The Ashland University MFA Program is proud to announce its visiting writer lineup for summer 2012. The following visiting writers will be on the Ashland University campus during the MFA program's residency July 28 through August 10, 2012.
Eula Biss
Andre Dubus III
Eula Biss
Eula Biss is the author of The Balloonists and Notes from No Man’s Land. Her work has recently been recognized by a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and teaches nonfiction writing at Northwestern University. Her essays have recently appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Believer, Gulf Coast, and Harper’s.
Andre Dubus III
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| Andre Dubus III |
Andre Dubus III grew up in mill towns on the Merrimack River along the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. He began writing fiction at age 22 just a few months after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology. Because he prefers to write in the morning, going from “the dream world to the dream world”, as the Irish writer Edna O'Brien puts it, he took mainly night jobs: bartender, office cleaner, halfway house counselor, and for six months worked as an assistant to a private investigator/bounty hunter. Over the years he's also worked as a self-employed carpenter and college writing teacher.
Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days, a New York Times bestseller. His memoir, Townie, was published in February 2011 with W.W. Norton & Co. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters.
An Academy Award-nominated motion picture and published in twenty languages, his novel House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. A member of PEN American Center, Andre Dubus III has served as a panelist for The National Book Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he is a full-time faculty member. He is married to performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.
Garrett Hongo
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| Garrett Hongo |
Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawai`i and grew up on the North Shore of O`ahu and in Los Angeles. He was educated at Pomona College, the University of Michigan, and UC Irvine, where he received an M.F.A. His work includes three books of poetry, three anthologies, and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai`i. He is the editor of The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America (Anchor) and Under Western Eyes: Personal Essays from Asian America (Anchor). Poems and essays of his have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, APR, Honolulu Weekly, Amerasia Journal, Virginia Quarterly Review, Raritan, and the LA Times. Among his honors are the Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, and the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His latest book of poetry, Coral Road, was published by Knopf in Fall 2011. He is presently at work on a book of non-fiction entitled The Perfect Sound: An Autobiography in Stereo. He teaches at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences.
Laura Kasischke
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| Laura Kasischke |
Laura Kasischke has published eight collections of poetry (most recently Space, in Chains, Copper Canyon Press) and eight novels, including two which have been made into feature length films. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Michigan, and lives with her family in Chelsea, Michigan.