NEWS...

2012 Session dates announced: June 17-30 (Session 1) and July 8-21 (Session 2), 2012.

and what's up with...

...YOUR TEACHERS & COUNSELORS?

Daniel Alarcón's'story collection, "War by Candlelight," was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, and the British journal Granta recently named him one of the Best Young American Novelists. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship (2001), a Whiting Award (2004), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007). He lives in Oakland, California, and his first novel "Lost City Radio" was published in February 2007.

Katherine Bell is Deputy Editor at Harvard Business Digital. Her book, "Quilting for Peace," will be published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang in 2009.

Sarah Braunstein received a 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her first novel, "The Sweet Relief of Missing Children," will be published by W.W. Norton in late 2010. She lives in Portland, Maine, where she’s working on another novel and a collection of essays.

Marion Bright was the recipient of a Lakeside Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her story "The Fix" was published by Pine Magazine. She lives in Petoskey, Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and composition.

Suzanne Buffam's first collection of poetry "Past Imperfect," won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award for best first book published in 2005. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals including Poetry, A Public Space, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and The Canary. She lives in Chicago were she serves on the creative writing faculty at the University of Chicago.

Austin Bunn’s fiction has been published in One Story, American Short Fiction, Salt Hill, and Best American Fantasy. His non-fiction has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Village Voice, and Best American Science and Nature Writing. His plays have been developed at The New Harmony Project, the Playwrights’ Center, and the Playwrights’ Theatre of New Jersey. He is the current Axton Fellow in fiction at the University of Louisville, where he teaches creative writing.

Marjorie Celona’s stories have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Glimmer Train, Crazyhorse, Best Canadian Stories, and Indiana Review. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is working on a first novel and, as always, more stories.

Arda Collins is a candidate in the Ph.D. program in poetry at the University of Denver. She received an M.F.A. in poetry from the Writers' Workshop, where she was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, A Public Space, jubilat, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the May Sarton Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and her collection of poems, "It Is Daylight," won the 2008 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and is forthcoming in spring 2009.

Michelle Falkoff teaches Legal Analysis, Writing & Research at the University of Iowa College of Law.

Jane Gregory's poems have appeared in Absent Magazine, Cannibal, The Hat, Notnostrums, Soft Targets, Typo and elsewhere. A chapbook was published by Cannibal Books in 2007. She is currently working on poems and pursuing a PhD in English at UC Berkeley. She misses even the Iowa weather.

Benjamin Hale's first novel, "The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore," will be published in hardcover by Twelve Books in early 2011. He's currently doing the whole New York City thing, but is pining for Iowa.

Amy Hassinger's second novel, "The Priest's Madonna," came out in paperback from Berkeley Books (Penguin) in 2007. She lives in Urbana, Illinois, teaches in the University of Nebraska's low-residency MFA in writing program, and is at work on her third novel.

Nate Hoks has recently published poems in Octopus Magazine, Crazyhorse, Pilot Magazine and Verse Daily. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and teaches English at Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart. He finds spelling Massachusetts very difficult.

Rebecca Johns's novel, "Icebergs," was a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, and her second, "The Countess," is forthcoming from Crown Books in 2010. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan.

Sally Keith has published two books of poetry, "Dwelling Song" and "design," the latter of which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry in 2000. She teaches poetry at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Kristin Kelly's work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, and Canary, among others. Her poem, "Endings," was included in the anthology "Best New Poets 2007." Her manuscript of poems, "Cargo," won the Elixir Press Tenth Annual Poetry Award and will be published by Elixir Press. She currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Danny Khalastchi's poems have appeared/are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including Denver Quarterly; jubilat; The Kenyon Review; 1913; Forklift, Ohio; and Ninth Letter, among others. A recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Danny is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University. His first collection of poetry, "The Maturation of Man," was awarded the Tupelo Press First Book Prize and will be published in 2011.

Justin Kramon's debut novel,"Finny," will be published by Random House in July, 2010. His website is justinkramon.com

Joshua Kryah's poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, and Verse, among other journals. His first collection of poems, "Glean," won the Nightboat Books 2005 poetry prize. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in UNLV's University College.

Nam Le's debut collection of short stories, "The Boat," was released in paperback in August 2009. "The Boat" has won numerous prizes and awards, among them the Dylan Thomas Prize, The Queensland Premier's Literary Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

Jason T. Lewis is hard at work on his first novel, "The Fourteenth Colony." His short story "Demonstration" appeared in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Yemassee. His story “Nativity” appeared in Connotation Press in November 2009. For many years Jason has been a highly-praised musician and songwriter. No Depression magazine called his band Star City “The best alt.country band you never heard of…” Jason’s first full-length solo album will be released in 2010.

Dora Malech's first full-length collection of poems, "Shore Ordered Ocean," will be published by Waywiser Press in November 2009. Her second collection of poems, "Say So," will be published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center in late 2010. Individual poems are forthcoming in Poetry London, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, and Barn Owl Review. This past summer, she was a Writing Fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy. She's currently teaching at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.

Stephen Marlowe teaches English at Edison State College in Ohio. He also practices Bankruptcy law in Tipp City, which is the funniest name for a town since Kalamazoo. He will finish his novel soon, he promises.

Peyton Marshall is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she received a Maytag Fellowship and the Richard Yates short fiction award. Her story “Bunnymoon” was published in Best New American Voices 2004. Her essay “From the Hills of Fauquier County” appeared in A Public Space. Her work has been published, in translation, in the Spanish-language journal, Etiqueta Negra. Two of her stories, “Come and See the Legend” and “Beast,” have appeared in FiveChapters. "Beast" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Portland, Oregon where she is at work on her first novel, plays bass in her band, The Third Sex, restores Craftsman homes, and — in her spare time – changes the diapers of her four-month-old twins.

