Biography of Joy Jacobson

Joy Jacobson’s chapbook, I And (New School, 2004), won the Chapbook Series Award in poetry at The New School, where she earned an MFA. She has had residencies at The MacDowell Colony and Vermont Studio Center. The poems in this issue are a part of an elegiac sequence entitled “Where She Is Gone To.” [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer is the author of eight books, including A Hummock in the Malookas (W.W. Norton, 1995), Nice Hat. Thanks. (with Joshua Beckman; Wave, 2002) and A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling, 2009). He has received the Hopwood Award for Poetry and a Pushcart Prize, was selected as a National Poetry Series Winner and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Recently, he participated in residencies and performances at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle). He lives in Brooklyn, New York. [bio updated 2011]

Poems

• What Is More Distracting Than Clouds

Biography of Rachel Bennett

Rachel Bennett has a BA in English from Grinnell College, where she won two Whitcomb Poetry Prizes judged by Gerald Stern and James Galvin, and she is an alumna of the Iowa Writers' Workshop Irish Writing Program in Dublin. Her poetry has appeared in Avocet, Big City Lit, Blood Lotus, Buffalo Carp, Rhapsoidia and The Portland Review. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Joseph O. Legaspi

Joseph O. Legaspi’s debut collection, Imago (CavanKerry), was published in 2007. He holds degrees from Loyola Marymount University and the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, he is one of the co-founders of Kundiman, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving Asian American poets. Born in Manila, Philippines, he now lives in New York City. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Anthony DiMatteo

Anthony DiMatteo's poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Front Porch, Long Island Quarterly, Main Street Rag, miller’s pond poetry magazine and Tar River Poetry; his prose, in College Literature, Early Modern Literary Studies and Renaissance Quarterly. He lives on Long Island and teaches English at the New York Institute of Technology. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Colette Gill

Colette Gill's first poetry collection, Silk & Sting, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. Her poems have received prizes from Connecticut River Review, Princemere Poetry Journal and the Texas Teachers of Creative Writing. She studied literature in St. Petersburg, Russia. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Linda S. Gottlieb

Linda S. Gottlieb received an MFA in poetry from The Johns Hopkins University, where she currently teaches creative writing. Her poems have appeared recently in Best New Poets 2010 (Samovar, 2010), RATTLE and The Los Angeles Review. Born and raised in New York City, she currently divides her time between there and Baltimore. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Erica Dawson

Erica Dawson's first collection, Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser, 2007), won the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. She is Assistant Professor of English and Writing at the University of Tampa, and Poetry Editor of Tampa Review. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Rebekah Remington

Rebekah Remington was educated at The Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan and the University of the District of Columbia. Her poetry has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, The Iowa Review and The Missouri Review. In 2009, she received a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award. She teaches poetry writing at Towson University. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Austin Tremblay

Austin Tremblay was born and raised in North Carolina. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston. Before graduate school, he worked as an actor and playwright. His poems have appeared in Bateau, cream city review, Gulf Coast and New South. He is working on a novel about his hometown, titled Scuffletown, and a chapbook, Leather, about baseball. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of R.A. Villanueva

R.A. Villanueva lives in Brooklyn, New York. A finalist for the 2010 Alice James Books/Kundiman Poetry Prize, his writing has appeared in AGNI, Bellevue Literary Review, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, RATTLE and The Virginia Quarterly Review. He is a Language Lecturer at New York University. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Michael Collier

Michael Collier is the author of five books of poems including The Ledge (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Dark Wild Realm (Mariner, 2007). He is co-editor of A William Maxwell Portrait (W.W. Norton, 2004). His translation of Euripides’s Medea (Oxford) appeared in 2006 and a book of essays, Make Us Wave Back (Michigan), in 2007. He was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001 to 2004. Collier's Poets Q&A and poetry reading video, both from 2009, appear at www.smartishpace.com. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Katherine Smith

Katherine Smith received her MFA in 1986 from the University of Virginia and is now a professor at Montgomery College in Maryland. Her poems have recently appeared in The Southern Review, Poetry, Many Mountains Moving and Shenandoah. (2001)

Biography of Christine Stewart

Biography of Elizabeth Brooke Hazen

Elizabeth Brooke Hazen studied English literature at Yale College and attended The Graduate Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in Antietam Review, Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin, Gargoyle, Hanging Loose and Nimrod. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 12.

