Writers' Colony 2009 Residents
Anne Baber—Lenexa, KS
One of my lifetime ambitions is to publish a book of poetry. I wrote my first poem at age 6, and this year, at age 71, felt it was time to get serious about that dream. I came to the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow to burnish my almost-complete poetry chapbook, Love, Too, In All Its Guises. I did that. And, spurred on by the chapbook contest through The Writer’s Digest, I wrote a poem every day the last week I was there. What a creative, yeasty time.
In my “real” life, I’m the co-founder – with Lynne Waymon, my sister – of Contacts Count. In that capacity, I write every day (newsletters, blogs, keynote scripts, magazine articles, proposals, workshop plans, etc.). We’ve published 7 books and more than 50 magazine articles. (See ContactsCount.com). I have a master’s in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and live in Kansas City.
Rosaleen Bertolino—Fairfax, CA
Rosaleen Bertolino’s short stories have recently appeared in Tiferet, West Marin Review, Southern California Review, and the Chicago Reader, as well as online at Prick of the Spindle, fictionatwork, and Tertulia. She is currently working on a novella. Her website is www.rosaleenbertolino.com
Vanessa Blakeslee—Maitland, FL
Vanessa Blakeslee is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In 2009 she received grants and fellowships from the United Arts of Central Florida and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as well as the Another World! Fellowship from the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Cimarron Review, The Madison Review, The Georgetown
Review, The Bellingham Review, and The Wordstock Ten anthology, among others. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel. When not writing and traveling she directs Maitland Poets & Writers, a division of the Performing Arts of Maitland which serves the Central Florida literary community.
Please visit www.vanessablakeslee.com for more information.
Catherine Brown – Chicago, IL
Catherine Brown’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Alligator Juniper, Meridian, Juked, The Summerset Review, and Dogwood, A Journal of Poetry and Prose. Her story “Neighbors” won an honorable mention in The Potomac Review’s fiction contest, and was included in Press 53’s 2009 Fiction Open Anthology. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She lives and works in Chicago, where Labrador Retrievers give her the strength to face another day.
Joe Cangelosi – Conway, AR
Dr. Joe Cangelosi is the Associate Dean and Professor of Marketing in the College of Business at the University of Central Arkansas. He has published 33 refereed journal articles and 31 refereed proceedings. His main areas of research interest are in health care management and marketing, and data quality and analysis. As a resident at the Writers' Colony in May 2006 and May 2007, he produced manuscripts entitled "Who is Making Lifestyle Changes Due to Preventive Health Care Information? A Demographic Analysis," published by Health Marketing Quarterly (vol. 26, issue 2, 2009), and has a working paper, "Which Preventive Health Care Information Sources are Most Important? A Demographic Study," which is almost ready for re-submission to a health care marketing or management journal.
From his 2008 residency, Cangelosi produced *Demographic Correlates of Preventive Health Care Lifestyles and Attitudes: A Demographic Study,* which was published in the International Journal of Business Disciplines (vol. 20, no. 1, 2009). During his 2009 residency he produced 2 working papers: *Face-to-Face Sources of Preventive Health Care Information,* and *Preventive Health Care Delivery Systems: A Demographic Analysis.* Both papers will be submitted to health care marketing or management journals during 2009-2010. Joe is an active marketing research consultant in the central Arkansas area completing projects for the states of Louisiana and Arkansas, as well as numerous private companies, and is working on computer-based exercise supplements for a Marketing Research Textbook, Marketing Research Essentials, by Joe Hair, et. al.
Darren Chase—New York City, NY
Darren Chase lives in New York City, where he toils happily as a writer, opera singer and English teacher. He is hard at work on an anecdotal memoir, Inside Schools: A Teacher's Journal, which chronicles his experience of teaching lower level learners in the public school system for the past seven years. He is also writing Rain, a novel for young adults. This year he has sung the roles of Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Alfredo in La Traviata, Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore, and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. His first CD, "C'est l'extase", which includes the early works of Claude Debussy, will be released next fall.
