2009 Brattleboro Literary Festival

2009 Brattleboro Literary Festival Authors

Tony Abbott has written eighty books for readers aged six to fourteen, including two bestselling series, The Secrets of Droon and The Haunting of Derek Stone. His novels for older readers include Kringle, Firegirl, winner of the Golden Kite Award, and The Postcard, winner of the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery. Abbott frequently speaks at national conferences for writers, teachers, and librarians, and gives workshops on writing at schools. He lives in Connecticut.

Peter Abrahams is the author of 22 novels of suspense, the most recent of which are Delusion, written for adults, the young adult novel Reality Check, and Into the Dark, the third in the best-selling Echo Falls mystery series for younger readers. Dog On It is the first title in his new series for adults written under the name Spencer Quinn. Formerly a CBC television producer, Abrahams now lives on Cape Cod with his wife and children.

Harry Bliss is a children’s book illustrator and an internationally syndicated cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker magazine. His most recently published titles are Louise: The Adventure of a Chicken, a picture book written by Kate deCamillo, Death by Laughter, a cartoon collection for adults, and Luke on the Loose, his debut comic book for children. He lives in northern Vermont.

Ashley Bryan is a storyteller, a performance poet and the illustrator or author of more than thirty books for children, the most recent of which is his picture book autobiography, Words to My Life's Song. His many awards and honors include the Arbuthnot Prize, three Coretta Scott King Awards for illustration, a Fulbright Scholarship and the 2009 Laura Ingalls Wilder Lifetime Achievement in Children's Literature Award. The head of the art department at Dartmouth College for many years, he now lives on a small island off the coast of Maine.

Katharine Coles’ books include the novels Fire Season and The Measurable World and four collections of poems. She has recently finished Burnt Letters, a nonfiction book about her grandfather. Her poems have been included in numerous public arts projects. In 2006, she was named to a five-year term as Utah's Poet Laureate. In addition to teaching creative writing and literature at the University of Utah, she is Director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago.

Michael Collier is the author of five books of poems including The Ledge, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and most recently, Dark Wild Realm. Collier has received one Guggenheim and two NEA fellowships, a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001–2004, he teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland and is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Wyn Cooper is the author of three books of poetry as well as a chapbook. His new book of poems, Chaos is the New Calm, will be published in spring 2010. A poem from his first book, “Fun”, was turned into Sheryl Crow’s Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do”. Forty Words for Fear, a CD of songs based on poems and lyrics by Cooper, set to music and sung by novelist Madison Smartt Bell, was released in 2003. It has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and World Café. He lives in Vermont and works for the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute.

Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a writer with The New York Times Magazine and the author of "America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life," which was published in January. A collection of Benoit's previously published writing entitled "American Voyeur: Dispatches From the Far Reaches of Modern Life” will be published next year. A former senior writer at Boston Magazine and fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation, Benoit also writes for The Advocate, Details, and Sports Illustrated, and has taught nonfiction writing at Emerson College and Northeastern University. He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Anna Dewdney is the author and illustrator of the New York Times best selling Llama, Llama picture book series. Her latest children’s book, Roly, Poly Pangolin, stars a shy endangered mammal that lives in southeast Asia. Her books have been made into plays, ballets, and, most recently, a musical with songs by Dolly Parton. Dewdney lives in southern Vermont with her children.

David Ebershoff is the author of three novels, The 19th Wife, Pasadena, and The Danish Girl, and a short-story collection, The Rose City. He has won a number of awards, including the Lambda Literary Award, and True West Magazine's Best Western Fiction Writer of 2009. Ebershoff has taught creative writing at New York University and Princeton, and currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. He is an editor-at-large at Random House and lives in New York City.

Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd, partners in North Hill, the garden design firm they founded in 1977, have also created a celebrated garden of the same name. Wayne Winterrowd is the author of Annuals for Connoisseurs, and Joe Eck is the author of Elements of Garden Design. Together they have written two books, The Year at North Hill and Living Seasonally. Their most recent book, Our Life in Gardens was published in 2009, and is now in its fourth printing. Both Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd are frequent contributors to Horticulture magazine. They and their gardens have been the subject of several feature profiles in The New York Times and in USA Today.

Annie Finch is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism, most recently Among the Goddesses: An Epic and The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self. Her book of poetry Calendars was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award and in 2009 she was awarded the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award. She lives in Maine where she directs Stonecoast, the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.

Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the Western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. His first novel, Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, was released to critical acclaim and became an instant bestseller. Ford is an award-winning short-story writer, and a survivor of Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle’s Chinatown, he now lives in Montana with his wife and children.

Donna Freitas is the author of the delightfully quirky young adult novel The Possibilities of Sainthood, and many nonfiction books, including Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses. Her second novel, This Gorgeous Game, will be published in spring 2010. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other print publications. Freitas is on the visiting faculty of the School of Religion at Boston University.

Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes, which won the National Book Award for Fiction, The Whole World Over and her new book I See You Everywhere. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her short fiction has won several prizes, including the Tobias Wolff Award and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella. She lives with her family in Massachusetts.

Peter Gould wrote Burnt Toast as a twenty-something Vermont communard. Readers have waited thirty-five years for his second novel, Write Naked, published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, and winner of the 2009 Green Earth Book Award, a national environmental literary prize. During those lost decades he has been acting, touring, clowning, directing, teaching, and bringing youth Shakespeare to life, throughout Vermont and way beyond

David Hackett Fischer’s major works have tackled everything from large macroeconomic and cultural trends to narrative histories of significant events to explorations of historiography. In 2005, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Washington’s Crossing, a brilliantly executed military history analyzing George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River. His new book, Champlain's Dream, is a remarkable biography of Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer and founder of Quebec City. Fischer is University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University.

