Richard Bausch was born in Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1945. He was educated in the public schools in and around Washington, D.C., and after two failures to maintain a standing in college, served a stint in the Air Force, after which he returned to university studies, first in Virginia and then at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the author of ten novels and seven collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, and Thanksgiving Night; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, and Wives & Lovers. His novel The Last Good Time was made into the 2005 movie of the same name directed by Bob Balaban and starring Armin Meuhler-Stahl, Maureen Stapleton and Lionel Stander. An acknowledged Master of the short story form, Richard Bausch has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story, and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story. The Modern Library published The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch in March 1996. He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. In 1995 he was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Since Cassill’s passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. He currently serves as The Moss Chair of Excellence in the Writing Program at The University of Memphis.

Marie Bradby is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist and the author of the popular children’s book More Than Anything Else, an ALA Notable Children’s Book and winner of the International Reading Association (IRA) Award. The sixth of seven children, she came from a family of storytellers who gathered at her home on holidays, regaling each other with humorous tales. Her books also include: Once Upon a Farm, a Kentucky Public Librarians Choice Award nominee; Some Friend; and the Golden Kite Honor Award winner and Nest Literary Classic Momma, Where Are You From? Her work is anthologized in several collections, including A Kentucky Christmas edited by George Ella Lyon, and she was nominated for The James Thurber House Residency in Children’s Literature. She received a Kentucky Foundation for Women grant for a novel-in-progress about Harriet Tubman and the little explored parts of her life titled Harriet’s Lost Diaries: A Novel. She's taught children's writing at the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop and the Antioch Writer's Workshop, and served as a visiting lecturer at Spalding University's MFA program in creative writing. A graduate of Hampton University, Virginia, Ms. Bradby is a former reporter for The Lexington Herald and The Courier-Journal, where she became the fashion editor. She also has been a staff writer for National Geographic Magazine, a contract writer for Time-Life Books, and a contributing writer for Louisville Magazine.

Photo by Lillian Elaine Wilson

Alice Friman’s ninth collection of poetry is Vinculum, forthcoming from LSU Press. Previous books are The Book of the Rotten Daughter and Inverted Fire (BkMk Press), and Zoo (University of Arkansas Press), which won the Ezra Pound Poetry Award and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. She has received fellowships from the Indiana Arts Commission, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and the Bernheim Foundation, and won the 2002 James Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah. Her poems appear in Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others. Professor of English at The University of Indianapolis from 1973 to 1993, she now lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College & State University.

2009 Summer Residency

Special thanks to visiting writers John Egerton, Ilya Kaminsky and Ed McClanahan for making the Summer 2009 residency a rewarding and successful literary experience.

John Egerton was born in Atlanta, Georgia, June 14, 1935, the son of William G. Egerton, a traveling salesman, and his wife, Rebecca White Egerton. The family settled in Cadiz, Kentucky where John remained until leaving to attend Western Kentucky University, 1953-1954. From 1954 until 1956, he served in the United States Army. He earned a B.A. at the University of Kentucky in 1958 and an M.A. in 1960. Between 1958 and 1960, Egerton was with the Public Relations Department of the University of Kentucky, and from 1960 to 1965, he was the Director of Public Information for the University of South Florida. He was a staff writer for Southern Education Report (1965-1969) and for Race Relations Reporter (1969-1971). In 1971, Egerton began his career as a freelance reporter. He was a contributing editor for Saturday Review of Education (1972-1973), Race Relations Reporter (1973-1974), and Southern Voices (1974-1975). From 1973 to 1975, he was a writer for Atlanta's Southern Regional Council. In 1977-1978, he was journalist-in-residence at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Egerton has written or edited eleven non-fiction books and contributed over 200 articles to periodicals. He has also been a participant in and writer for many projects or conferences dealing with desegregation and civil rights.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press 2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine. In addition, Ilya writes poetry in Russian. His work in that language was chosen for "Bunker Poetico" at Venice Bienial Festival in Italy. In the late 1990s, he co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization which sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad with a goal of supporting such relief organizations as Doctors Without Borders and Survivors International. Ilya has served as a Writer In Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy and has taught poetry at numerous literary centers. Ilya has also worked as a Law Clerk at the National Immigration Law Center, and more recently at Bay Area Legal Aid, helping impoverished and homeless in solving their legal difficulties. He teaches Contemporary World Poetry, Creative Writing, and Literary Translation in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University. He also served as the 2007-2008 Writer-in-Residence at Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He lives in San Diego, California with his beautiful wife, Katie Farris.

