Speakers

FEATURED SPEAKER: Amy Hempel

We’re thrilled to announce that this year’s featured speaker is Amy Hempel.

Amy is the author of Reason to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, and Tumble Home, and is the coeditor of the anthology, Unleashed: Poems by Writer’s Dogs.

Amy’s stories have appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s, The Quarterly, The Yale Review and several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Her literary awards include the Hobson Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has served as a judge for the National Book Award, The PEN/Revson Award, The PEN/ Hemingway Award, and the Mary McCarthy Prize.

Panelists and Breakout Speakers:

Deborah Ager is editor and publisher of 32 Poems Magazine, a print journal that publishes 64 poems per year. 32 Poems, founded in 2003, has had poems appear twice in Best American Poetry and twice in Best New Poets and on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. The 32 Poems blog  publishes interviews with poets published in the magazine as part of its mission to help writers promote their work. Ager’s first book, Midnight Voices, was published in March 2009 by WordTech.

Cathy Alter is a successful freelance writer whose feature articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in local and national newspapers and magazines including The Washington Post, Washingtonian, Self, Prevention, Fitness, McSweeney’s, Spin, Preservation, and Might. She was also a Washington correspondent for People magazine. Her book, Virgin Territory: Stories from the Road to Womanhood (Three Rivers Press) was released in 2004 and her memoir, Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over (Atria) was released in July 2008. She has been a frequent panelist for organizations including American Independent Writers, The Baltimore Writers Conference, The Junior League of Washington, the Bethesda Literary Festival, Empowered Women International, and Georgetown University’s Bunn Student Journalism Awards. Cathy received a B.A. from Colgate University and a M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, where she is a faculty member.

J.T. Barbarese is the author of four books of poems, most recently The Black Beach (UNT, 2005), and a translation of Euripides’ The Children of Heracles (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). His poems have appeared widely, including in The Atlantic Monthly, Boulevard, The Denver Quarterly, and Poetry, and his critical essays and literary journalism in Tri-Quarterly, The Sewanee Review, and The Georgia Review.  He is a member of the MFA Program at Rutgers University’s Campus at Camden and the editor of Story Quarterly, now headquartered at Rutgers University’s Campus at Camden, NJ.

Geoffrey Becker is the author of Dangerous Men, a collection of short stories (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and Bluestown, a novel (St. Martin’s Press, 1996). His story, “Black Elvis,” was selected by E.L. Doctorow for The Best American Short Stories, 2000. Other awards he has received include the Nelson Algren Prize from the Chicago Tribune, a James Michener Fellowship, an NEA fellowship, a Heekin Foundation fellowship, two Maryland Arts Council Awards, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award for best first book of fiction. Most recently, he is the 2008 winner of both the Parthenon Prize, and the Flannery O’Connor Prize for short fiction. He teaches at Towson University, where he also directs the graduate program in professional writing, and in the low-residency MFA program of Queens University, Charlotte.

Zachary Benavidez has the Johns Hopkins University M.A. in Writing and the Georgetown University M.A. in English literature. He teaches English and creative writing at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Dan Brady is the poetry editor of Barrelhouse and the editor of Growler, a review of debut collections of poetry. He is the former editor of American Poet, the journal of the Academy of American Poets, and currently works as an arts administrator in Washington, DC.

Susan Coll was born in New York, and attended Occidental College. She is the author of the novels Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and KarlMarx.com, and has worked as a freelance writer and book reviewer. Her articles have appeared in publications including the International Herald Tribune, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and the Washington Post. A short story set in India, “Fire Safety Week”, was broadcast on BBC World Service Radio, and the first chapter of the novel Brain Fever, written with J.H. Diehl, appeared in the literary journal Enhanced Gravity.

Kyle G. Dargan is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at American University and the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS Magazine. He was formerly the managing editor for Callaloo, poetry editor for the Indiana Review, and a submissions screener forMeridian. His poetry collections include The Listening (2004, UGA), winner of the 2003 Cave Canem poetry Prize, and Bouquet of Hungers (2007, UGA), winner of the 2008 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for poetry.

