2019 Workshop Leaders

Keynote Speaker: Moira Smiley

Moira SmileyMoira Smiley's work can be heard on BBC TV & radio, NPR, PBS, ABC Australia's Books & Arts, in feature films, and on more than sixty albums. She performs regularly with her group, VOCO, and has toured with leading artists around the world—including tUnE-yArDs, Paul Hillier's Theater of Voices, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, KITKA, the Irish super-group Solas, grammy-winning pianist, Billy Childs, The Lomax Project, and the New World Symphony. Recent solo performances include TED, Stravinsky's Les Noces, and the London Proms Festival. In 2018, Moira released her latest solo album and choral songbook, Unzip The Horizon, and an upcoming concert at Carnegie Hall will be devoted to her work.


Workshop Leaders

Philip Baruth portraitPHILIP BARUTH is a novelist and award-winning commentator for Vermont Public Radio. His latest novel, The Brothers Boswell (Soho Press), tracing the famous friendship between James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, was selected as one of the Best Books of 2009 by The Washington Post. His novel, The X President was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of 2003. Referred to as a member of "the new generation of up-and-coming writers" by the Washington Post, Philip teaches Vermont Literature and creative writing at the University of Vermont, where he has served on the Faculty senate and is currently Associate Chair of the English Department.

Beach portraitJENSEN BEACH is the author of Swallowed by the Cold. His fiction has appeared recently in A Public Space, the Paris Review, and The New Yorker. He teaches at Johnson State College and in the MFA Program in Writing & Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Lillian-Yvonne BertramLILLIAN-YVONNE BERTRAM is the author of the poetry collections Personal Science (Tupelo Press, 2017); a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press 2016); and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), chosen by Claudia Rankine as the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award. Currently Lillian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, where she teaches in the UMass Boston MFA in Creative Writing Program. She was recently named the new director of the Chautauqua Institution Writers’ Festival.

Peter BielloPETER BIELLO is the host of All Things Considered on New Hampshire Public Radio and a writer of short stories, novels, radio journalism, book reviews, essays, and the occasional blogpost. His short fiction has appeared in Lowestoft ChronicleGargoyle, and other publications, and his story "Break and Enter" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He reviews books for Three Percent and Necessary Fiction. At NHPR, he's the host of The Bookshelf, a twice-monthly podcast that is available on iTunes. He is the founder of the Burlington Writers Workshop and co-founder of the literary journal Mud Season Review. He lives in Concord, New Hampshire.

Jim Ellefson portraitJ.C. ELLEFSON. At one time or another, J.C. Ellefson has made his living as a hired hand, a blacksmith, an apprentice Rolls Royce mechanic, and a fiddler in an old-timey band. He has taught at Shanghai International Studies University, the Universidade Dos Acores, and has published poems and short fiction in magazines throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, and Japan. Jim currently teaches writing and literature at Champlain College, where he is Poet-In-Residence, and chair of The Committee on Verbal Insurrection. His book, Foreign Tales of Exemplum and Woe, came out on Juneteenth Day, 2015. His second book, Under the Influence: Shoutin' Out to Walt came out in the fall of 2017. He and his wife, Lesley Wright, own and operate Summer's Gale Farm in Leicester, VT and direct the Champlain College Young Writers' Conference.

Geof Hewitt portraitGEOF HEWITT lives in Calais, Vermont. Vermont's slam champion, Geof has been teaching, editing, writing, performing, and passing out wolf calls for forty-five years. This makes him sound like an oracle, and he is. His latest books are Only What's Imagined (poems) and Hewitt's Guide to Slam Poetry and Poetry Slam, which comes with a DVD and won the Mom's Choice award for poetry in 2008. His collection of selected and new poems, The Perfect Heart, is due from Mayapple in the fall. (Photo credit to Jeb Wallace-Brodeur)

Brionne Janae portraitBRIONNE JANAE is a California native, poet, and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botoloph Emerging artist award a Hedgebrook and Vermont Studio Center Alumni and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry and prose have been published in The American Poetry Review, Bitch Magazine, Sixth Finch, Plume, The Nashville Review, and Waxwing among others. Brionne is the winner of the 2014 Muriel Craft Bailey Contest at the Comstock Review judged by Kwame Dawes, and the author of After Jubilee which was selected for publication by Dorianne Laux and published by Boaat Press.

Seth Jarvis portraitSETH JARVIS is a writer, director, producer, and performing artist. Several of his original plays have been produced, including The Once & Future Ubu, The Next State, Icon, The Moreau Horrors, and last fall's Transitions..., commissioned by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. He has produced and co-hosted several series over the years, including The Burlington Poetry Slams, artsProject VT, and Playmakers. Jarvis has been a teaching artist for over twenty-five years, most recently with FlynnArts, Vermont Young Playwrights, and Champlain College. He currently works at the Vermont International Film Foundation.

