Meacham Writers' Workshops 2005
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Thursday, October 27: Chattanooga
State Center for Advanced Technology, Room C-30 at 7:00: Braggs, Matthews, Wier
Friday, October 28:
UTC University Center
Morning
& Afternoon Informal
Discussions/ Interviews
Afternoon Reading: 12:00
UC Signal MTN RM: Cook, Schockley, Guest
Evening Reading: 7:00
UC Raccoon MTN RM: Jackson, Stern, Tate
Saturday, October 29:
UTC University Center
Morning Workshop/Discussions 10:00-11:30 University Center
Special High School Workshops
10:00-11:30 Holt Hall
(Rooms
will be posted in UC)
Afternoon Reading: 1:00 UC Raccoon MTN RM: Graham, Macari, Priest
Earl Braggs, UC
Foundation Professor of English, teaches writing and literature at UTC. He is
the author of five collections of poetry, including Crossing Tecumseh
Street, House on Fontanka, Walking Back From Woodstock, and Hat
Dancer Blue (winner of the 1992 Anhinga
Prize). His latest collection, In Which Language Do I Keep Silent:
New and Selected Poems, is scheduled for
publication in 2006. In addition to many prizes and awards for poetry and
fiction, he was recently awarded Individual Artist Grants from Chattanooga
Allied Arts and The Tennessee Commission for the Arts.
Rebecca Cook teaches
English at UTC. Her chapbook of poems, The Terrible Baby, will be
published in 2006 by Dancing Girl Press. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she
was awarded a Writer's Residency at The Dairy Hollow Writers' Colony in 2005. Her
prose and poetry have appeared in many literary journals. New work is scheduled
to appear in Northwest Review, Orchid, Margie, Quarter After Eight, Powhatan
Review, and others.
Barry Graham's five
books are widely praised on both sides of the Atlantic. The Times
(London) hails Graham as "a young master," and Details calls him "one of the real literary
finds." Booklist says of Before : unrelenting and brutally honest. . . Graham has a
visual style and writerly voice that are all his own: timely, urban, and
powerful." Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, calls The Book of Man "haunting and evocative... resonates with the
redemptive power art has over life." Graham has written for many American
and British publications, is the editor of The Bradley News Weekly in Cleveland, Tennessee, and is a Zen Buddhist
priest and teacher of The Buddha Way Zen Sangha.
Paul Guest has written two books of poems, The Resurrection
of the Body and the Ruin of the World (2002
New Issues Prize in Poetry) and Notes for My Body Double (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Rodney
Jones has said "From my first encounter with Paul Guest's poetry, I have
thought of him as one of the most brilliant poets in America. He makes no
distinction between light and dark subject matter. The accomplishment of his
poems translates everything into delight." His work has appeared in Poetry,
Prairie Schooner, Verse, The Iowa Review, Slate, Swink, Gulf Coast, and many others.
Richard Jackson, UC
Foundation Professor of English directs the Meacham Writers' Conference, and is
the author of nine books of poems, including Half Lives: Petrarchan Poems,
Unauthorized Autobiography: New and Selected Poems, Heartwall
, and Svetovi Narazen, as well as several chapbooks of translations,
and his own work has been translated into over a dozen languages. He has edited
two anthologies of Slovene poetry an eastern European chapbook series, two journals, and is the author of a two
award winning books of criticism. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright
Fellowship, NEA and NEH Fellowships, 5 Pushcart Prizes, and other awards including
the President of Slovenia's Order of Freedom Medal for literary and
humanitarian work in the Balkans.
Anne Marie Macari's first book of poems, Ivory Candle, won the APR/Honickman first book prize in 2000. Her poems have been published in many magazines and anthologies such as TriQuarterly, American Poetry review, Bloomsbury Review, Shenandoah, Five Points, and The Iowa Review. She is on the core faculty at New England College Low residency MFA Program and the Prague Summer Workshops. Her second book, Gloryland, has been called by the poet-critic Tony Hoagland, a book "in pursuit of the serious mysteriesÉa sensational collection."
Sebastian Matthews
is the author of the memoir, In My Father's Footsteps. He has
also co-edited, along with Stanley Plumly, The Poetry Blues: Essays &
Interviews of William Matthews and Search
Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews,
a recent finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poetry and prose has appeared in,
among other places, Atlantic Monthly, New England Review, Post Road,
Seneca Review, Tin House and Virginia
Quarterly Review. Matthews teaches
part-time at Warren Wilson College where he edits Rivendell. Author of one chapbook of poems, his book, We
Generous, is forthcoming from Red Hen
Press.
Cherie Priest's southern
gothic novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Tor October 2005), has
received rave reviews. Publisher's Weekly says "The classic Southern gothic
gets an edgy modern makeover in Priest's debut novel" and Charles de Lint says
"The narrator's voice is pitch-perfectÉI could hear the mosquitoes. Smell the
damp forests. Share the same eerie frisson of the narrator." Her second novel,
the sequel Wings to the Kingdom, is
slated for publication in 2006. A third book will complete the trilogy in 2007.
Evie Shockley is the
author of a chapbook, The Gorgon Goddess (2001), and the
forthcoming collection a half-red sea,
both with Carolina Wren Press. Her poetry also appears in such publications as
African American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Fifth Review ,Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Ekphrasis, HOW2,
Poetry Daily: Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website, and Role Call. A graduate fellow of Cave Canem, she was awarded a residency at
Hedgebrook Retreat for Women Writers in 2003, and is Assistant Professor of
English at Rutgers University.
Gerald Stern is the
recipient of many awards, including the National Book Award for This Time;
the Lamont Prize; fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, American
Academy of Poets; and the Ruth Lilly Prize. Widely revered as a master teacher,
he has taught at many universities including Columbia, NYU, Iowa, and has been
a guest at numerous venues such as the Prague Summer Workshops and New England
College's MFA Program. His memoir, What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes From a
Life, has been widely praised. His American
Sonnets reinvented the genre, and his
latest book, Everything is Burning,
is just out.
James Tate is the
author of 14 collections of poetry including the recent Return to the City
of White Donkeys. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book
Award and the William Carlos Williams Award, as well as the Yale Series of
Younger Poets Award and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American
Poets, he has also published a book of short stories, Dreams of a Robot
Dancing Bee, a book of essays and
interviews, The Route as Briefed,
from U of Michigan Press, and has been editor of Best American Poetry
1997. Other books of poetry include Memoir
of the Hawk, Shroud of the Gnome, and Worshipful
Company of Fletchers. His work is the
subject of a collection of essays, Under Discussion: On James Tate, from Michigan. He teaches at the University of
Massachusetts in Amherst.
Dara Wier is the author of nine books of poetry including her recent Reverse Rapture. Earlier collections include the Phi Beta Kappa Award Finalist Voyages in English and Hat on a Pond. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Arts Council, and American Poetry Review. She teaches in the MFA program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Her poems appear in many journals and anthologies including APR, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, Seattle Review and New American Writing.