Thom Didato is the publisher and founding editor of the online literary and arts magazine failbetter. The former Program Manager at The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, Thom currently teaches fiction workshops and literary editing and publishing courses at Virginia Commonwealth University where he serves the Graduate Programs Coordinator.

Keith Donohue is the author of the best-selling novel The Stolen Child and the novel Angels of Destruction. A Ph.D. in English Literature from the Catholic University of America, Donohue also wrote the introduction to the Everyman’s edition of the Novels of Flann O’Brien. For many years, he wrote speeches for the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and now works at another federal agency.

Gregory Donovan, a senior editor of Blackbird, is one of the founding faculty members of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has taught for twenty years. He has won the Robert Penn Warren Award sponsored by New England Writers, as well as grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Donovan’s poetry collection, Calling His Children Home, was the 1993 Devins Award winner from University of Missouri Press. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Kenyon Review. His poetry has been anthologized, most recently in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (University of Virginia, 2003). Donovan is the writer-in-residence for the Virginia Commonwealth University Glasgow Artists and Writers Workshop.

Leila Emery holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Smith College and an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her poetry has appeared in Abbey, 95Notes, poetryfish, and Advocate, and is forthcoming in 24/7: A Caregiving Anthology. She is a freelance editor, teaches English at Montgomery College in Maryland, and also serves as Managing Editor of the Potomac Review.

David Erlewine practices law in DC. He lives outside Annapolis with his wife and two kids. On the train, and late at night, he sometimes writes. His stories appear (or soon will) in The Pedestal, elimae, In Posse Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Mud Luscious, Monkeybicycle, 971 Menu, Keyhole, and others. His hilariously pathetic blog is http://whizbyfiction.blogspot.com

Mary Flinn, senior editor of Blackbird, has been the Director of New Virginia Review, Inc., since 1985, and is the editor, with George Garrett, of Elvis in Oz, New Writing from the Hollins College Creative Writing Program (1992). She also facilitated the editing of The Gazer Within by Larry Levis (2001), and she has served as the poetry and fiction editor of 64 Magazine, and as editor of New Virginia Review. She has participated on editors’ panels, as a literature fellowship judge for numerous art councils, and as a review panelist for the National Endowment and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She was the first recipient of the Theresa Pollack Award for Words presented by Richmond Magazine.

Molly Gaudry edits Willows Wept Review and Willows Wept Press, co-edits Twelve Stories, and is an associate editor for Keyhole Magazine. Her writing appears in PANK, Quick Fiction, Eyeshot, elimae, Fringe Magazine, Anderbo, and Night Train, among many others, and in the anthologies What Happened To Us These Last Couple Years? An Anthology of the Bush Years and Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2009. Find her online at mollygaudry.blogspot.com.

Amy Holman teaches writers how to analyze and be savvy about the publishing market and works with them individually to find magazines, presses, and agents for their writing. She teaches at conferences, literary centers and universities. She is a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and has been published most recently on the blog for The Best American Poetry anthology, New Verse News, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, Barrelhouse, and the anthology, Knitting Through It. Other works have been in The Subway Chronicles anthology, The Best American Poetry 1999, Archaeology Magazine, American Letters & Commentary, Failbetter, Cortland Review, Night Train, and several issues of Xconnect.

Charles Jensen is the author of three chapbooks, including Living Things, which won the 2006 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, and The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon (New Michigan Press, 2007). His first full-length collection, The First Risk, is forthcoming in fall 2009 from Lethe Press. A past recipient of an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, his poetry has appeared in Bloom, Columbia Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, The Journal, New England Review, spork, and West Branch. He holds an MFA in poetry from Arizona State University and is currently pursuing an MA in Nonprofit Leadership and Management. He is the founding editor of the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT, which explores creative work on a city-by-city basis. He serves as director of The Writer’s Center, one of the nation’s largest independent literary centers.