Biography of Haines Eason

Haines Eason's poems have appeared in many journals, including The Yale Review, American Letters & Commentary, and Indiana Review. He regularly writes for American Book Review, is an Associate Editor at Boulevard, and attends the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issues 14 and 16. [bio updated 2009]

Biography of Ellen Kirvin Dudis

Ellen Kirvin Dudis earned her B.A. from Middlebury College. Her poems have appeared in Cream City Review, The Madison Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Poetry, The Nation and Smartish Pace, Issue 3.(2009)

Biography of Charlie Clark

Charlie Clark’s poems have appeared in Crazyhorse; Forklift, OH; Low Rent Magazine; Missouri Review and Smartish Pace, Issue 9. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and now lives and works in Washington, DC. (2009)

Biography of Anne-Marie Thompson

Anne-Marie Thompson is pursuing her MFA at The Writing Seminars of Johns Hopkins University. Before moving to Baltimore she taught piano lessons and gave lecture-recitals in Texas. Her poems have appeared in The Dark Horse, descant and Ploughshares. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16. (2009)

Biography of Elizabeth Spires

Elizabeth Spires' sixth collection of poems, The Wave-Maker, was published by W.W. Norton in July 2008. A review of the book appears in the review section of our website. Her new children's book, I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings, was published by FSG in 2009. She recently edited Contents of a Minute (Sarabande, 2008), a chapbook by the late poet Josephine Jacobsen. Spires is Professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore. Her poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Issues 9 & 15. Please visit our media section to hear an interview with Spires & watch a video of her reading. [bio updated 2009]

Biography of Phillis Levin

Phillis Levin is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Mercury (2001) and May Day (2008), both from Penguin, and the editor of The Penguin Book of Sonnet (Penguin, 2001). Her honors include a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, the Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. Levin is a professor of English and poet-in-residence at Hofstra University. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 14. [2009]

Biography of Eric Pankey

Eric Pankey is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently The Pear as One Example (Ausable, 2008). His work has been supported by fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the NEA and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is a Professor of English and Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 12. I video of Pankey's Smartish Pace reading can be found in the media section of this website. (2009)

Biography of Elizabeth Arnold

Elizabeth Arnold’s third collection of poems is a book-length sequence entitled Effacement (Flood Editions, 2010). She won fellowships from The Rockefeller Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has also received a Whiting Writers’ Award. Arnold is on the MFA faculty at the University of Maryland and lives outside Washington, D.C. A video of Arnold’s 2009 Smartish Pace reading appears at www.smartishpace.com. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Greg Nicholl

Greg Nicholl's book-length manuscript has been a finalist for four prizes; his poems have appeared in many literary magazines. He grew up in Gig Harbor, Washington, received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and moved to Baltimore where he works in the acquisitions department at The Johns Hopkins University Press. He is the web manager for The Cortland Review. He has a poem in Issue 14 of Smartish Pace. [bio updated 2009]

Biography of Terence Winch

Terence Winch's most recent book of poetry is Boy Drinkers (Hanging Loose, 2007), and his fifth book, Falling Out of Bed in a Room With No Floor, is forthcoming from Hanging Loose in 2011. In 2007 he released the album When New York Was Irish, which includes many of his compositions originally recorded by Celtic Thunder, an Irish band he co-founded in 1977. A video of his 2009 Smartish Pace reading appears at www.smartishpace.com. [bio updated 2011]

Poems

• The Emptiness

Biography of David Keplinger

David Keplinger has been awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize, fellowships from the NEA, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the SOROS Foundation. His third book, The Prayers of Others, will appear from New Issues in the fall of 2006. His translated collection of the poetry of Carsten Rene Nielsen, World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors (New Issues) is forthcoming in 2007. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 13. [bio updated 2006]

Biography of Wayne Miller

Wayne Miller is the author of Only the Senses Sleep (New Issues, 2006), recipient of the William Rockhill Nelson Award, and The Book of Props (Milkweed, 2009). He translated Moikom Zeqo’s I Don’t Believe in Ghosts (BOA, 2007) and is co-editor of New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008). He teaches at the University of Central Missouri where he edits Pleiades. Miller read in Baltimore on Sunday May 31, 2009 (3pm) at The Walters Art Museum as part of the Smartish Pace Reading Series. His translations and poetry appear in Smartish Pace, Issues 12 and 16. (2009)

Biography of Reginald Harris

Reginald Harris works for the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. His book, 10 Tongues (Three Conditions, 2001), was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year. He has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issues 2, 10 and 16 (2009).

Biography of Matt Anserello

Matt Anserello is an MFA candidate at West Virginia University. His work has appeared in Bat City Review, Phoebe and Versal.

