VaBook!

Participants - VABook! 2005

• fiction
• mystery & suspense
• nonfiction
• poetry & songwriting
• publishing & exhibitors
• youth & family

Poetry & Songwriting

Harry Brown, author of Everything Is Its Opposite, has taught at Eastern Kentucky University since 1970. He has published three other collections of poems — Measuring Man, Paint Lick Idyll, Ego's Eye — and co-edited God's Plenty: Modern Kentucky Writers. 3/20 3 p.m.

Oni Buchanan holds degrees from UVa, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the New England Conservatory of Music (in piano performance). Her first book of poems, What Animal, won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series competition. She lives and works in Boston. 3/16 4 p.m.

Robert Creeley, author of If I Were Writing This and Life & Death, has written more than 60 books of poetry. Creeley has won the Bolligen Prize, a Before Columbus Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. 3/19 2 p.m., 8 p.m.

Roberta Culbertson is a poet and director of the Institute for Violence and Survival at the Virginia Foundation for the Humantites. Her projects include the journal Sacred Bearings and Tough Times Companion. She co-authored Siege: Crisis Leadership & the Survival of U.S. Embassy Kuwait. 3/16 2 p.m., 7 p.m.

Stephen Cushman, a professor of English at UVa, is the author of two poetry collections, Cussing Lesson and Blue Pajamas, as well as three books of nonfiction. His latest is a study of the Battle of the Wilderness entitled Bloody Promenade. 3/17 6 p.m., 3/19 2 p.m.

Kyle Dargan’s The Listening, won the 2003 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He is poetry editor for Indiana Review and has worked as an advisory editor for Callaloo. His poems and reviews appear in Callaloo, Denver Quarterly, LIT, Meridian, and Shenandoah. 3/16 4 p.m.

Brady Earnhart, originally from south Florida, received his M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa and his doctorate in English from UVa. He currently teaches at the University of Mary Washington and is writing songs for his third CD. 3/20 3 p.m.

Claudia Emerson, author of Pinion, An Elegy, has written three books of poems. Recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is an associate professor of English at Mary Washington College. 3/18 4 p.m.

Éric L. Farrell is the author of Seeking Solace: Finding Peace and Comfort in Times of Distress and Verbalizions of Enlightenment: The Secret to the Pain. He hosts the WordStage Poetry Lounge and TOUR. 3/19 8 p.m.

Annie Finch, poet, editor, critic, and translator, has written three poetry books including Calendars (shortlist, Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award). Her most recent is The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self. She directs the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program. 3/17 6 p.m.

Duane Graham Foster ("The Blacksheep") is the author of Don't Look at Me: A Poetic Autobiography and hosts the “Poetry In The Light Tour.” WordStage 3/19 8 p.m.

Kate Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press, editor of Los Angeles Review, and teaches at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Mating Season is her fifth book of poetry. She is author of African American Sleeping Beauty and a novel. 3/18 2 p.m.; 3/19 noon, 4 p.m.

Barbara Hamby's third collection of poems, Babel, was chosen by Stephen Dunn to win the Associated Writing Programs' Donald Hall Prize and was published in 2004 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is writer-in-residence at Florida State University. 3/18 8 p.m.

Cathryn Hankla’s ten books of poetry and fiction include Poems for the Pardoned, Emerald City Blues, The Land Between, and Last Exposures: A Sequence of Poems. A professor at Hollins University, she edits poetry for The Hollins Critic. 3/17 4 p.m.

Malcolm Holcombe's major label debut, A Hundred Lies, received a four-star review from Rolling Stone senior music editor, David Fricke. He is releasing an independent CD called I Never Heard You Knockin' this March. Fricke has called his sound "blues in motion." 3/20 3 p.m.

Marie Howe’s poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, AGNI, Harvard Review, and New England Review, among others. She is the author of The Good Thief, which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the National Poetry Series. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. 3/16 2 p.m., 7 p.m.

Susan Hull, of Madison County, is a UVa M.F.A. program graduate. Her work appears in Virginia Country, Iris, Tough Times Companion, Common Journeys and Sewanee Review. Western Albemarle High School Drama Department will produce her play, Mountain Home, at the festival. 3/16 2 p.m.; 3/17 8 p.m. (production)

Allisa "Lala" Jones, author of When Paper Met Pen, is a vocalist, model, and spoken word artist whose website is lalalounge.net. WordStage 3/19 8 p.m.

Ilya Kaminsky, born in the former Soviet Union, graduated from Georgetown University and subsequently served as George Bennet Fellow Writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy. He has won the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine. Dancing in Odessa is his first book. 3/16 2 p.m., 7 p.m.

Sarah Kennedy is an associate professor of English at Mary Baldwin College and the author of Double Exposure, Flow Blue, and From the Midland Plain. She is the co-editor of the anthology Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia. 3/18 noon, 4 p.m.

David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. His latest books are a collection of essays entitled What Is A Book? and The Ha-Ha, chosen by Dave Smith for LSU Press's Southern Messenger Poets series. 3/18 6 p.m.; 3/19 10 a.m., noon

Sharon Leiter teaches a poetry workshop at the Charlottesville Writing Center. Her books include The Lady and the Bailiff of Time and Akhmatova's Petersburg. Her poetry has appeared in Cimarron Review, The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and other journals. 3/17 2 p.m.