Janice N. Harrington is the author of two award-winning picture books, The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County and Going North. She is also a widely published poet and the winner of a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry. Her 2007 book of poetry, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, won the A. Poulin Jr. Prize and the 2008 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Formerly a professional storyteller and a youth services librarian, Harrington now teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois.

Hannah Holmes is a cheeky science writer whose expertise lies in the conversion of molehills to mountains. Bending her curiosity on the overlooked and the unassuming, she discovers the enormous miracles that nature and science have wrought in every living thing --and in unliving things, as well. She has written extensively for the Discovery Channel Online and dozens of national magazines; and has authored three books: The Secret Life of Dust, Suburban Safari, and The Well Dressed Ape. She lives in South Portland, Maine.

Hillary Jordan received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Her first novel, Mudbound, was awarded the 2006 Bellwether Prize for fiction, founded by Barbara Kingsolver to recognize debut novels that address issues of social justice. It won a 2009 Alex Award from the American Library Association and was the 2008 NAIBA Fiction Book of the Year. She lives in Tivoli, New York.

Brad Kessler’s novel Birds in Fall won the 2006 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was named by the Los Angeles Times one of the top ten books of the year. Kessler is the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Writer's Award. His new book, Goat Song is about moving to Vermont, herding goats and making cheese. He lives in Vermont with his wife, the photographer Dona Ann McAdams.

Philip Kunhardt is an author, producer for PBS and other networks, and presidential scholar. A recognized authority on Abraham Lincoln, he is the co-author of Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography, P.T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman, The American President, Looking For Lincoln, and the forthcoming book Lincoln, Life Size. He has appeared on the Today Show, National Public Radio, CNN, Larry King Live, the Diane Rehm Show, and many others. Kunhardt is currently a Bard Center Fellow in Annandale, New York.

Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, essayist, and translator. He is the author of 16 books of poetry, most recently News of the World. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Levine has received the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize. He was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. Levine lives in New York City and Fresno, California, and teaches at New York University.

Elinor Lipman is the author of nine novels, including My Latest Grievance, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, The Inn at Lake Devine and, most recently, The Family Man. Her first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted for the screen by Helen Hunt in 2007. Lipman won the 2001 New England Booksellers fiction award and, in 2007, The Poetry Center's fiction award for My Latest Grievance. In 2008 she served as a fiction judge for the National Book Awards.

Paul Mariani is the author of sixteen books, including biographies of William Carlos Williams, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Hart Crane, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. He has published six volumes of poetry, as well as three books of literary criticism, and a spiritual journal. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including several NEH Awards, an NEA award, and a Guggenheim. In 2009 he was awarded the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award for Poetry. He is a University Professor of English at Boston College.

Robert Olmstead is the author of six previous books. Coal Black Horse was the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the Ohioana Award, was a #1 Book Sense Pick, and was a Borders Original Voices pick. His new book, Far Bright Star, delivers another richly characterized, tightly woven story of nature, inevitability and the human condition and was on the June Indie Next list. Robert is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA grant, and he is currently a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of four poetry collections including her most recent, Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was recently reprinted as a Carnegie Mellon University Contemporary Classic. Dzvinia’s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She is a founding editor of New York-based Four Way Books, and a Pushcart Prize winner. Dzvinia currently serves as core faculty of poetry at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program of Creative Writing of Pine Manor College.

Irene M. Pepperberg a scientist who specializes in animal cognition, is the author of two books, The Alex Studies and the New York Times bestseller Alex & Me, both of which describe her work with the famous African Grey parrot who was her subject for three decades. She is an adjunct associate professor at Brandeis and a research associate at Harvard. The winner of many fellowships and a seminar presenter at international scientific congresses, Pepperberg also serves as consulting/associate editor for four journals.

Tom Perrotta is the author of six works of fiction: New York Times best-selling Abstinence Teacher, Joe College, Little Children, Bad Haircut, The Wishbones and Election. Election was made into the acclaimed 1999 movie directed by Alexander Payne and starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Little Children was released as a movie directed by Todd Field and starring Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly in 2006, for which Perrotta received Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for best screenplay. He lives outside of Boston.

Jody Redhage is an award-winning cellist who has premiered over 100 works, including many of her own compositions for chamber ensembles. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall and has appeared on NBC's The Today Show and The Rockefeller Christmas Spectacular. Jody graduated with her master's degree in cello performance from the Manhattan School of Music in 2005, and now resides in Brooklyn.

Jeffrey Sweet's work has starred William Petersen, Helen Hunt, Jon Cryer, Alan Bates, Nathan Lane and Jack Klugman among others. A resident playwright of the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theatre of Chicago, The Value Of Names and Other Plays, an anthology of his work including nine scripts, was recently published by Northwestern University Press. His book on playwriting, The Dramatist's Toolkit, is in its 13th printing. He has won the WGA Award and was nominated for an Emmy for his TV writing.

Baron Wormser is the author/co-author of twelve books, most recently The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid, Scattered Chapters: New and Selected Poems and a work of fiction entitled The Poetry Life: Ten Stories. He is a former Poet Laureate of Maine who teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program and the Fairfield University MFA Program. He also directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Wormser has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

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