All events take place in the Dorothy Rubel Room of the Helen S. Schaefer Building, unless otherwise noted.

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Robinson is also the author of the modern classic Housekeeping (available in paperback from Picador), which won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award for First Fiction and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the Academy of American Arts and Letters, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her newest novel, Home, has just been released. Robinson received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award in 1990 and the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts in 1998. She is also the author of two books of nonfiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam (which will be reissued by Picador in November 2005). She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

photo by Nancy Crampton
Read an excerpt

Jean Valentine, currently the State Poet of New York, won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker, in 1965. Her most recent book is Little Boat (Wesleyan University Press, 2007). Her previous collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965–2003 was the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, Columbia University, and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, among many other places.

photo by Max Greenstreet
Read an excerpt

Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart. Her book, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, won the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award and was published in 2004 by Alice James Books. Barnett has taught at Barnard, the New School, and NYU, where she was honored with an Outstanding Service Award. She has worked as a magazine editor and now works as a freelance editor of poetry and poets’ prose. She has taught craft classes at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the NYU Writers Workshops in Paris, and at the Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College.

photo by Christine Krikliwy
Read an excerpt

Lee Ann Brown’s books include Polyverse (Sun & Moon), which was selected by Charles Bernstein for the New American Poetry Series; The Sleep That Changed Everything (Wesleyan University Press); and many collaborative works including Nascent Toolbox with Laynie Browne; The 3:15 Experiment with Bernadette Mayer, Jen Hofer, and Danika Dinsmore; and Dia(gnostic) with painter Anne Slacik. She now teaches poetry at St. John’s University in New York City and has taught poetry at Naropa University, Barnard, Bard, the New School for Social Research, and in the New York City Public Schools through Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She is the editor of Tender Buttons Press and is a co-founder of a new project for multidisciplinary poetry and performance, the French Broad Institute of Time and the River in Marshall, North Carolina. She has performed her work internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Foundation Royaument, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, the Bowery Poetry Club, and Alice Tully Hall.

photo by Lee Ann Brown
Read an excerpt

Luci Tapahonso is a Professor of American Indian Studies and English at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry including Blue Horses Rush In, which was awarded the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association’s 1998 Award for Poetry. Her most recent book, a collection of stories and poems entitled Radiant Curve, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the 2006 “Lifetime Achievement” award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

photo by UA Press
Read an excerpt

Ofelia Zepeda is a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation of southern Arizona and was born and raised in Stanfield, Arizona. She is a Regents’ Professor of linguistics and recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship for her work in American Indian language education, maintenance, and recovery. She has published works in the Tohono O’odham language and in English. She has written three books of poetry: Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert, Jewed I-hoi/Earth Movements, and Where Clouds are Formed (forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press). She is the series editor of the University of Arizona Press’s Sun Tracks Native American book series.

photo by UA Press
Read an excerpt

Manuel Muñoz is the author of two collections of short stories: The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2007, and Zigzagger, published by Northwestern University Press in 2003. Muñoz’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Rush Hour, Swink, Epoch, Glimmer Train, Edinburgh Review, and Boston Review, and has aired on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona, and is at work on a novel. He has just received a Whiting Writer’s Award.

photo by Helena Maria Viramontes
Read an excerpt

Tenney Nathanson is the author of the book-length poem Home on the Range (The Night Sky with Stars in My Mouth) (O Press), the collection Erased Art (Chax Press), and the critical study Whitman’s Presence: Body, Voice, and Writing in Leaves of Grass (NYU). He is currently at work on a book-length poem, Ghost Snow Falls through the Void (Globalization) , and a critical study of contemporary American “formally innovative” poetry (sometimes post-Fordist, sometimes Buddhist, sometimes not). He lives in Tucson, where he directs the Ph.D. program in Literature and teaches American poetry and creative writing in the English department at the University of Arizona.

photo by Lynda Zwinger
Read an excerpt

Mónica de la Torre is the author of the poetry books Talk Shows (Switchback, 2007) and Acúfenos, a collection in Spanish published in 2006 in Mexico City by Taller Ditoria. She writes about art and culture for publications in Mexico and the U.S. and is co-author of the artist’s book Appendices, Illustrations & Notes, available on Ubu.com. She co-edited the multilingual anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry with Michael Wiegers (Copper Canyon Press, 2002) and translated the books Poems by Gerardo Deniz (Lost Roads) and Mauve Sea-Orchids by Lila Zemborain (Belladonna Books). She is senior editor at BOMB Magazine and lives in Brooklyn.

photo by Nina Subin
Read an excerpt

Bhanu Kapil teaches at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and in the low-residency MFA in Writing at Goddard College. She is the author of The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works), and Humanimal (forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press, fall 2008).

photo by Pierre Marie Perinet
Read an excerpt

Ben Lerner’s first book, The Lichtenberg Figures, won the Hayden Carruth Award and was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2004. His second book, Angle of Yaw, was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award. He co-founded and co-edits No: a journal of the arts, and he recently joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.

photo by Beth Fladung
Read an excerpt

Home | email

University of Arizona Poetry Center | 1508 East Helen Street (At Vine Avenue) |Tucson , AZ 85721-0150
Phone: 520-626-3765 | Fax: 520-621-5566 | email: poetry@email.arizona.edu