Lee Gutkind is founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction, the first literary journal to publish nonfiction, exclusively, now celebrating its 14th year of publication. Gutkind’s immersion experiences, along with the compelling literary techniques he has developed, have helped to create a new paradigm for writing about the world—the “literature of reality” that is creative nonfiction. In the spirit of the creative nonfiction movement, of which Harper’s magazine credited him as founder, Gutkind frequently crosses genres as a writer, editor, and reporter.

Gutkind’s books, praised for being simultaneously personal and universally informative, include: Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather, (2003) a memoir; The Veterinarian’s Touch: Profiles of Life Among the Animals (1998 Owl Books), published in hardcover in 1997 by Henry Holt as An Unspoken Art: Profiles of Veterinary Life; The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand: The Game as Umpires See It (1999); The Art of Creative Nonfiction: The Literature of Reality (1996); Creative Nonfiction: How to Live It and Write It (1996); Stuck in Time: The Tragedy of Childhood Mental Illness; One Children’s Place, Inside a Children’s Hospital (1992); Many Sleepless Nights, The World of Organ Transplantation (1990).

Additionally, Gutkind has edited many notable books on creative nonfiction, is a published novelist, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and has served as a consulting editor at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., where he taught narrative techniques to reporters, producers, and editors at the Science Desk. In 2004, Gutkind was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Chatham College. In 2006, he launched PodLit: a bi-weekly podcast.

Gutkind is editor of Best Creative Nonfiction, an upcoming annual anthology to be published by W.W. Norton. His latest book, published in March 2007, is Almost Human: Making Robots Think. Currently, Gutkind is the inaugural Virginia Piper Distinguished Writer in Residence at Arizona State University.

Joseph Bathanti was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa. He received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as an MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Bathanti is the author of four books of poetry: Communion Partners, Anson County, The Feast of All Saints, and This Metal, which was nominated for The National Book Award, and won the 1997 Oscar Arnold Young Award from The North Carolina Poetry Council for best book of poems by a North Carolina writer. His first novel, East Liberty, winner of the Carolina Novel Award, was published in 2001 by Banks Channel Books in Wilmington, N.C. His new novel, Coventry, winner of the 2006 Novello Literary Award, was published by Novello Festival Press in the fall of 2006. His collection of short stories, The High Heart, winner of the 2007 Spokane Prize, will be published by Eastern Washington University Press in fall 2007.

Bathanti’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Manhattan Poetry Review, The Nebraska Review, Carolina Quarterly, America, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, The Sun, The Texas Review, California Quarterly, Studies in Short Fiction, Southern Humanities Review, South Dakota Review, Kentucky Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Review, The Hollins Critic, Tar River Poetry, South Carolina Review, and many others.

Bathanti is professor of creative writing and co-director of the Visiting Writer Series at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.

Bathanti is the recipient of a literature fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council; the Samuel Talmadge Ragan Award, presented annually for outstanding contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina over an extended period; a fellowship from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry; the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize; the Ernest A. Lynton Faculty Award for Professional Service and Academic Outreach; the Aniello Lauri Award for Creative Writing; the Linda Flowers Prize; the Sara Henderson Hay Prize; the 2002 Sherwood Anderson Award, and others.

A Marilyn P. Donnelly Writer in Residence
Dr. Jewell Parker Rhodes is the artistic director and Piper Endowed Chair of the the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Her stories have been anthologized in Children of the Night: Best Short Stories by Black Writers, edited by Gloria Naylor (Little Brown, 1996), and Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell (Westview Press/Harper Collins, 1995).

Rhodes is a prolific writer and her short fiction has appeared in Callaloo, Calyx, The Seattle Review, Feminist Studies, Peregrine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Shooting Star Review, among others. Her work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her scholarly and nonfiction articles appear in various academic journals, Ms. Magazine, and in many composition texts.

Her novels include Voodoo Dreams, Voodoo Season, Magic City, Douglass’ Women, and her newest book, a tribute to her late grandmother, Porch Stories: A Grandmother’s Guide to Happiness.

Among her numerous awards are the Yaddo Creative Writing Fellowship, the National Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction, and two distinguished teaching awards. She also was selected as the Creative Writing Delegate for the Modern Language Association.

Jewell received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama Criticism, a Master of Arts degree in English, and a Doctor of Arts degree in English (creative writing) from Carnegie Mellon University. In 1995, she earned the Distinguished Teaching Award in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University.

She lives in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Lewis Nordan, born in 1939, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi, a small town in the Delta. After high school he attended one year at Delta State College before going into the Navy to serve aboard several ships, including the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, where he worked as a journalist. In the following years he took various jobs, finished college at Millsaps College, taught high school, and eventually earned a PhD in Shakespeare at Auburn University.

At age 35, he dropped out of academic life and began writing fiction. Now he is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. Nordon’s publications include almost a hundred short stories in various journals and anthologies, and seven books of fiction, including two collections of short stories and five novels.

He has also published a memoir. His novel, Music of the Swamp, was cited by the American Library Association as Notable Book of the Year, and best fiction award from the Mississippi Institute of Art and Letters. The novel, Wolf Whistle, also won the ALA Notable Book Award, as well as the Mississippi Authors Award for Best Fiction, the New York Public Library Award for Best Book for the Teen Years, and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for best book. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Nordan is married to Alicia Blessing-Nordan, and they live in Sewickley, Pa.

A Marilyn P. Donnelly Writer in Residence
Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. She moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with her family when she was two. After that country’s war of independence (1980) her family moved first to Malawi and then Zambia where she met her husband. In 1994, she came to the United States. She lives now in Wyoming with her husband, two daughters, and a son. Fuller was educated in Scotland and Canada. She received a BA from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her works include Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, a New York Times Notable Book and Entertainment Weekly’s Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and Scribbling the Cat, both memoirs. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in National Geographic Magazine,The New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, Outside Magazine, Real Simple, The London Guardian, Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, The Daily Telegraph, and Salon.com.