Contact our MFA Core Faculty: 800-7-ANTIOCH

Steve Heller (fiction, program chair) ext. 312
Jenny Factor (poetry, core faculty) ext. 227
Emily Rapp (creative nonfiction, core faculty) ext. 228

 

Meet our MFA Mentor Faculty:

Bruce Bauman (creative nonfiction), a professor in the CalArts MFA writing program since 2002 and has taught periodically at UCLA Extension sine 1998. He has taught courses in the novel, short story, narrative, experimental nonfiction and popular criticism. (Many of his students have gone on to publish successfully.) He is the author of the novel And The Word Was, which Booklist called "a magnificent debut, smart and intense, but accessible and riveting. This is simply a great novel." Los Angeles Magazine wrote, And The Word Was Does "what only novels can: Make us gasp, sit up, say yes, the world has changed. This is what it feels like to live now." Reviewers have compared his work to Robert Stone, Camus and Larry David. The novel was optioned for film by Volume One production company.

Bauman was a UNESCO/Aschberg laureate for literature in 2000 and received a fellowship to Sanskriti Center for the Arts in New Delhi, India. His work has appeared in Salon, BOMB, Bookforum, The LA Weekly and numerous literary magazines and anthologies. He is a senior editor of the award winning Black Clock magazine. Bauman is working on his new novel, Broken Sleep. His website is www.brucebauman.net.

 

 

Dodie Bellamy's (fiction) latest book is Academonia, a cross-genre collection of pedagogical essays and fictions was published by Krupskaya in 2006. Her novel, The Letters of Mina Harker (reprint with introduction by Dennis Cooper, 2004 from University of Wisconsin Press) is a Gothic thriller updated for the 21st century. Also in 2004 San Francisco's Suspect Thoughts Press published Pink Steam, a collection of fiction, memoirs, and essays. Real, her epistolary collaboration with the late Sam D'Allesandro, tackles AIDS, sexual transgression, and the desire for the forbidden. Her book, Cunt-Ups, a radical feminist revision of the "cut-up" pioneered by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Poetry. She is currently working on The Fourth Form, a multi-dimensional sex novel. Her writing has appeared in, among others, the anthologies Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache, Best American Erotica 2001, High Risk, The New Fuck You, and Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories. In 1998 she won the San Francisco Bay Guardian "Goldie" Award for Literature. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Bookforum, Out/Look, The San Diego Reader, Nest, as well as numerous literary journals and web sites. In January, 2006, she curated an installation of Kathy Acker's clothes for White Columns, New York's oldest alternative art space. With Kevin Killian, she has edited over 140 issuesof the literary/art zine Mirage #4/Period(ical).

 

 

Leonard Chang’s (fiction) first novel, The Fruit 'N Food, won the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction in 1996, and is now taught at universities around the world. His second novel, Dispatches from the Cold (Black Heron, 1998) won a San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award for Literature, and is currently being made into an independent film. He is also the author of a popular and critically-acclaimed noir trilogy, which includes Over the Shoulder (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2001), Underkill (St. Martin's, 2003) and Fade to Clear (St. Martin's, 2004). His novels have been translated and published in France, Japan and Korea. His award-winning short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Crescent Review, Prairie Schooner, Confluence, and The Literary Review. For more information, visit www.leonardchang.com.

 

 

Susan Taylor Chehak (fiction) received her M.F.A. in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught fiction writing at the University of Iowa and in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, where in 2001, she was awarded an Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing. She is the author of five novels, including Smithereens (a Dashiell Hammett Prize nominee), The Story of Annie D. (an Edgar Award nominee and New York Times Notable Book), and Harmony (a Literary Guild Editor's Choice), and her short fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Vice, Guernica Magazine, LA Under the Influence (Doublewide Press), Publisher's Weekly, Sisters in Crime 5 (Berkley), and The Chariton Review. She currently serves as Executive Editor of ZinkZine, a quarterly literary magazine which she created, available online at www.zinkville.com . Susan grew up in Iowa - which serves as the setting for much of her work - has lived in Los Angeles for many years, and spends as much time as possible in Keystone, Colorado, where she is the owner of inxpot, a coffeehouse, bookstore, and bar.