Audrey Ferber—San Francisco, CA
Audrey received an MFA in writing from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Since receiving her MFA Audrey has supervised MFA students as a Major Project instructor at the University of San Francisco and taught writing and literature at the University of California Berkeley Extension in San Francisco. Her short stories have been anthologized and have appeared online in Literary Mama. She has written book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. Most recently her personal essays have appeared in Traveler’s Tales for Women and FRONTIERS: A Journal of Women Studies. She is at work on SIMPLE SISTERS, a novel set in a Shaker community in New Lebanon NY in the 1870’s and HIPS DON’T LIE: What I Learned in Twelve Months of Dance Lessons. Audrey also facilitates book groups.
Andrew Gerle--Long Island City, NY
Composer, playwright and pianist Andrew Gerle is a three-time recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award for musical theater writing, administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for THE TUTOR (book and lyrics by Maryrose Wood). With lyricist Eddie Sugarman, he won a 2006 Jonathan Larson Award for their show, MEET JOHN DOE, which received seven Helen Hayes nominations for its world premiere at the Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. He has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Artists' Colony and a writer-in-residence at the Sundance Theater Institute at Ucross and the Eugene O'Neill Music Theatre Conference. As a musical director, he has worked on dozens of Off-Broadway, regional and touring productions.
He has served as musical director and accompanist for such distinguished artists as Kitty Carlisle Hart, John Raitt, Jennifer Holliday, Leslie Uggams, Liz Callaway, Mary Testa and Michael Rupert. As a classical pianist, he has appeared as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony, the Yale Symphony, the National Symphony, and on programs for National Public Radio and Television. He recently performed the role of Manny in the first New York-area revival of Terrence McNally's play, Master Class, at the Papermill Playhouse, and was most recently seen at the Cape Playhouse in Two Pianos, Four Hands. His CD with vocalist Christa Justus, Throw It To the Wind: the songs of Maltby & Shire, will be coming out this fall, along with his first songbook. Please visit www.andrewgerle.com.
Kelly Hayes-Raitt—Santa Monica, CA
To put a human face on U.S. policies, Kelly Hayes-Raitt visited pre- and post-invasion Iraq, helped Palestinian schoolchildren through dicey checkpoints in the West Bank, interviewed survivors of the brutal massacre at the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, went behind bars in the Philippines to interview a pastor imprisoned for his human rights activism and into bars to interview underage Filipinas purchased for a night to pleasure foreign men, and accompanied Iraqi refugees in Damascus through UN-sponsored food giveaways. She blogs at www.PeacePATHFoundation.org. To finance writing her book, she crisscrosses America (5 times in 15 months!), housesitting and living out of her car while she rents out her own Santa Monica home to vacationers. Portions of her book have been awarded two residential fellowships and several literary awards. She blogs about her the process of writing and her adventures on the road at www.ScribblersPath.com.
Betty Craker Henderson--Monett, MO
Drawing on a lifetime of personal Ozark experience, Betty writes short stories, novels and non-fiction. Prior to a successful free-lance career, she was a librarian and news editor. Today she struggles to find time to write in addition to dealing with elderly in-laws, numerous grandchildren and the love of her life. However, she continues to persevere by short stints on the computer and regularly running away from home to annual retreats at Dairy Hollow. Last year’s project, Junkyard Bones, a juvenile mystery, is at this time under an agency’s scrutiny. An adult non-fiction, From Trash to Treasure: the Evolution of an Ozark Junkyard, is also being marketed. Currently, Betty is working hard on a new juvenile novel, For the Love of Pete, which she hopes to wrap up in the near future.
Richard Jespers--Lubbock, TX
Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Richard Jespers holds a graduate degree in English from Texas Tech University and taught for many years. He has published stories in Colere, FRiGG, Boulevard (a 2008 Pushcart Prize nominee), Blackbird (included in Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2008, a print anthology), Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly. He resides in Lubbock, Texas.
