CROSSHATXH. THE POETRY SERIES DEFYING ALL STYLISTIC BOUNDARIES TO CONVERGE AT EXCELLENCE.

May 6th: Mark Kraushaar, Darlin Nikki, and Lisa Kundrat!

2009-06-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Mark Kraushaar has been been widely published and anthologized with new work in the Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Alaska Review, Gettysburg Review, as well as Best American Poetry, and the web site Poetry Daily. He has been featured in the Missouri Review as well as Michigan Quarterly and has been a recipient of Poetry Northwest’s Richard Hugo Award. A full length collection, Falling Brick Kills Local Man, in earlier editions a finalist for the May Swenson Prize, the Walt Whitman Award, and the Juniper Prize was published by University of Wisconsin Press, as winner of the 2009 Felix Pollak Prize. He has been the recipient of two Wisconsin Arts Boards grants and most recently a Wisconsin Arts Board fellowship.

“Darlin” Nikki Janzen is a poet, artist, and mentor. Described by many as the Janis Joplin of Spoken word, she teaches creative writing as therapy that also bridges gaps between cultures. She has won various poetry Slam titles, including Haiku Slam Champion in 2008, and Milwaukee’s Grand Slam Champion in 2011 & 2007. She has competed on four Milwaukee Slam teams, performs in a variety of shows, facilitates writing workshops, and teaches 8th grade. She has published two chapbooks, has been published in multiple magazines and anthologies, and her poetry CD, Unstitch the Sun, is now available.

Lisa Kundrat has lived in Minnesota, Montana, Washington, Ecuador and Wisconsin in the last 9 years with traveling in between. She now lives near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. After vagabonding around, she's trying a new experiment called staying and thinks she found a good place for it. LK received her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She currently works at Thomson Reuters as a blog writer, and she is also a freelance editor for the Veterans Book Project.

April 21st: For National Poetry Month, we're joined by Marilyn Taylor, Christine Holm, and J.L. Conrad!

2009-06-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

Marilyn L. Taylor, former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin (2009 and 2010) and the city of Milwaukee (2004 and 2005), taught poetry and poetics for fifteen years at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has facilitated poetry workshops, readings and presentations throughout the state and many venues across the country, from Connecticut to California. She has recently been appointed to the advisory board of the Low-Residency MFA Program at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. Marilyn is the author of six collections of poetry, the most recent of which, titled Going Wrong, was published by Parallel Press in 2009. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The American Scholar, Poetry, Measure, The Able Muse, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and in a new anthology titled Filled with Breath: 30 Sonnets by 30 Women Poets. She was awarded first place in contests sponsored by The Atlanta Review, Dogwood, Passager, The Ledge, and the GSU Review poetry journals. She is currently a Contributing Editor for THE WRITER magazine, where her articles on craft appear bi-monthly.J.L. Conrad’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets (SUNY Press, 2010), H_NGM_N, Pleiades, Columbia, Third Coast, Beloit Poetry Journal, Mid-American Review, The Cream City Review and Forklift, Ohio, among others. She is the author of A Cartography of Birds (Louisiana State University Press, 2002) and a chapbook, Species of Light (bellywater press, 2004). Conrad earned her MFA in creative writing from American University and is currently working toward her PhD in Literary Studies at UW-Madison.

Christine Holm is a Wisconsin native; she has lived, studied, and worked in Madison since 2002. She took her first creative writing course in 2008 on a dare and mostly lies in her poems. She currently works determining Supplemental Security Income benefit eligibility for community members, and will be attending an MFA program in the fall. She participates in a poetry workshop at Oakhill Corrections through the Writers in Prison Project.

March 17th: "No Poet is an Island: United in Marriage, in Work, & in Sentence" with C.E. Perry & Rita Mae Reese, Sarah Busse & Wendy Vardaman, & the poetry of participants from the Writers in Prisons Project

2009-06-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

C. E. Perry graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1992 and Dartmouth Medical School in 1999. She has worked as a waitress, construction worker and nursing assistant as well as a poetry instructor, and a physician for the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Her work has been published in Southeast Review, Harpur Palate, Margie, Pool, and Ploughshares. Sarabande Books published her first book of poetry, Night Work, in 2009. She is a family medicine physician in Madison, Wisconsin where she lives an a 107 year old house with her family.

