About the Writers

2008-2009 Season

Click on the "more" link for each author to find a full biography along with available works, literary criticism, and related audio and video files.

Adam Zagajewski

A major figure of the Polish New Wave literary movement of the early 1970s and of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement of the 1980s, Adam Zagajewski’s most recent books in English are Eternal Enemies (2008) and Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. more >

Carolyn Forché

Poet and translator Carolyn Forché’s prize-winning volumes of poetry include Gathering the Tribes (1976), The Country Between Us (1982), The Angel of History (1994), Blue Hour (2003) the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness (1994). Her work on behalf of human rights in El Salvador and elsewhere is a major focus of her poetry, much of which depicts the terrible cruelties inflicted on children victimized by the war. more >

Clayton Eshleman

Clayton Eshleman has published his writing and translations in over 500 literary magazines and newspapers, and given readings of his work at over 200 universities. In November 2008 he will publish The Grindstone of Rapport, a comprehensive survey of his poetry, prose poems, essays, and translations from the French of Aime Cesaire, Michel Deguy, and Artaud, and from the Spanish of Cesar Vallejo. more >

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behind My Eyes (2008). His earlier collections are Rose (1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award; The City in Which I Love You (1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. more >

Rod Smith

Rod Smith's latest collection, Deed, was published by The University of Iowa Press in the fall of 2007. He is also the author of Music or Honesty, Poèmes de l'araignée (France), In Memory of My Theories, The Good House, The Boy Poems, and Protective Immediacy. A CD, Fear the Sky, came out from Narrow House Recordings in 2005. more >

Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel Mackey’s books of poetry include Splay Anthem, which won the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry. He is also the author of an ongoing prose work, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which three volumes have been published. more >

Marjorie Welish

Marjorie Welish is the author of several books of poetry, including Word Group (2004), and Isle of the Signatories (2008). Ms. Welish has received grants and fellowships for her poetry from Brown University, Cambridge University, and the NY Foundation for the Arts. more >

Ciarán Carson

Ciarán Carson, a musician and poet, has published two books on Irish traditional music, The Pocket Guide to Traditional Music (1986) and Last Night’s Fun (1997). His nine collections of poetry include Belfast Confetti (1989), which received the Irish Times Literature Prize; First Language (1993), which was awarded the T.S. Eliot prize; and Breaking News (2003). more >

Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles is a poet, playwright and performance artist, who is also currently writing a novel called The Inferno and an opera called Hell. Her books include Skies, (2001), Cool for You (2000), School of Fish, (1997) and Chelsea Girls (1994). more >

Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson’s science fiction and fantasy novels include Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), which received Locus Award for Best New Writer; Midnight Robber (2000), nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel; Skin Folk (2001), which won the World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic; and The Salt Roads, which received the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. more >

Henrietta Rose-Innes

Henrietta Rose-Innes of South Africa is the winner of the 2008 Caine Prize for African Writing for a short story, "Poison." She has published two novels, Shark’s Egg (2000) and The Rock Alphabet (2004) and is writing a third. more >