Vermont Studio Center

Ryan Walsh grew up in West Virginia. He is author of the chapbooks Reckoner (Chickadee Chaps & Broads, 2015) and The Sinks (Midwest Writing Center Press, winner of the 2010 Mississippi Valley Poetry Chapbook Contest). Poems have appeared in Blackbird, Ecotone; FIELD; Forklift, Ohio; Green Mountains Review; Narrative, and elsewhere. He has worked at the Vermont Studio Center since 2011.

Laurie Macfee received an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Sierra Nevada College, and studied in the MFA Fine Arts program at University of South Florida. She received the Redfield Fellowship for Book Arts and is designer and past poetry editor of Sierra Nevada Review. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, Blue Lyra Review, Big Bell, Terminus, Brushfire, Halcyon, and the anthology Change in the American West among others. She was Writing Program Coordinator in VSC's Staff-Artist Program in 2015-16 and continues on as Grants Coordinator and Interim Writing Program Director.

Matt Hart is the author of five books of poems: Who's Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006), Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010), Light-Headed (BlazeVOX, 2011), and Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), and Debacle Debacle (H_NGM_N BKS, 2013). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, H_NGM_N, Harvard Review, jubilat, Lungfull!, and Post Road, among others.

Judith Claire Mitchell is the author of the novels The Last Day of the War and A Reunion of Ghosts. She teaches undergraduate and graduate fiction workshops at the University of Wisconsin, ­Madison, where she is a professor of English and the director of the MFA program in creative writing. She has received grants and fellowships from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and Bread Loaf, among others. She lives in Madison with her husband, the artist Don Friedlich. Judith Claire Mitchell's visit was generously funded by the Rona Jaffe Foundation.

Kara van de Graaf is an Assistant Professor of English at Utah Valley University. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, New England Review, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and editor of Lightbox Poetry, an online educational resource for poetry in the classroom, at www.lightboxpoetry.com.

A wandering artist writer who daily meets the world openly with interest and wonder, Wolf has published, exhibited art, lectured and teaches on subjects diverse (philosophy,art history,travel, yoga and astronomy). She is currently working on a collection of short stories, a novella and a play.

Jane Hirshfield’s most recent, eighth book of poetry is The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), appearing alongside a new book of essays, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Knopf, 2015). Previous books include Come, Thief (Knopf, 2011); After (HarperCollins, 2006), named a best book of the year by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Financial Times (UK); and Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her earlier collection of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997), is considered a classic, as are the four books Hirshfield edited and co­translated presenting the work of world poets of the past.

Hirshfield’s poems, described as “radiant and passionate” in The New York Times Book Review, “magnificent and distinctive” by The Irish Times, and “among the pantheon of the modern masters of simplicity” in the Washington Post, have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review, Poetry, Harper’s, The New Republic, The American Poetry Review, and eight editions of The Best American Poetry. Her honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the Donald Hall­ Jane Kenyon Award in American Poetry, Columbia University’s Translation Center Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2012 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Jane Hirshfield's visit was generously funded by the Rona Jaffe Foundation.

Luce Fellowship recipients, Song Lin and Yu-Han Chao read from their work translating from Chinese to English during their May 2016 VSC residency.

Paulette Livers is the author of Cementville, a Novel (Counterpoint), Winner of Elle Magazine Lettres Prize, and finalist for Center for Fiction's Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize, Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year, and the Kentucky Literary Award. Please visit: www.PauletteLivers.com.

Creative Director at Mighty Sword Studio—A Boutique Writing and Design Studio, where writers come to make good work, and publishers come to make beautiful books

Victor LaValle is the author of slapboxing with jesus, a collection of stories, and three novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, and The Devil in Silver. His most recent novel, The Devil in Silver, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2012. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He teaches creative writing in Columbia University's MFA program.

Dustin Parsons’ essays and stories have appeared in Seneca Review, Crab Orchard Review, Normal School, and Indiana Review amongst others. Recent honors for his writing include the American Literary Review fiction prize, The Laurel Review fiction prize, and grants in creative non-fiction from NYFA and the Ohio State Arts Council. He is associate professor of English at The State University of New York at Fredonia.