Matthew Kirkpatrick was nominated for an AWP Intro Journal. He lives in Salt Lake City, UT where he is a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah. His writing has appeared in Copper Nickel, Hobart, No Colony, Gargoyle among others, and was cited in the Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology. He edits Improbable Object, co-edits Barrelhouse, and holds the FC2 Fellowship at the University of Utah. He holds an M.A. in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University, and has been awarded a fellowship by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Jeff Kleinman is one of the founders of Folio Literary Management, LLC. He has represented many successful books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks, Mockingbird by Charles Shields, and The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, as well as the critically acclaimed Finn by Jon Clinch, Sacco & Vanzetti by Bruce Watson, and Enslaved by Ducks by Bob Tarte. He holds a B.A. in Modern Studies from the University of Virginia, an M.A. in Italian from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Kim Dana Kupperman is the recipient of the 2009 Katharine Nason Bakeless Prize in Nonfiction, awarded by the Bread Loaf  Writers Conference and judged by Sue Halpern. Her collection of essays will be published by Graywolf Press in 2010. Honors include a reprint in Best American Essays 2006, a 2009 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship, a 2008 fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, notable mentions in Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize anthologies; the 2003 Robert J. DeMott Prose Prize; and first place in the 1996 Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest. She is the founder of Welcome Table Press, devoted to publishing and celebrating the essay. She works as the managing editor of The Gettsyburg Review..

Reb Livingston is the editor of the online poetry magazine No Tell Motel and publisher of No Tell Books. She’s the author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books) and co-editor of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series. Her next book, God Damsel, is scheduled to be released in early 2010. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006, The American Poetry Review, Coconut and other publications.

Paul Maliszewski is the author of Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders. His fiction and essays in have appeared in Barrelhouse, Bookforum, Harper’s, Granta, and the Paris Review, and his stories have twice received a Pushcart Prize.

C.M. Mayo is the author of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, as well as Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico. Sky Over El Nido won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Founding editor of Tameme (the bilingual Spanish/English chapbook press), she is also a translator of contemporary Mexican writing and has authored an anthology of Mexican fiction in translation: Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 2006). Her work has appeared in such publications as Creative Nonfiction, Kenyon Review, The North American Review, The Paris Review, Southwest Review, Tin House, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. She has won three Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards and three Washington Independent Writers Awards. Visit her blog at: Madam Mayo.

Jen Michalski is the author of the short fiction collection Close Encounters (So New Media, 2007). Her work has appeard widely, including McSweeney’s, failbetter, storySouth, Hobart, Pindeldyboz, Potomac Review, Word Riot, and more. She is also the editor of jmww, and the co-host of the 510 Reading series in Baltimore.

Shannon O’Neill is a literary agent at The Sagalyn Agency. For over 20 years, The Sagalyn Agency has represented journalists, academics, business writers, and novelists, doing business primarily with the large New York houses and focusing on upmarket nonfiction, business books, and commercial fiction. Shannon has a Master’s degree in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College. Interests include current affairs, books on social, cultural and intellectual trends, and literary fiction. She is actively considering new work in non-fiction and fiction. Visit www.sagalyn.com to learn more about the agency and how to submit your work.  

Ed Perlman writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and is founder of Entasis Press. His poetry, essays, and book reviews have appeared in various reviews and publications including Explorations, Passages Northwest, The Sewanee Theological Review, and The Living Church. He was a participant in the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 1995, and 1998. He is a contributing author to Alexandria, a Town in Transition 1800-1900 (Alexandria Historical Society). The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the NEA awarded him an artist fellowship grant for 2006 for his poetry. He teaches at the Johns Hopkins University M.A. Program in Writing and serves as faculty advisor for poetry students; he was one of the first winners of the JHU Writing Program’s Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence.

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon Books) and A Year and a Day (William Morrow). Her short fiction has appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Iowa Review, New England Review, The Sun, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah.

