2007 Authors

Debby Applegate is the author of The Most Famous Man in America: the Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography and finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Her writing has won her numerous prizes and fellowships, has appeared in publications from the Journal of American History to The New York Times and has taught at Yale and Wesleyan Universities. Debby lives in New Haven, Connecticut and Portland, Oregon.

Deirdre Bair received the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography, and her biographies of Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Jung were also prize finalists. Her latest book is a memoir: Calling it Quits: Late life Divorce and Starting Over. Deidre has been a literary journalist and university professor of comparative literature and she divides her time between New York and Connecticut.

Ibtisam Barakat is an award-winning Palestinian-American writer, poet, educator and founder of Write Your Life seminars. Her stories appear in a variety of collections including Jennifer Armstrong’s Shattered and Naomi Shahib Nye’s The Space Between Our Footsteps. Her book, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood has been described by Booklist as “a spare elegant memoir.

Ann Beattie short story writer and novelist and one of the nation’s most important fiction writers, has received critical acclaim for her depiction of the generation of Americans who grew up in the 60s. She has published six collections of short stories including, and six novels including Chilly Scenes of Winter. Winner of the Rhea Award for the short story, she has received numerous awards for her work including an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She divides her time between Maine and Key West, Florida.

Sven Birkerts is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. His newest book—a memoir of sorts—is My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time. He teaches at Mount Holyoke College, is a member of the core faculty of the low-residency Bennington Writing seminars and edits the literary journal AGNI. Sven lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with his family.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, where her first language was Flemish. She is the author a book of poems in French, Artemis (1973), and two collections of poems in English from BOA Editions: The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and Small Gods of Grief, which won the Isabela Gardner Award. Her latest collection, New Hunger, was published this year. She teaches poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

Marian Burros is a food columnist for the New York Times where she has worked for 21 years. She has over 30 years experience as a writer, editor and reporter covering food and consumer issues. She has authored 13 food and cookbooks, including Cooking for Comfort; The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook; 20 Minute Menus, and Pure and Simple. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including an Emmy award for consumer reporting.

Augusten Burroughs was born and raised in Western Massachusetts He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Running with Scissors, which has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two-and-a-half consecutive years. His other books include Dry, Magical Thinking: True Stories and Possible Side Effects and Sellevision, which is currently in development for film.

Kurt Brown is has published four collections of poetry, Return of the Prodigals, More Things in Heaven and Earth, Fables from the Ark, which won the 2003 Custom Words Prize, and Future Ship. In addition, he has edited three books of lectures delivered at writers’ conferences across America: The True Subject, Writing It Down for James and Facing the Lion. He was the Bruce McEver Visiting Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

Jon Clinch’s is a native of upstate New York and a graduate of Syracuse University. His first novel Finn has been described by Publisher’s Weekly as a “darkly luminous debut….Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River’s ceaseless flow. A native of upstate New York and a graduate of Syracuse University, Jon lives in Pennsylvania and he and his wife his wife have one daughter.

John Crowley is an American author of fantasy, best known as the author of Little, Big, which received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. His recently published conclusion to the Aegypt sequence has received rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review calls the Aegypt sequence “A dizzying experience, achieved with unerring security of technique.”

Ellen Dudley is the author of Slow Burn and The Geographic Cure. She is a recipient of an Individual Arts Fellowship from The Vermont Arts Council and has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. Ellen is the founder and editor of the Marlboro Review in Marlboro, Vermont and she divides her time between Vermont and Hawai`i.

Joshua Harmon’s first novel, Quinnehtukqut, was published this month. The first section of the novel, The Legend of Jimmy Frye, was published in its entirety in The Iowa Review, and, at 80 pages, was their longest piece of fiction ever published. The novel is experimental in form, and concerns the early establishment of the area in northern NH that contains the watershed for the Connecticut River. He is a graduate of Marlboro College.

Randall Kenan is the author of the biography James Baldwin: American Writer and the collection of oral histories Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the 21st Century, as well as the novel A Visitation of Spirits, and the short story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. His work has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowhip, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and numerous other prizes. He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Haven Kimmel is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch. Her novels include The Used World, Something Rising (Light & Swift), and The Solace of Leaving Early. She studied English and Creative Writing at Ball State University and North Carolina State University and attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, NC.

