Creative Writing

2018 FEATURED WRITERS AND WORKSHOP LEADERS

 Poetry Workshop Leader Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux’s fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Laux teaches poetry in the Program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University and is a founding faculty member of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program. Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

Creative Nonfiction Workshop Leader Dawn Raffel

Dawn Raffel’s latest book is The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, the story of a mysterious European showman who saved the lives of thousands of American children. Previous books include a memoir, The Secret Life of Objects, two critically acclaimed story collections, and a novel. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from O, The Oprah Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle to BOMB and NOON, and has been widely anthologized. A longtime magazine editor, she helped launch O Magazine, where she served as executive articles editor. She has taught creative writing in the MFA program at Columbia University; Summer Literary Seminars in Russia, Canada, and Lithuania; as well as at the Center for Fiction in New York. She now works as an independent editor. She brings a holistic, cross-genre approach to her teaching.

Fiction Workshop Leader Martha Southgate

Martha Southgate is the author of four novels. The Taste of Salt was named one of the best novels of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe. Her previous novel, Third Girl from the Left, won the Best Novel of the Year award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She’s also the author of The Fall of Rome and Another Way to Dance, which won the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award for Best First Novel. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her July 2007 essay from the New York Times Book Review, “Writers Like Me”, received considerable notice and appears in the anthology Best African-American Essays 2009. Previous non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O Magazine, Premiere, and Essence.

ALSO FEATURING

Lee Briccetti is a poet and the author of two books, Blue Guide and Day Mark. She’s the Executive Director of Poets House. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Briccetti has won a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and a Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has been a resident at the MacDowell and Millay Colonies and a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Tina Cane is the Poet Laureate ​of Rhode Island. She’s also the founder and director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including Spinning Jenny, The Literary Review, Two Serious Ladies, and Tupelo Quarterly. She’s the author of Once More With Feeling and The Fifth Thought. In 2016 she received a Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.

 Tara Gelsomino is the founder and CEO of One Track Literary Agency, a boutique editorial agency launched in April 2018. A twenty-plus year veteran of the publishing industry, she was formerly the Executive Editor of Simon & Schuster’s digital imprint, Crimson Romance, and also worked for BBC Audiobooks America/AudioGO and Romantic Times Magazine. She is a Rhode Island native and lives in Johnston with her husband and rescue dog, Yoda.

Mira T. Lee’s debut novel, Everything Here is Beautiful, was selected as an Indies Introduce title and Indie Next pick by the American Booksellers Association, and named a Top Winter/2018 Pick by more than 30 news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, O Magazine, New York magazine, Chicago Review of Books, and Seattle Times, among others. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of literary journal, including the Gettysburg Review and Triquarterly.

Jean-René Lemoine is a French playwright, director and actor. His plays include “Erzuli Dahomey, Goddess of Love” and “Médée poème enrage, Medea (Written in Rage)”. His work has received some of the highest literary and artistic honors in France: le prix SACD, from the Society of Authors and Dramatic Composers, le prix Emile Augier, from the Académie Française, and the Grand Prix de la Critique for best literary creation.

Maria Mutch’s collection of short fiction, When We Were Birds, was published in the spring of 2018. She’s the author of the memoir Know the Night. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in a number of journals, including Poets & Writers, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Normal School, Guernica, Necessary Fiction, Fiction Writers Review, Southeast Review, and The Malahat Review. Born and raised in Canada, she has a degree in visual art from York University in Toronto.

Amaryah Orenstein has always loved to read and provide (oftentimes unsolicited) editorial advice and, as a literary agent, she is thrilled to help writers bring their ideas to life. She is particularly drawn to narrative non-fiction and memoir but enjoys any book that connects the reader to its characters and evokes thought and feeling. Amaryah began her career at the Laura Gross Literary Agency in 2009 and, prior to that, she worked as an Editorial Assistant at various academic research foundations, including the Tauber Institute, where she edited books for Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England. She completed an MA at Ohio University’s Contemporary History Institute and a PhD at Brandeis University, and currently serves as Co-President of the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association.

Dan Pope is the founder and publisher of Roundabout Press, based out of Hartford, Connecticut. He is a 2002 graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. His first novel, In The Cherry Tree, was published by Picador in 2003, and his second novel, Housebreaking, came out with Simon & Schuster in 2015. he has published short stories in such print journals as McSweeneys, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Harvard Review, Witness, Post Road, Crazyhorse, The Bellevue Review, Fields Magazine, The Bennington Review, descant, and such anthologies as Best New American Voices 2007.

Dariel Suarez is a Cuban-born writer who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1997, during the economic crisis known as The Special Period. His story collection, A Kind of Solitude, was selected as the winner of the 2017 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction and is forthcoming from Willow Springs Books. Dariel is the Director of Core Programs and Faculty at GrubStreet and one of City of Boston’s inaugural Artist Fellows. He holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Boston University.

Vikki Warner is the author of the memoir Tenemental: Adventures of a Reluctant Landlady, published by The Feminist Press in 2018. She is an acquisitions editor with Blackstone Publishing and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in BUST, The Boston Globe, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and various local arts publications. She has a BA in English from URI and an MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.