Category: Master’s Degree

Maxine Hong Kingston is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who operated a gambling house in the 1940s, when Maxine was born, and then a laundry where Kingston and her brothers and sisters toiled long hours. Kingston graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1962 from the University of California at Berkeley, and, in the same year,… Continue reading Maxine Hong Kingston

Cristina García is the author of four novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, and A Handbook to Luck. She has edited two anthologies, Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature. Two works for young readers, The Dog Who Loved the Moon, and I Wanna Be Your… Continue reading Cristina Garcia

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels, Veronica (2005), Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) and the collections, Bad Behavior (1988) andBecause They Wanted To, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998 . Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories(1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). Her story Secretary was the… Continue reading Mary Gaitskill

Claudia Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry–Plot, The End of the Alphabet, and Nothing in Nature is Private–and, most recently, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. She is co-editor, with Goddard MFA in Creative Writing faculty member Juliana Spahr, of American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language. She teaches… Continue reading Claudia Rankine

In a dozen books–both novels and collections of stories–Banks has written of ordinary people with affection and compassion. Yet these ordinary people feel compelled to wreck their own lives and the lives of those around them he has “ever more clearly emerged,” Fred Pfeil wrote in the Voice Literary Supplement, “as a writer from the… Continue reading Russell Banks

His one-man play, Word of Mouth: The Story of a Human Satellite Dish, was presented Off Broadway by Mike Nichols and Elaine May in 1995 and won the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Solo Performance. Word of Mouth premiered at The Home for Contemporary Theater in NY and played at La Mama… Continue reading James Lecesne

Anna Balint is the author of Horse Thief, a collection of short fiction, Curbstone Press, 2004. Earlier publications were Out of the Box, poems, Poetry Around Press, 1991; and spread them crimson sleeves like wings, poems and stories, Poetry Around Press, 1993. She co-edited Poets Against the War, an anthology of poems protesting the Gulf War, 1991. Her stories and poems have… Continue reading Anna Bálint

Joan Larkin’s latest book, My Body: New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose Press), received the Publishing Triangle’s 2008 Audre Lorde Award. David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times has called Larkin’s voice “unsentimental, ruthless and clear-eyed…. This is poetry without pity, in which despair leads not to degradation but to a kind of grace.” Larkin’s previous books… Continue reading Joan Larkin

Adam Braver’s first book, Mr. Lincoln’s Wars, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer’s pick, a Border’s Original Voices selection, a Book Sense 76 pick, as well as appearing on the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list, among many other year-end lists. His work has also been published in the Cimarron Review and thePittsburgh Quarterly. He received his MFA from Goddard… Continue reading Adam Braver

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder, both published by Graywolf Press. Recent work appears in Five Points, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Subtropics, The Seattle Review, The Pinch, and in the anthologies Truth in Nonfiction and Naming the World. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus… Continue reading Paul Liscky

Mary Johnson is the author of An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life. This memoir tells the story of Johnson’s twenty years as a Missionaries of Charity, the group commonly known as the Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. After leaving the sisters in 1997, Johnson completed a… Continue reading Mary Johnson

Jean Valentine is the author of eight books of poetry, most recentlyThe Cradle of the Real Life (Wesleyan, 2000). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, The Graduate Writing Program at NYU, and The 92nd St. Y, and lives in New York City. A list of recent books:Home.Deep.Blue, alicejamesbooks; The River at Wolf, alicejamesbooks; and Growing Darkness, Growing Light,… Continue reading Jean Valentine

PJ Mark is an agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates.  He has worked in the publishing industry for sixteen years, as an international book scout, a journalist covering the book publishing industry, and as a literary agent since 2002.  He is most interested in literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. Representative clients include Dinaw Mengestu, Samantha… Continue reading PJ Mark

In 2009, Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award, for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” Todd is beginning his fifteenth season as artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation’s leading center… Continue reading Todd London

Appearing at the Spring 2012 Port Townsend, Washington Residency – 2/22/12 (with Todd Haynes) Christine Vachon is an American movie producer who, along with partner Pamela Koffler, founded indie powerhouse Killer Films in 1995. The company has produced a number of the most acclaimed American independent films over the past two decades including Far from Heaven (nominated for… Continue reading Christine Vachon

Native New Yorker Marie Ponsot was born in 1921. She has published numerous works, including Springing (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); The Bird Catcher (1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The GreenDark (1988); Admit Impediment (1981); and True Minds(1957). When asked why poetry matters, Ponsot replied: “There’s a primitive need for… Continue reading Marie Ponsot

Walter Mosley is the critically acclaimed author of twenty-three books. His work has been translated into twenty-one languages. Many readers first discovered Walter’s writing in the Easy Rawlins Mystery Series. The first book in the series, Devil in a Blue Dress, was made into a feature film starring Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals. In addition to his… Continue reading Walter Mosley

Nilo Cruz, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer prize for Drama, is a young Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely around the United States. His plays are many and include Anna in the Tropics,The Beauty of the Father, Night Train to Bolina, Dancing on her Knees, A Park in Our House, Two Sisters and a… Continue reading Nilo Cruz

Appearing at the Fall 2011 Plainfield, Vermont Residency Richard Nash is an independent publishing entrepreneur, presently launching Cursor, a platform that will power the world’s next 50,000 independent publishers, the first of which, Red Lemonade, launched in May 2011. For most of the past decade, he ran the iconic indie Soft Skull Press for which… Continue reading Richard Nash

Since 1997, Philip Himberg has been the Producing Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program which provides year-round support for playwrights and theatres artists on two continents. He expanded the program to include two new laboratories: The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at White Oak and Playwrights Retreat at Ucross. In addition, he has created… Continue reading Philip Himberg