Featured Speakers 2008

	Select a speaker to jump to his or her bio:
	Ann Hood is the author of Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine (Bantam, 1987), Waiting to Vanish (Bantam, 1988), Three-Legged Horse (Bantam, 1989), Something Blue (Bantam, 1991), Places to Stay the Night (Doubleday, 1993), The Properties of Water (Doubleday, 1995), Ruby (Picador, 1998) and The Knitting Circle (Norton, 2007). She has also written a memoir, Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time (Picador, 1999); a book on the craft of writing, Creating Character Emotions (Story Press, 1998); and a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life (Norton, 2004). She has won a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and two Pushcart Prizes. She now lives in Providence, RI with her husband and their children.
	Denise Duhamel's Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005) is the winner of the Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Her other titles include Mille et un Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005), and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001). Her work has been anthologized widely, including several editions of The Best American Poetry. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she teaches poetry at Florida International University in Miami.
	Nick Carbò is the author of three poetry collections — Andalusian Dawn (Cherry Grove Collections, 2004), Secret Asian Man (Tia Chucha, 2000), and El Grupo McDonald’s (Tia Chucha, 1995). He is also the editor of three anthologies of Philippine literature: Pinoy Poetics: Essays on Filipino and Filipino American Poetics (Meritage Press, 2004); (co-editor with Eileen Tabios) Babaylan: Fiction and Poetry by Filipina Women Writers (Aunt Lute Books, 2000); and Returning a Borrowed Tongue: Filipino and Filipino American Poetry (Coffee House Press, 1995). His criticism and essays have been published in The Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (Scribners, 2002), Melus, Poets & Writers Magazine, and The Anchored Angel (Kaya Press, 1999).
		Talvikki Ansel has published two books of poems: My Shining Archipelago (Yale Series of Younger Poets Award) and Jetty & Other Poems. She has received a Stegner Fellowship, Pushcart Prize and Lannan Residency Fellowship. Currently teaching at URI, she has also taught at Centre College, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Texas at Austin.
		Annette Blair began her career writing Amish, Regency, and Victorian historicals but hit her stride, and the bestseller lists, with contemporary comedy in the form of Bewitching Romantic Comedies and Mystic Mysteries (Penguin Putnam). Her latest, Gone With The Witch, is her fourteenth release. She is currently contracted to write books fifteen to twenty-one.
		Amy Caldwell has worked in the publishing industry for 15 years; she’s an Executive Editor at Beacon Press. She acquires non-fiction books, from the literary to scholarly crossover. Among her titles are Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith, Fred Pearce’s When the Rivers Run Dry, Joe Mackall’s Plain Secrets, Hella Winston’s Unchosen, Marty Moran’s The Tricky Part, Steve Puleo’s Dark Tide and The Boston Italians, and E.J. Graff’s What Is Marriage For?
		Mary Cappello, an award-winning writer and educator, is the author of Night Bloom: A Memoir and most recently of Awkward: A Detour, a book-length essay on 'awkwardness' that was a Los Angeles Times Bestseller. Her literary nonfiction and experimental prose appears in Salmagundi, Michigan Quarterly Review, SouthwestReview, Raritan, American Letters and Commentary, andelsewhere. Currently, she is composing Swallow: Foreign Bodies, their Ingestion, Aspiration and Extraction in the Age of Chevalier Jackson under contract with The New Press, and she has just completed Called Back: A Breast Cancer Memoir, an excerpt of which will appear in The Georgia Review. Cappello is Professor or English at URI.
		Nina Cassian, born in Romania, and now a resident of New York City, is an internationally renowned poet, composer of chamber and symphonic music, film critic, journalist, and translator of William Shakespeare, Bertold Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Iannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan. She has published over fifty books, including Life Sentence: Selected Poems (Norton, 1990), edited by William Jay Smith; Take My Word For It (Norton, 1998); Cheerleader At the Funeral; and works of fiction and books for children. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New England Review, and American Poetry Review.
		Tina Chang’s Half-Lit Houses was a finalist for the 2005 Asian American Literary Award. She received an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. Her poems have appeared in numerous prestigious journals and anthologies. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, and the Van Lier Foundation.
		Alexander Chee is a recipient of the 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in Fiction and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. His first novel, Edinburgh (Picador, 2002), won the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year. He is currently the Visiting Writer at Amherst College. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin.
		Betty J. Cotter is the author of the novel Roberta’s Woods, which was released this spring by Five Star. She was named the 2006 fiction fellow by the R.I. State Council on the Arts. She is managing editor of Independent Newspapers in Wakefield, R.I., and a third-semester student in the MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
		Peter Covino is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island. He is the author of the poetry collection, Cut Off the Ears of Winter (New Issues 2005), winner of the 2007 PEN/Osterweil Award for emerging poets, and a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. His chapbook. Straight Boyfriend (2001), won the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Columbia, Gulf Coast, Interim, The Paris Review, Verse, The Penguin Anthology of Italian-American Writing, and Contemporary European Poets (Graywolf, 2008), among others.
