as visiting faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  His poems have appeared in Tin House, McSweeny’s, Ploughshares, and The New Yorker among many others.  W.W. Norton & Co. will publish his second book in 2012.  He lives and works in Portland, Oregon. 

 

 

CLAUDIA EMERSON received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her book Late Wife: Poems (LSU Press, 2005). Figure Studies: Poems, her newest collection, was published in 2008 (LSU Press). She is also the author of the poetry collections Pharaoh, Pharaoh, and Pinion: An Elegy; all volumes are published in Dave Smith's Southern Messenger Poets series. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Southern Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, New England Review, and other journals.  Emerson is the recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2008-2010.  She is professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and recently served as Distinguished Visiting Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. 

 

DAVID WOJAHN’s latest collection is World Tree (2011). InterrogationPalace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004 was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and received the O. B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library.  His previous collections are Icehouse Lights (1982), winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize and the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award; Glassworks (1987), named that year’s  best poetry volume by the Society of Midland Authors; Mystery Train (’90), Late Empire (’94), The Falling Hour (’97) and Spirit Cabinet (’02).  (All volumes except the Yale debut are from Pitt.)  He is also the author of Strange Good Fortune, essays on contemporary poetry, and editor (with Jack Myers) of A Profile of 20th Century American Poetry, and two posthumous collections of Lynda Hull’s poetry.  He received The Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry for 2008, has been awarded Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and in 1987–88 was Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholar.  He is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a long-time member of the Vermont College MFA faculty. 

 

KEVIN YOUNG is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels (2011) and Jelly Roll, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize.  He is the editor of six volumes, most recently Best American Poetry 2011.  His book The Grey Album: Music, Shadows, Lies won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and is forthcoming in March 2012.  A recipient of Guggenheim and United States Artists James Baldwin Fellowships, Young is Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing & English and curator of Literary Collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University.   www.kevinyoungpoetry.com

 

 

 

CYNTHIA LEITICH SMITH is the New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling author of Tantalize, Eternal, Blessed, and Diabolical (Candlewick).  Her first graphic novel is Tantalize: Kieren’s Story, illustrated by Ming Doyle (Candlewick). Her award-winning books for younger children include Jingle Dancer, Indian Shoes, Rain Is Not My Indian Name (all HarperCollins) and Holler Loudly (Dutton).  Cynthia's website at www.cynthialeitichsmith.com was named one of the top 10 Writer Sites on the Internet by Writer's Digest and an ALA Great Website for Kids.  Her Cynsations blog at cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/ was listed among the top two read by the children's/YA publishing community in the SCBWI "To Market" column.  Cynthia has served on the faculty of VCFA’s Writing for Children and Young Adults Program, and appeared as a featured author/speaker at schools, conferences and festivals all over the country.

 

TIM WYNNE-JONES has written thirty-two books including novels, picture books and three collections of short stories. He has been short-listed five times for the Canadian Governor General’s Award for children’s literature and has won it twice. He has won the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award, three times, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, twice and a BGHB honor, once. He has also won the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America, and the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. He has been short-listed for the Guardian Prize, in Great Britain twice. His books have been published in French, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, German, Spanish, Castilian, Italian, Hebrew, and (shortly) Turkish. His most recent novel is the young adult thriller Blink & Caution. Tim is proud to be Canada’s nomination for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Award. He teaches in the MFA program at VCFA and lives on 76 acres of land near Perth, Ontario. He has three children, all grown up now and living hither and yon.  www.timwynne-jones.com