EVENTS

SAM HAMILL is an esteemed poet, translator, essayist and editor. He was Editor of Copper Canyon Press from 1972-2004. Hamill has taught at prisons for fourteen years, in artist-in-residency programs for twenty years, and has worked extensively with battered women and children. He is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, poetry-in-translation, and essays including, Almost Paradise: Selected Poems & Translations (2005), Dumb Luck (2002), Gratitude (1998), and A Poet’s Work (1998). He also founded Poets Against War in 2003.

ALICIA PARTNOY is a poet, translator, and human rights activist. She was born in Argentina in 1955 and is one of the few survivors from secret detention camps in which about 30,000 Argentineans were ‘disappeared.’ She is the author of Volando bajito (2005); The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina (1999); You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile (1988); and Revenge of the Apple-Venganza de la Manzana: Poetry (1992). Partnoy is the chair of the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

Galway Kinnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1927. He studied at Princeton University and the University of Rochester. His volumes of poetry include A New Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990); Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980); The Book of Nightmares (1971); Body Rags (1968); Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964); and What a Kingdom It Was (1960). He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, and François Villon, and, this year, Rainer Maria Rilke. Galway Kinnell divides his time between Vermont and New York City, where he is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. He is currently a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. 

Dorianne Laux was born in Augusta, Maine, in 1952. She worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, a maid, and a donut holer before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988. Laux is the author of three collections of poetry: Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000), What We Carry (1994), and Awake (1990). With Kim Addonizio, she is the co-author of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, an Editor's Choice III Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Laux is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon's Program in Creative Writing. 

Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 and grew up in Jamaica where he attended Jamaica College and the University of the West Indies at Mona. He studied and taught in New Brunswick on a Commonwealth Scholarship to Canada. Since 1992 he has been teaching at the University of South Carolina. He is a Professor in English on the Columbia campus of that institution where he is Distinguished Poet in Residence and Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Dawes has published eight collections of poetry, Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree 1994--Winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, UK), Resisting the Anomie (Goose Lane 1995), Prophets (Peepal Tree 1995), Jacko Jacobus (Peepal Tree 1996), Requiem (Peepal Tree 1996), a suite of poems inspired by the illustrations of African American artist, Tom Feelings in his landmark book The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo, and Shook Foil (Peepal Tree 1998) a collection of reggae-inspired poems. His most recent collection, Midland, was recently awarded the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize by the Ohio University Press (2001). The judge for contest was Eavan Boland. In 2001, Dawes was a winner of a Push Cart Prize for the best American poetry of 2001. 

Janet Sternberg's newest book is Optic Nerve, a book of poetry and photos (Red Hen Press, 2005). She is also the author of Phantom Limb, a meditation on loss and consolation that has been described by Bill Moyers as "the perfect metaphor for. . .the ultimate inevitabilities of life." Other books include the two volumes of The Writer on Her Work with the classic 1980 first volume re-issued by W. W. Norton in a 20th anniversary edition. As former Director of Writers in Performance at the Manhattan Theatre Club, she pioneered in creating new ways to present literature on stage, producing evenings devoted to Raymond Chandler, Isak Dinesen, Colette and Louise Bogan; for public television, she also produced the prize-winning film, Virginia Woolf: The Moment Whole. Her photography has been honored with one-person exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Mexico, as well as by extensive portfolios in Aperture and Art Journal, and appears in private and museum collections. Former Vice-President of PEN USA, she currently serves on its board, and also on the Visiting Committees for the Writing Programs at CalArts and Antioch University. In 2003, Sternburg was selected by The Utne Reader’s annual arts issue as one of the 40 creative people chosen for work that is "innovative, . . {with} depth, resonance . . full of ideas and insights that challenge us to live more fully."

Special Thanks to the University of Nebrasks Press and W.W. Norton for their generous book donations. 

Special Thanks to BOA Editions, Ltd. for their generous book donations. 

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Rex Wilder has traveled extensively, and lived for extended periods in Tahiti, Normandy, Madrid, and New York City. He attended Connecticut College, where he graduated with a degree in Hispanic Studies. Wilder now lives in Pacific Palisades, California with his wife and three children. 

California native Leslie Monsour was educated at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she received her degree in English Literature. She has been a reference librarian at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a news reporter for Pacifica Radio, and a research consultant for documentaries. She has also taught Spanish poetry at Florence Avenue Middle School in Los Angeles, and has been an instructor for the U.C.L.A. Extension Writers' Program. One of the most anthologized contemporary poets, her work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Birmingham Poetry Review, Hellas, The Lyric, Dark Horse, and Poetry. In 1998, Robert Barth published her collection, Earth's Beauty, Desire, & Loss, and, in 1999, Aralia Press at West Chester University published a letterpress edition of her poems, Indelibility. 

Shelley Savren's book, The Common Fire, was published by Red Hen Press in 2004. She is the recipient of nine California Arts Council Artist in Residence grants, two National Endowment for the Arts regional grants, and three artist fellowships from the City of Ventura. She has taught poetry writing workshops at a maximum security men’s prison, juvenile detention centers, a homeless shelter, a school for emotionally disturbed adolescents, a women’s center and numerous other facilities and at every grade level through the California Poets in the Schools. She also received first place in the 1994 John David Johnson Memorial Poetry Award and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize. She lives near the ocean in Ventura, California with her husband, Elijah Imlay, and is a full-time faculty member of the English Department at Oxnard College. The Midwest Book Review writes: “THE COMMON FIRE showcases this remarkable talent and will aptly serve to introduce a whole new audience of readers to a storytelling poetry.” Marge Piercy writes: Shelley Savren’s poems in THE COMMON FIRE are warm and direct, full of the stuff of daily life, family life, joy and pleasure and grief and pain we can all identify with in poems that carry a strong emotional weight.” Li-Young Lee writes: “These are poems of earnest storytelling and fond description. Nostalgia for gone worlds and affection for the evanescing present are the subjects and inspirations for this volume. A pleasure to read.”  

