WCDH Alumni
2001 Residents
Leigh Buchanan Bienen - Evanston, Illinois
A senior lecturer at Northwestern University School of Law, Leigh has been admitted to the bar in seven different states. In addition to her legal education, she holds an MA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and has resided at several writers' colonies, including Yaddo and Macdowell. She has received grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Joyce Foundation, and has had short stories honored by the O'Henry Prize (1983) and Best American Short Stories (1982).
Kathy Calhoun - New Orleans, Louisiana
Kathy holds a B.A. in Journalism from Loyola University of the South, and has taken many writing courses. She's won numerous awards for her public relations and advertisement writing, including the PRSA's Anvil in 1998. Her work has been published in the Baton Rouge Advocate, the Vieux Carre Courier, and Gambit. She is the mother of two children, and has worked as a legal secretary.
Eileen Chaves - Norman, Oklahoma
Eileen has been writing since her early teens, when she placed highly in several local and national contests for young writers. She has been an editor of the U. of O's literary magazine, The Windmill, and had work published there as well as by the National Library of Poetry and the Poetry Guild Anthology (Winter 1998-1999).
Rosemary Daniell - Savannah, Georgia
A native of Georgia, Rosemary's most recent book is Secrets of the Zona Rosa. Her other memoir titles include Confessions of a (Female) Chauvinist, Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South and Sleeping with Soldiers.
For the past 20 years she has taught Zona Rosa, ongoing creative writing workshops which she developed, in Atlanta and Savannah.
She has won two NEA grants, one in poetry and one in fiction, as well as a grant in fiction from the Georgia Council for the Arts.
Rosemary was part of the Georgia poets-in-the-schools program, and has studied with James Dickey and others.
Gretchen Ernster - New York, New York
As a child, Gretchen studied voice at the San Francisco Conservatory, mainly classical soprano opera. She later taught full-time in history and English at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California.
In her second year of teaching she started writing. In her third, she began applying to MFA programs. After her stay at WCDH, she began her second year as a student in the MFA Program at Columbia University.
Gretchen is a Hertog Fellow, and has received graduate awards for her thesis in humanities. A voice student and research assistant, she is a former teacher. One of her special interests is exploring the intersection of arts and environment.
Joe George - Buffalo, New York
A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Joe was chef and co-owner of Cafe Cosmos in Buffalo, New York, from 1993 to 1996.
He has also been a part-time culinary instructor at Erie Community College, and has written a regular cooking column for the Buffalo Spree since 1999.
His writing has been published nationally, both in print and on-line. Visit him online at Joe George. He is the father of a son, Issac George.
Richard Grayson - Davie, Florida
Richard holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, an M.A. in English from College of Staten Island, and a J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law.
He has published short stories and non-fiction essays continuously since 1975, in publications ranging from well-known newspapers (Orlando Sentinel, Philadelphia Daily News, San Jose Mercury News) to literary journals (Albany Review, White Mule, Harpoon, Southern Lights). His letters to the editor have been published by the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. His most recent book of short stories, And to Think That He Kissed Her on Lorimer Street, was published in 2006.
His book I Brake for Delmore Schwartz was selected for the National Endowment for the Arts Small Press Exhibit at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Rolling Stone described his collection of short stories, With Hitler in New York, as being "Where avant garde fiction goes when it becomes standup comedy."
A fellow of five other American writers' colonies, Richard has won numerous prizes, fellowships, and award for his work, including the National Arts Club Scholarship in Prose and three Florida Individual Artist Fellowships.
Cedric Liqueur - Catford, England
A professional stage actor for nine years, Cedric joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1994 as an associate actor. He attended King's College and the East 15 Acting School in England, and San Francisco State University in America.
His educational background and professional interests are English Literature, Classical Poetry and Drama, Shakespeare, Jacobean, Restoration/18 Century drama.
Brenda K. Lewis - Ravenwood, Missouri
A native of Kansas City and a graduate of the University of Kansas with graduate degrees in Slavic Languages and Soviet Studies, Brenda has worked academia, marketing, and journalism.
Her published works include academic translations, feature articles, news stories, and editorials. Her Random Thoughts from a Simpler Perspective is a series of weekly radio essays broadcast on the NPR affiliate out of Northwest Missouri State University at Maryville.