Biography of Lucy Biederman

Lucy Biederman is an MFA candidate at George Mason University. Her poetry has appeared in Front Porch, Gargoyle, New Delta Review and TYPO. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of Aaron Poochigian

Aaron Poochigian recently completed Stung With Love: The Poems and Fragments of Sappho (Penguin, 2009). His poems and translations have appeared in The Chimaera, The Classical Journal and Unsplendid. He is D.L. Jordan Fellow at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. His poetry and translations appear in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of Maggie Glover

Maggie Glover earned a BA from Denison University and an MFA from West Virginia University, where she was awarded the James Paul Brawner Poetry Award in 2007. Her poems and reviews have appeared in 32 Poems, Controlled Burn, The Journal and Pebble Lake Review. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of Michael Collier

Michael Collier is the author of five books of poems including The Ledge (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Dark Wild Realm (Mariner, 2007). He is co-editor of A William Maxwell Portrait (W.W. Norton, 2004). His translation of Euripides’s Medea (Oxford) appeared in 2006 and a book of essays, Make Us Wave Back (Michigan), in 2007. He was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001 to 2004. Collier's Poets Q&A and poetry reading video, both from 2009, appear at www.smartishpace.com. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Elizabeth Spires

Elizabeth Spires' sixth collection of poems, The Wave-Maker, was published by W.W. Norton in July 2008. A review of the book appears in the review section of our website. Her new children's book, I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings, was published by FSG in 2009. She recently edited Contents of a Minute (Sarabande, 2008), a chapbook by the late poet Josephine Jacobsen. Spires is Professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore. Her poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Issues 9 & 15. Please visit our media section to hear an interview with Spires & watch a video of her reading. [bio updated 2009]

Biography of Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Satin Cash (Persea, 2008), Blue Venus (Persea, 2004), Glass Town (Red Hen, 1999), winner of the Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, Blind Boy on Skates (U. of N. Texas, 1987) and Cellar (Alderman, 1983). Her poems appear in Smartish Pace, Issue 8. Her Smartish Pace reading on 3/19/09 appears in the media section of this website.

Biography of Michael Chitwood

Michael Chitwood is a freelance writer and a lecturer at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of eight books of poetry including most recently From Whence (LSU, 2007) and Spill (Tupelo, 2007), a finalist for ForeWord magazine’s poetry book of the year and winner of the 2008 Roanoke-Chowan Prize. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of Debra Nystrom

Debra Nystrom is the author of Bad River Road (Sarabande, 2009), a Virginia Literary Award winner; Torn Sky (Sarabande, 2003) and A Quarter Turn (Sheep Meadow, 1991). She teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.

Biography of Nicole Pekarske

Nicole Pekarske is the author of Intermissa, Venus, (Cherry Grove, 2004). She teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 13. [bio posted 2006]

Biography of David Bergman

David Bergman is the author of two books of poetry, Cracking the Code (Ohio State, 1985), which won the George Elliston Poetry Prize, as well as Heroic Measures (Ohio State, 1998). This year Sheep Meadow Press will publish The Selected Poems of Jean Sénac, which Bergman translated with Katia Sainson. He teaches at Towson University. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Vona Groarke

Vona Groarke’s poetry collections, published in Ireland by The Gallery Press, include Shale (1994), Other People’s Houses (1999), Flight (2002) and Juniper Street (2006). In 2004, Flight and Earlier Poems was published by Wake Forest University Press, which also published Juniper Street in 2006. She teaches at Wake Forest University and the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Poems

• Inside Out

Biography of Craig Arnold

Craig Arnold's second book of poems, Made Flesh, was published by Ausable Press in 2008. He taught at the University of Wyoming. His work appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 15. A video of Craig reading a poem from Smartish Pace appears in our media section (2009).

Biography of Alan Shapiro

Alan Shapiro’s writing has received a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Tantalus in Love (2005) and Old War (2008), both from Houghton Mifflin, are the most recent of his ten books of poetry. He teaches at the University of North Carolina. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of David Lehman

David Lehman is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Yeshiva Boys (Scribner, 2009) and When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005). Among his nonfiction books are A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs  (Nextbook/Schocken, 2009), The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Anchor, 1999), The Perfect Murder (Michigan, 2000), and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991). He edited Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present and The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present, which appeared from Scribner in 2003 and 2008, respectively. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006), a one-volume comprehensive anthology of poems from Anne Bradstreet to the present. Lehman teaches writing and literature in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City. He initiated The Best American Poetry series in 1988 and continues as the annual anthology's general editor. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 and an Academy Award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990. His poems appeared in Smartish Pace, Issue 15 and he read in the Smartish Pace reading series in New York on Oct. 4, 2008. He lives in New York City and in Ithaca, New York.

