Poet Bios 2007-2008
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and of Small Gods of Grief, which won the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001. Her third book, A New Hunger, was published by Ausable Press in 2007.
Elena Karina Byrne is a visual artist, teacher, book reviewer, editor, poetry consultant and moderator for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and former 12 year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America. Since 1991 she has organized readings for the University of Southern California’s Doheny Memorial Library, and the J. Paul Getty Center GRI.
A ten time Pushcart Prize nominee, Elena's recent publications include Best American Poetry 2005, The Yale Review, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, and Tri-Quarterly, among others.. Her book, The Flammable Bird (Zoo Press/Tupelo Press), is now available through Tupelo Press & Consortium; her new book, MASQUE, is forthcoming with Tupelo Press in October of 07; forthcoming works in progress include, The Fable Language (poetry), Voyeur Hour (poetry/ art) and Insignificance (essays).
Travis Wayne Denton is the Associate Director of Poetry @ TECH. The pushcart prize nominated poet is also editor of the literary arts publication Terminus Magazine, as well as a contributing editor for The Chattahoochee Review. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals.
Travis Denton Links
www.Terminusmagazine.com
Mike Dockins was born in 1972 and grew up in New York. He holds a B.S. from SUNY Brockport and an MFA from UMASS Amherst. He lives in Atlanta where he is completing a Ph.D. at Georgia State University. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Crazyhorse and The Gettysburg Review, and they have been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A Pushcart prize nominee, Mike is a co-founding editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. His first book of poems, Slouching in the Path of a Comet, was published by Sage Hill Press in 2007. His poem, “Dead Critics Society,” was selected by guest editor Heather McHugh for inclusion in the 2007 edition of The Best American Poetry. Mike is also a singer-songwriter. You can find his band Clop on iTunes, Napster, and elsewhere.
Albert Goldbarth is the author of over twenty books of poetry, including Budget Travel through Space and Time. He has twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.
Tony Hoagland is the author of three volumes of poetry: Sweet Ruin, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets, and What Narcissism Means to Me, as well as a collection of essays about poetry, Real Sofistakashun all by Graywolf Press. His poems and critical essays have appeared widely in journals and anthologies such as American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Ploughshares. Hoagland currently teaches in the poetry program at the University of Houston. He is the winner of the 2005 O.B. Hardison Jr. Prize. Awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is the only national prize to recognize a poet's teaching as well as his art. Hoagland also received the 2005 Mark Twain Award, given by the Poetry Foundation in recognition of a poet’s contribution to humor in American poetry.
Collin Kelley is an award-winning poet and playwright from Atlanta. He is the author of Slow To Burn (2006, Metro Mania Press) and Better To Travel (2003), which was nominated for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Lambda Literary Award and Georgia Author of the Year Award. His spoken word CD, HalfLife Crisis, was recently re-issued by CD Baby and iTunes. He is the recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year/Taran Memorial Award and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Kelley’s poetry has appeared in many journals, including In Posse Review, Blue Fifth Review, Terminus, New Delta Review, Chiron Review, among others. He is also co-editor of the award-winning Java Monkey Speaks Anthology series (Poetry Atlanta Press) and The Thrill & The Hurting: Poems and Art Inspired by the Music of Kate Bush (Morning Fog Press, UK). By day, Kelley is the managing editor for Atlanta Intown. Kelley also hosts the Internet radio show The Business of Words at Leisure Talk Radio Network. For more information, visit www.collinkelley.com.
Dorianne Laux. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Dorianne Laux’s fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon (W.W. Norton), is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award. It was also short-listed for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the most outstanding book of poems published in the United States in the previous year, and chosen by the Kansas City Star as one of the ten best books of poetry published in 2005. Laux is also author of three collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Awake (1990), What We Carry (1994), and Smoke (2000). Red Dragonfly Press will release Superman: The Chapbook, later this year. Co-author of The Poet's Companion, she is the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Best of the American Poetry Review, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Orion and Ms. Magazine. She has waited tables and written poems in San Diego, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Petaluma, California and Juneau, Alaska. In 1994, she moved to Eugene where she is now a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. She lives with her husband, the poet Joseph Millar.
Joseph Millar is the author of Fortune, from Eastern Washington University Press. His first collection, Overtime (2001) was finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania, attended Johns Hopkins University and spent 25 years in the San Francisco Bay area, working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines including TriQuarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, New Letters, Manoa, and River Styx and he has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, the Moncalvo Center for the Arts and from Oregon Literary Arts. He teaches at Pacific University’s Low Residency Program.
Opal Moore is the author of Lot's Daughters, published in April 2004 by Third World Press. She has published short stories and essays in several journals and anthologies, and collaborated on projects with visual artists, musicians and filmmakers as well. She currently chairs the English department at Spelman College.
Alan Shapiro published his first volume, After the Digging (Elpenor Books), in 1981. The next five, The Courtesy (1983), Happy Hour (1987, winnner of the Robert and Hazel Ferfuson Memorial Award and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award), Covenant (1991), Mixed Company (1996, winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize), The Dead Alive and Busy (2000, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award), Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2000), Song and Dance (2002) and Tantalus in Love (2005), the latter two with Houghton Mifflin. Houghton Mifflin will publish his new book, Old War, in 2008. He has written two prize-winning memoirs, The Last Happy Occasion and Vigil (University of Chicago Press, 1996 and 1997), a work of criticism, In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination (TriQuarterly Books, 1993), and two translations, The Oresteia (2003) and The Trojan Women (forthcoming). Other honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Writer's Award, the O. B. Hardison, Jr., Poetry Prize from the Folger Library, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. He is an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow. Currently, he is the W. R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Quincy Troupe, professor emeritus from the University of California, San Diego, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 1939. Quincy Troupe is the author of 17 books, including eight volumes of poetry. His newest book of poems is The Architecture of Language (Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, MN 2006), recipient of the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement. His manuscript, Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press) won the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award and was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry published in 2002. In April 2005, Houghton Mifflin published his second book for children, Little Stevie, based on the life of musician Stevie Wonder. Troupe is editor of Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, a literary journal published by the Institute of Africana Studies at New York University.
Other distinctions include the publication in 2006 of a New York Times best-selling book, The Pursuit of Happyness, of which Mr. Troupe is the co-author with Chris Gardner; a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, in March 2005, his selection as the first official Poet Laureate of California, in 2002. “The Living Language” segment of Bill Moyers The Power of the Word series, which featured Quincy Troupe, won an Emmy Award; and Troupe earned a Peabody Award for co-producing and writing the Miles Davis Radio Project, which aired on NPR.
Troupe lives in New York City and the village of Goyave, Guadeloupe, French West Indies, with his wife, Margaret.
Dean Young’s collections of poetry include, most recently, Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Embryoyo. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and two from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A new book, Primitive Mentor, will be published this coming spring. He teaches in the Iowa Writers' Workshop.