Vermont Studio Center

Paul Russell is the author of seven novels, including Immaculate Blue and Boys of Life. Two of his novels, The Coming Storm and The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, won the Ferro-Grumley Award, and three have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. Sea of Tranquillity was chosen as one of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels by the Triangle Publishing Group.

He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, attended Oberlin College, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English from Cornell University. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writers Fellowship, he has taught at Vassar College and the University of Exeter.

His poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in such journals and anthologies as Epoch, Carolina Quarterly, The James White Review, Sou’wester, The Black Warrior Review, American Short Fiction, Lumina, The Barcelona Review, Men on Men 4, The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica, Sequoia, The William and Mary Review, Queer 13, Gastronomica and Best Food Writing 2001. His work has been translated into thirteen languages.

Photo credit: Tuan Ching

V. V. Ganeshananthan's debut novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and chosen as one of Washington Post Book World's Best of 2008, as well as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, Columbia Journalism Review, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the American Academy of Berlin, she has been visiting faculty at the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She presently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. She is at work on a second novel, excerpts of which have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014.

This event is supported by the Rona Jaffe Foundation.

Photo credit: Preston Merchant

Ross Gay is the author of three books: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Catalog was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, the Ohioana Book Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Ross is the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Richard Wehrenberg, Jr., of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin' in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.

Photo Credit: Natasha Komoda

Gladys Swan has published four novels, including "Carnival for the Gods" (Vintage Contemporaries Series) and "Ghost Dance--A Play of Voices" (LSU Press, nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award), which was reprinted as part of "A New Mexico Trilogy" (published by Serving House Books). "A New Mexico Trilogy" also contains "A Dark Gamble," and "Ancestors." Additionally, she has published eight collections of short fiction, of which the most recent is "Jungle: Stories from the Sewanee Review." The title story received the annual award for the best fiction in the magazine for 2015. She has twice been a Visiting Writer at the Vermont Studio Center and has held residencies at Yaddo, the Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, the Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, and the Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico. The Carnival Quintet, the outgrowth of her first novel, will be published by Kiwai Media in Paris.

[The story excerpts on this recording are read by Marie Howe.]

Hester Kaplan is the author of the story collections The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Unravished, and the novels Kinship Theory and The Tell. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction have been widely published and anthologized, including in The Best American Short Stories series. She is the recipient of an NEA, the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction, and the Salamander Short Story prize, among others. She was most recently Acting Director of the Lesley University MFA Program in Creative Writing, where she is on the faculty, and is co-founder of Goat Hill Writers (goathillwriters.com). She lives in Providence, Rhode Island. You can read more about Hester at hesterkaplan.com.

Baron Wormser is the author/co-author of fourteen books and a poetry chapbook. Wormser has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. From 2000 to 2006 he served as poet laureate of the state of Maine. He teaches in the Fairfield University MFA Program. His latest book of poetry, Unidentified Sighing Objects, (CavanKerry Press) came out in September, 2015; his novel, Tom o’ Vietnam, about an American veteran of the Vietnam War who is obsessed with King Lear, was published in Autumn 2017 by New Rivers Press. His essay on Willem de Kooning appeared in Best American Essays 2014. He lives with his wife Janet in Montpelier, Vermont, where he conducts numerous workshops in his house.

Howard A. Norman is an American award­-winning writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages. Norman is a three-­time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C. and Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Norman worked on a fire crew with Cree Indians after dropping out of high school. It is during this time that he became fascinated with their folk stories and culture and spent the next sixteen years living and writing in Canada's Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Greenland. He also received his high school equivalency diploma, and then studied at Western Michigan University Honors College, receiving Bachelor of Arts degrees in zoology and English. He then earned a Masters of Arts degree from the Folklore Institute of Indiana University.

His most recent novel, My Darling Detective, was published last year.

Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of SO MUCH SYNTH (Copper Canyon Press, 2016); OUR ANDROMEDA (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), which was a New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of 2013"; HUMAN DARK WITH SUGAR (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and INTERIOR WITH SUDDEN JOY (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999). Shaughnessy's poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper's, The Nation, The Rumpus, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter.

Jane Shore’s six books of poems have garnered many prizes including the 1977 Juniper Prize, the 1986 Lamont Prize, and a 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award nomination. A YES-OR-NO ANSWER, (2008) won the 2010 Poets Prize. A Guggenheim Fellow, a Radcliffe Institute Fellow, a Hodder Fellow at Princeton, she was also awarded two grants from the NEA. Widely anthologized, her poems appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Yale Review. THAT SAID, New and Selected Poems, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. She has taught at Harvard (The Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English), Sarah Lawrence, Tufts, M.I.T, the University of Washington, and was the Distinguished Visiting Poet at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. A Professor of English at the George Washington University for twenty-five years (after a year as the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington) she lives in Washington, DC and in East Calais, Vermont.

Jensen Beach is the author of the short story collection Swallowed by the Cold, as well as a previous collection of stories. His work has appeared in A Public Space, the New Yorker, Paris Review and elsewhere. He teaches in the BFA program at Johnson State College and the MFA Program in Writing & Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and lives in Vermont with his family.