Jane Hamilton is the author of seven novels, most recently The Excellent Lombards. Her first book, The Book of Ruth, won the Pen/Hemingway Award and the GLCA New Writer’s Award, and that novel and A Map of the World were Oprah selections.
Brooks Haxton has published seven collections of shorter poems, two book-length narrative poems, one book of creative nonfiction, and four books of translations. He has received grants and awards from the NEA, the NEH, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and others. He lives with his wife in Syracuse and teaches at Syracuse University.
David Haynes is the author of seven novels for adults and five books for younger readers. He is an emeritus professor of English at Southern Methodist University, where he directed the creative writing program for ten years. Since 1996 he has taught regularly in MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and has also taught writing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Hamline University, at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, and at the Writers’ Garret in Dallas. He has received a fellowship from the Minnesota State Arts Board, and several of his short stories have been read and recorded for the National Public Radio series “Selected Shorts.” His seventh and most recently novel is A STAR IN THE FACE OF THE SKY. He is also the author of a series for children called “The West Seventh Wildcats.” His upcoming book is a collection, MARTHA’S DAUGHTER: A NOVELLA AND STORIES.
David spent fifteen years as a K-12 teacher in urban schools, mostly teaching middle grades in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He worked on numerous school reform efforts, including developing the influential Saturn School of Tomorrow, where he served as Associate Teacher for Humanities. He has been involved in the work of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, coordinating efforts of the nation’s finest educators to develop standards in the fields of social studies, vocational education, early childhood education and for teachers of students whose first language is not English.
David Haynes co-founded and serves as the Board Chair for Kimbilio, a community of writers and scholars committed to developing, empowering and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora and their stories.
Caitlin Horrocks is the author of a story collection, This is Not Your City (2011) and a novel, The Vexations (2019). Her forthcoming story collection is Life Among the Terranauts. She teaches at Grand Valley State and joined our faculty in 2013.
Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Imperial Liquor. A former Stegner Fellow and Cave Canem Fellow, his honors include the Hurston/Wright Legacy award, the Dorset Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin
A. Van Jordan is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Cineaste. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Lannan Poetry Award, he received his MFA from the Program in 1998 and has been on its faculty since 2004.
Christine Kitano is the author of the poetry collections Birds of Paradise (Lynx House Press) and Sky Country (BOA Editions), which won the Central New York Book Award and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Dumb Luck & other poems (Texas Review Press) won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. She is co-editor of They Rise Like a Wave (Blue Oak Press), an anthology of Asian American women and nonbinary poets. She is an associate professor in the Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University.
Dana Levin is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Banana Palace (2016), which was a finalist for the Rilke Prize. Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day, in 2005, and in 2011 Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Sky Burial was noted for 2011 year-end honors by The New Yorker, the San Francisco Chronicle, Coldfront, and Library Journal. Levin’s poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and The Paris Review. Her fellowships and awards include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as from the Lannan, Rona Jaffe, Whiting and Guggenheim Foundations. Levin currently serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis, where she lives. Her fifth book, Now Do You Know Where You Are, will be published by Copper Canyon in Spring 2022.
Margot Livesey joined our faculty in 1991. She is the author of eight novels and a collection of stories, and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Maurice Manning is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently, Railsplitter. His first book was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and his fourth book was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. A Guggenheim Fellow, Manning is professor of English and writer-in-residence at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY. He lives on a small farm with his family in Kentucky.