Kazim Ali’s books include the poetry collections The Far Mosque (Alice James, 2005) and The Fortieth Day (BOA, 2008) and the novels Quinn’s Passage (Blaze Vox, 2004) and The Disappearance of Seth (Etruscan, 2009). Forthcoming in 2009 is Bright Felon (Wesleyan).
Renée Ashley is the author of three volumes of poetry: Salt (Brittingham Prize in Poetry), The Various Reasons of Light, and The Revisionist’s Dream, as well as a novel, Someplace Like This, and a chapbook, The Museum of Lost Wings. She is on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.
Carlos Cunha, a journalist, has written for numerous publications in the United States and abroad. Born in Portugal and raised in South Africa, he lives in Connecticut. His literary writing won the 2005 William Faulkner and 2006 Gulf Coast essay prizes.
Carl Dennis’s most recent book of poems, Unknown Friends, was published by Penguin in 2007. His work has received the Pulitzer Prize and the Lilly Prize.
Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is a former U.S. Poet Laureate (1993 – 95) and the recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, among many other honors. Currently she serves as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her new book of poetry, Sonata Mulattica, will be published this spring by W. W. Norton.
Mark Irwin’s sixth collection appeared from New Issues in 2008. He teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles and Colorado.
Meghan Kenny’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Sonora Review, Iowa Review, Gettysburg Review, Cimarron Review, Bound Off, and Florida Review. She received the Iowa Review Award for Fiction in 2005 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2007. She was a 2008 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and is currently the Tickner Writing Fellow at the Gilman School in Baltimore.
Melissa Kwasny is the author of three books of poetry, The Archival Birds (Bear Star Press, 2000), Thistle (Lost Horse Press, 2006), and Reading Novalis in Montana (Milkweed Editions, 2009), as well as the editor of Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950 (Wesleyan University Press, 2004). She lives in western Montana.
Deborah Landau’s book of poems, Orchidelirium, won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. She directs the creative writing program at NYU.
James Longenbach is the author most recently of Draft of a Letter (Chicago) and The Art of the Poetic Line (Graywolf). He is Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester.
Jeffrey Meyers, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published his life of Samuel Johnson in the fall of 2008 and will bring out The Genius and The Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe in 2009. Twenty-five of his books have been translated into twelve languages, and his works have appeared on all six continents.
D. A. Powell’s most recent collection is Chronic (Graywolf, 2009). His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, Barrow Street, and Poetry. A professor of English at the University of San Francisco, Powell will serve as the Coal Royalty Chair at the University of Alabama in 2010.
Roger Rosenblatt is the author, most recently, of Beet, a novel. His play The Oldsmobiles opens this spring at the Flea Theater in New York.
Mary Ruefle’s most recent book is The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008), her first collection of prose.
Scott Russell Sanders is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Staying Put, Hunting for Hope, and A Private History of Awe. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University.
Zach Savich has had recent poems in Jubilat, American Letters and Commentary, Court Green, Iowa Review, and other journals.
Lynda Sexson’s books are Ordinarily Sacred, Margaret of the Imperfections, and Hamlet’s Planets. She is the editor of Corona, a book in a box, and director of the film My Book and Heart Shall Never Part.
Bruce Smith was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of five books of poems: The Common Wages, Silver and Information (National Poetry Series, selected by Hayden Carruth), Mercy Seat, The Other Lover (University of Chicago), which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and, most recently, Songs for Two Voices (Chicago, 2005). He teaches at Syracuse University.
Gregory Spatz is the author of the novels No One But Us and Fiddler’s Dream, as well as a book of short stories, Wonderful Tricks. His short stories have appeared in New Yorker, New England Review, Epoch, Santa Monica Review, Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Journal, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. He is on the permanent faculty at Eastern Washington University—The Inland Northwest Center for Writers. Visit www.gregory spatz.com for more information.
Leon Stokesbury teaches in the graduate writing program at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His Autumn Rhythm (University of Arkansas Press, 1996) was awarded the Poets’ Prize.
Judy Troy, a recipient of the Writer’s Whiting Award, is the author of the story collection Mourning Doves and two novels, West of Venus and From the Black Hills. She is currently working on a third novel titled Memories of Earth, and is the alumni-writer-in-residence at Auburn University.
Bruce Weigl is the author, editor, or translator of over twenty works, most recently The Circle of Hanh, a memoir (Grove Atlantic, 2000), The Unraveling Strangeness, poems, (Grove Atlantic, 2004), and Declension in the Village of Chung Luong (Ausable Press, 2006). In 2006 he was awarded the Lannan Literary Award in Literature for poetry.