Gayle Keiser—Tecumseh, Michigan
Following her first retreat to Dairy Hollow in October 2007, Gayle left her position as Executive Director of a non-profit organization, The Illinois Stewardship Alliance, to work on her novel full time. After completing the novel entitled Impeccable, based on a true story, she returned to Dairy Hollow in October 2009 to begin work on a sequel novel. Subsequently she moved from Galesburg, Illinois to Tecumseh, Michigan where she continues to work on her writing full-time. Gayle wrote Impeccable to put a human face on the complex issue of immigration. She holds graduate degrees in political science from University of Missouri and University of Oregon. In addition to writing creative non-fiction, Gayle is a freelance writer for Illinois Issues magazine and a features writer for The Zephyr, a weekly newspaper in Galesburg, the birthplace and boyhood home of Carl Sandburg.
Claire Koshar—Montverde, FL
With an Education degree and many years at her dog training school, Claire combined her love for teaching with her love for dogs. Her book, A Guide to Dog Sports: From Beginners to Winners, was named among the 10 Best New Books by the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. She is working on Best Ever Bobby, a children’s puppy training book and Skillet Sketches, perceptions of her beloved Florida.
Helen Krieger—New Orleans, LA
Helen has been a prolific writer for the past decade, working in journalism, fiction and screenwriting. She received her BA in psychology from the University of Dallas, then moved to Boston, where she worked as a journalist for The MetroWest Daily News and The Jamaica Plain Gazette for a year before once again being tempted by the South. She moved to New Orleans and co-founded a local paper, The Bywater Marigny Current, which she ran for several years before turning it over to her partner so she could concentrate on writing fiction.
She began writing a series of award-winning stories, then adapted them into a screenplay, Flood Streets, which just finished production and is going into post this month. It follows a group of creative malcontents as they struggle to rebuild their lives a year after Hurricane Katrina. Her fiction has appeared in such magazines as Janushead, and All Things Girl. She’s been a finalist for Scriptapalooza, and she’s served as a Fellow at The Writers Colony, winning the Eureka! Short Stories Award. She’s also received several grants to pursue writing including a Cultural Economy Grant to study novel writing at the Algonkian Writer’s Conference in San Francisco. Inspired by writers like Bukowski, Raymond Carver, and Jonathan Ames, Helen continues writing short stories and is at work on a novel.
Pat Laster--Benton, AR
Pat Laster writes a weekly column for the Amity (AR) Standard and is a contributing editor for Calliope: A Writer’s Workshop by Mail, based in Tucson, AZ. She is a founding member of the Central AR Writers (prose) and has led workshops for poetry groups throughout the State of Arkansas. She wrote an entry for Arkansas Biography and three entries for Central Arkansas Library System’s online encyclopedia of Arkansas culture and history. She is currently working on a novel.
Mark Lewandowski – Terre Haute, IN
Mark earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University in 1991 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Indiana State University. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Siauliai, Lithuania, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland. His essays and stories have appeared in many journals, but most recently in The Florida Review, Cimarron Review and Mochila Review. Mark’s prose has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and listed as "Notable" in The Best American Essays (2x), The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
Brenda K. Lewis—Ravenwood, MO
A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Brenda holds graduate degrees in Slavic Languages and Literature, Soviet and East European Area Studies, and English. In her professional life, she has worked in the tour and travel industry, in journalism, and as a university administrator. She currently teaches English composition and literature at Northwest
Missouri State University in Maryville, MO, where she also serves as an associate editor for The Laurel Review, a national literary journal. Published works include translations, feature articles, news stories, editorials, personal essays, literary essays, and radio essays. She lives (much to her surprise) on a farm in northwest Missouri with her husband and six cats, where she juggles the varied responsibilities of being a farm wife, a university instructor, and a writer. About this last role she says, "My personal experience as an urbanite transplanted to rural America informs my writing, which explores the dynamic of place as a foundation of human character." In addition to Dairy Hollow, Brenda has been a resident at Ragdale, an Illinois writers' colony, and Norcroft, on the north shore of Lake Superior.