"Captain Kentucky, a.k.a. Ed McClanahan, 1972"

Copyright © Guy Mendes, Courtesy of Gnomon Press.

Ed McClanahan is a native of Brooksville, Kentucky born in 1932. A graduate of Miami (Ohio) University (AB 1955) and the University of Kentucky (MA 1958), he has taught English and creative writing at Oregon State University, Stanford University, the University of Montana, the University of Kentucky, and Northern Kentucky University. His books include The Natural Man (a novel), Famous People I Have Known (a serio-comic autobiography), A Congress of Wonders (three novellas), and My Vita, If You Will (a miscellany of previously uncollected fiction, non-fiction, reviews, and commentary). The first two books were published by Farrar Straus & Giroux (1983 and 1985 respectively), the latter two by Counterpoint Press (1996 and 1998). The Natural Man has been reprinted by Gnomon Press (Frankfort KY), and Famous People I Have Known has been reprinted by the University Press of Kentucky; both are also available from Books on Tape. The title story of A Congress of Wonders was made into a prize- winning short film in 1993, and in 1994 McClanahan was the subject of an hour-long documentary on Kentucky Educational Television. In 2002, Larkspur Press (Monterey KY) published McClanahan's memoir Fondelle: or the Whore With a Heart of Gold, in a limited edition. His latest book, an "implied autobiography" titled O The Clear Moment, was released by Counterpoint in July 2008. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Playboy, and he twice won Playboy's Best Non-Fiction award. He has also been awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, two Yaddo Fellowships, and an Al Smith Fellowship. He lives with his wife Hilda in Lexington, Kentucky, and is working on a latter-day sequel to The Natural Man titled The Return of the Son of Needmore.

Daniel Anderson's work has appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Harper's, The New Republic, The Southern Review, and The Best American Poetry, among other places. His first book of poems, January Rain, was published in 1997. Johns Hopkins University Press published his second collection, Drunk in Sunlight, in 2006. He also edited The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov, listed as a New York Times “Notable Book” in 2003. He received the 2005 Pushcart Prize and won fellowships from the NEA, the Bogliasco Foundation, and Johns Hopkins University. He has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and served as the Nancy and Rayburn Watkins Endowed Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Murray State.

Dianne Aprile is the author of four books, including two on the Abbey of Gethsemani, the monastery home of the writer/peace activist/Trappist monk Thomas Merton. A former staff writer for the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, she holds numerous awards for her work in journalism, including the National Society of Newspaper Columnists top award and a shared staff Pulitzer. Her work has also appeared in a number of publications, including Conversations with Kentucky Writers, The New Southerner Anthology, Southern Living and Louisville Review. Aprile teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University, leads writing workshops throughout the region, and is a contributing editor to Pitch magazine.

Linda Bierds’ seventh book of poetry, First Hand, was published in April 2005 by Putnam’s, which also released her book Flight: New and Selected Poems in October 2008. Her prizes include the PEN/West Poetry Award and the Washington State Governor’s Writers Award (both for The Profile Makers), two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, four Pushcart Prizes, the Consuelo Ford Award from the Poetry Society of America, a 1995 Notable Book Selection from the American Library Association (for The Ghost Trio) and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Artist Trust Foundation of Washington, and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1998 she was named a Fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is a professor of English at the University of Washington and lives on Bainbridge Island, just west of Seattle. Her books are: Flight: New and Selected Poems (G. P. Putnam’s Sons 2008), First Hand ( Putnam’s 2005), The Seconds (Putnam’s 2001), The Profile Makers  (Henry Holt and Co. 1997), The Ghost Trio (Holt 1994), Heart and Perimeter (Holt 1991), The Stillness, the Dancing (Holt 1988), and Flights of the Harvest-Mare (Ahsahta Press, Boise State University 1985).