Rita Mae Reese grew up in West Virginia and moved to Tallahassee when she was twenty years old to work for a lesbian publisher. She lived in Tallahassee for 13 years and received a B.A. in American Studies and an M.A. in poetry at Florida State University. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Wallace Stegner fellow in fiction, a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry, The Alphabet Conspiracy, was released in February 2011 from Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press.

Wendy Vardaman lives in Madison, Wisconsin and is the author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press 2009). She works for The Young Shakespeare Players (a children’s theater company), co-edits Verse Wisconsin, has three children, and does not own a car. In addition to poetry, she writes essays and interviews, which have appeared in Poetry Daily, Women’s Review of Books, and on Poets.org.

Sarah Busse is a poet and a co-editor of Verse Wisconsin, and the coordinator of her local school’s bake sales. She’s the author of Quiver (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009) and Given These Magics (Finishing Line Press, 2010). A third chapbook, Gauguin in California, is forthcoming from Desperado Press. She has been featured at Verse Daily and Your Daily Poem. She lives in Madison with her husband and two children, where she searches for a good recipe for pear pie and the missing game pieces for Chutes and Ladders. Her most recent hobby is shouting herself hoarse down at the Capitol.

Writers in Prisons Project Participants are from a wide variety of backgrounds with a wide variety of skills and accolades to their names. They share a writing workshop, a love for poetry and performance, and a dedication to each other’s growth as artists. Their work will be read, with pseudonyms, by poets on the “outside.”

February 24th: Margaret Benbow, Steel Wagstaff, and Marne Bruckner and Anne Sexton!

2009-06-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

Margaret Benbow's poems have been published in numerous magazines such as Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, The Antioch Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Triquarterly; and in several anthologies, including The Journey Home, Wisconsin Poetry, Love Over Sixty: An Anthology of Women's Poems and in a new anthology published by Fearless Books. Benbow's collection Stalking Joy won the Walt McDonald First Book award in 1997 and was published by Texas Tech University Press. She has now completed a second collection, and is wavering between the titles Evil Twin and Vampire Meets Maiden. Benbow also writes short stories, which have appeared in magazines such as Zoetrope: All-Story, Rosebud, The Georgia Review, and The Antioch Review. She was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Board Grant in 2003 for fiction, and received the 2005 Best Short Story award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers. In 2008 her short story collection Boy Into Panther was a finalist in the Iowa Short Fiction Award contest.

Marne Bruckner is a 19 year old poet and spoken word artist who grew up in Washington Heights, New York City. She writes the stories of her neighborhood as an inner-city child, her journey and the intriguing journeys of others. She has been writing poetry since the age of eight, and began her spoken word career at the age of 15 when she made the 2007 Urban Word slam team. Her slam team competed at Brave New Voices, teen poetry nationals in California, placing 3rd on final stage out of 40 teams. Since 2007, Marne has placed 3rd in the Knicks Poetry Slam winning scholarship money and prizes. At 17 she wrote her one woman show entitled “The Insides Ain’t Pink Enough” and performed it in collaboration with Dance Theatre Workshop, in NYC. She is the proud recipient of a First Wave scholarship to the Univeristy of Wisconsin for her poetry, and was a part of the 2010 UW-Madison CUPSI team, which took the 1st place championship in Boston. Marne has performed in and around all of the greater New York City area with features and gigs at the The Nuyorican Poets Café, The Bowery, Winter Gardens with Cocoa Rosie, Queen Godis’ Video Release, BAM, The Point, Hammerstein Ballroom, The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty D. Shabazz Memorial Educational Center, Contacting the World Theatre in Manchester England and much more. Her work is published in Connect. Politic. Ditto Urban Word NYC Publications and she hopes to continue to publish and put her work out in the air for the entire world to inhale.

Steel Wagstaff is a graduate student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studies 20th Century American poetry and environmental criticism. For the past few years he has co-curated the FELIX reading series, which seeks to highlight the work of writers who have a close connection to small and independent presses. He is from Boise, Idaho.

