RopeWalk Writers Retreat

2009 Summer Faculty

Marianne Boruch photo by Will Dunlap Poetry	Marianne Boruch has published six books of poetry, most recently Grace, Fallen from (Wesleyan, 2008) and Poems, New and Selected (Oberlin, 2004) as well as two essay collections, In the Blue Pharmacy: Essays on Poetry and Other Transformations (Trinity, 2005) and Poetry's Old Air (Michigan, 1995). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Kenyon Review, American Poetry review, Poetry London, and The Yale Review. Her poems and prose have been included in collections such as Poets of the New Century and American Alphabets. Marianne was Guggenheim Fellow for the 2005-2006 year and has won prizes including the Pushcart, the Terence De Pres Award, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Anderson Center, Ragdale and Hall Farm, and poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has served as Artist-in-Residence at Isle Royale, our most isolated National Park. For two decades, she has taught in the graduate program at Purdue University where she received the College of Liberal Arts Excellence Award in 2007. Since 1988, she has also taught semi-regularly in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. This is her second time on the RopeWalk faculty.
Andrew Hudgins Poetry	Andrew Hudgins has published six books of poetry: Ecstatic in the Poison, Babylon in a Jar, The Glass Hammer, The Never-Ending, After the Lost War, and Saints and Stranger. His new book, Shut Up, You're Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children, will be published by The Overlook Press in 2009. He is also the author of a collection of literary essays, The Glass Anvil. Andrew's work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Southern Review. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004 and had previously held Wallace Stegner and Alfred C. Hodder fellowships. Andrew is currently on the faculty of The Ohio State University. This is his fifth visit to RopeWalk.
Erin McGraw Special Guest Reader/Lecturer	Erin McGraw's most recent novel, The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, is described as "transporting and witty" by Publishers Weekly. Her previous books include The Good Life, The Baby Tree, Lies of the Saints, and Bodies at Sea. Her work has appeared in magazines and journals including The Atlantic Monthly, The Southern Review, California Quarterly, Kenyon Review, and Story. Erin's honors and awards include the 1996 Pushcart Prize, fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Stanford University, and the National Society of Arts and Letters Career Award. Erin teaches English at The Ohio State University. This is Erin's fourth RopeWalk.
Kyoko Mori Creative Nonfiction	Kyoko Mori writes poetry and fiction as well as nonfiction. Her memoir, The Dream of Water, describes her journey to make peace with her mother's suicide. Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures, is a collection of essays about being a Japanese-American in the Midwest. She has also published the novel Stone Field, True Arrow and two novels for young adults, Shizuko's Daughter and One Bird, as well as Fallout, a collection of poetry. Kyoko teaches nonfiction at George Mason University and fiction in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. This is her first time at RopeWalk.
Ben Percy Fiction	Benjamin Percy is the author of a novel, The Wilding (forthcoming from Graywolf Press in late 2009), and two books of stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, Men's Journal, Paris Review, the Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, and Best American Short Stories. His honors include the 2008 Whiting Writers Award, the Plimpton Prize and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches in the MFA program at Iowa State University. Ben was featured in the RopeWalk Reading Series on the USI campus last year.

RopeWalk Writers Retreat
a program of the University of Southern Indiana