Faculty and Visiting Writers
January 2005

Clare Ansberry is bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal’s Pittsburgh office and author of The Women of Troy Hill (Harcourt), a best-seller.

Jan Beatty’s new collection of poems, Boneshaker, was published in spring 2002 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her first book, Mad River, won the Agnes Lynch Starret Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Beatty’s chapbook, Ravenous, won the 1995 State Street Chapbook Prize. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies published by university presses. Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR affiliate WYEP-FM featuring the work of national writers.

Mary Breasted is the author of two comic novels: I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (Harper & Row) and Why Should You Doubt Me Now? (Farrar Straus & Giroux). She was a reporter for The Village Voice and The New York Times. She is currently working on a third novel.

Jane Coleman has published 21 books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Five of her books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the only woman to have received three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for her first two collections of poetry, No Roof But Sky and The Red Drum, and her first collection of short fiction, Stories from Mesa Country. She has two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, and her memoir, Mountain Time, was runner-up for the Willa Award in 2002, as was her historical novel, Matchless in 2004.

Leslie Dunton-Downer is co-author, with Alan Riding, of the critically acclaimed Essential Shakespeare Handbook (Dorling Kindersley). She received a Ph.D. of Distinction in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1992, and remained there as a lecturer and then as junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows before living in Paris for ten years. She has written for academic publications, stage, and television.

Gary Fincke is the Writers Institute director and professor of English and creative writing at Susquehanna University. His most recent collections of poetry and fiction have won major prizes: Sorry I Worried You (stories) won the 2003 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction: Writing Letters for the Blind (poems) won the 2003 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Poetry Prize. His most recent publication is Amp’d: A Father’s Backstage Pass, his nonfiction account of his son’s rock and roll life in two signed bands (Michigan State University Press).

Kathleen George is a professor in the theatre arts department at the University of Pittsburgh. Her publications include The Man in the Buick, a collection of stories (BKMK Press); Taken (Delacorte), and Fallen. Taken has been translated into French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian. Another novel, The Kids, is in progress.

Robert Gibb is the author of six books of poetry, The Names of the Earth in Summer (Stone Country’s 10th Anniversary Award Volume), The Winter House (Devin’s Award Finalist), Montgomery Days (Camden Poetry Award), Fugue for a Late Snow, The Origins of Evening (National Poetry Series Winner) and, most, recently, The Burning World. Other awards include a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, five Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants, the Wildwood Poetry Prize, and the Devil’s Millhopper Chapbook Prize.

Samuel Hazo, the author of books of poetry, fiction, essays, and plays, and founder and director of the International Poetry Forum, is a National Book Award Finalist. His latest book of poems, Just Once, received the Maurice English Poetry Award. Two forthcoming titles are A Flight to Elsewhere (poetry) and The Autobiographers of Everybody (essays). He was chosen the first State Poet of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Governor Robert Casey in 1993, a position he held until 2003.

Julian Mazor is the author of Friend of Mankind and other stories (Paul Dry), a collection of short stories originally published in The New Yorker, Shenandoah, and the O’Henry Prize collection series. Washington and Baltimore, his earlier collection of stories, was published in 1968.

Ann Townsend is the author of two collections of poetry: Dime Store Erotics (Silverfish Review Press), winner of the Gerald Cable Prize, and The Coronary Garden (Sarabande Books). Her poetry, fiction, and criticism appear in such magazines as The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Five Points, The Nation, The Georgia Review,and The Kenyon Review. She has read her poems and lectured on poetry and poetics across the country. She has been a member of the creative writing program at Denison University since 1992. She has taught classes on poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers Workshop and the Antioch Writers Workshop, among others.

Marion Winik - Since 1991, Winik has been heard telling the story of her life, three minutes at a time, as a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She is the author of four books of creative nonfiction, among them First Comes Love (Pantheon/Vintage), a memoir of her marriage, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Austin Writers’ League Violet Crown Award; Telling (Pantheon/Vintage) a best-selling collection of personal essays; The Lunch-Box Chronicles (Pantheon/Vintage); and Rules for the Unruly (Simon and Schuster). Winik’s essays and articles have been published in many newspapers, magazines, web sites and anthologies.

Past Residencies