 

 

Jenny Factor (poetry, core faculty) graduated from Harvard College in 1991 and the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2000. Her first collection, Unraveling at the Name (Copper Canyon Press), was a finalist for the 2002 Lambda Literary Award. Her second collection will be complete later this year. Factor is the youngest poet anthologized in California Poets from the Gold Rush to the Present, a 2004 Los Angeles Times Notable Book. She lives in San Marino, California, with her partner and son. Jenny Factor's personal Web site: www.jennyfactor.com.

 

 

Richard Garcia (poetry) is the author of four books of poetry, including The Flying Garcias (University of Pittsburgh Press), Rancho Notorious (BOA Editions), and The Persistence of Objects (BOA Editions, 2006). He is also the author of a bilingual children's book, My Aunt Otilia's Spirits (Children's Book Press). His poetry has appeared in many journals, such as Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, The Cortland Review and The Colorado Review. His work is also included in anthologies, among them, The Best of the Prose Poem, Mother Songs, Urban Nature, Touching the Fire and Best American Poetry 2005. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, several fellowships and grants from the California Arts Council, a Pushcart Prize, the Mudfish Prize from Mudfish Magazine, the Greensboro Award from the Greensboro Review, the Cohen Award from Ploughshares, and the Georgetown Prize from the Georgetown Review. He was poet-in-residence at the Long Beach Museum of Art for three years and at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles for twelve years, where he conducted workshops in art and poetry for hospitalized children. More information on his publications, a bio, new writing, links to web publications and comments by his students can be found on his website at www.richardgarcia.info.

 

 

Steve Heller (fiction, program chair), an award-winning novelist and short story writer, grew up on a small acreage in the wheat country around Yukon, Oklahoma, where many of his fictions take place. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing and English from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and his Ed.D. in English Education from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. A former Yaddo and NEA Fellow, Heller is best known for his novel The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman, originally published by Chelsea Green and subsequently reprinted by Anchor/Doubleday. Lucky Kellerman was a selection of both Book-of-the-Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club. Lucky Kellerman also received the Friends of American Writers First Prize Award. A sequel, Father’s Mechanical Universe, was recently published by BkMk [BookMark] Press. According to W. D. Wetherell, “Father's Mechanical Universe combines the sharp, concentrated focus of a novel with the tender, lyrical quality of the best memoirs to create one of the most moving accounts of family love I've read in years." Novelist Jonis Agee calls Heller "an authentic American voice who teaches us about the human heart haunted by misdeeds, mysteries, and longing." Heller's short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and national anthologies, and twice have received O. Henry Awards. Many of Heller's stories have been set in Hawai`i, where he has lived for several extended periods, including the spring and summer of 1995 when he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hawai`i. His first collection, The Man Who Drank a Thousand Beers (Chariton Review Press), has been called "a Hawaiian Winesburg, Ohio.” Hawai`i is also the focus of his most recent fictions, including new stories in Nebraska Review, Bamboo Ridge, South Dakota Review, Spirit of Aloha, an in-flight magazine, and RainTiger, an online journal. Heller's creative nonfiction appears in such places as Manoa, New Letters, Colorado Review, and online journals such as Living Waters and Oklahoma Review. He is completing a book-length memoir called Walking Through the Moon, a Story of Ghosts. Heller is currently professor & Chair of the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

 

 

Tara Ison (fiction) received her M.F.A. in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College. She has taught Fiction and Screenwriting at Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, Ohio State University, Goddard College, the UCLA Writers' Program, and is currently Core Faculty at Antioch University's M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program. Her short fiction, essays, and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The Mississippi Review, LA Weekly, Another City (City Lights Books), Bestial Noise (Bloomsbury Press), Lost on Purpose, (Seal Press/Avalon), the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and ZinkZine. She is the recipient of two Yaddo Fellowships, Pushcart Prize nominations, a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for International Study, a Brandeis National Women's Committee Award, and a Thurber House Fiction Writer-in-Residence Fellowship. The Feminist Bookstore News called A Child Out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, Inc.), "disturbing, dark, and original. A stunning first novel.” Alcatraz was a CINCH Librarian's Choice Award winner and a Finalist for the 1997 Los Angeles Times Book Awards, "Best First Fiction." In Spring 2006 she served as the Blattner Fellow at Northwestern University. Her new novel, The List, was recently released by Scribner and is in bookstores now. For more information visit www.taraison.com.