Galway Kinnell has won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award and is one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the 20th century. He was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and attended Princeton University. In his poetry, Kinnell often depicts and experiences the natural world, as represented by the lives of animals and flowers. He is a currently Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Michael Lesy is a writer and professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His books, which combine historical photographs with his own writing, include Wisconsin Death Trip, Dreamland: America at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century and (with Angelo Rizzuto) Angel’s World: The New York Photographs of Angelo Rizzuto.

Lois Lowry was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and attended junior high school in Tokyo, Japan-her father was a career military officer. At the age of 17, Lowry attended Brown University and majored in writing. Lois Lowry began writing professionally when she was in her mid-30s and now spends time writing every single day. Her books include The Giver, Number the Stars, Gathering Blue, the Anastasia Kupnik series and the Gooney Bird series. In addition to two Newbery medals, Lois Lowry has won numerous other awards including the Boston Globe Horn Award and the Margaret Edwards Award. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine and has four children and two grandchildren.

Deborah Madison worked in the kitchen at the Zen Center in San Francisco then left to cook at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Later, she returned to Zen Center to become the first chef at The Greens in Fort Mason. She has written several books on vegetarian cooking including Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets, The Greens Cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, The Savory Way, which won the Cookbook of the Year Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and Vegetable Soup from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen. Madison has also received the M. F. K. Fisher Mid-Career Award. She lives in New Mexico.

Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and three novels, including This Side of Brightness and Dancer both of which were international best-sellers. His most recent novel is Zoli. His fiction has been published in 26 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ and other places. His awards and honors include the Hennessey Award, the Rooney Prize, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. Raised in Ireland, he lives in New York with his family.

Martha Rhodes is the author of three poetry collections: Mother Quiet, Perfect Disappearance (winner Green Rose Prize), and At the Gate. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Agni, Fence, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and other journals. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a founding editor and the director of Four Way Books, an independent literary press in New York City.
Jeffrey Roberts lives in Montpelier Vermont and works in the areas of agriculture and food policy, conservation, and the environment. He is a co-founder and principal consultant to the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont. Jeff is active in Slow Food USA as a director and treasurer of the national board and a Northeast Regional Governor. Jeff is a frequent speaker on artisan cheese, sustainable agriculture, and the working landscape. His new book, Atlas of American Artisan Cheeses, was published in June.

Allen Shawn is a composer and writer. He began composing music at the age of ten and has produced a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano works, as well as music for ballet, theater, and film. He performs frequently as a pianist. His books include Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life and Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey. He is on the faculty at Bennington College and lives in Vermont.

Leda Shubert was born in Washington, DC but has lived in Vermont for more than thirty years. Her book Ballet of the Elephants was a Kirkus Editor’s Choice for 2006 and is also on the Horn Book Fanfare list. For the seventeen years, she was the school library consultant for the Vermont Department of Education. She has also erved on the Caldecott Committee, the Arbuthnot Committee, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Committee, as well as on both of Vermont’s state book awards committees.

Zak Smith is a Brooklyn-based artist. In his book Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow, he at once eases and expands readers’ experience of the twentieth-century classic. Smith has created more than 750 pages of drawings, paintings, and photos—each derived from a page of Pynchon’s novel. His work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial and is in the permanent collection of the Walker Museum.

Keith Stewart is the author of It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life. He has been the proprietor of Keith’s Farm, in Orange County, New York since 1986 and is one of the longest-standing purveyors at New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket. Stewart lives on his farm with his wife, artist Flavia Bacarella who provided the illustrations for Stewart’s book.
Matt Tavares wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Zachary’s Ball, as his senior thesis at Bates College. After graduating, he started trying to get it published. After several revisions, Candlewick Press published the book as Zachary’s Ball in 1998. The book went on to be named named one of Yankee Magazine’s 40 Classic New England Children’s Books. Since then, Matt has published three more books, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Oliver’s Game, and Mudball. Matt now lives in Ogunquit, Maine with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter.