Squire Babcock Program Director
"Babcock is a splendid novelist who deserves a wide audience."

- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler

Squire Babcock worked as a ballroom dance instructor, farm hand, weigh-man in a cotton gin, hunting guide, pool table repair mechanic, small business owner, carpenter, freelance writer and blues drummer before committing to writing and teaching. Author of the novel The King of Gaheena, he holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is currently Associate Professor of English at Murray State. Babcock's writing credits include Colorado Review, Louisville Review, and Old Hickory Review among many other national publications.

Ann Neelon Assistant Director
A native of Boston and a former Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa, Ann Neelon is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the author of the book Easter Vigil, which earned the Anhinga Prize for Poetry and the RPCV Writers and Readers Award. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow as well as a Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. She is also the winner of an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and fellowships from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Yaddo Artists Colony. Ann's poems and translations have appeared in many magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Ironwood, The Gettysburg Review, and Manoa.

Gaylord Brewer recently published his seventh poetry collection, The Martini Diet (Dream Horse Press 2008, winner of the 2006 Orphic Prize), and the comic novella Octavius the 1st (Red Hen Press 2008). Earlier books of poetry include Presently a Beast (Coreopsis Books 1996), Devilfish (Red Hen Press 1999, winner of that press's inaugural book prize), Four Nails (Snail's Pace Press 2001, winner of the 2001 Snail's Pace Poetry Prize), Barbaric Mercies (Red Hen Press 2003), Exit Pursued by a Bear (Cherry Grove Collections 2004), and Let Me Explain (Iris Press 2006). His critical works include David Mamet and Film (McFarland 1993) and Charles Bukowski (Macmillan 1997). He has published 700 poems in journals and anthologies, such as Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and his plays have been staged in Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, New York, and Valdez, Alaska. Among his recent residencies were the Global Arts Village (India) and a return to the Fundación Valparaíso (Spain). Brewer, a native of Louisville, earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University and is currently a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and edits the journal Poems & Plays.

Nickole Brown is the author of Sister, a novel-in-poems published by Red Hen Press in 2007. Her work has been featured in The Writer's Chronicle, Poets & Writers, 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Diagram Magazine, Another Chicago Magazine, and Post Road, among other journals, and she coedited the anthology Air Fare: Stories, Poems, & Essays on Flight. Brown has served as the national publicity consultant for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival and for Arktoi Books, as well as the program coordinator for the Vermont College of Fine Arts writing residency in Slovenia. She’s been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She also studied English Literature at Oxford University as an English Speaking Union Scholar and served as the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. A graduate of the MFA Program for Creative Writing at Vermont College, she currently teaches at University of Louisville and Bellarmine University and has worked at the nonprofit, independent literary press Sarabande Books since 1999.

Christine Hale is the author of the novel Basil’s Dream (Livingston Press 2009), and her creative nonfiction and short fiction have appeared in Arts & Letters, North Dakota Quarterly, Apalachee Review, Under the Sun, and The Sun. She has been a Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and a finalist for the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. A native of the southern Appalachians, as were her parents, Ms. Hale grew up in Bristol, Virginia. She was educated in North Carolina, earning an A.B. from Pfeiffer University, an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She’s worked the range of jobs, from banquet server to investment banker, freelance writer, editor, and copy editor, although the majority of her experience is as teacher and mother. A former Beebe Fellow at Warren Wilson College, she’s taught creative writing there and at the Great Smokies Writing Program in Asheville as well as at the University of Tampa in Florida. A fellow of the MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and Hambidge colonies and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ms. Hale is writing a new novel, and a spiritual memoir.

Tommy Hays

Before writing fiction, Tommy Hays wrote anything and everything for tiny sweatshop weekly newspapers with names like the Tugaloo Tribune, the Tri-County News and the Tribune Times. At this last paper he failed (miserably) a lie detector test and was accused of stealing $1,000 in Willie Nelson concert money. But that’s another story. Hays’ latest novel, The Pleasure Was Mine (St. Martin’s Press), was chosen for the One City, One Book community read in Greensboro, North Carolina and for the Amazing Read, Greenville, South Carolina's first community read. His book The Pleasure Was Mine was read on NPR’s Radio Reader and was a Finalist for the SIBA Fiction Award. Hays’ other novels are Sam’s Crossing (Atheneum) and In the Family Way (Random House), winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. He is Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program and a Lecturer in the Master of Liberal Arts Program at the UNC-Asheville. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and two children.

Lorraine López

In addition to her work with MSU's MFA program, Lorraine López serves as an assistant professor in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Her book Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (Curbstone 2002) won the inaugural Miguel Marmól prize for fiction. Her book Call Me Henri (Curbstone Press 2006) won the Paterson Prize for Young Adult Literature. Her novel The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters came out fall 2008 from Grand Central Press. An associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review, Lorraine has written for Prairie Schooner, Voices of Mexico, CrazyHorse, Image, Cimarron Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly/Narrative Magazine, and Latino Boom. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Louis Siegel.

Karen Salyer McElmurray is a former landscaper, casino employee and sporting towel factory worker who in her current life is a writer and a teacher of writing. Karen is the author of Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, described by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as “a moving meditation on loss and memory and the rendering of truth and story.” The book won the 2003 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and earned the distinction of a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book. McElmurray’s debut novel Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven won the 2001 Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Assistant Professor in creative writing at Georgia College and State University, McElmurray serves as creative nonfiction editor for Arts and Letters. Her newest novel is The Motel of the Stars (Sarabande Books 2008) and she hopes, in the next year, to begin a new memoir about her travels in India and Nepal and the end of a love affair.

Dale Ray Phillips

"Phillips's prose flashes powerful unpredictability with every delicious little shock." - Publishers Weekly

Dale Ray is the author of the acclaimed book My Peoples' Waltz, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is a prolific writer of short stories, contributing to Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, and many more. He holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and has taught at a variety of universities, including the University of Arkansas, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Clemson University, and most recently Murray State.

Lynn Pruett is the author of the novel Ruby River (Grove/Atlantic) and her stories and essays appear in American Voice, Southern Exposure, Black Warrior Review, and Tobacco, an anthology. The artist-in-residence at the Carnegie Center for Literacy in Lexington, she earned fellowships from Yaddo, Sewanee, Squaw Valley, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She's led fiction workshops at the University of Kentucky, the University of Alabama, and North Carolina State University. Her mother's family has lived in Calloway County since the Purchase, and her uncles still farm the original land.

Jeffrey Skinner's fifth book of poetry Salt Water Amnesia appeared in 2005 from Ausable Press. His works also include Late Stars (Wesleyan University Press), A Guide to Forgetting (Graywolf Press, and a winner in the 1987 National Poetry series chosen by Tess Gallagher), The Company of Heaven (Pitt Poetry Series), and Gender Studies (Miami University Press). He's served as editor for two anthologies of poems, Last Call: Poems of Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance and Passing the Word: Poets and Their Mentors. Skinner's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Bomb, DoubleTake, and the Georgia, Iowa, and Paris reviews. Also an accomplished playwright, his recent play Down Range will receive a full production in New York City in 2009. Skinner holds an MFA from Columbia University and teaches at the University of Louisville. He's the board president and editorial consultant for Sarabande Books, a literary publishing house he founded with his wife Sarah Gorham.

Julia Watts

A native of Southeastern Kentucky, Julia Watts is the author of nine novels, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning VOYA-recommended young-adult novel Finding H.F. Her 2007 novel The Kind of Girl I Am was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and her 2008 novel Kindred Spirits is the first in a series of middle-grade novels featuring an unlikely trio of friends: a telepathic girl, a tech-savvy boy, and a ghost. Watts has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and her essays and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including The American Voice, Brain/Child, The Journal of Kentucky Studies, and Now and Then. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and an M.A. in English from the University of Louisville. She teaches at South College in Knoxville, where she lives with her family and numerous pets. She loves to write.