Anne Sexton is the author of eight collections of poetry, culminating in The Awful Rowing Towards God. Soon after her first poetry workshop, Sexton’s work found homes in some of the country’s most prestigious publications. A Pulitzer Prize winner, she is best known for her confessional style, themes which challenged social taboos, and her personal struggle with depression. She is also one of the most transfixing readers of the 20th century, and may, with a reappearance here, own the 21st as well.

January 20th: Ron Czerwien, Timothy Yu, Andy Gricevich, and Kelsey Van Ert

2009-06-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Ron Czerwien is the owner of Avol's, a used and out-of-print bookstore in Madison, WI. His poems have appeared in Arbor Vitae, After Hours, Hummingbird: Magazine of the Small Poem, Rosebud, Wisconsin Trails Magazine, Wisconsin Academy Review, and on-line at Moria, Nth Position, Qarrstiluni, Right Hand Pointing, and Shampoo. He also hosts the monthly "First Thursday Open Mike Poetry Readings" at Avol's.

Timothy Yu is the author of the poetry collection Journey to the West (Barrow Street), which won the Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Award from Kundiman, as well as a book of criticism: Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry Since 1965 (Stanford University Press). His work has also appeared in SHAMPOO, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Chicago Review. He is a professor of English and Asian American studies at UW-Madison.

Andy Gricevich lives in Madison, where he edits Cannot Exist magazine and (with Lewis Freedman), facilitates the ______________-Shaped Reading Series. He spent much of the last decade performing satirical cabaret songs with the Prince Myshkins and strange political theater and chamber music with the Nonsense Company. He fears we may be confusing irony with habitual insincerity, and is uncomfortably writing this in the third person.

Kelsey Van Ert (Pyro) is from St. Paul/Minneapolis Minnesota. Her artistic expertise lie in spoken word, theater, visual art, dance (breaking aka “break dance”) and music, including the piano, guitar, the cello and voice. In 2005, Kelsey became involved in the Twin cities Hip-Hop community through writing and performing Spoken Word poetry with a group of other local youth and community leaders called Teens Rock The Mic and later with The Quest for the Voice. She then became involved with Brave New Voices, competed with a team of youth poets in New York City and San Jose, and became involved with other local organizations such as Metakwe, Yo! The Movement, and the Peace Palace which use art as a medium to empower youth and their communities. In 2010, Kelsey was commissioned to perform in B-Girl Be, an annual festival of women in Hip-Hop in the twin cities, hosted by Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. Kelsey has earned a full scholarship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a part of First Wave, a four year scholarship program geared towards Hip-Hop arts and community activism. Through First Wave she has been able to travel and perform throughout the U.S as well as Mexico, Panama, and most recently the United Kingdom. Kelsey has also conducted spoken word workshops in Madison area schools and community centers.

December 9th: Bruce Dethlefsen, Cathryn Cofell and Obvious Dog (with Bill Orth) and Danez Smith

2009-06-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

Bruce Dethlefsen is the 2011-2012 Wisconsin Poet Laureate. He is the author of two chapbooks, Decent Reed, and Something Near the Dance Floor, the latter of which won the Posner Award Honorable Mention. His latest book, Breather, won an Outstanding Achievement in Poetry award from the Wisconsin Library Association. Bruce served six years as secretary of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry and hosted the Poet Tree reading series at the Montello Public Library for ten years. He lives in Westfield, Wisconsin.

Cathryn Cofell was raised with music in her home and in her heart, which is apparent in her work both on the page and off. After publishing five chapbooks of poetry (most recently Kamikaze Commotion (Parallel Press)) and garnering close to 50 awards for her work, she felt it was time to shift direction and experiment more formally with the performance of this work. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Obvious Dog that experiment has taken off as Lip. Bill Orth and Bruce Dethlefsen perform as Obvious Dog. They took their name from Wisconsin Poet Laureate Marilyn Taylor’s description of “a poem beyond resuscitation.” Bill, from Sauk City, plays guitar, bass and sings when he's not working his ridiculously busy but rewarding day job.

Danez Smith was a winner of the Urban Griot award for the Best Poet under 21, was a Slam Champ in 2007,and has represented Saint Paul, MN and Madison, WI in many national competitions. He's shared stages with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Naughty by Nature, MC Lyte, Amiri Baraka, Universes, Beau Sia, and Mayda Del Valle, is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is a Production Manager for radio station WSUM.

October 21st: Seth Abramson, Eric Disambwa, Jesslyn Roebuck, Heather Swan

2009-06-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Eric Disambwa is a writer, poet and an educator, working with both children and adults. He is also a political activist, having served as a monitor in El Salvador’s first free election after their revolution and having participated in demonstrations throughout the U.S. and in Cuba. He was one of the artists featured at Word Verse, A Ko-Thi Dance Company-sponsored event held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was also one of the artists featured at “Local Solo---a night of performance art,” part of Walker’s Point Center for the Arts presentation of cutting edge work by emerging artists. He created a spoken word piece for Walker’s Point’s show (re)Evolution, originated the character known as 'the Angel of Death' in the play M: A Collection of Mothers by Deaduri Gales and sometimes features with the Latina poet, Carmen Murguia. His poetry is both empathetic and enlightening, bringing an African-American perspective to global issues. His essay "Dear Milwaukee" can be found on the NPR website for their program State of the ReUnion. He has previously worked as a facilitator at the ALMA Center, a not-for-profit organization committed to healing families through counseling batterers remanded to them by the courts, as an educator for MPS, working with Special Education classes and is currently a returning student at UW-Milwaukee pursuing a degree in Community Education. Mr. Disambwa is a U.S. citizen born in Memphis TN and raised in the small town of Blytheville AR. He currently resides in Milwaukee.

Seth Abramson is the author of Northerners (Western Michigan University Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press, and The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009). A contributing author to The Creative Writing MFA Handbook (Continuum, 2008) and a 2008 recipient of the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from Poetry, his work has recently appeared in Best New Poets 2008 (University of Virginia Press, 2008), Poetry of the Law (University of Iowa Press, 2009), American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. Currently a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Jesslyn Roebuck has lived in Madison, Wisconsin since 2006. She grew in up the Hudson Valley of New York. She currently teaches at Operation Fresh Start, writes poetry in her spare time, and was the editor of the literary magazine, Plankton. Her work has been published in CRATE, The Chronogram, Mudfish Magazine, The White Pelican Review, and The Marquis Literary Magazine. She was the recipient of the 2008 Mudfish Magazine Poetry Prize.

Heather Swan has been a recipient of The Wisconsin Center for the Book Bookmark Award, the August Derleth Award, a Martha Meier Renk Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Finalist Award. Her poems have appeared in The Cream City Review, Iris, Mothering Magazine, The Wisconsin Poets Calendar, Basalt, Dossier Journal, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and The Comstock Review, among others. Her chapbook, The Edge of Damage (Parallel Press), was given the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Best Chapbook of 2009 Award.

November 18th: Madison's Poet Laureate, Fabu Carter Brisco, Traci Brimhall, Angela Trudell Vasquez and William Giles

2009-06-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

Fabu is the third Madison Poet Laureate and a graduate from the UW-Madison in African Languages and Literature and Afro-American Studies. She serves the Madison community as a literary artist (poet and storyteller) and educator. As a literary artist, she creates and shares poetry reflecting her life spent in Memphis, Tennessee, Nairobi, Kenya and Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, PMS (Poems, Memoirs and Stories), Southern Women's Review, Black Books Bulletin, The Wisconsin Academy Review, UMOJA magazine, Rosebud Magazine, The Madison Times, The Capital City Hues and Verse Wisconsin. She is also a monthly columnist for The Capital Times and The Capital City Hues newspapers. She has a new book, Poems, Dreams and Roses published in December 2009. The University of Nairobi will published In Our Own Tongues in 2010. Parallel Press will publish African American Life in Haiku in 2011. Her poetry most often focuses on African Americans, women and children. She recently performed original poetry about Mary Lou Williams at the Overture on May 2nd to a sold-out performance.