Jeffrey Levine is the author of the poetry collections Rumor of Cortez and Mortal, Everlasting. Winner of the Larry Levis Poetry Prize, the James Hearst Poetry Award, the Mississippi Review Prize and the Kestrel Prize, he is the editor-and-publisher of Tupelo Press. 3/16 7 p.m.; 3/18 2 p.m.; 3/19 noon

William Logan is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Macbeth in Venice, and three books of criticism, including Reputations of the Tongue, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches at the University of Florida. 3/19 10 a.m., noon

Charlotte Matthews, author of the chapbook, A Kind of Devotion, has poems published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, and Meridian. Recipient of teaching and writing awards, she teaches at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Distance Education and at Piedmont Virginia Community College. 3/16 2 p.m.

Erika Meitner's first book, Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, won the 2002 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Recipient of numerous poetry fellowships, her poems have appeared in publications including Slate, the Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and North American Review. 3/17 noon

E. Ethelbert Miller, author of How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love and other poetry collections, chairs the board of the Institute for Policy Studies. He has been the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard since 1974. 3/18 8 p.m.; 3/19 noon

Dan Mullis ("WordsMyth") is a hip hop freestyle artist, band member, part-time poet, and a lyrical improvisationalist. WordStage 3/19 8 p.m.

Gregory Orr has published eight books of poetry, most recently The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems, and five books of essays and criticism, including Poetry as Survival. He has also written a memoir, The Blessing. 3/16 7 p.m.

Joseph Parisi joined POETRY in 1976 and was Editor 1983-2003. His most recent books are Dear Editor: A History of POETRY in Letters and The POETRY Anthology 1912-2002. Awarded a Guggenheim in 2000, he is a By-Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. 3/18 noon, 3/19 noon

James Reiss's most recent book of poems is Riff on Six: New and Selected Poems. He is a professor of English at Miami University and former editor of Miami University Press in Oxford, Ohio. 3/18 8 p.m.; 3/19 noon

Kristen Staby Rembold's poems have recently appeared in Green Mountain Review and Southern Poetry Review. She has published a novel, Felicity, and a chapbook of poems, Coming Into This World. She is an M.F.A. student at Warren Wilson College. 3/16 2 p.m.

David Rigsbee’s poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the New Yorker, Poetry, the Southern Review, and many other publications. Author of 12 books including his Selected Poems, he co-edited Invited Guest: Southern Poetry in the Twentieth Century, published by UVa Press. 3/18 noon, 2 p.m.

Dana Roeser’s book Beautiful Motion is the winner of Northeastern University Press’s 2004 Samuel French Morse Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Iowa Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, and other journals. 3/17 noon

Tim Seibles, author of Hammerlock, Body Moves, Hurdy-Gurdy, and Buffalo Head Solos, has led workshops for Cave Canem and the Hurston-Wright Foundation. He has received an Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City and teaches at Old Dominion University. 3/17 6p.m.

Don Selby, co-editor of Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website, co-founded Poetry Daily with Diane Boller and Rob Anderson following 23 years in the law publishing industry. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the UVa School of Law. 3/18 noon

Ravi Shankar, author of Instrumentality, is poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and founding editor of Drunken Boat, an international online journal of the arts. He is currently editing an anthology of South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern poetry. 3/16 4 p.m.

Jan Smith, a Louisville, Kentucky native, is a Charlottesville singer and songwriter whose roots/Americana originals distill elements of folk, country, bluegrass, and pop. "Smith's deceptively simple tunes sparkle with freshness and originality," writes Performing Songwriter magazine. 3/20 3 p.m.

R. T. Smith is the author of Brightwood, The Hollow Log Lounge, and other volumes of poetry, including TrespasserMessenger. He is the editor of Shenandoah and the co-editor of the anthology Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia. 3/18 2 p.m., 4 p.m.

Lisa Russ Spaar has written two poetry collections, Blue Venus and Glass Town, and edited Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems. Honored by the Academy of American Poets, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, she directs the UVa Creative Writing Program. 3/17 6 p.m.; 3/18 noon

Dabney Stuart, author of Family Preserve and 15 previous poetry collections, has received fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, and Virginia Commission for the Arts. He was editor of Shenandoah from 1988-1995 and is an emeritus professor of English at Washington and Lee University. 3/17 4 p.m.

Eric Trethewey has published five collections, including Songs and Lamentations and Heart's Hornbook. His poems, stories, essays and reviews have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Atlantic Monthly, the American Scholar and Kenyon Review. 3/20 3 p.m.

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, author of Black Swan, won the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and an Academy of Amercian Poets Prize. She teaches Creative Writing at Cornell University. 3/18 4 p.m.

Sharmila Voorakkara, author of Fire Wheel, teaches at Ohio University. She has been the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and received her M.F.A. from UVa, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. 3/17 noon

Susan R. Williamson lives and writes in Charlottesville and is an associate publisher of Tupelo Press. She also serves as editor-in-chief of Streetlight Magazine. Her poems have been published in Lucid Oona, Lumina, Streetlight, LINK and other journals. 3/17 2 p.m.

Karenne Wood won the Native Authors First Book Award for Markings on Earth in 2000 and was selected as Writer of the Year in Poetry in 2002 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers. Her poems have recently appeared in Shenandoah. 3/20 3 p.m.

WordStage Lounge and TOUR is a poetry & spoken word performance event based in Richmond, Virginia, hosted by Éric L. Farrell. WordStage artists include:
 • Allisa "Lala" Jones
 • Dan Mullis ("WordsMyth")
 • Duane Graham Foster ("The Blacksheep")
 • Doug Powell, co-host of WordStage Poetry Lounge in Richmond, Virginia, is currently writing his first book, Neo-Mentality
 • Tony Ares ("Carolina Lumberjack" ) is a "Poetry In The Light Tour" feature poet who "chops down crooked trees with words, using the timber to build shelters for the spiritually homeless."
3/19 8 p.m.