Marilyn Chin, poetry, was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. Her books have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. She is the author of Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty (1994), and Dwarf Bamboo (1987).
Jim Daniels, poetry, was born in Detroit and currently lives in Pittsburgh, where he is the Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and directs the Creative Writing Program. He is the author of nine books of poems, including Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Street, a book combining his poems with the photographs of Charlee Brodsky. In addition, he is the author of two collections of short stories, No Pets and Detroit Tales. He has two books forthcoming in 2007, Mr. Pleasant, a collection of short stories from Michigan State University Press, and American/Dream, poems from Eastern Washington University Press. He has edited or co-edited four anthologies of poetry, including Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race, and American Poetry: The Next Generation. He wrote the screenplays for “Dumpster” (2006) and "No Pets” (1995), two independent feature films, both of which appeared in film festivals in the U.S. and abroad. He has also received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. 
Alice Fulton's most recent book of poems is Cascade Experiment, published by W.W. Norton. Her book Felt (W.W. Norton), was awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. This biennial poetry prize is given on behalf of the nation in recognition of the most distinguished book of poetry
written by an American and published during the preceding two years. Felt also was selected by the Los Angeles Times as a Best Book and as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Fulton's many honors include fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Michigan Society of
Fellows. Her work has been included in six editions of The Best American Poetry series, the Pushcart Prize series, and has been adapted several times for musical and theatrical productions. Alice Fulton has been the Holloway Poet at University of California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Professor at University of California, Los
Angeles; Ohio State University, Columbus; the University of North Carolina, Wilmington; and Vermont College. She is currently the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell University.
William Heyen, poetry, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940. He is Professor of English/Poet in Residence Emeritus at SUNY Brockport, his undergraduate alma mater. His M.A. and Ph.D. degrees are from Ohio University. A former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature in Germany, he has won NEA, Guggenheim, American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters, and other fellowships and awards. He is the editor of American Poets in 1976, The Generation of 2000: Contemporary American Poets, and September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond. Heyen's work has appeared in over 300 periodicals including Poetry, American Poetry Review, New Yorker, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Ontario Review, and in 200 anthologies. His books include Pterodactyl Rose: Poems of Ecology, The Host: Selected Poems, Erika: Poems of the Holocaust, and Ribbons: The Gulf War from Time Being Books; Pig Notes & Dumb Music: Prose on Poetry and Crazy Horse in Stillness, winner of 1997's Small Press Book Award for Poetry, from BOA; Shoah Train: Poems, a Finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, from Etruscan Press; and The Rope: Poems, The Hummingbird Corporation: Stories, and Home: Autobiographies, Etc. from MAMMOTH Books. Carnegie-Mellon University Press has recently released his first book, Depth of Field (Louisiana State University Press, 1970) in its Classic Contemporaries Series.
Floyd Skloot, creative nonfiction, was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1947, and moved to Long Beach, NY, ten years later. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with a B.A. in English, and completed an M.A. in English at Southern Illinois University, where he studied with the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella and the late novelist John Gardner. From 1972 until becoming disabled in 1988, Floyd worked in the field of public policy in Illinois, Washington, and Oregon. He began publishing poetry in 1970, fiction in 1975, and essays in 1990. In May, 2006 he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Franklin and Marshall College. An Oregonian since 1984, Floyd moved from Portland to rural Amity when he married Beverly Hallberg in 1993. They lived in the middle of twenty hilly acres of woods for 13 years before moving back to Portland. Floyd's current projects include The Wink of the Zenith, a new memoir about the forces that shaped him as writer, which will appear from the University of Nebraska Press in fall, 2008, and a volume of poetry, The Snow's Music, which Louisiana State University Press will publish in fall, 2008.
Kevin Young, poetry, is the author of five poetry collections, and editor of four others. His most recent volume is For the Confederate Dead, which has been featured in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly and on NPR. Young's first book, Most Way Home, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Lucille Clifton, and later won the Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares. Young's second book, To Repel Ghosts, a "double album" based on the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, was a finalist for the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets and was reissued in a "remix" version in 2005. Young's third poetry collection, Jelly Roll, won the Paterson Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His previous collection, Black Maria, a film noir in verse, has been recently staged by the Providence Black Repertory Theater.There will also be visiting agents and editors at the Summer Residency.
About the MFA at AU |
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Current Students |
River
Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative |
Faculty & Student News |
Joanna Robinson, MFA student, has had her lyric essay, "Mars" selected for publication in an upcoming issue of The Southern Review . |
Joy Gaines-Friedler's first book of poems, Like Vapor, has been published by Mayapple Press. |
Valerie Due, MFA student, has had her essay "The Skinning Board" selected as the winner of the Writers at Work nonfiction fellowship competition, which includes prize money, publication in Quarterly West, a featured reading at the Writers at Work Conference, full tuition for the conference, free housing, and a manuscript consultation with a visiting writer or agent while at the conference. Abigail Thomas, the judge of the contest, had this to say about Due's piece:
"I love the emotional restraint coupled with the ravishing prose of the piece. It serves so perfectly the young narrator whose initiation into the harsh realities of life--and death--on a farm is being presented here." |
Peter Campion's essay on poetry and politics is now featured on Poetry Daily. He won a Pushcart Prize for his poem, "Just Now." |
Robert Root's The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction will be published in paperback edition in August 2008 by Rowman and Littlefield. |
Stephen Haven's new book The River Lock: One Boy's Life Along the Mohawk has been published by The University of Syracuse Press. |
Angie Estes has had three of her poems translated and published in the recent Russian anthology Contemporary Poetry in the United States: A Bilingual English-Cyrillic Edition. New poems also appear in the Spring 2008 issue of FIELD. Her lyric essay, "Want," was just published in the anthology Every Passing Breath: Contemporary Poets Respond to the Psalms. |
Amy Campbell, Incoming MFA student, was a finalist for the Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize for her piece, "A World Away." |
Timothy West, Incoming MFA student, has had his poem "To My Daughter on a Workday" selected to be featured on an RTA bus card in Cleveland, Ohio for the annual Moving Minds: The Verse and Vision Project. |