Clark Knowles portraitCLARK KNOWLES has been teaching fiction and creative non-fiction at the University of New Hampshire for eighteen years and holds the title of Charles S. Murkland Lecturer. He received his M.A. in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire, and his MFA in Writing from Bennington College. In 2009, the New Hampshire Arts Council awarded him an Individual fellowship, and his fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines, most recently in issues of The Collagist, Northern New England Review, Harpur Palate, Conjunctions, Bellevue Review, Limestone, Nimrod, Eclipse, and Glimmer Train Stories.

Jenny LandJENNY LAND was born in Vermont, studied Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, completed post-graduate work at the University of Oxford and the University of St. Andrews, and returned to Vermont to write and and to teach at St. Johnsbury Academy.  She publishes poetry and historical fiction.  Last year, on her sabbatical year in Britain, she won a national poetry contest to honor the queen's 90th birthday.  She lives in Peacham, Vermont with her husband and twin daughters.

Tony MagistraleTONY MAGISTRALE is the author of 20 books, most recently Dialogues Among Lost Tourists (poems) and The Shawshank Experience: Tracking the History of the World’s Favorite Movie. Currently, Tony is Professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Kerrin McCaddenKERRIN MCCADDEN is the author of Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes, winner of the Vermont Book Award and the New Issues Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation Writing Award, and her poems have appeared in such places as Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is the associate director of The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, and teaches at Montpelier High School. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

GennaRose NethercottGENNAROSE NETHERCOTT is the author of The Lumberjack’s Dove (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018), selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. Her other recent projects include A Ghost of Water (an ekphrastic collaboration with printmaker Susan Osgood) and the narrative song collection Modern Ballads. She tours nationally and internationally composing poems-to-order for strangers on a 1952 Hermes Rocket typewriter, and is one third of The Traveling Poetry Emporium, a team of poets/educators who bring poems-to-order events to museums, universities, and libraries. A Vermont native, Nethercott has lived in many cities throughout the US and Europe, but is always drawn back to the forest.

Jericho ParmsJERICHO PARMS is the author of Lost Wax (University of Georgia Press). Her essays have appeared in Fourth Genre, The Normal School, Hotel Amerika, American Literary Review, Brevity and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, noted in Best American Essays, and anthologized in Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, and Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays By Women. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches in the Professional Writing program at Champlain College.

Genevieve PlunketGENEVIEVE PLUNKET'S stories have appeared in New England Review, Willow Springs, Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, West Branch, Colorado Review, and Arts & Letters. In 2017, she was a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. Her short story, "Something for a Young Woman," was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017 and her story, "The Buried Man," appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2018. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.

Adrienne RaphelADRIENNE RAPHEL  is the author of What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017), selected by Cathy Park Hong as winner of the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize; and the chapbook But What Will We Do (Seattle Review, 2016), selected by Robyn Schiff as winner of the Seattle Review Chapbook Contest. She writes for the New Yorker online, and her work has also appeared in the Paris Review Daily, The New Republic, and Lana Turner Journal, among other publications. Born in New Jersey and raised in Vermont, Raphel graduated from Princeton and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is currently earning a PhD in English at Harvard and is working on a book about crossword puzzles.

Rasmussen portraitJOHN RASMUSSEN hails from Nebraska. The Caribbean has served as his teaching and filmmaking base for thirteen years. He is well versed in narrative, documentary, and experimental movie making. He is fond of saying "To be able to assist, instruct, and advise in the making of movies is a true gift. The Haitian Spaghetti Western is the film genre of the future."

Shuchi SaraswatSHUCHI SARASWAT's photographs and prose have appeared in Ecotone, Tin House online, Literary Hub, and Quick Fiction. She received a Gulliver Travel Research Grant and scholarships to Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Writers Omi at Ledig House, The Writers' Room of Boston, Tin House Summer Writers' Workshop, and the Breadloaf Writers' Conference. Shuchi is Curator of the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith, a reading series focused on migration, exile,  displacement,  and translation, and is one of the judges for the 2019 National Book Award in Translated Literature.

Alex SmithALEX SMITH. Born and raised in the rural Adirondack Mountains in Northern New York, folk singer Alex Smith builds songs from stories that are neither contrived nor romanticized- simply keenly observed and honestly told. Smith sings with a rich baritone often compared to Stan Rogers and Gordon Lightfoot, and his characters live and breathe a balance between beauty and imperfection. He has been touring nationwide since 2009, and was awarded an NTCMA Award for his 2013 release Hamilton County. Chris Wienk of 97.7 WEXT (Albany, NY) says: “Alex Smith brings a fresh look and sound to an old art form, presenting the folk song to the 21st Century listener with original songs that feel both old and new at the same time.”