Jaimee Wriston Colbert is the author of Shark Girls (2009, Livingston Press) (link has an excerpt), which earned a starred review in Booklist and was a Finalist for the USABookNews Best Books of 2010, and a Finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year; a linked stories collection, Dream Lives of Butterflies (2007, BkMk Press), which won the gold medal (first place) in the 2008 Independent Publisher Awards in the Short Stories Fiction category, and was a Finalist in the USABookNews Best Books of 2007 Awards and the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards; the novel, Climbing the God Tree (1998, Helicon Nine Editions), winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Prize, and the short stories collection Sex, Salvation, and the Automobile (1994, Zephyr), winner of the Zephyr Publishing Prize. The title story from her new collection "Things Blow Up" won the 2012 Ian MacMillan Fiction Award and was published in Hawai'i Review. Another story from her new collection won the 2008 Jane’s Stories National Short Story Award, and another was chosen for the 2009 Editors’ Fiction Prize in Isotope. The Gettysburg Review, 2012, published an excerpt from her new novella, Ghosts. Her stories have been nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize, and awarded Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, 2011; twice selected as a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the Julia Peterkin Fiction Prize, and have been published in numerous journals, including: TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Tampa Review, Connecticut Review, New Letters, Green Mountains Review, Snake Nation Review, Louisiana Literature, The Evolutionary Review, Solstice, Natural Bridge, The Paterson Review and Rosebud. Several stories have been broadcast on NPR's "Selected Shorts," and anthologized in: Ohio Short Fiction; Peculiar Pilgrims - Stories From the Left Hand of God; Water's Edge – Open to Interpretation, and Deep Waters (Outrider Press – Second Place Prize). Her stories have been presented at the Boston Fiction Festival and performed throughout Maine by PCA Great Performances. Excerpts from her fiction along with interviews can be listened to at various NPR affiliate radio station websites, and New Letters On The Air. Originally from Hawaii, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing. Her website is: www.jaimeewristoncolbert.com.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan's book All That Lies Between Us won the American Book Award in 2008. She is the Director of the Creative Writing Program / The Binghamton Center for Writers, and a Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-State University of New York. She is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ. She has published eleven books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons (Cross-Cultural Communications), Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, Italian Women in Black Dresses and her latest book, All That Lies Between Us, (all by Guernica Editions). She is co-editor with her daughter Jennifer of four anthologies: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin/Putnam) and Italian-American Writers on New Jersey (Rutgers). She is the editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The New York Times, Poetry Ireland, Connecticut Review, The Los Angeles Review, The Christian Science Monitor, LIPS, and Rattle, as well as in numerous other journals and anthologies.
Ms. Gillan has won the 2008 Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Endeavor from Binghamton University, the 2008 Sheila Motton Award, Primo Nazionale Belmoro, the First Annual John Fante and Pietro di Donato Award, the Aniello Lauri Award, the May Sarton Award, the Fearing Houghton Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Poetry, and the American Literary Translators Association Award through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has also received the New Jersey Governor’s Award for Literary Outreach and The Dare to Imagine Award from Very Special Arts.
Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. She has been interviewed and read her poems on National Public Radio’s (NPR) “All Things Considered”, “the Brian Lehrer Show”, “the Poet and the Poem”, “the Leonard Lopate Show”, as well as “in honor of National Poetry Month”, “The Charles Osgood Show” on CBS-Radio, also on Pacifica Radio, and Voice of America. She has also been featured on several PBS-TV (Public Broadcasting System) programs. Her books have been chosen as Editor’s Choice by Booklist, New York Public library Book List, and one of the American Library Association’s Outstanding Books for Lifelong Learners. Her poems are included on state and national tests in North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Texas, and Italy. She has read her poems numerous times at universities, festivals, and poetry centers throughout the USA and in Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Finland, Wales, and Ireland The Maria Mazziotti Gillan Collection of her papers is housed at the Binghamton University Libraries.
A sampling from her books and poems.
Professor Thomas Glave was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A graduate of Bowdoin College and Brown University, Glave traveled as a Fulbright Scholar to Jamaica, where he studied Jamaican historiography and Caribbean intellectual and literary traditions. While in Jamaica, he worked on issues of social justice, and helped found the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG).
Glave is author of the collection Whose Song? and Other Stories (City Lights), nominated by the American Library Association for their Best Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year award and by the Quality Paperback Book Club for their Violet Quill/Best New Gay/Lesbian Fiction Award. His collection of experimental/political essays, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent, was published in 2005 by the University of Minnesota Press and was awarded the Lambda Award in Nonfiction in 2006. His edited anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, was published by Duke University Press in 2008, and received a Lambda Literary Award in 2009. The Torturer’s Wife, also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, was published by City Lights at the end of 2008. The recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including an O. Henry Prize for fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, Glave was named a Writer on the Verge by The Village Voice in 2000. A contributing and advisory editor for Callaloo, Glave serves on the board of directors of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), and recently taught at MIT as Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. He is presently an associated faculty member of Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies (LACAS), Africana Studies, and Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture (PIC).
“Thomas Glave has the strong talent and courage to take up the right to enter the inner selves of both black and white characters in his stories. This is a creative claim beyond ‘authenticity’ determined by skin color. He also has that essential writer's ear for the way different people speak within their cultures, and what their idiom gives away of their inhibitions and affirmations.” -- Nadine Gordimer, speaking about Whose Song?