Adam Robinson is the founder of Publishing Genius Press, a micro press that publishes books, PDF chapbooks, and runs IsReads, a broadside journal that hangs poetry outdoors. His first collection, titled Adam Robison and Other Poems, will be published by Narrow House Books in June 2009.Adam Robinson is the founder of Publishing Genius Press, a micro press that publishes books, PDF chapbooks, and runs IsReads, a broadside journal that hangs poetry outdoors. His first collection, titled Adam Robison and Other Poems, will be published by Narrow House Books in June 2009.

The President of the Gail Ross Literary Agency, Gail Ross is a lawyer, publishing consultant, and literary agent. She negotiates with major publishers and producers in the sales and distribution of literary properties and their video, audio, film and other rights. Gail is also a partner in the law firm of Lichtman, Trister & Ross where, along with Karen Post, she focuses on the legal aspects of publishing and media law. In addition, she advises clients on copyright, libel, trademark, electronic publishing and licensing issues. Gail writes and lectures frequently on publishing issues. She is the co-author of The Writer’s Lawyer (Times Books), a definitive, practical guide to the law for writers and editors.

Laura Ellen Scott’s most recent flash fiction appears in Dogzplot, Behind the Wainscot, elimae, and Juked, and is forthcoming in Northville Review. One of her flashes made Storysouth’s million writers notable stories list even though it was below the 1000 word minimum. She teaches fiction writing in the undergraduate program at George Mason University and blogs about writing at http://probablyjustastory.blogspot.com/

Dustin Beall Smith’s essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, Hotel Amerika, The Louisville Review, New Plains Review, the New York Times Magazine, River Teeth, the Sun, Writing on the Edge, and elsewhere. His honors include a notable mention in Best American Essays, 2008; and the 2007 Katharine Bakeless Nason Nonfiction Book Prize through Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf program. His book, Key Grip. A Memoir of Endless Consequences, was published by Houghton Mifflin in August 2008. He currently teaches creative writing at Gettysburg College.

Lynn Stearns leads “Memoir” and “Story Construction” workshops at the Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, and serves as an associate fiction editor for the Potomac Review. Her most recently published work appeared in anthologies: In Good Company, New Lines From The Old Line State, and Not What I Expected.

Amy Stolls is the Literature Program Officer for the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1988, she has advised and collaborated with thousands of poets, prose writers, translators, publishers, educators, booksellers, and literary presenters on ways to keep literature a vital part of American society. Her first novel, Palms to the Ground, was published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux; her second, The Ninth Wife, is forthcoming from Harper Collins.
Gwydion Suilebhan is the author of The Faithkiller, Let X, Abstract Nude, The Butcher, Develop, The Great Dismal, The Treehouse, The Consellation, and the prologue to Cardenio Found.  His plays have been produced, workshopped, and read at the Source Theatre, National Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Taffety Punk Theatre Company, Rorschach Theatre, Theater of the First Amendment, and the Capital Fringe Festival, among others.  He has received two Individual Artist fellowships and a Larry Neal Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and has been accepted into the Cultural Development Corporation’s Mead Theatre Lab program three times.  His work has been commissioned by the Source Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Intentional Theatre Group, Taffety Punk Theatre Company, and Rorschach Theatre. He’s the former poetry editor for Barrelhouse. 

Linda Underhill is the author of The Unequal Hours: Moments of Being in the Natural World, and The Way of the Woods: Journeys Through American Forests. Her essays have appeared in Fourth Genre, Under the Sun, and the Pennsylvania Review. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Gettysburg College.

Joseph Young lives in Baltimore where he writes microfiction and on the arts. His stories and poems have appeared in such journals as Exquisite Corpse, elimae, SmokeLong, FRiGG, Publishing Genius, Mississippi Review online, JMWW, and many others. He has collaborated with painters, printmakers, animators, musicians, and performers, adding his text to their images, movements, and sounds. Joseph keeps the blogs BaltimoreInterview.com, in which he writes on art and artists, and verysmalldogs.blogspot.com, a microfiction blog.