 

 

Bernadette Murphy (creative nonfiction) has published three books of creative nonfiction: The Tao Gals’ Guide to Real Estate (with LA novelist Michelle Huneven), a nonfiction narrative following the lives of six women (herself included) as they put Tao principles to work navigating the red-hot real estate market (Bloomsbury USA, 2007); The Knitter’s Gift (2004), an anthology of creative nonfiction, poetry and fiction; and the bestselling Zen and the Art of Knitting (2002) in which she uses memoir and reportage to explore the connection between fiber arts, creativity, and spirituality. She is currently at work on a novel about music, motherhood and madness tentatively titled "Grace Notes." In addition, she is a contributing book critic for the Los Angeles Times and has published hundreds of reviews there. Her personal narratives and essays on literature have appeared in BOOK Magazine, Ms. Magazine, LA Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Los Angeles Times Magazine and elsewhere. A fiction writer as well, her work “Venice Street” was a finalist for the Heekin Group Foundation’s James Jones Novel-In-Progress award. She has taught at the UCLA Extension Writers Program and National University’s M.F.A. Program, as well as in private writing workshops. A proud graduate of the Antioch Los Angeles M.F.A. Program, she was a member of the inaugural year’s class, graduating with the Orange cohort. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

 

 

Aino (Ino) Paasonen (Translation + Adaptation) Growing up in post World War II Europe, Aino lived in several European countries whose languages she learned, one after another, becoming orphaned of any mother-tongue but adapting, willy-nilly to the frequent changes. Translator, memoirist, poet, storyteller, critic, editor, Aino considers herself primarily a teacher who loves teaching and interacting with students, learning a great deal from them. She holds a UCLA Ph.D. in Comparative Literature; a License es Lettres from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland; and is also a Tai Chi instructor. She has taught at Northwestern University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Art Center College of Design, and UCLA. She has published family chronicles, interviews with architects, essays, poems and poetry translations. She is working on a memoir (Fatherland, Mother Tongue) about her sense of recovered identity as a would-be Finn and Hungarian, which she is "by birth." She has eclectically researched and imagined herself into becoming a little more like the person she might have been -- were it not for WWII. She considers herself a citizen of the world, a "naturalized" American , as well as a French, Swiss, Italian, Swedish and Spanish impersonator. As translator of poetry, Aino has worked primarily with Swiss poet, writing in Italian, Remo Fasani. Individual translations can be found online at www.brinding.com, as well as in the journals Gradiva, and Fife Lines. Her translations of poems by Remo Fasani were read during UNESCO's World Poetry Week in 2002 at the National Library in Edinburgh, Scotland. She and Andrea Paganini have published a book of interviews with Remo Fasani, in Italian (2005). Aino is currently teaching in the Antioch Los Angeles BA and MFA programs, and is an Associate of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Her translations of poems by Inger-Mari Aikio-Arianaick, from Finnish Lapland is due to be published this Spring (This Beloved Homeland, 2008), with Beatrice Lewin Dumin. Aino is currently translating a selection of poems in Finnish, Swedish and Sami -- in collaboration with her Finnish cousin Hannes-- for a book illustrated with "healing" photographs (Suomi, Land of the Finns).

 

 

Carol Potter's (poetry) third book of poems, Short History of Pets, won the 1999 Cleveland State University Poetry Center award, and the Balcones Prize from Austin Community College, Austin, Texas. Her latest book, Otherwise Obedient, was published by Red Hen Press in October 2007. Her previous books are Before We Were Born (1990), and Upside Down in the Dark (1995) from Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in Pushcart XXVI, Poetry Magazine, Field, The Massachusetts Review, The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Women's Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals. Other awards include: The Pushcart Prize, The Tom McAfee Discovery Award from The Missouri Review (1986), the New Letters Award for Poetry (1990), and three time finalist for Massachusetts Cultural Council awards. She has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Fundacion Valparaiso, Villa Montalvo, Centrum and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Currently her poems are forthcoming from Maize, The Journal, and Arts & Letters. Of Short History of Pets, Naomi Shihab Nye wrote: "Short History of Pets is a knock-out punch from the get-go. With captivating power, it reminds us that what claims or appears to be short may also be profound, deep and enduring.Carol Potter writes with a magnetically potent instinct for pacing and a stunning originality of style." Potter was Writer-in-Residence at the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, in April, 2003, and was the Visiting Poet in the M.F.A. program at Indiana University in 2003-2004