Traci Brimhall is the author of Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, FIELD, Indiana Review, and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a former Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her work has also received Pushcart Prize nominations, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize.

Angie Trudell Vasquez is a Latina activist poet from Des Moines, IA by way of Seattle, WA where she lived for many years. In Seattle she was a member of the literary group, Los Nortenos, and helped produce many literary art shows. She was a featured reader at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s Music & Arts Festival in 2003. Her work has appeared in print and on stage in the Pacific Northwest and in the Midwest. Most recently, she was the featured poet in the play, The Latina Monologues, which debuted in March 2009 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was reprised in October 2009. Several of her poems were selected for the play, and a portion of the play was filmed for Milwaukee Public Television’s show Adelante and a short documentary about it can be found here. Her first book, The Force Your Face Carries, was self-published in 2005 under own label, Art Night Books. It sold out. She re-released it in 2009. It’s available at Woodland Pattern Book Center, the Riverwest Co-op & Café and from the press' website. Look for Love in War Time, her second book, to be released soon.

Hailing from the center of the Pacific Ocean, William Giles is an islander living in rising waters. He is an artist who understands the need for simple wisdoms found in cultural traditions; especially in the information renaissance that we live in today. In 2006 Will began tutelage with his second family, Youth Speaks Hawaii, as he learned to shape his words and value the breath they are spoken upon. In 2008 he was the Youth Speaks Hawaii Slam Champion, and led the 5 person team to a National Championship that summer at Brave New Voices in Washington D.C. Moving into a mentorship role, Will recently served as a Youth Speaks Hawaii Artist in Residency at several public high schools. Now a member of the First Wave Hip-Hop Theater Ensemble at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is honored to bring multicultural arts, spoken word, and hip-hop culture to the forefront of education and activism. William is excited for all opportunities to learn, heal, and share his inherited and integrated cultures with fellow travelers on the journey."

September 29th: Daniel Kunene, Angela Sorby, Jennifer Gilmour, Lord Byron

2009-06-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

Daniel Kunene was born in South Africa where he earned a B.A. degree at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and a M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He taught at UCT from 1954 to 1963 when he left South Africa and lectured briefly at the University of London, England, before coming to the United States. He taught at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1964 till 1970 when he accepted a position as Professor of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He retired in 2003. His publications include the internationally acclaimed analysis of Sesotho praise poetry entitled "Heroic Poetry of the Basotho." He has published several books of poems, including Pirates Have Become Our Kings (East African Publishing House} and A Seed Must Seem To Die. Kunene's latest book of poems, The Rock at the Corner of My Heart, was published in 2009 by Brown Turtle Press in Makanda, Illinois. His poetry has also been published in many magazines and anthologies. He participated, by invitation, at several international poetry festivals, including one in Medellin, Colombia, South America, in July 2009, and another in Granada, Nicaragua, in February 2010. Kunene's poem, "Soweto," was based on the story of a twelve-year old school girl shot by the police in South Africa and was put to music for choir and orchestra by the Dutch composer Bernard van Beurden.

Angela Sorby's most recent book, Bird Skin Coat (2009), won the Brittingham Prize, a Midwest Book Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association's Recognition of Outstanding Achievement in Poetry. She's also the author of Schoolroom Poets (2005), and Distance Learning (1998). She teaches at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

"Sorby’s disposition as a poet is to keep the truth in the picture—the rude, uncoordinated, self-destructive truth—and the skids and barrel rolls of perspective she performs with her idiomatic lyricism always keep the poem alive.”—Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me

Jennifer Wolters Gilmour has been writing for the past 19 years. She has hosted and performed at open mics and poetry readings in Milwaukee, Chicago, Iowa City, British Columbia, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Taos, New Mexico. Her poetry and short stories have been featured in Tamafyr Mountain Press, Venus Envy, and Generation X Compilation. In addition to being inspired by writing of all genres and authors, Jennifer has reverence for sharing spoken word because of the amazing people it has allowed her to meet. She believes that poetry in particular concisely captures humor, beauty, and often miraculous portraits of moments almost overlooked, much like the shutter of a camera.