Poems

• Comparative Fates

Biography of Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr’s poems in Smartish Pace, Issue 15, are from his tenth book, a book-length sequence titled How Beautiful The Beloved (forthcoming, Copper Canyon, 2009). This book continues the trajectory of his previous collection, Concerning the Book That is the Body of the Beloved (Copper Canyon, 2005). He teaches at the University of Virginia, where he founded its MFA in Creative Writing Program. He read in the Smartish Pace Reading Series at The Walters Art Museum in the summer of 2008. His work appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 15. (2008)

Biography of Clarinda Harriss

Clarinda Harriss chairs the Towson University English Department, works with prison writers, and directs BrickHouse Books, Inc., Maryland’s oldest continuously-publishing small press. Her poems have appeared most recently in Poetry and The Spoon River Anthology. (2000)

Poems

• I Must Admit

Biography of Richard Jones

Richard Jones is the author of seven books of poetry including The Blessing (2000), winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award, Apropos of Nothing (2006) and The Correct Spelling & Exact Meaning (2009), all from Copper Canyon. He is professor of English and director of the creative writing program at DePaul University, and editor of Poetry East. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issues 2, 10, 11 and 16. Please visit our media section to watch a video of Jones reading. (2009)

Poems

• Fishing

Biography of Campbell McGrath

Campbell McGrath has received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize and the MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.” Seven Notebooks (2008), his eighth book of poems, was recently published by Ecco Press. His Poets Q & A appears on this website and his poems appear in Smartish Pace, Issues 10 and 15. (2008)

Biography of Carol Muske-Dukes

Carol Muske-Dukes is Poet Laureate of California. Viking will publish her eighth book of poems, Twin Cities, in 2011. Sparrow (Random House, 2003) was a National Book Award finalist. Channeling Mark Twain (Random House, 2008) is the most recent of her four novels. Married to the Icepick Killer: A Poet in Hollywood (essays, Random House, 2002) and Women and Poetry: Truth, Autobiography and the Shape of the Self (reviews & essays, Michigan, 1997) were both New York Times Most Notable Books. Her recently completed Poets Q&A appears at www.smartishpace.com. [bio updated 2011]

Biography of Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks is the author of four books of poetry including, most recently, Gourd Seed (Maypop, 1993). He has also translated sixteen volumes of Jelaluddin Rumi into English, culminating in the bestselling Essential Rumi (Harper Collins, 1995) and inclusion in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (Norton, 1999). He has received the Guy Owen Poetry Prize from the Southern Poetry Review and the Pushcart Writer’s Choice Award, Small Press Category. He taught poetry and creative writing in various universities for thirty-four years. He is now Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia. (2001)

Biography of Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski has published more than forty collections of poems, including the four books that constitute her series The Archaeology of Movies and Books: Argonaut Rose (1998), The Emerald City of Las Vegas (1995), Jason the Sailor (1993), and Medea the Sorceress (1991), all published by Black Sparrow Press; and Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987 (Black Sparrow, 1988), which won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her new poems appear in Smartish Pace Issues 6 & 15. [bio updated 2008]

Biography of Alex Grant

Alex Grant is the author of Chains & Mirrors (NCWN/Harperprints, 2006), winner of the 2006 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and the 2007 Oscar Arnold Young Award (best collection by a North Carolina poet), and The White Book (Main Street Rag, 2008). He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of Joseph Harrison

Joseph Harrison is the author of Someone Else’s Name (Waywiser, 2003) and Identity Theft (Waywiser, 2008). He lives in Baltimore. His poems appear in Smartish Pace, Issues 14 and 15. [bio updated 2008]

Biography of Bro. Yao

Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover III) was co-owner of Karibu Books and is a professor at Bowie State University. His work has appeared in numerous publications including African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Obsidian III and Smartish Pace Issue 14 where his poem "City" was a Finalist for the Erskine J. Poetry Prize. He read for the Smartish Pace Issue 14 release party and the video is in our media section. [bio updated 2008]

Biography of Amber L. Cohen

Amber L. Cohen is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Maryland, where she received her MFA. She received Honorable Mention in the Academy of American Poets’ Prize in Honor of Anais Nin and was the University of Maryland Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House Writer-In-Residence. Her first published poems appeared in Smartish Pace, Issue 14. (2007)

Biography of David Kirby

David Kirby is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and literary criticism, most recently The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems (LSU, 2007)—nominated for a National Book Award—and Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa of Avila, and 17 Other Colossal Topics of Conversation (Georgia, 2007). Stephen Reichert’s interview with David Kirby appears on our website. His poems appear in Smartish Pace, Issues 4, 9, 10 and 15. (2008)

Poems

• Mrs. Budweiser

Biography of Brenda Hillman

Brenda Hillman is the author of eight poetry collections including Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005) and Practical Water (2009), both from Wesleyan University Press. She is Olivia Filippi Professor of poetry at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 16 (2009).

Biography of Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie is the author of twenty books of poetry and prose including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown, 2007), the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Young People’s Literature, and Face (poems, Hanging Loose, 2009). In collaboration with Chris Eyre he created the movie Smoke Signals (Miramax Films, 1999), which received a Christopher Award. Several of his new poems appear in Smartish Pace Issue 16 (April 1, 2009).