 

 

Emily Rapp’s (creative nonfiction) first book, Poster Child: A Memoir was published by Bloomsbury in January 2007 and released in paperback in January 2008. A former Fulbright scholarship recipient, she was educated at Harvard University, Saint Olaf College, and the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Cimarron Review, The Clackamas Literary Review, Body + Soul, Goodhousekeeping, Terminus, The Sun, The Texas Observer, Segue, StoryQuarterly, and other journals. She has received awards and recognition for her work from The Atlantic Monthly, StoryQuarterly, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation, the Jentel Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a winter writing fellow. She is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award for emerging women writers and the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at Bucknell University. Her story, "November," was recently published in Narrative, and her essay, "Okahandaja Lessons," appears in the Spring 2008 edition of the Bellevue Literary Review. She is currently at work on a novel set in Northern Ireland.

 

 

Rob Roberge (fiction) is the author of the upcoming book of stories Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life (Black Arrow Press, scheduled for 2008), the neo-noir novels More Than They Could Chew (Perennial Dark Alley/Harper Collins, February 2005) and Drive (re-issue, Hollyridge Press, 2006). His stories have been featured in ZYZZYVA, Chelsea, Other Voices, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Ten Writers Worth Knowing Issue of The Literary Review. His work has also been anthologized in Another City (City Lights, 2001) and It’s All Good (Manic D Press, 2004).

Rob also teaches writing at a number of programs in the Los Angeles area, including the Antioch University Los Angeles, MFA in Creative Writing and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he received the Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing in 2003. In his spare time, he plays guitar and sings with the Los Angeles area garage/punk bands The Violet Rays, The Danbury Shakes and LA’s seminal (class of 78) punk band Urinals, and restores and rebuilds vintage amplifiers and quack medical devices. For news and more info, visit & or email at www.myspace.com/robroberge.

 

 

Sharman Apt Russell (creative nonfiction) received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and her BS from the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, she teaches at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico. This fall she led the Environmental Writing Institute in Missoula, Montana and a weekend workshop for Whitman College. She has a book forthcoming in spring called Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist (Basic Books). Her most recent nonfiction is Hunger: An Unnatural History (Basic Books, 2005) which Kirkus Reviews described as "an engrossing account of the myriad aspects of hunger" and Publishers Weekly called "haunting." Her An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect (Perseus Books, 2003) was a pick of independent booksellers in their Summer 2003 Book Sense 76, and her Anatomy of a Rose: The Secret Life of Flowers (Perseus Books, 2001) has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Swedish, Spanish, and German. Her other books include the novel The Last Matriarch (UNM Press, 2000); When the Land Was Young: Reflections on American Archeology (reprinted University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Kill The Cowboy: A Battle of Mythology In The New West (reprinted University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life In the Southwest (reprinted University of Nebraska Press, 2002); a children's fantasy, The Humpbacked Fluteplayer (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1994); and Frederick Douglas (Chelsea House, 1987). Her essays have been published in many magazines, journals, and anthologies, among them: Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism, and Awakening (North Point Press, 2007); Nature Writing (Norton, 2003); Sisters of the Earth (2003); At Home on the Earth: Two Centuries of U.S. Women's Nature Writing (2002); The Sweet Breathing of Plants (Farrar, Straus, and Gireaux, 2001); and Writing Home: Award-Winning Literature from the New West (Heydey Books, 1999). Professor Russell has been awarded a Writers at Work Fellowship in Nonfiction, a Henry Joseph Jackson Award in Nonfiction, a Pushcart Prize, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.