Robert Olen Butler is the author of ten novels and three collections of short stories. A former Army Military Intelligence sergeant, Butler uses his experiences in Vietnam in some of his works. His writing appears in Best American Short Stories, Esquire, The New Yorker, New Stories from the South, The Paris Review, and The Sewanee Review. His numerous awards include the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his collection of short stories A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Butler earned an MA from the University of Iowa in 1969. Currently, he holds a Frances Eppes Professorship at Florida State University.

Leigh Anne Couch lives in Tennessee and is the managing editor of the Sewanee Review. She has held residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the KHN Center for the Arts. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Carolina Quarterly, Verse Daily, Western Humanities Review and the Louisville Review. Her first book of poems Houses Fly Away was published by Zone 3 Press.

Tony Crunk is a poet and the author of two books for children, Big Mama and Grandpa’s Overalls. His first collection of poetry, Living in the Resurrection, was the 1994 selection in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and his work has appeared in such journals as Paris Review, Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry Northwest. Crunk earned an MA in philosophy from the University of Kentucky and an MFA from the University of Virginia. He has taught at the University of Virginia, James Madison University, Murray State University and the University of Montana. He has also served in administrative and instructional capacities with a number of community arts organizations, including Hellgate Writers, Inc. and The Writer’s Voice/Billings, MT Center.

Kate Daniels is author of three volumes of poetry, including The Niobe Poems and Four Testimonies: Poems. Her first volume The White Wave won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry. She earned an MFA from Columbia University, and won the James Dickey Prize for Poetry from Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art and the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry from Southeastern Louisiana University. Her poems have been anthologized in a number of publications and have appeared in journals such as American Poetry Review, Critical Quarterly, and the Southern Review. She also edited a volume of poems by Muriel Rukeyser and co-edited the book Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly.

Lynnell Major Edwards is the author of two full-length collections of poetry,The Highwayman's Wife and The Farmer's Daughter (Red Hen Press 2007, 2003). Her work has appeared on Verse Daily and in numerous literary journals including Poems & Plays, Southern Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, Poetry East, and Dos Passos Review. She is a regular reviewer for The Georgia Review, Pleiades, and Rain Taxi. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky where she teaches writing and literature courses at the University of Louisville. She earned a doctorate in English at the University of Louisville, her undergraduate degree at Centre College in Kentucky, and is the recipient of a 2007 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She is also associate director of InKY, inc. a non-profit literary arts organization that sponsors a monthly reading series in Louisville.

Eric Gansworth is the author of three novels, including Indian Summers (Michigan State University Press 1998) and Smoke Dancing (Michigan State 2004), and Mending Skins (University of Nebraska Press 2005). He is also the author of a collection of poetry and paintings, Nickel Eclipse: Iroquois Moon (Michigan State 2000). Gansworth is an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation and was born and raised on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in western New York. He holds an MA in English from the State University College at Buffalo and is an associate professor of English at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York.

Silas House is the author of the novels Clay’s Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo as well as the play The Hurting Part. He received the Award of Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Chaffin Award for Literature, two Kentucky literary prizes for novel of the year and the fiction prize from the National Society of Arts and Letters. House is a two-time finalist for both the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize and the SEBA Book of the Year. House is writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University, where he also directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. Recently, House collaborated with actress Ashley Judd on a screenplay.

