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.

DIANE WILLIAMS is the author of six books of fiction, including It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature and Excitability. She is the founding editor of the innovative literary journal NOON and a former editor of StoryQuarterly. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Harper's and McSweeney's. She has taught at Bard College and Syracuse University.

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.

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.

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

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

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

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN has published eleven books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons, Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, and Italian Women in Black Dresses. Her newest book All That Lies Between Us received the American Book Award. She is the editor of the Paterson Literary Review and the founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ . She is also the Director of the Creative Writing Program and a Professor of Poetry at SUNY Binghamton.

JOHN BRANDON is one of the nation's most distinguished new fiction writers. He is the author of the novel Arkansas and the forthcoming novel The Semester, both from Sweeney's. His shorter work has been published in Mississippi Review, The Believer, Subtropics, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and other publications. He received an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at University of Mississippi.