 

 

Reginald Shepherd's

(poetry) first book, Some Are Drowning, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1994 as winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry. Pittsburgh published his second book, Angel, Interrupted, in 1996; it was a finalist for a 1997 Lambda Literary Award. Pittsburgh published his third book, Wrong, in 1999. His fourth book, Otherhood, was published by Pittsburgh in 2003; it was a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and for a 2004 Lambda Literary Award. His fifth book, Fata Morgana, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2007. Shepherd is the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, published by the University of Iowa Press in 2004, and of Lyric Postmodernisms: An Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetries, published by Counterpath Press in 2008. His book Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry, was published in the University of Michigan Press Poets on Poetry series in 2008. Shepherd has received a 1993 Nation/“Discovery” award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Florida Arts Council, and the Fund for Poetry, among other awards and honors. He has published more than four hundred poems in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The Yale Review, as well as in over twenty-five~anthologies, including four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize volumes. He lives with his partner Robert Philen, a cultural anthropologist, in Pensacola, Florida."

 

 

Rachel Toor’s (creative nonfiction) most recent book is The Pig and I: How I Learned to Love Men (Almost) as Much as I Love My Pets was published in 2005 by Hudson St./Penguin. She is also the author of Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection Process (St. Martin’s, 2001), an occupational memoir of working in undergraduate admissions at Duke University, and two young adult books published by Chelsea House, Eleanor Roosevelt and The Polish Americans. She is a frequent contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a Senior Writer at Running Times, and her work has appeared in Glamour, Reader’s Digest, and other, more academically-oriented, publications. Her next book, Personal Record: One Woman’s Love Affair with Running, will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2008. After graduating from Yale she spent a dozen years as an editor of scholarly books at Oxford and Duke University Presses. Rachel is on the faculty at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers, the MFA program of Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington.

 

 

Alma Luz Villanueva (fiction) is the author of three novels. The Ultraviolet Sky won The American Book Award in 1989, and was chosen for New American Writing, 1990. It is also listed in Five Hundred Great Books By Women, edited by Holly Smith, which includes 500 novels from the 13th century to the present. Naked Ladies won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 1994. Both novels are used as textbooks in this country and abroad. She has also published a short story collection, Weeping Woman, La Llorona And Other Stories (which is being translated into Japanese and Spanish). Her newest novel, Luna's California Poppies, was published in 2002. Villanueva is also the author of six books of poetry, most recently Planet, which won The Latin American Writers Institute Poetry Award (New York City, 1994), and Desire (poetry from this collection was chosen for The Best American Poetry, 1996). A film titled, Who Called Me to This Dance? by filmmaker and dancer Tonia Shimmin, features her poetry as script. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and her poetry appears in Prayers For A Thousand Years: Inspiration From Leaders and Visionaries Around The World. Her new book of poetry, VIDA, was published in 2002. Her essays and book reviews have also appeared in Letters To My Mother (Pocket Books), Hot Flashes (Faber and Faber), Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series, Volume 24 (Gale Research Publications), Visions Across The Americas (College textbook, Harcourt Brace), Letters to J.D. Salinger (University of Wisconsin Press), and Ms. magazine. Villanueva's poetry and short stories have also been included in upcoming grammar, junior high and high school textbooks geared for the new century (she's especially proud of that). A bronze plaque with her poetry has been installed on the Waterfront in San Francisco (where she fished as a girl), as part of the San Francisco Art Commission's Poetry Project. Her work, both fiction and poetry, is included in numerous anthologies- most recently, an excerpt of Naked Ladies appeared in Caliente! The Best Erotic Writing in Latin American Fiction, as well as the anthologies: It's A Woman's World- A Century of Women's Voices In Poetry, and Under The Fifth Sun (a story from Weeping Woman, La Llorona and Other Stories). More information can be found on her website at http://www.almaluzvillanueva.com

 

 

Amy Sage Webb (Associate Faculty/Pedagogy Specialist) earned her M.F.A. in fiction from Arizona State University. As a specialist in creative writing pedagogy, she has served as Director of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ pedagogy forums, and as editor of the national pedagogy papers. She is a contributing author to Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall 2001 and 2004) and to Power and Identity: The Authority Project (Multilingual Matters, 2006). Her creative work appears most recently in Fourth River Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Eclipse. She directs the Creative Writing program at Emporia State University, where she teaches introductory creative writing, fiction writing, special topics and studies in creative writing, and literary editing. She currently serves as managing editor of Bluestem Press and Flint Hills Review, and serves on the boards of Woodley Memorial Press and the Kansas Arts Commission. She recently completed her first collection of short fiction, Save Your Own Life.

