The 2015 Faculty
Sterling Watson – Conference Director, Co-Founder
Sterling Watson is the author of six novels, including The Calling, Deadly Sweet, Blind Tongues, Sweet Dream Baby, and Weep No More My Brother. His most recent novel, Fighting in the Shade, was published in 2011 by Akashic Books and was described by Dennis Lehane as, “A brilliant, fearless look at the savage rites of passage that exist in the fraternity of American sports. A book as gripping and unforgettable as any in recent memory.” Mr. Watson’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review. He was director of the Creative Writing Program at Eckerd College for twenty years and is the College’s Peter Meinke Professor Emeritus of Literature and Creative Writing. He teaches in the MFA program at Pine Manor College. His seventh novel,Suitcase City, will be published by Akashic Books in March of 2015.
Andre Dubus III – Fiction
Andre Dubus III is the author of six books, including the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His most recent book, Dirty Love, published in the fall of 2013, was a New York Times “Notable Book” selection, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice,” a 2013 “Notable Fiction” choice from The Washington Post, and a Kirkus “Starred Best Book of 2013.” Mr. Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a 2012 recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches full-time at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Fontaine, a modern dancer, and their three children.
www.andredubus.com
Ann Hood – Nonfiction
Ann Hood is the author of ten novels, including the bestsellers Somewhere off the Coast of Maine, The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, and The Obituary Writer. She has also written two memoirs, Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miraclesand Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2008, a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life, and The Treasure Chest, a ten book series for middle readers. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and NPR’s The Story, and her essays and short stories have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, O, Glimmertrain, Tin House and many other publications. The winner of two Pushcart Prizes, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and Best American Spiritual, Travel, and Food Writing Awards, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island. The Knitting Circle will soon be an HBO movie starring Katherine Heigl. Her new novel, An Italian Wife, will be published in September 2014. www.annhood.us
Laura Lippman – Fiction
Laura Lippman is the author of eleven novels featuring Baltimore private detective Tess Monaghan, seven stand-alone novels, and a short story collection. Her six most recent books have all been New York Times bestsellers. Ms. Lippman has won numerous literary prizes for her work, including the Edgar, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, Agatha, Gumshoe, Barry, and Macavity Awards. A recent recipient of the first-ever Mayor’s Prize, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband, David Simon, their daughter, and her stepson.
www.lauralippman.com
Attica Locke – Fiction
Attica Locke’s first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK (now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction). Her second book, The Cutting Season, published by Dennis Lehane Books, is a national bestseller. It was named an Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, was long-listed for the Chautauqua Prize, and is the 2013 winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. A graduate of Northwestern University, Locke was a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab. She spent many years as a screenwriter, writing scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, and Dreamworks. She is a member of the academy for the Folio Prize in the UK and is also on the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. A native of Houston, Texas, she lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter. www.laurawilliamsmccaffrey.com.
Les Standiford – Fiction
Les Standiford is the author of fifteen books, including the novels Bone Key andHavana Run and the critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, Last Train to Paradise, Meet You in Hell, Washington Burning, and The Man Who Invented Christmas. Last Train to Paradise was one of the History Channel’s Top Ten picks.Meet You in Hell was the publisher’s nominee for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Washington Burning was the publisher’s nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. The Man Who Invented Christmas was a New York TimesEditors’ Choice in 2008. He has received the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami. In March 2011, Ecco Press published Bringing Adam Home, an account of Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews’ twenty-seven-year quest to solve the 1981 kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was for three weeks the number one selling True Crime book on the Wall Street Journal list. http://stewart-onan.com/
David Yoo – Young Adult Writing
David Yoo is the author of the YA novels Girls for Breakfast (Delacorte), which was named a NYPL Best Book for Teens and a Booksense Pick, and Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before (Hyperion), a Chicago Best of the Best selection, along with a middle grade novel, The Detention Club, (Balzer and Bray). His first collection of essays, The Choke Artist (Grand Central) was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. He holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. David has a regular column in Koream Journal, and teaches at the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College, as well as at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Framingham, Massachusetts with his wife and two children. For the exact same information, please visit www.daveyoo.com.
