Faculty Feature: Annie Dawid

 
Annie Dawid won the 2012 Flash Fiction Award from A Room of One’s Own (AROHO) foundation. She is a former professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Lewis & Clark College (1990-2006) now living in Southern Colorado’s Wet Mountain Valley. Her last book, And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories of a Family (2009), won the Litchfield Review Award for Short Fiction. Previous works include Lily in the Desert: Stories (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2001) and York Ferry: A Novel (Cane Hill Press, 1993). Her story of September 11th, “The Closer You Were, the Less You Knew,” won second prize in Glimmer Train Magazine’s Fiction Open in 2006. In 2007, she opened BloomsburyWest, a retreat for writers and artists in Silver Cliff, Colorado (www.bloomsburywest.com).

At the 15th annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference, Annie will be teaching a weekend workshop called "The Sound of Her Voice: Narrative Character."

Some recent good news for Annie:

• Her short piece, "Homeless with Dad," is a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and will be published in this year's New American Fiction Anthology.
•  Her short Essay, "Being Jewish in the Shadow of the Sangre de Cristos," will be published in the spring Jewish Currents magazine.
• Her short story excerpt, "Instinct," was published in Colorado Central's Jan/Feb issue.
• Her nonfiction piece, "Dances Sacred and Profane," will be published this year in Progenitor, the magazine of the creative writing program at Arapahoe Community College.
• Her story, "Homeless Camping Jump," was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train recent Fiction Open.

 Congratulations Annie!

Dan Mueller Reading at Bookworks this Saturday!

Daniel Mueller will be reading this Saturday, March 30th at 3:00 PM at Bookworks from his story collection NIGHTS I DREAMED OF HUBERT HUMPHREY.

Dan is teaching a weekend Flash Fiction workshop this year the at the 15th Annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference. Find out more here.

We look forward to seeing you at Bookworks Saturday!

Poetry Reading: Natalie Diaz

Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 7:00pm at CNM Main Campus, Smith Brasher Hall, room 100

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She was part of the Old Dominion Lady Monarch basketball team that made it to the NCAA Championship game in 1997. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, Diaz returned to Old Dominion and completed a double-MFA in poetry and fiction. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in May of 2012. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Black Renaissance Noire, Crab Orchard Review, and others. She is a 2012 Bread Loaf Scholar and a recipient of a Lannan Residency in Marfa, TX. She was also awarded a 2012 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2012 Narrative Prize from Narrative Magazine, and a 2012 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Artist Fellowship. Diaz currently lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, working with the last remaining speakers at Fort Mojave to teach and revitalize the Mojave language.

Participant Accomplishments: Eleni Bastea's New Book of Poems

We are thrilled to announce that former Taos Summer Writers' Conference participant, Eleni Bastea's first poetry collection, Venice without Gondolas, is scheduled to be published this summer by Finishing Line Press. The book is available for pre-order now!

Eleni Bastéa was born and raised in Greece. She studied art history at Bryn Mawr College and architecture and architectural history at the University of California at Berkeley. She teaches at the University of New Mexico.

“Eleni Bastéa's "Venice Without Gondolas" is a collection rich in sense of place, highly imagistic, and labyrinthian in its explorations of the past. The poems work beautifully as a sequence exploring family, history and mythology, often simultaneously. It begins with Marco Polo's reflections on Venice and ends with a liturgy at a contemporary kitchen table. This small book travels great distances.” — Diane Thiel, "Echolocations," Winner of the 13th Annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize

Faculty Feature: Amy Beeder

Amy Beeder is the author of Burn the Field (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2006) and Now Make An Altar (2012.) Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, The Nation and many other journals. She has taught poetry at the University of New Mexico and The Taos Summer Writers' Conference. Check out this recent review of Now Make An Altar by Cerise Press.

At the 15th annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference, Amy will be teaching a weekend poetry workshop called Exercises in the Art of Poetry. "Amy has a wonderful and relaxed demeanor coupled with being astute, knowledgeable, insightful and enthusiastic." - 2012 Workshop Attendee

Participant Accomplishments: Marge Saiser's New Book of Poems

Marge Saiser was the 2007 Leo Love Scholarship recipient for the Taos Summer Writers' Conference. Her new book, Losing the Ring in the River, is forthcoming from UNM Press.We can't wait to read it!

Marge Saiser is the author of five books, including Lost in Seward County, Beside You at the Stoplight, and Bones of a Very Fine Hand. Her honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize and several Nebraska Book Awards. In 2009 Saiser was named Distinguished Artist in Poetry by the Nebraska Arts Council. Her poems have been published in Prairie Schooner, Chattahoochee Review, Field, and other journals.

The Leo Love Scholarship for the 15th annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference is now accepting applications. Go here for details.

Emily Rapp Reading at Bookworks this Sunday!

Emily Rapp will be reading at Bookworks Sunday, March 17th at 3:00 PM from her new book The Still Point of the Turning World. 

Emily is teaching a weeklong master class called "Mapping the Memoir" at this year's conference. 

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Faculty Feature: Summer Wood

"Summer guided the workshop well and gave me great insight on how to proceed with my next draft." - 2012 Workshop Attendee

Summer Wood will be teaching a weeklong master class titled "Wrestling with the Angel: A master class in the novel" at this year's conference. Find out more about the class and how to register here.

Summer Wood is the author of two novels: Raising Wrecker, set amid the giant trees of Northern California’s magical Lost Coast, and Arroyo, placed in the fictional terrain of northern New Mexico. Raising Wrecker will be availabe soon as an audiobook from Audible and was recognized with the 2012 WILLA Award for Contemporary Fiction and was a Book-of-the-Month Club Selection and a BookBrowse Editors’ Choice. The 2007 recipient of the $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation, Wood currently serves as Executive Editor for Voices from the American Land. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Cutthroat, Western American Literature, and other places. Together with Kathy Namba she has raised three sons and three dogs. For more info visit her website at www.summerwoodwrites.com.

Emily Rapp On The Today Show

Tomorrow, Friday, March 8th, Taos Summer Writers' Conference faculty member Emily Rapp will be appearing on the Today Show to talk about her memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World. So tune in!

Emily Rapp is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir (BloomsburyUSA) and The Still Point of the Turning World (Penguin Press, March 2013). A former Fulbright scholar, she was educated at Harvard University, Trinity College-Dublin, Saint Olaf College, and the University of Texas-Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She has received awards and recognition for her work from The Atlantic Monthly, StoryQuarterly, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Jentel Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Fundacion Valparaiso, and Bucknell University, where she was the Philip Roth writer-in-residence. Her blog, http://ourlittleseal.wordpress.com, was named by TIME as one of the top 25 blogs of 2012. Her work has appeared in VOGUE, The New York Times, The Sun, Salon, Slate, the Huffington Post, TIME, Body+Soul, Bodega, Fitness, Good Housekeeping, the Los Angeles Times and other publications. She is a regular contributor for The Rumpus and Role/Reboot. She has taught writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles, the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and 24PearlStreet. She is a core faculty member in the MFA program at University of California-Riverside. This is her third year in Taos.

“Emily Rapp is an exceptional teacher. She far exceeded my very high expectations!” – 2012 Workshop Participant 

This year, at the 15th Annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference, Emily Rapp will be teaching a Memoir Master Class, for which space is limited (and quickly disappearing!) Find out more here.