Andrew Hudgins is the author of several poetry collections, including Saints and Strangers (1985), a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize; The Never-Ending (1991), a finalist for the National Book Award; and Ecstatic in the Poison (Overlook Press 2003). His book-length poem After the Lost War: A Narrative (1988), a narrative in the voice of Georgia-born poet and civil war soldier Sidney Lanier, won the Poets’ Prize. Hudgins is also the author of a book of essays The Glass Anvil (1997). Mr. Hudgins’s honors include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University.

Charlie G. Hughes is the co-editor of Groundwater: Contemporary Kentucky Fiction, editor of The Kentucky Literary Newsletter, and author of Shifting for Myself, a volume of poems. He is also the owner of Wind Publications, a literary press with an emphasis of Kentucky and regional writers. Hughes hold degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Kentucky. Though employed as an analytical chemist, he has an abiding interest in the literary arts. He is the former editor of Wind, Kentucky's oldest active literary magazine. His poems and fiction have appeared in prominent literary magazines, including Kansas Quarterly, Kentucky Poetry Review, Hollins Critic, International Poetry Review, ART/LIFE, Cumberland Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Appalachian Heritage, Cincinnati Poetry Review and others.

Beth Lordan is the author of the novel August Heat, the short-story collection And Both Shall Row, and the novel-in-stories But Come Ye Back. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Atlantic Monthly, and Gettysburg Review, as well as on NPR's "Selected Shorts." The recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as an O. Henry Award for her short fiction, Lordan teaches fiction writing and directs Irish Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She lives in Carbondale with her husband.

George Ella Lyon

Born and raised in the mountains of Kentucky, George Ella Lyon grew up with a love of poetry and music. She has published two collections of poems, along with Where I'm From, Where Poems Come From, a poetry primer. She's also written more than twenty picture books, five novels for young readers, the autobiography A Wordful Child, a book of stories for adult new readers titled Choices, and the novel With a Hammer for My Heart. She is the editor of A Kentucky Christmas, and co-editor, with Leatha Kendrick, of Crossing Troublesome:  Twenty-Five Years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop. Her work is featured in the PBS series, "The United States of Poetry."

Lee Martin is the author of The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, River of Heaven , and Quakertown. He has also published two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones, and a short story collection titled The Least You Need To Know. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper's, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, Story, DoubleTake, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, and Glimmer Train . He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council, as well as the 2006 Ohio State University Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. Since 2001, he has taught in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University where he is now Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing.

Erin McGraw is the author of four books, most recently The Good Life (Houghton-Mifflin 2004). Her stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and many other publications, and she has received fellowships from Stanford University, the Macdowell Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. She teaches creative writing at the Ohio State University.

Nancy Reisman, author of House Fires and The First Desire, earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. House Fires won the 1999 Iowa Short Fiction Award. The First Desire won the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction. She has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and has won an O.Henry Award and the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. Her stories have been included in numerous anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, O.Henry Award Stories, and Jewish in America.

Scott Russell Sanders

Born in Tennessee and reared in Ohio, Scott Sanders studied at Brown University before going on, as a Marshall Scholar, to earn a Ph.D in English literature at Cambridge University. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University, and has won the university’s highest teaching award. Among his more than twenty books are novels, collections of stories, and works of personal nonfiction, including Staying Put, Writing from the Center, and Hunting for Hope. His latest book is A Private History of Awe , a coming-of-age memoir, love story, and spiritual testament, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received the Lannan Literary Award, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Great Lakes Book Award, the Kenyon Review Literary Award, and the John Burroughs Essay Award, among other honors, and has received support for his writing from the Lilly Endowment, the Indiana Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In June 2006 he was named one of five inaugural winners of the Indiana Humanities Award. A Conservationist Manifesto, his vision of a shift to a sustainable society, will be published in 2009. His writing examines the human place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relation between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path. He and his wife, Ruth, a biochemist, brought up two children in their hometown of Bloomington, in the hardwood hill country of Indiana’s White River Valley.