Lissa Lord—Kansas City, MO
Back in the '80s when Lissa was a grad student at the University of Michigan, information seeking and production was transformed through the power of electronic media. A computer became the required text for all students of Library Science—now known simply as The School of Information. Lissa says that using the computer for academic work introduced the direction of her career and improved the quality her life. Reading and writing text on the computer worked in favor of a lifelong struggle with dyslexia.
“The appearance of text on electronic paper, the computer monitor, opened my mind’s vision like a new pair of glasses.” The computer was the writing instrument she needed. “Surprisingly, Word became art to me.” Writing to art is the literate journey of which she is writing during her stay at Dairy Hollow. Lissa has been an academic librarian for over twenty years. Her published writings include book reviews, articles in professional journals, websites, online tutorials, a research blog http://dissertationresearch.blogspot.com and a debuting Twitter site http://twitter.com/LibraryKUEC —“just too much fun.”
Hans Montelius -– Stockholm, Sweden
Hans is a director and screenwriter. He works with features, shorts, documentaries and has made award winning commercials. His screenplay Commander in Love recently won an award for best screenplay at the UCLA Professional Program.
Prior to working with film, Hans worked in the theater, where he wrote six plays and directed a dozen more. He also founded one of the largest theaters in Sweden with 860 seats.
Dale Mulfinger – Minneapolis, MN
Dale Mulfinger, FAIA, co-founded SALA Architects as Mulfinger & Susanka Architects in 1983. SALA has received numerous awards, including MN AIA Firm of the Year and Residential Architect Rising Star. Dale received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Minnesota in 1967 where he is currently a Professor in Practice in the College of Design. His professional background includes the Architects Collaborative of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Brown Daltus of Rome, Italy.
Dale is a frequent lecturer to both laymen and scholars, with venues including many schools of architecture in the United States and at several national AIA state conventions. In the fall of 2003, he was the Fay Jones Guest Chair at the University of Arkansas. He has authored two award-winning books, The Architecture of Edwin Lundie, published by MHS Press, 1995, and The Cabin by Taunton Press, 2001. Dale’s third book, The Getaway Home, was released in September 2004, and his fourth book, Cabinology, was released in September 2008. He also regularly writes “Cabin Fever” articles for the Mpls/St.Paul magazine. Dale is currently working on a book regarding the business of residential architecture while at The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, with a fellowship from Crystal Bridges.
Jen Nipps—Ada, OK
Jen Nipps currently lives in Ada, Oklahoma. She is Publicity Director for the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation, Inc. (OWFI). Her writing has appeared in WRITERS Journal; the OWFI Report, which is the newsletter for OWFI; WritingForDollars; 4HEALTH Magazine; and on TutorialBlog.org. She is working on a book of devotions, which has been requested by AWOC Books and should be out either by Christmas or early next year.
Kim O’Donnel—Seattle, WA
Kim O'Donnel is a trained cook and journalist with 16 years of experience. Formerly with The Washington Post, Kim, who's presently based in Seattle, writes about food and the cooking life at True/Slant. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, Smithsonian.com and Culinate, where she hosts "Table Talk," a weekly cooking chat (Thursdays, 1ET). As the Duncan Eat-Write Fellow at WCDH, she's been cooking up a storm for her forthcoming cook book, "Licking Your Chops: A Meatless Guide for Meat Lovers," which will be published by Da Capo Press in Fall 2010.