 

 

Guest Artists and Lecturers:

 

Ed Frankel (Critical Paper Seminar; Teaching Academic Writing) received his BA from Antioch in 1974 and his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA in 1981. He is on the English Department Writing Programs faculty at UCLA. As Adjunct faculty at Antioch he teaches Introduction to Modernism and Post-Modernism, Literary Nonfiction and Advanced Stylistics, Literature and Literary Criticism. He has coauthored two instructional college English texts. His poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Americas Review, The Dogwood Journal of Poetry and Prose, The Litchfield Review, Fugue, and other journals. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

 

 

Diana Hume George (Creative Nonfiction Guest and Commencement Speaker) is the author or editor of ten books of nonfiction, literary criticism, literary journalism, and poetry. Best known for The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching America, a collection of her travel essays, she has also written four volumes of poetry, most recently Phantom Breast and Koyaanisqats. She is the co-editor of Anne Sexton's Selected Poetry and the author of Oedipus Anne, the only full-length study of Sexton's poetry. George's psychoanalytic literary criticism included Blake and Freud, for which she was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. With Constance Coiner, she also co-edited The Family Track, a book of essays by writers on balancing work and family. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The American Council of Learned Societies, the Fetzer and Cummings Foundations, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in magazines and journals such as MS., The Missouri Review, and The Georgia Review, and her "Wounded Chevy at Wounded Knee," selected for the Best American Essays series, is reprinted in many anthologies. She is the author of over forty articles and reviews in scholarly journals, as well as essays on teaching and writing in the AWP Writer's Chronicle and in Brevity. She was the founding director of the creative writing program and of the gender studies program at The Behrend College of The Pennsylvania State University, and is now a core faculty member in the MFA program in creative nonfiction at Goucher College. She has been a visiting writer for Davidson College and Allegheny College, as well as at The Chautauqua Writers' Center, where she also co-directs the annual Chautauqua Writers' Festival. Her recent essays in Creative Nonfiction and River Teeth, "Zane Grey on a Carousel in Indian Territory" and "The Last of the Raccoon," are part of her ongoing memoir about living with Seneca Indians of the Iroquois Nation, which she calls "the book that's taking a lifetime to write."

 

 

Salvador Plascencia (Fiction Guest) received a B.A. from Whittier College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His novel The People of Paper, originally published by McSweeney's Rectangulars, has been translated into over half a dozen languages. Plascencia's shorts stories and reviews have also appeared in Los Angeles Times, Tin House, and McSweeney's. He was previously an assistant lecturer at The University of Southern California where he taught the Sheridan Baker thesis machine. Plascencia is a native of El Monte, California.

 

 

David L. Ulin (ACS I) is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, which was recently published by Viking Penguin. He is also the author of Cape Cod Blues (Red Dust, 1992), a book of poems, and the editor of two anthologies of Southern California literature: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (City Lights, 2001), selected as a Best Book of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, (Library of America, 2002), which won a California Book Award from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was selected as one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He teaches at the University of Redlands. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, The New York Times Book Review, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. He was recently named Book Editor for the Los Angeles Times.

 

 

Cecilia Woloch (Poetry Guest) is the author of Sacrifice (Cahuenga Press 1997), a BookSense 76 selection in 2001; Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem (Cahuenga Press 2002); and Late, (BOA Editions 2003) for which she was named Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry for 2004. A chapbook manuscript, "Narcissus," was chosen winner of the Tupelo Press Snowbound Competition and will be published in 2008. Individual poems have appeared in such journals and magazines as Tin House, Nimrod, New Letters, and on Minnesota Public Radio's The Writers' Almanac, and have been anthologized in Best American Poetry, Billy Collins' 180 More (Extraordinary Poems for Every Day), and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, among others. Her poems have been translated into French, German and Polish. A celebrated teacher, Ms. Woloch has conducted poetry workshops for thousands of young people throughout the U.S. and around the world, as well as workshops for professional writers, educators, participants in Elderhostel programs for senior citizens, inmates at a prison for the criminally insane, and residents of a shelter for homeless women. The founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of The Paris Poetry Workshop, she is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California and serves on the faculty of the MFA Program in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.~ She continues to travel widely, and in recent years has divided her time between Los Angeles, Atlanta, Shepherdsville (Kentucky), Paris (France), and a small village in the Carpathian mountains of southeastern Poland.