Heather Sellers holds a Ph.D in English/creative writing from Florida State University. A professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, she won an NEA grant for fiction and was part of the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program.

Her books include a short story collection titled Georgia Under Water, a children’s book titled Spike and Cubby’s Ice Cream Island Adventure, three volumes of poetry, and three books on the craft of writing. She has also taught at the University of Texas/San Antonio, and St. Lawrence University.

George Singleton was born in Anaheim, California and lived there until he was seven. He grew up in Greenwood, South Carolina, graduating from Furman University in 1980 with a degree in philosophy, and from UNC-Greensboro with an MFA in creative writing. Singleton has taught English and fiction writing at Francis Marion College, the Fine Arts Center of Greenville County, and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He has been a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina and UNC-Wilmington, and has given readings and taught classes at a number of universities and secondary schools. His stories have been anthologized in eight issues of New Stories from the South, and also in 20 Over 40, Surreal South, Writers Harvest 2, They Write Among Us, and Behind the Short Story. His non-fiction has appeared in Bark and Oxford American, and has been anthologized in Best Food Writing 2005, Dog is My Co-Pilot , and Howl. He has published four collections of stories: These People Are Us, The Half-Mammals of Dixie , Why Dogs Chase Cars, Drowning in Gruel; and two novels: Novel and Work Shirts for Madmen. He has published stories in The Atlantic, Harpers , Zoetrope, and Playboy, as well as over one hundred stories in literary magazines and quarterlies.

Philip Stephens's first collection of poems, The Determined Days (Sewanee Writers' Series/The Overlook Press), appeared in 2000 and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA West Award. His chapbookThe Signalmen received the Hanks Chapbook Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center in 1999. His writing has appeared in The Oxford American, Southwest Review, North American Review, and The Journal, among other places, and his poetry has been anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie-Mellon University Press 2000) and Phoenix Rising: The Next Generation of American Formal Poets (Word Press 2004). His essay, "Fate and a Jukebox," appeared in Best Music Writing 2004 (Da Capo Press 2004).

A native of Murray, Kim Trevathan is the author of Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on Easy Water, the account of the 652-mile canoe trip he took with his dog Jasper, in 1998, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2001. Recently, UT Press published Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland, based on a slightly longer trip with a photographer, Randy Russell, instead of the dog. Trevathan has published fiction and essays in New Delta Review, The Texas Review, New Millennium Writings (Spring 1999 fiction prize), The Distillery, andThe Florida Review. He teaches writing and literature at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee.

Catherine Wald’s book The Resilient Writer: Tales of Rejection and Triumph from 23 Top Authors (Persea Books 2005), won the 2006 Outstanding Book Award in the service category from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). Her web site rejectioncollection.com, has been featured in The New York Times, Writer’s Market, wirednews.com, The Writer, Writer’s Digest and The Artist’s Magazine. Cathy leads seminars on writing, self-promotion and overcoming rejection such organizations as Manhattanville College, Sarah Lawrence College, SUNY Purchase, National Writers Union, International Association of Business Communicators, NYU School of Publishing, Flushing Arts Council, Journalism & Women Symposium, and Bronx Writers Center. She has moderated panels for Associated Writers and Writing Programs, The New School and ASJA, and she teaches at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. In 2006 she was named to the Westchester Arts Council’s Artist Roster. Cathy has been published in Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, Woman’s Day, The Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune, and in several anthologies. She was awarded three artist residencies at the Ragdale Foundation. The author of a rejected novel, she is also the translator for The French of Childish Things by Valery Larbaud (Sun & Moon 1994). As a corporate communications writer and editor, Cathy held positions at AIG, Philip Morris and Avon Products before going freelance. Since then, she has managed editorial projects for companies such as ADP, American Express, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Ernst & Young, Ogilvy, Pepsi and Prudential. A resident of Yorktown, New York, Cathy is married to a high school science teacher and is the mother of two teenagers.