		Amity Gaige is the winner of a Truman Capote Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. In 2006, she was named one of “5 Under 35” emerging writers by the National Book Foundation. Her debut novel, O My Darling, was published in 2005. Her second novel, The Folded World, was recently named one of the best books of 2007 by The Chicago Tribune. She has recently moved from Providence to Amherst, Massachusetts, where she teaches at Mt. Holyoke College.
		Scott Hightower is the author of three books of poetry. He is also the recipient of a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. Hightower is a contributing editor to The Journal. He has taught at Fordham, F.I.T., and Drew University, and is an adjunct writing professor at NYU. A native Texan, he lives in New York City.
		Richard Hoffman is author of Half the House: A Memoir, and the poetry collections Without Paradise and Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize. He has received several fellowships and awards for his writing, most recently The Literary Review’s Charles Angoff Prize. He teaches at Emerson College and in the Stonecoast MFA Program.
		Melissa Hotchkiss’ first book of poems, Storm Damage, was published by Tupelo Press in 2002. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications such as failbetter.com, The New York Times, Free Inquiry, LIT, 3rd bed, Lyric Poetry Review, Upstairs at Duroc, and Heliotrope. Her prose has appeared in The New York Times and the New Virginia Review. Melissa is one of the editors of the poetry journal Barrow Street and a member of Urban Park Rangers, a poetry workshop in New York City.
		Jibade-Khalil Huffman was born in Detroit and educated at Bard and Brown. He is the author of 19 Names For Our Band, forthcoming from Fence Books. His poetry, fiction and photography have appeared in the Boston Review, Court Green, 6x6, NOON and Encyclopedia, among others. The recipient of the 2004 Grolier Poetry Prize, he lives in Queens, NY.
		Robert Leuci is an adjunct professor in the URI English department. He has written seven crime novels, translated into four languages and has most recently published a memoir with Harper Collins, All The Centurions. He has also written a television play for the Arts And Entertainment network show 100 Centre Street and has done a radio play for German radio, Brooklyn Roofs. In 1999 he received the South County Center For the Arts literary prize. He lives in Saunderstown.
		Robin Lippincott is the author of three novels, In the Meantime (2007), Our Arcadia: An American Watercolor (2002) and Mr. Dalloway (1999), and a collection of short stories, The Real, True Angel (1996). The recipient of fellowships to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, his work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Fence, American Short Fiction, The New York Times Book Review, The Literary Review, The American Voice, Provincetown Arts, and many other journals. He teaches in the brief-residency MFA in the Writing Program at Spalding University and at Harvard University.
		Jody Lisberger’s story collection, Remember Love, was recently published by Fleur-de-Lis Press. Her fiction has appeared in Confrontation, Fugue, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Louisville Review, and Thema. She is on the faculty of the brief-residency M.F.A. in Writing Program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She is also a full-time lecturer in Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island, where she specializes in courses on feminist theory and postcolonial literature.
		Wayne Miller is the author of two books of poems, The Book of Props (Milkweed, 2009; forthcoming) and Only the Senses Sleep (New Issues, 2006). He is also a translator of Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo’s I Don't Believe in Ghosts (BOA, 2007) and co-editor of the anthology New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008). The recipient of multiple prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Poetry Foundation, he teaches at the University of Central Missouri, where he edits Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing.
		Pamela Petro writes frequently about the intersection of art and travel. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Daily Telegraph in London, and many other newspapers, journals, and magazines. A winner of the Bedford Pace Prize for travel literature, she is also the author of three genre-bending narratives about such disparate places as Wales, the American South, and Southwest France.
		David Rutschman’s stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, The Southeast Review, and other journals. He's a graduate of the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and the recipient of fellowships from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. An instructor in creative writing and U.S. literature at URI, he lives in Providence.
		Kate Schapira is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Phoenix Memory (horse less press, 2007), The Saint’s Notebook (CAB/NET Chapbook Series, 2008) and Case Fbdy. (Rope-A-Dope Press, 2008). Other work has recently appeared in Practice, Aufgabe, Ecopoetics, Denver Quarterly and A Sing Economy, an anthology from Flim Forum Press. She curates the Publicly Complex Readings Series in Providence, RI, and teaches poetry and creative nonfiction at the University of Rhode Island and Brown University.
		Aaron Tillman received a Short-Story Award for New Writers from Glimmer Train Stories and won First Prize in the 2007 Nancy Potter Short Story Contest at URI. His fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, The Carolina Quarterly, and The Babson Literary Review. Aaron has an MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has worked as a contributing writer and editor for Chelsea House Publishers. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation at URI, focusing on Jewish American magical realism.
		Nicki Toler is a working writer whose essays and non-fiction pieces have appeared in a variety of publications over the last 15 years. Her “Just a Thought” column runs in East Greenwich Magazine each month, and her fiction and non-fiction work were featured in the 2007 Rhode Island Writers’ Circle Anthology. She is a Web editor at the University of Rhode Island.