Lord Byron, he of "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know" fame, will rise on the 30th from the underworld of earthy delight/debauchery and breathe new life into the cantos of Don Juan before our very eyes. Bring your rosary if you need the assurance or a kerchief if you want to mop your greedy brow, but do not, whatever you do, bring the children.

August 27th: Dasha Kelly, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Tim Kloss, and Emily Dickinson!

2009-06-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

Dasha Kelly is a nationally-respected advocate for writers and the art of spoken word. Locally, she is the founder and director of Still Waters Collective, an outreach initiative utilizing creative writing as tool to build new models of leadership and empowerment. Kelly’s brand of training and development has been widely requested and used by colleges, K-12, correctional institutions, non-profit groups, corporate teams, artists and arts organizations. In addition, Dasha works to broker professional development and performance opportunities for local artists and writers. Most recently, she was invited to work with the University of Wisconsin's First Wave Urban Arts Scholarship as National Recruitment Director. In her own craft, Dasha is an accomplished writer, a seasoned performer and engaging public speaker. She has written for magazines such as Upscale, Black Enterprise and Milwaukee; her narrative essays appear regularly online, including OnMilwaukee.com; her 2003 novel, All Fall Down, earned her a place in Written Word Magazine's "Top Ten Up-and-Coming Writers of the Midwest" list; she performed on the season six premiere of HBO presents Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam; her one-woman show "Anthems for Grown Folks" is being developed into a traveling production; and she works extensively as a keynote and motivational speaker. Dasha has recently released a collection of writings through Penmanship Books and is working on her second novel.

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of eleven books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novella Brazil (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2010) won the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest. Her poetry collection Cinema Muto (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009) was selected by David Wojahn for a Crab Orchard Open Selection Award. Her story collection The Alice Stories (University of Nebraska Press, 2007) won the Prairie Schooner Fiction Book Prize. Her first story collection The Dogeater (University of Missouri Press, 1987) won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Short Fiction. Space (Alonquin Books, 1998), her memoir about growing up near Cape Kennedy during the moon race, won the Alex Award from the American Library Association. Her novel The Museum of Happiness, set in Paris in 1929, has been reissued with a new afterword by the author by the University of Wisconsin Press as part of the Library of American Fiction. Her popular writing text Building Fiction has also been reissued in trade paperback by the UW Press. Her other poetry collections are Dog Angel (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004) and World as Dictionary (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1999). She is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chartreuse (Hollyridge Press, 2005) and Film History as Train Wreck (Center for Book Arts, 2006) which won the 2006 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize. Her individual stories and poems appear regularly in magazines in the U.S, the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Germany, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Research and Study Center at Harvard, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Wisconsin Arts Board, the Corporation of Yaddo, and James A. Michener and the Copernicus Society. In 1987, she joined the writing faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is currently the Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English and the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She was also the founding director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Wisconsin.

Tim Kloss, son of Gerald "Slight Kloss-Eyed" Kloss of the old Milwaukee Journal, is the emcee of Poet's Monday, a poetry venue in its twenty-first year. A poet since high school, Tim is also a piano student, a songwriter, aspiring composer, and filmmaker (his movies include "Robot from Space," "Dr. Jekyll's Ghost," and "Planet of the Grapes") and spends most of his time painting.

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst at the Homestead on December 10, 1830. Her quiet life was infused with a creative energy that produced almost 1800 poems and a profusion of vibrant letters. Her lively childhood and youth were filled with schooling, reading, explorations of nature, religious activities, significant friendships, and several key encounters with poetry. Her most intense writing years consumed the decade of her late 20s and early 30s; during that time she composed almost 1100 poems. She made few attempts to publish her work, choosing instead to share them privately with family and friends. In her later years Dickinson increasingly withdrew from public life. Her garden, her family (especially her brother’s family at The Evergreens) and close friends, and health concerns occupied her. With a few exceptions, her poetry remained virtually unpublished until after she died on May 15, 1886. After her death, her poems and life story were brought to the attention of the wider world through the competing efforts of family members and intimates.