Lawrence Bridges’ mark in the art of the television commercial and independent feature is permanent. Bridges was named " Best Advertising Auteur" by Connoisseur magazine in 1989, inspiring the magazine to write, "Whenever you see an ad that verges on art, chances are good that Bridges had a hand in it--as either director, editor or graphic designer." Bridges, first as an editor then as a director, created nothing less than a revolution in advertising with hand-held, grainy, textured "anti-commercials." He single-handedly turned editing into a killer application for advertising agencies seeking to maximize the impact of their ads on television audiences. All television advertising since bears the stamp of this breakthrough style, and no longer could advertising agencies ignore the importance of editing. The Stanford graduate (English) and Tuck (Dartmouth) MBA began his career as a production assistant on Francis Coppola's "The Conversation." From 1973-75 he worked as a film editor for CBS-TV News working out of the network's New York office. In 1979 he returned to L.A.and founded Red Car Inc., an editing and design boutique with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Dallas and San Francisco, and Buenos Aires. Bridges has been a guest lecturer in Advanced Entrepreneurship at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration (Dartmouth) and in the department of English at Stanford University. Bridges currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Melanie. 

Amy Uyematsu is a sansei (3rd-generation Japanese American) from Los Angeles. She’s old enough to remember when the term "Asian American" was non-existent, and she was more used to being called "Oriental" or, on far too many occasions, "Jap." She was one of the original staff members of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and got that job in 1969 after writing a senior research paper on "yellow power." At the end of that paper, she included three poems (just for the hell of it), never suspecting that over three decades later she’d still be writing poetry. Amy has two published books: 30 Miles from J-Town and Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain from Story Line Press. A new collection, Stone Bow Prayer, was released in June, 2005, by Copper Canyon Press. 

Cynthia Hogue has published three collections and two chapbooks of poetry, most recently Flux (New Issues Press, 2002). Her fourth collection, The Incognito Body, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2005. Her poems have been praised for their intelligence, elegant compression, and chiseled syntax. Her work has been nominated for five Pushcart awards, and received the Mammoth Press Poetry Prize and The Judith Pearson Siegel Award for poetry. Also known for her criticism and scholarship, Hogue has been called one of the few critics well versed in contemporary theoretical debates who is also a skilled reader of poetry. Her books and essays on poetry, ranging from that of Emily Dickinson to Kathleen Fraser and Harryette Mullen, have explored the possibilities for ethical, poetic subjects and the transformation of consciousness. Her co-edited, critical anthology of essays, We Who 'Love To Be Astonished': Experimental Feminist Poetics and Performance Art (U of Alabama Press, 2001), broadens the definition of "experimental." It is the first study of the avant-garde to bring together critical essays on diverse, and diversely experimental American women writers. For her work, Hogue has been awarded NEA, NEH (Summer Seminar), and Fulbright fellowships. In 2001-2002, she gave the Provost's Distinguished Lectureship at Notre Dame University, and received a Residency Fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico. She is currently the 2004-2005 H.D. Fellow at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Hogue directed the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University for eight years before joining the Department of English at ASU in 2003. 

Ron Koertge grew up in an old mining town in Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River. He has lived in California for many years and has been on the faculty of Pasadena City College for more than 35 years. He also teaches in the M.F.A. Writing for Children Program at Vermont College. He is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Arizona Kid, Where the Missing Never Stops, and Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright, all of which were ALA Best Books for Young Adults. 

Douglas Kearney received an MFA in Writing at the California Institute of the Arts (2004). He is an advisor for nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts and is the editor of Cave Canem IX, an anthology of poetry by emerging and established African American poets. His own poetry has been published in anthologies including Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, Bum Rush The Page and Role Call, and several journals including Callaloo and nocturnes. He has performed his work all over the country, including commissioned work for the Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis, a showcase performance at the 2002 Slam Nationals, LA's World Stage and New York's Public Theatre and Bowery Poetry Club. He is currently developing a libretto for an opera in an invented language with composer Grisha Coleman. He is also working on a libretto for a horror opera with composer Wes Hambright. He recently completed libretto work on Eisa davis’s play "Six Minutes" which was selected by the Hip Hop Theatre Festival. (Photo by Roman Jaster) 

Geri Digiorno is Poet Laureate of Sonoma County 2006-2007 and founder and director of The Petaluma Poetry Walk. She is author of White Lipstick (Red Hen Press, 2005). Geri's publishing credits include Paterson Literary Review, Carbuncle, 33 Poetry Review, Cyanosis, North Coast Review, Tomcat, Tight, Bogg, Women's Voices, Sonoma Mandala, The Noe Valley Voice and The Haight Ashbury Review. In addition, she is a painter and teaches workshops in Sonoma County and Paterson, New Jersey. A chapbook of her poems, I'm Tap Dancing, was published by Norton Coker Press. 

Menaghan is the winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and other awards, and has published poems and articles in Irish, American, and Canadian journals. He has given readings in London, Paris, Debrecen (Hungary), around Ireland, and across the U.S. from New York to Honolulu. He teaches literature and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he also serves as Director of both the Irish Studies & Summer in Ireland programs and runs the annual LMU Irish Cultural Festival.