Pam Pearce—Fort Smith, AR
I grew up in Oklahoma but have lived many years in Arkansas, including college at Hendrix in Conway. Most of my teaching career was at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, where I won the adjunct faculty award in 2002. Recently, I retired to become one of our family's caregivers. I've always loved books and reading, so writing stories has been a great privilege, especially my work on the MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. The setting for my fiction is around Fort Smith, a region of sharp contrasts, like its Southern and Western roots. I'm also writing and researching a linked story collection from the 1930's.
My husband and I have two grown sons. Like them, I love to explore the Ozarks, but I also love long trips west through the high plains. Besides books and writing, my perfect day would include conversation with friends, looking at art or making it, any kind of music but polka, at least two newspapers, and lots of dogs.
Liza Potvin—Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Liza Potvin was born in Moselle, France in 1958 and raised there and in Denmark, the U.S., and Canada, studying at Odense Universitetet, Université de Toulon, University of Montana, University of Calgary (B.A. 1983), Queen’s University (M.A. 1984), and McMaster University (Ph.D., 1991). Her poems and stories have appeared in Canadian journals such as Quarry Magazine (Best Story, 2000), Zygote Magazine (First Place, Fiction 2001), A Room of One’s Own, CV II, The Grist Mill, LitWit, Crash, and in anthologies like Outskirts: Women Writing from Small Places, Visions and Echoes: Patterns of Transcendence Among Canadian Women Writers, and Islands West: Stories from the Coast.
In 1993, she won the Edna Staebler Creative Nonfiction Award for White Lies (for my mother) (NeWest, 1992). Other books include The Traveller’s Hat (Raincoast, 2003) and Cougarman Percy Dewar (Trafford, 2005). Her essays have appeared in Descant, The Ohio Review, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, The Antigonish Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Feminsim and Education, Canadian Poetry, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, Canadian Literature, Atlantis, and Studies in Canadian Literature. She is a regular reviewer for Event Magazine, and teaches at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Robin Silverman—Shawnee Mission, KS
Before coming to Dairy Hollow, I rarely took time for my own writing. By "my own" I mean work that hasn't been assigned to me. I've been a writer and editor on and off since earning my Bachelor's of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1973. I took a detour from writing to get a Master's degree in Counseling and worked as a therapist for several years, but writing drew me back.
Through the years, I've dabbled in essay writing, attending several workshops at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Last year, I answered a call for entries for a book about autism. My daughter has Asperger's syndrome, and I'd been meaning to write about the joys and pitfalls of parenting her. So I wrote an essay about her work life, sent it in and got it published in Voices of Autism. I was thrilled. I resolved to write more essays. And then I didn't. So I came here to carve out time and space to work on creative nonfiction. And I'm working on a mystery I've been carrying around in my head for years. It's been wonderful. I just hope I carry the practice of writing "my own' stuff back to Kansas City when I leave.
Paula Vene Smith—Grinnell, IA
Paula Vene Smith is the author of “The Painter’s Muse,” a novel currently under contract for publication in Spanish, Russian, Italian, and Dutch, but still available to an interested U.S. publisher. Paula has short stories in North American Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and Four Quarters; her poems appear in Red Cedar Review, Flyway, and Ekphrasis, among others. Raised in a U.S. Foreign Service family, Paula lived in six countries during her first twenty years. Following her
education at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Swarthmore College, and Cornell University, she accepted a faculty position at Grinnell College, where she has enjoyed a twenty-year career as a professor and writer, including a year of living in London. Paula is married to a Grinnell physics professor and they have a son and daughter who are now 18 and 15 years old. Last year Paula was appointed as the academic dean of Grinnell College, and while new responsibilities make it hard to find time to write, she continues to work on her second novel.
Eddie Sugarman--Western Springs, IL
Eddie Sugarman is a theatre writer, producer and director living just outside of Chicago. With writer-composer Andrew Gerle, he wrote the new musical Meet John Doe, which was adapted from the classic Capra film. Meet John Doe received its World Premiere at the historic Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. for which it was nominated for 7 Helen Hayes Awards. Eddie is very proud to be Managing Director of the Jedlicka Performing Arts Center, a 250-seat professional theatre on the campus of Morton College in Cicero, IL. At The Writers’ Colony he and Andrew began work on a new musical about the people and events surrounding the Farnsworth House, a landmark piece of modern architecture designed by Mies van der Rohe in Plano, Illinois. Eddie and Andrew’s residency was made possible by a generous grant from the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, The Shen Family Foundation and the Ford’s Theatre.
