Past Guest Faculty

Courtesy
Marjorie Agosín

Biography
Marjorie AgosÍn is Chilean American poet whose European relatives escaped the Holocaust. She is a human rights activist and essayist whose work speaks of memories and inner reflections of home and exile. A prolific writer, author of almost twenty books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, AgosÍn is also the winner of numerous international awards for her writings and activism including: the United Nations Leadership award, the Gabriela Mistral prize for life achievements and the International Latino Book Award among others. She is the Luella LaMer professor of Latin American studies at Wellelsey were she has taught for almost 24 years.

Courtesy
Ruth Behar

Biography
Cuban born Ruth Behar is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Her work revolutionized anthropology by its humanistic approach, achieving international recognition for compassionate stories about experiences in Spain, Mexico and Cuba. Reviewers say her narratives "tug at the heart" and reveal an artistry that allows her to "capture and share intimate stories while preserving their tellers’ dignity." Her writing crosses borders and blurs genres of biography, storytelling and testimonios. Behar’s work, including her most recent book s (2007), builds bridges from the island to the continent, bringing to life the stories of Jews in Cuba. She is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Miami. She is a member of the MacArturos collective, a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and an emeritus member of the Executive Board of the Macondo Foundation

Courtesy
The Poet Ai

Biography
In ferocious poetry often called “terrifying,” the American poet Ai rewrites history in searing monologues that explore issues of race and sex. Ai’s many awards include a National Book Award, the American Book Award, the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. A woman of Japanese, Cheyenne, Irish, Black and German ancestory, Ai was born in Albany, Texas, raised in the Southwest. She is a Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. Her books are: Dread (W. W. Norton & Co., 2003); Vice (1999); Greed (1993); Fate (1991); Sin (1986); Killing Floor (1979); and Cruelty (1973).

Courtesy
Andrei Codrescu

Biography
Romanian born Andrei Codrescu is internationally known for his satiric wit and biting political perspective. A poet, novelist and popular commentator on National Public Radio, his is a distinctive perspective on American culture. "Where I grew up, jokes were the only oppositional culture… Humor is a very deep-rooted mode of survival…." He is a poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter and editor of Exquisite Corpse, a literary online journal (www.corpse.org). His recent works include: soon to be released Jealous Witness: New Poems (2008) with a CD of Storm Songs by the New Orleans Klezmer AllStars; New Orleans, Mon Amour (2006); Wakefield (2004) and the national bestseller The Blood Countess (1996).

Website
www.codrescu.com
Dorothy Allison

Biography
Dorothy Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1949. Proclaimed "one of the finest writers of her generation" by the Boston Globe and "simply stunning" by the New York Times Book Review, Dorothy Allison makes her home in Northern California. She lives with her partner Alix Layman, and her seven-year-old son, Wolf Michael.

An award winning editor for Quest, Conditions, and Outlook — early feminist and Lesbian & Gay journals, Allison's chapbook of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me, was published with Long Haul Press in 1983. Her short story collection, Trash (1988) was published by Firebrand Books. Trash won two Lambda Literary Awards and the American Library Association Prize for Lesbian and Gay Writing. The expanded edition of Trash (2002) included the prize winning short story, "Compassion" selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003.

Website
www.dorothyallison.net
Joy Harjo

Biography
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1951. She is an enrolled member of the Muskogee Tribe. Joy Harjo graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in poetry in 1976. She then received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1978. Harjo taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Arizona State University, and the University of Colorado, the University of New Mexico, and UCLA.

Her books of poetry include: How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001 (2002), A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales (2001), The Good Luck Cat (2000), A Map to the Next World (2000), The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994), In Mad Love and War (1990), Secrets from the Center of the World (1989), She Had Some Horses (1983), What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979), The Last Song (1975).

Website
www.joyharjo.com
Luis J. Rodriguez

Biography
Luis J. Rodriguez is an American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. His work has won several awards, and he is recognized as a major figure of contemporary Chicano literature. His best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., is the recipient of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, among others, and has been the subject of controversy when included on reading lists in California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas schools due to its frank depictions of gang life.

He is also the author of Music of the Mills, It Doesn?ft Have To Be This Way: A Barrio Story, My Nature is Hunger, The Concrete River, The Republic of East L.A., Poems Across the Pavement, America is Her Name, Trochemoche, and Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times.

Rodriguez has also founded or co-founded numerous organizations, including the Ti?La Chucha Press, which publishes the work of unknown writers, Ti?La Chucha's Cafe & Centro Cultural, a San Fernando Valley cultural center, and the Chicago-based Youth Struggling for Survival, an organization for at-risk youth.

Website
www.luisjrodriguez.com
Denise Chávez

Biography
A true child of La Frontera, Denise Cha?Lvez is the author of the novels Loving Pedro Infante, Face of An Angel and a short story collection, The Last of the Menu Girls, and most recently, A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture, a memoir in food. She has also published a children?fs book, La Mujer Que Sabi?La El Idioma de Los Animales/The Woman Who Knew the Language of the Animals. The author of many plays, she considers herself a performance writer.

Cha?Lvez has a B.A. in Drama from New Mexico State University (1971), an M.F.A. in Drama from Trinity University (1974), and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico (1984).

Since its inception in 1994, Cha?Lvez has served as the Artistic Director of the Border Book Festival, a major national and regional book festival based in Las Cruces and Mesilla, New Mexico. She is also the founder of Sin Fronteras, Writers Without Borders as well as the Cultural Center of Mesilla/El Centro Cultural de Mesilla ?gC.C.M.,?h a multi-cultural arts center based in Mesilla, New Mexico. The C.C.M. is an arts resource center, literary, storytelling, workshop and performance venue and serves as the home of the annual Border Book Festival.

Website
www.borderbookfestival.org
John Phillip Santos

Biography
John Phillip Santos recently returned to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, after twenty-one years in New York. He was (and remains) a freelance filmmaker, producer, journalist and writer whose work focuses on issues of media, culture and ethnic identity. His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, among numerous other publications. A former executive producer and director of new program development for Thirteen/WNET, Santos also produced over 40 documentaries for CBS and PBS, two of them nominated for Emmy Awards.

In 1997, Santos joined the Ford Foundation as an officer in the Media, Arts and Culture Program, where he handled the Media Projects Fund and worked with new media technologies, especially as they pertain to developing countries.

Santos was the first Mexican-American Rhodes scholar to study at Oxford. He holds degrees in English Literature and Language from Oxford University and in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Notre Dame. He is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize at Notre Dame and the Oxford Prize for fiction. Santos is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Watson Institute for Inter-national Studies at Brown University. Santos' 1999 family memoir, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation (Viking / Penguin) was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2006 it was selected for the "One Book, One City" reading program in San Antonio.