Professor, English Department
Areas of Interest
Cultural studies /Sport studies
Creative Writing (Poetry and Creative Non-Fiction)
Critical Theory
Third Wave Feminism
Environmental Studies
Current Projects
Environmentalism, Surfing, and Subcultures: From Intrinsic Value to Globalization
"You Just Don't Understand": Negotiating the Second/ Third Wave Feminist Divide in Sport Studies," forthcoming in The Scholar and the Feminist, 2006
"Women in Sport Post Title IX" to appear in the Routledge Companion to Feminism and Post feminism, ed. Sarah Gamble (Routledge, 2009)
"Ambassadors of the Last Wilderness: Surfers, Environmental Ethics, and Activism in America," in Tribal Play: Sport Subcultures and Countercultures, eds. Kevin Young and Michael Atkinson. Forthcoming in the Elsevier book series "Research in the Sociology of Sport" (2008)
Books
Natural Selection: Poems for an Environmentalist Century (Louisiana Literature Press, 2008)
The Proving Grounds: Poems
The Women's Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism
Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon
Pretty Good For a Girl: A Sports Memoir
Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women's Bodybuilding
Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism
Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic in Modern Culture
John Vernon is the author of eleven books, including the book of poems Ann, the memoir A Book of Reasons, and the novels La Salle, Lindbergh's Son, Peter Doyle, All for Love: Baby Doe and Silver Dollar, The Last Canyon, and most recently Lucky Billy. His work has appeared in Harper's, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, and many other magazines, journals, and newspapers. Two of his books have been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and he has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts grants. Professor Vernon is the 21st faculty member at Binghamton University to be named a Distinguished Professor; he teaches in the Spring semester each year.
Publisher's Synopsis of Lucky Billy
A myth-busting novel about America's most infamous and beloved outlaw, Billy the Kid, from a critically acclaimed historical novelist. According to legend, Billy the Kid killed twenty-one men, one for every year of his short life; stole from wealthy cattle barons to give to the poor; and wooed just about every senorita in the American Southwest. In Lucky Billy, John Vernon digs deeply into the historical record to find a truth more remarkable than the legend, and draws a fresh, nuanced portrait of this outlaw's dramatic and violent life.
Houghton Mifflin site for Lucky Billy; New West Books & Writers review of Lucky Billy.
For many years, Joe Weil worked as a tool maker on the night shift at National Tool and Manufacturing in Kenilworth, New Jersey. While there, he became active as a shop steward and organizer in the teamster’s union. He grew up in a working class family that encouraged learning for the beauty of learning—not for material gain. Weil always wrote, and he read hundreds of books, while grinding tool bits, and negotiating labor contracts. Increasingly, he used his organizing skills on the poetry scene, founding a magazine called Black Swan which featured work by such noteworthy writers as Robert Creeley, Jan Richman, and Pablo Medina. He also ran an “urban environmental” magazine called Anti-Lawn which mixed poems and stories with articles about the environmental catastrophe of the American suburban life style—particularly the American lawn. His activism included a traveling reading series for food pantries called ‘The Can of Corn Traveling Poets Series.” From 1989 until 2004, he was the director of poetry at the Baron Art Center in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Weil also won two certificates of recognition from the NFAAA for his teaching in the arts. Weil’s poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in Big Scream, Red Brick Review, Poet Lore, The New Renaissance, Rattle, Paterson Literary review, The Louisiana Review of Literature, National Labor Forum, the New York Times, and Lips magazine, among others. His three recent book publications are: The Plumber's Apprentice (2010 from New York Quarterly Books), What Remains (2009) and Painting the Christmas Tree (2009). He has been a five time Pushcart prize nominee, has appeared on PBS “Fooling With Words” special, and has also read on Pacifica and National Public Radio, Most importantly of all, Weil plays a fairly good piano.
Six poems by Joe E. Weil on NJPoets.com.
Pamela Gay, Associate Professor of English, teaches an undergraduate course in flash fiction (CW380). Her writing has been published in Iowa Review Web; Other Voices; Paterson Literary Review; Vestal Review; BOGG: Journal of Contemporary Writing; Neotrope: Progressive Fiction; Phoebe, Sleet Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Le Forum, & FragLit. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellowship and national e-book award for HOMECOMING, a creative narrative nonfiction collection, and she has also received grants from the New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA) for installations based on her writing.
Course website & link to Creative Arts: http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~pgay/
Liz Rosenberg is the author most recently of the novel HOME REPAIR(Avon, 2009) and she has published five collections of poetry, THE FIRE MUSIC (winner of the Agnes Starrett Prize); CHILDREN OF PARADISE, a collection of prose poems from Mammoth Press, THESE HAPPY EYES and, in 2008, both a chapbook called THE LILY POEMS from Bright Hill Press and a new full-length collection DEMON LOVE from Mammoth . Her poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review and elsewhere, as well as in numerous anthologies. She has published over twenty five children's books, from picture books for the very young (including MONSTER MAMA, winner of a Children's Choice award) to poetry anthologies for young readers (including LIGHT GATHERING POEMS, winner of the Lee Bennet Hopkins Poetry Priize) and two young adult novels. She writes a review column for The Boston Globe.
Lisa Li Shen Yun reads at diverse venues ranging from The Langston Hughes Library of New York to The National Library of Singapore. She received a NYFA Fellowship for her work Havana Suite and Other Poems, and her poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Seattle Review, Gathering of the Tribes, The Georgetown Review, The Paterson Literary Review, LIPS, The Hawaii Pacific Review, and in anthologies such as NuyorAsian Anthology, Identity Lessons, and Roots and Flowers. She also is known as a cultural critic and scholar, with her work on Asian diasporas and Black-Asian linkages.
