BRENDA COULTAS is the author of The Marvelous Bones of Time (2008) and A Handmade Museum (2003) from Coffee House Press. Coultas’s poetry is deeply invested in the local, blending lyricism with documentary reality. She is the recipient of the Norma Farber Prize from The Poetry Society of America, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council residency.

Student Writers: April 21, 2010

The Writing Programs’ 2010 Jacob Julien Visiting Writer

George Saunders is the author of six books, including the story collection In

Persuasion Nation and the book of essays Braindead Microphone. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, and other publications. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches in Syracuse University’s MFA program. Event organized by Deb Olin Unferth and Anne Greene.

The Writing Programs’ 2010 Annie Sonnenblick Lecturer

Writer and film critic Molly Haskell is the author of the classic work From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. She has served as film critic for New York magazine and Vogue and has written for The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. Her newest book, Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, has received widespread critical acclaim. Event organized by Anne Greene.

HILTON ALS, the English Department’s Distinguished Visiting Writer for 2009–2010,

is the author of The Women, a meditation on gender, race, personal identity, and the

biographical subject. A staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996 and a recipient of the

George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, Als also has edited and contributed

to numerous books and museum catalogues. Richard Pryor: A Novel is forthcoming

from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Event organized by Lisa Cohen

JOHN ASHBERY’s recent collections include Planisphere, Notes from the Air: Selected

Later Poems, and a Library of America edition of Collected Poems 1956–1987. His second

book, The Tennis Court Oath, was published by Wesleyan in 1962. Widely recognized

as one of America’s greatest poets, Ashbery has received a MacArthur Fellowship,

two Guggenheims, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and

the International Griffin Poetry Prize. He also is renowned for his art criticism and his

translations from the French. Event organized by Elizabeth Willis

Amy Bloom's latest novel, Away, an epic story about a Russian immigrant, was a New York Times best-seller. Her other books include the story collections Come To Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You and the nonfiction book, Normal. A finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, she received a National Magazine Award for fiction, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, Best American Short Stories, and in many anthologies in the US and abroad.

Introduction: Anne Greene, director of writing programs and a 2006 recipient of the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Presenter: Amy Bloom ’75, Wesleyan's 2009-2010 Jacob Julien Visiting Writer

Thomas Sayers Ellis is the author of The Maverick Room (2005), which won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a recipient of a Whiting Award. His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Best American Poetry (1997 and 2001), Grand Street, The Baffler, Jubilat, Tin House, Poetry, and The Nation Mr. Ellis is a contributing writer to Waxpoetics, Poets & Writers and contributes to TSE's Pick of the Week at www.tmottgogo.com. He is also an Assistant Professor of Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A Program. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and spends his summers in Washington, D.C. working on The Go-Go Book: People in the Pocket in Washington, D.C. His new book, Skin, Inc., is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in fall 2010.

LISA COHEN's biography of three neglected twentieth century figures -- the eccentric scholar Esther Murphy, the fan and collector Mercedes de Acosta, and the fashion writer and icon Madge Garland -- will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Her essays have appeared in journals including Ploughshares, Fashion Theory, GLQ, Bookforum, and The Boston Review.

DEB OLIN UNFERTH is the author of a collection of stories, Minor Robberies, and a novel, Vacation, both published by McSweeney's. Her work has appeared in Harper's, 3rd Bed, Fence, and other publications. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant from the Warhol Foundation, and in 2009 the Cabell First Novelist Award. She joins Wesleyan's English department this year.

ELIZABETH WILLIS is the Shapiro-Silverberg Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University. She is the author of four books of poetry, Second Law, The Human Abstract, Turneresque, and Meteoric Flowers. Her work has been selected for the National Poetry Series and her awards include the Boston Review Prize, an award from the Howard Foundation, a Walter N. Thayer Fellowship for the Arts, and a grant from the California Arts Council. As a critic, she has written on 19th and 20th century poetry, and she has edited a collection of essays entitled Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Politics of Place.