She presently lives on a farm in northwest Missouri, where, between being a farm wife and caring for aging parents, she writes literary fiction. She writes, "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." She has been a resident at Ragdale, an Illinois writers' colony.
Linda Mannheim - Miami, Florida
Linda is the recipient of an NEA individual fellowship, and the author of the short story "Friends of Banda," which won second prize in the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, part of the Nimrod/ Hardeman Awards. The story, set in South Africa at the time of apartheid and its aftermath, was published in the fall-winter 2000 Nimrod International Journal.
Francesca McCaffery - Malibu, California
Francesca was recently awarded a spot in Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Short Story Workshop in Belize (for more information, look at zoetrope.com), and has been asked to collaborate on a screenplay with Hollywood screenwriter Marshall Todd.
She attended New York University in Theatre, and has since worked on films on the production end. She is currently a grants-writer for a non-profit agency for homeless and at-risk children, The Children's Lifesaving Foundation; her recent achievements there include the successful writing of a $24,000 grant that allowed funding for a creative program for inner-city children.
2000 Residents
Lisa Beatman - Boston, Massachusetts
Lisa is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and works in Boston works in international education.She has traveled the world --- including the Dominican Republic, Alaska, and now, Eureka Springs. Her poems reflect this, with settings and characters, both real and imagined, from all over the globe. Their spirit and style range from playful to serious, the content from water displacement to beehive hairdos to the construction of a road. Lisa is the winner of the Lucidity 2000 Prize. Her website:
Jane Bernstein - New York, New York
Jane Bernstein's memoir, Bereft: A Sister's Story, was published by North Point Press in 2000. She is the author of one previous memoir, Loving Rachel; Departures, a novel; and the young adult novel, Seven Minutes in Heaven, which was adapted from the screenplay she co-wrote for the Warner Brothers movie of the same name. Her essays, articles, and short fiction have appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Ms, Poets & Writers, Self, Glamour, and Creative Nonfiction.
Anna Bogle
The first recipient of the Starr Fellowship.
Lisa Brown - Nevada, Missouri
Lisa, who at 13 wrote a fictitious account of a girl who rode cross-country on horseback, lived her dream in 1982. This odyssey launched both her writing career and the Ortho-Flex Saddle Company, the largest custom saddlery in the world. Lisa has written for many equestrian publications. An advocate for battered women, she has also written many articles on this subject.
Hope Norman Coulter - Little Rock, Arkansas
Hope is the author of two novels, The Errand of the Eye (August House, 1988) and Dry Bones (August House, 1990); one children's book, Uncle Chuck's Truck (Bradbury Press, 1993); and numerous shorter pieces. Her work has won several awards, including Arkansas's "Porter Fund for Literary Excellence" and the "Short Story Award" of Louisiana Life magazine.
A native of New Orleans, she grew up in Alexandria, Louisiana, graduated from Harvard University, and went to Zambia on a Rotary Fellowship. After another stint in Boston she moved to Little Rock, where she currently lives with her husband and three children. She teaches creative writing at Hendrix College, in Conway, Arkansas.
Darcie Deaville - Ontario originally, now living in Austin, Texas, by way of California
Darcie Deaville's truly smoking fiddle runs from hot bluegrass break-downs to swing to contemporary improvisation on her CD Tornado in Slo Mo, on which she also plays mandolin, octave mandolin, and guitar. Her songs, all self-written, are sung with her strong, expressive voice, in a remarkable vocal range. Winner of the Kerrville New Folk Competition, she's been a busker on the streets of Toronto and has worked as a multi-character actor / musician in a variety of theater productions, including "Always, Patsy Cline" and "Woody Guthrie's American Song." She's appeared and recorded with many other artists including Ani Di Franco.
A former battered wife, her work is notable in that she explores this kind of violence (and escaping it), while spiritedly, positively emphasizing strength, not victimization. She frequently does benefit concerts for organizations like battered women's shelters. Now moving from songwriting and music to prose, she is spending the summer taking writing courses at the University of Iowa and retreating to write.
The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow (WCDH) is a program of the Communication Arts Institute.