2015 Guest Faculty
Jess Walter – Keynote Speaker
Jess Walter is the author of eight books, including six novels, most recently, the number one New York Times bestseller, Beautiful Ruins. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, the PEN/USA Literary Prize in both fiction and nonfiction and won the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harpers, Esquire, McSweeney’s, Playboy, ESPN the Magazine and many others. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. He lives with his wife and three children in his childhood home, Spokane, Washington. www.jesswalter.com
Patricia Engel – Guest Speaker
Patricia Engel is the author of the novel, It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, and the story collection, Vida, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, winner of a Florida Book Award and International Latino Book Award, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Barnes & Noble, and LA Weekly. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Boston Review, Guernica, and Harvard Review, among other publications, and have received numerous awards including, most recently, a 2014 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Miami.www.patriciaengel.com
Lisa Gallagher – Literary Agent
Formerly Senior Vice President and Publisher of William Morrow, Lisa Gallagher is known throughout the publishing industry as an indefatigable author advocate who has nurtured the careers of countless writers. At William Morrow, she worked with numerous New York Times bestselling authors, including novelists Brunonia Barry, Marisa de los Santos, Neil Gaiman, Andrew Gross, Kim Harrison, Joe Hill, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Laura Lippman, Gregory Maguire, Christopher Moore, Sena Jeter Naslund, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Kimberla Lawson Roby, James Rollins, and Neal Stephenson; and nonfiction writers T. J. English (Havana Nocturne), Bruce Feiler (Where God Was Born), Guy Fieri (Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives), John Grogan (Marley & Me, The Longest Trip Home), Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics), Slash (Slash), James Swanson (Manhunt), U2 (U2 by U2), Robert Wagner (Pieces of My Heart), and Frank Warren (Lifetime of Secrets: A Postsecret Book), among others. http://greenburger.com/
Bill Contardi – Literary Agent
Meg Kearney – Director, Pine Manor Low-Residency MFA Program
Meg Kearney is founding director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Formerly Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York, she is the author of two books of poems for adults, An Unkindness of Ravens and Home By Now, winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award, as well as two novels in verse for teens: The Secret of Me, and its sequel, The Girl in the Mirror. Meg’s picture book, Trouper, was illustrated by E.B. Lewis and published by Scholastic in fall 2013. It was selected as one of the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People of 2014, one of the most “Diverse and Impressive Picture Books of 2013” by the International Reading Association, and one of the season’s best picture books by the Christian Science Monitor. Her poetry has been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in myriad literary magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit: www.megkearney.com and www.pmc.edu/mfa.
Peter Meinke – Poetry
Peter Meinke is Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, Florida. His most recent book isLucky Bones (2014), his eighth in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and dozens of other magazines. He has published over twenty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Truth and Affection, published by the University of Tampa Press (2013), is a collection of his Poet’s Notebook columns with his wife Jeanne’s drawings, from Tampa Bay’s alternative newspaper, Creative Loafing. His poetry has received many awards, including two NEA Fellowships and three prizes from the Poetry Society of America. His book of short fiction, The Piano Tuner, won the 1986 Flannery O’Connor Award. Mr. Meinke directed the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College for many years and has often been writer-in-residence at other colleges and universities. www.petermeinke.com
Jacquelyn Mitchard – Closing Special Guest Speaker
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books for adults, young adults, and children, including The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Her critically acclaimed books and stories have been translated into thirty languages, and have received many awards, including the Margaret Powers Award, Britain’s People Are Talking award, The Bram Stoker Award, and finalist for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. In 2013, Mitchard became Editor-in-Chief of Merit Press, a realistic Young Adult fiction imprint under the aegis of F&W Media, and an instructor in the Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. A longtime journalist and a contributing editor for More magazine, Mitchard lives on Cape Cod with her family.jacquelynmitchard.com
Johnny Temple – Editor/Publisher, Akashic Books
Johnny Temple is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. He won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award and the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing. Temple is the editor of the anthology USA Noir, which was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice and includes stories from Dennis Lehane, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joyce Carol Oates, and others. Temple teaches courses on the publishing business at Wilkes University and Wesleyan University; and is the Chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn’s borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival. He also plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including The Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, andBookForum. http://www.akashicbooks.com/
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