Participants

Deborah Ager's writing has appeared in Best New Poets 2006, The Bloomsbury Review, The Georgia Review, and New Letters. Awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she is the publisher and editor of 32 Poems magazine.

Darnell Arnoult is the author of Sufficient Grace and What Travels With Us, which was the 2006 SIBA Poetry Book of the Year and winner of the Weatherford Award.

James G. Basker, author of Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660-1810, is President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Rei Berroa (Book of Fragments) teaches Spanish Literature and Caribbean Studies at George Mason University. He is Literary Advisor to Teatro de la Luna and Hispanic Culture Review, co-founder of the Mentoring Program and Poetry Contest “In Two Tongues / En dos lenguas” in Arlington.

Constance Quarterman Bridges's Lions Don't Eat Us, was selected by Sonia Sanchez for the Cave Canem Award. Retiring from the U.S. Treasury Department in 1987, she began publishing poems in magazines and anthologies, including The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry.

Victoria Chang’s book of poems, Circle, won the Crab Orchard Open Competition. She edited Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, and her poems have been published in Best American Poetry, Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and Triquarterly.

Adam Chiles's work has appeared in Best New Poets 2006, Indiana Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cimarron Review, Phoebe, and Painted Bride Quarterly. An instructor at Northern Virginia Community College, he lives in Fredericksburg with his wife and son.

Michael Chitwood is author of four collections of poetry--From Whence is one of two to be published in 2007--as well as two collections of essays and fiction, including Finishing Touches. He teaches at the University of North Carolina.

Paul Curreri is a songwriter/guitarist. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design to pursue painting and film, which helped him develop his ability to observe the visual world. He lives in Charlottesville with his wife, songwriter and guitarist Devon Sproule.

Stephen Cushman, author of Heart Island, has published three books of poetry and three books of non-fiction. He teaches at UVa.

Scott Donaldson's most recent biography, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life, tells the story of a great American poet. He also has books on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cheever, and MacLeish. He taught at William and Mary for 28 years and now lives in Arizona.

Mary Flinn, Blackbird senior editor, has been the Director of New Virginia Review, Inc., since 1985 and Poetry and Fiction editor of 64 Magazine. Wiith George Garrett, she edited Elvis in Oz, New Writing from the Hollins College Creative Writing Program.

Tret Fure is a singer-songwriter who won the two categories of the 2006 South Florida Folk Festival Songwriting Competition, plus the Phyllis Schliessman Award for Outstanding Contributions to Women’s Music. She has also engineered and produced recordings by many artists

Gary Geddes authored the poetry collection Skaldance and the travel memoir Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things. A Canadian author and editor of more than thirty books and literary anthologies, he has won national and international awards including the America's Best Book Award and the Gabriela Mistral Prize.

Kimiko Hahn is the author of The Unbearable Heart, Mosquito and Ant, The Artist's Daughter, and most recently, The Narrow Road to the Interior. Her awards include an American Book Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, and an NEA Fellowship.