Aaron McCollough's third book of poems, "Little Ease", was released in 2006 by Ahsahta Press. His other books include "Double Venus" (Salt, 2003) and "Welkin" (Ahsahta, 2002). McCollough lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is the editor of the online poetry magazine GutCult.

Kevin Moffett's first collection of stories, "Permanent Visitors," was published in October 2006. His stories have received the Nelson Algren Award and the Pushcart Prize, and have appeared in McSweeney's, StoryQuarterly, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. “Tattooizm,” originally published in Tin House, appears in The Best American Short Stories 2006. He teaches at Cal State University, San Bernadino.

Paula Morris's first novel, "Queen of Beauty," was published in 2002. The New Zealand Herald called "Queen of Beauty" "a stunning debut novel...a masterful work." Her second novel, "Hibiscus Coast," a literary thriller set in Auckland, was published in November 2005 by Penguin Books New Zealand. Her latest novel, "Trendy But Casual," was recently published by Penguin.

Thisbe Nissen is currently Writer-in-Residence at The New School's Eugene Lang College in New York City. She's also teaching in Pacific University's Low Residency MFA. Last summer she and her husband, Jay Baron Nicorvo, and some friends, founded The Catskill Studio for Writing in Saugerties, NY, where they now live with their cats and chickens..

Alex Ruskell is the Associate Director of Academic Support at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Lewis Robinson's first novel, "Water Dogs," was published by Random House in January 2009. He is also the author of "Officer Friendly and Other Stories," winner of the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award. He received a Whiting Writers’ Award in 2003 and he teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.

Dan Rosenberg's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including 6X6, Third Coast, Conduit, and Thermos, and his translations of Slovenian poetry by Tomaz Salamun and Miklavz Komelj have appeared in eXchanges and The Iowa Review. His chapbook, "A Thread of Hands," will be published by Tilt Press in spring 2010. He is a Teaching-Writing Fellow at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL.

Anjali Sachdeva's stories have been published in Northern Woman, Pittsburgh City Paper, and various regional publications, and included in the anthology "The Barefoot Nuns of Barcelona and Other Stories." In 2006-07 she held the Provost's Fellowship at the University of Iowa. Her collection of short stories, "Harvest," was a finalist for the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy and the Axton Fellowship at the University of Louisville. She teaches English at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and is currently at work on a novel.

Vivien Shotwell is writing a novel about an eighteenth-century opera singer, and in her own path as a singer is delighted to be a member of the Calgary Opera's Emerging Artist Development Program for their 2009-10 season.

Nina Siegal's first novel, "A Little Trouble With the Facts," was published in February, 2008 by Harper Collins in New York; it's been translated into Dutch and French. She is currently writing her second novel, which concerns a Rembrandt painting, in Amsterdam. Nina received a 2006-2007 U.S. Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing, the Jack Leggett Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a Ludwig Vogelstein Grant and MacDowell Colony Fellowships. In July 2008, she became the founding editor of Time Out Amsterdam, which launched in September.

Jared Stanley published his first full-length book, "Book Made of Forest," in 2009. He still lives in Merced, California, among the almond, fig, and walnut trees, and from which you can occasionally see the bare granite peaks of the Sierra Nevada. He's now a Bicycle Commissioner for the City of Merced, working on sustainable transportation and planning. Cycling, he says, is the best activity for a poet. Owls strafe you. Crows hex you.

Michelle Taransky's first book, "Barn Burned, Then," was selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. She lives in Philadelphia and works at Kelly Writers House at University of Pennsylvania and teaches poetry at Temple University.

Catherine Theis is the author of the chapbook, "The Maybook," published by Your Beeswax Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Court Green, Fence, Gulf Coast, Mrs. Maybe, Northwest Review and Blackbird. She lives in Chicago, where she works as an editor.

Vu Tran is a Shaeffer Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He won the Lawrence Foundation Prize for the best story to appear in the Michigan Quarterly Review in the calendar year 2004.

Justin Tussing's first novel, "The Best People in the World," was published in February 2006 by HarperCollins. A portion of this novel appeared in the Summer 2005 Debut Fiction issue of The New Yorker. Other work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Third Coast, and in "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection" (2001). Justin is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Trish Walsh spent 2006-7 in Minneapolis, where she was an Associate at Dorsey & Whitney. She is currently clerking for a federal judge in Seattle, Washington.

Malena Watrous' first novel, "If You Follow Me," is coming out from HarperCollins in December 2009. It received a Michener-Copernicus award.

Vinnie Wilhelm's fiction has appeared in The Southern Review and Glimmer Train. His most recent story, "The Crying of the Gulls," appears in the Summer 2007 issue of The Mississippi Review. He recently receieved a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Antoine Wilson's first novel, "The Interloper," was published by Other Press/Handsel Books in Spring 2007. One of his stories, "In Boca," appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of A Public Space.

Jenny Zhang recently completed a collection of linked short stories and is at work on a novel. In 2007, she won first place in the Summer Literary Seminars Unified Contest in Fiction. Last year, she was a finalist in the Diagram Innovative Fiction Contest, a finalist in the Gulf Coast Fiction Contest, and a finalist in the Glimmertrain Very Short Fiction Award. She recently was awarded second place in the Zoetrope All-Story Fiction Contest. Her writing has been published in Monkeybicycle, Diagram, and the Walrus.