Marian Szczepanski—Houston, TX
A graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, Marian Szczepanski has received awards, grants, and fellowships from Clackamas Literary Review, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, and the Houston Press Club. Her work has most recently appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Houston Woman Magazine, University of Houston’s Collegium magazine, Women’s Journal, and is forthcoming in Ozarks Mountaineer Magazine. She is currently at work on a fourth novel set in a small Ozarks town that bears a striking resemblance to Eureka Springs.
Michael Taylor—Arkadelphia, AR
A professor of mass communication at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Michael is the author of three nonfiction adventure and science books, Cave Passages, Dark Life, and Caves, as well over a hundred articles in such magazines as Sports Illustrated, Outside, Audubon, Reader's Digest and Woman's Day. He has worked as an expert adviser on documentaries produced by the PBS, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, and has written and directed his own short films. He is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas, and is currently working on a novel, a humor book, and a series of natural history articles.
Bianca Turetsky—New York Bianca Turetsky works in New York City, where for the past 8 years she has been running the studio of the acclaimed artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel. In 2007 she assisted Mr. Schnabel in France on his Academy Award nominated film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. She spent part of this past year working with him in Israel on his upcoming movie, Miral, to debut 2010 at the Cannes Film Festival.
Bianca is currently working with Poppy books (a subgroup of Little Brown) on completing her first book, a middle-grade novel about a 12 year old girl from Connecticut named Louise Lambert, who tries on a beautiful vintage dress at a mysterious sale and ends up transported back to the last time the dress was worn, onboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage.
Lonnie Whitaker—High Ridge, MO
An attorney by trade and a well published author of Ozark life and nostalgia, his stories have appeared in Missouri Life, The Ozark Mountaineer, and the Out of the Ozarks Writers Guild Journal. Lonnie is the recipient of the 2005 Starr Fellowship at the WCDH and was a third-place winner in the nationally advertised 2003 John Woods College Fiction Contest for Come Saturday Morning. In 2007 he was an editor of Hourglass Books' anthology, Peculiar Pilgrims: Stories from the Left hand of God and was a 2008 finalist for the Ball State Writing Residency. He is a member of the Ozark Writers League and Saturday Writers. He will complete his first novel, Geese to a Poor Market, which is set in the Missouri Ozarks in the 1950s, in his Fall 2009 stay at WCDH. Major parts of his novel were written while at WCDH. He says, "Dairy Hollow is a special place."
Reggie Scott Young—Lafayette, LA
Reggie Scott Young compiled and edited Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays by Ernest J. Gaines with Marcia Gaudet, and This Louisiana Thing that Drives Me: The Legacy of Ernest J. Gaines with Marcia Gaudet and Wiley Cash. He has published creative works and critical essays in Callaloo, West Side Stories, Kodon, The Christian Century, African American Review, Interdisciplinary Humanities, and
The Christian Imagination: Essays on Literature and Writing, and other publications. His non-fiction narrative, “Leaving Louisiana,” will appear in the Summer 2009 issue of The Oxford American, and his poem “Lincoln’s Beard (or, On Being Invited to Read at the Lincoln Bicentennial Celebration, Baton Rouge, LA, Feb. 8, 2009),”will appear in the Fall 2009 issue of Louisiana Literature. His recently completed novel is tentatively titled Acts of Dancing, and he is a member of the Macondo Workshop. He serves as an associate professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he directs graduate dissertations in fiction writing and literature and teaches courses in American literature, ethnic literatures, and modern fiction.
