Faculty

Fiction:
Steve Almond Steve Almond is the author of two story collections, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the non-fiction book Candyfreak, and the novel Which Brings Me to You, co-written with Julianna Baggott. He lives outside Boston with his wife and baby daughter Josephine, who can and will kick your ass with cuteness.
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Victoria Redel Redel is the author of two books of poetry and three books of fiction. Her latest novel The Border of Truth (Counterpoint 2007) weaves the situation of refugees and a daughter's awakening to the history and secrets of her father's survival and loss. It was a 2007 Barnes and Noble Discovery Book. Loverboy (2001, Graywolf / 2002, Harcourt), was awarded the 2001 S. Mariella Gable Novel Award and the 2002 Forward Silver Literary Fiction Prize and was chosen in 2001 as a Los Angeles Times Best Book. Loverboy was adapted for a feature film directed by Kevin Bacon in 2006. Her fiction and poetry have been widely anthologized. Redel's work has also been translated into six languages. Her most recent collection of poems, Swoon (2003, University of Chicago Press), was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award.

Redel is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College and teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia University. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Fine Arts Work Center.
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Dean Bakopoulos

Dean Bakopoulos’ first novel, Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon, was selected by the New York Times as one of 100 Notable Books of 2005 and received “Book of the Year” awards from the New York Public Library, the Council of Wisconsin Writers, the Library of Michigan, and the Friends of American Writers. The recipient of a 2006–07 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, his second novel, My American Unhappiness, is forthcoming from Harcourt. He has been an instructor and guest lecturer at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell, and other institutions, and is currently the writer-in-residence at Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

Dean is a recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction.

NonFiction:
Abigail Thomas Abigail Thomas, the daughter of renowned science writer Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell, etc.), is the mother of four children and the grandmother of twelve. Her academic education stopped when, pregnant with her oldest daughter, she was asked to leave Bryn Mawr during her first year. She’s lived most of her life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and was for a time a book editor and for another time a book agent. Then she started writing for publication. She is the author of two short story collections, Getting Over Tom and Herb's Pajamas; a novel An Actual Life; and two memoirs, Safekeeping, and A Three Dog Life. A Three Dog Life was selected by the LA Times and Washington Post as one of the best books of 2006. Her next book, Thinking About Memoir, will be published in April 2008.
Abigail Thomas lives in Woodstock, NY.
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Poetry:
Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio is a passionate poet, fiction writer, and teacher, finalist for the 2000 National Book Award, and recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. Kim has authored four collections of poetry, most recently What Is This Thing Called Love (2004, W.W. Norton), which Tony Hoagland called "a hot, dark book of the body, engrossed in the fusions and fissions of eros." Her previous three books of poetry are from BOA Editions: The Philosopher's Club, Jimmy & Rita, and Tell Me, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. A book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure, was published by Fiction Collective 2. She is also co-author, with Dorianne Laux, of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton). With Cheryl Dumesnil she co-edited Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (Warner Books). Her first novel, Little Beauties, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2005. Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. Her poetry and fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and literary journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Chick-Lit, Dick for a Day, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review, Poetry, and Threepenny Review. She currently teaches private workshops in Oakland, CA.
Visiting Writer:
Walter Kirn Walter Kirn is a contributing editor to Time and GQ and a regular reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, New York, and Esquire. He is the author of four previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, Thumbsucker, and Up in the Air. He lives in Livingston, Montana.


Agents:

Kit Ward

Christina (Kit) Ward, a literary agent in the Boston area since 1992, was previously an editor with Little, Brown and Company. As an agent, she represents a diverse list that includes such nonfiction subject areas as biography, narrative history, psychology, travel and nature writing, creative nonfiction and memoir, and a variety of practical nonfiction. Her fiction list ranges from literary fiction to mystery and suspense. Kit finds her editorial background to be a particular asset in helping writers shape and develop their work in progress. Some of her recent projects include Go With Me, by Castle Freeman, Jr., A Sudden Country, by Karen Fisher, Losing The Garden, by Laura Waterman, and the forthcoming Hiding Man: A Life of Donald Barthelme, by Tracy Daugherty.
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Peter Steinberg

Peter Steinberg began his publishing career in 1996, assisting at the renowned boutique literary agency Donadio & Olson, where he was lucky enough to cut his teeth working with writers including Mario Puzo, Chuck Palahniuk, Edward Gorey and Robert Stone. Peter then began taking on clients and sell their work and moved to JCA Literary Agency as a full agent, where his client list grew. He then worked at Regal Literary for over three years, where he inked many six-figure deals for his clients before forming The Steinberg Agency in the fall of 2007.

Peter's clients have been nominated for Edgars, Quills, The Story Prize, The Paris Review Discovery Prize and National Book Awards. Clients include Keith Donohue, author of the national bestseller The Stolen Child; Alicia Erian, author of New York Times Notable Book, Towelhead, (soon to be a major motion picture written and directed by Alan Ball and starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello and Toni Collette and to be released in August 2008 by Warner Independent); Bob Harper, fitness expert and trainer on NBC's The Biggest Loser; Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury, a finalist for the National Book Award; Mitch Cullin, author of A Slight Trick of the Mind and Tideland. He also represents Kevin Clash, the puppeteer and voice of Sesame Street's muppet Elmo; Lord Brealove Swells Whimsy, aspiring retrosexual dandy and author of The Affected Provincial's Companion Vol.1, optioned to Johnny Depp; and Lebowskifest.com's bestseller I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, the Big Lebowski and What-Have-You.

Editors:

Carol Houck Smith Carol Houck Smith is an editor at large at W.W. Norton, specializing in literary fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry. The books she publishes generally have a distinctive voice, narrative dash, and new ways of viewing the human condition. In fiction she has been editor for Andrea Barrett (winner of The National Book Award), Ron Carlson, Charles Baxter, Brady Udall, Pam Houston, Rick Bass, and Joan Silber, among others. In poetry she has published Stanley Kunitz, Gerald Stern (both winners of the National Book Award), Rita Dove,and Stephen Dunn, both awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and Maxine Kumin, along with newcomers Beth Ann Fennelly, and A. Van Jordan. She has won awards for achievement from Writers @ Work and PEN. A scholarship in Poetry has been endowed in her name at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and she has endowed a scholarship in fiction at Bread Loaf as well as a fellowship in fiction at the University of Wisconsin.
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Ladette Randolph

Ladette Randolph is interim director of University of Nebraska Press where she acquires widely in the humanities. She is the author of the short story collection This Is Not the Tropics (University of Wisconsin Press) and editor of the anthologies A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers (University of Nebraska Press) and The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers (University of Nebraska Press, Spring 2007). She recently completed her first novel, Mary Rasmussen University of Oklahoma Press). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation grant, two Nebraska Book Awards, Prairie Schooners Virginia Faulkner Award, a Pushcart prize, and she has been reprinted in Best New American Voices.
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Rick Campbell

Rick Campbell’s newest book of poems is Dixmont, from Autumn House Press. His other books are The Traveler’s Companion (Black Bay Books, 2004) and Setting The World In Order (Texas Tech 2001) which won the Walt McDonald Prize. His poems and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The Tampa Review, The Florida Review, Southern Poetry Review, Puerto Del Sol, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. Campbell has won an NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and two fellowships from the Florida Arts Council. He is the director of Anhinga Press and the Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and he teaches English at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida. He lives with his wife and daughter in Gadsden County, Florida.