Presenting the Clemson Literary Festival

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Presenting the Clemson Literary Festival

• March 6-8, 2008Presented by The Greenville News

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Festival Sponsors

• Presenting Sponsor The Greenville News
• Clemson University
• College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities
• English Department
• Performing Arts Department
• Brooks Center for the Performing Arts
• Strom Thurmond Institute
• Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing
• Friends of The South Carolina Review
• Childrens Literature Symposium
• City of Clemson
• The Arts Center
• Clemson University Bookstore

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Steve Almond

• Steve Almond grew up in Palo Alto, California,
  and studied at Wesleyan University and the
  University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He
  has taught creative writing at Boston College and
  Emerson College and spent seven years as a
  newspaper reporter in El Paso and Miami. His
  short stories have appeared in Zoetrope, Tin
  House, Ploughshares, Playboy, and many other
  periodicals.

Selected Works My Life in Heavy Metal
(stories) The Evil B.B. Chow (stories) Candyfreak
Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of
America (nonfiction) Which Brings Me to You
(novel with Julianna Baggott) Not That You Asked
(essays)
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Catharine Savage Brosman

• Catharine Savage Brosman was born in Colorado and
  spent most of her childhood there and in
  Trans-Pecos, Texas. She studied at Rice
  University and in France and is now a chaired
  professor emerita of French at Tulane University,
  New Orleans. Brosmans poetry and stories have
  been published widely in the U.S., England, and
  France. She has been a frequent contributor to
  Clemson Universitys literary journal, The South
  Carolina Review, beginning with the journals
  second issue in 1969.

Selected Works Essays The Shimmering Maya and
Other Essays Finding Higher Ground A Life of
Travels Poetry Watering Journeying from Canyon
de Chelly Passages Places in Mind The Muscled
Truce Range of Light
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Wayne Chapman
Festival co-organizer

• Wayne Chapman is Professor of English at Clemson
  University. He is the founding director of the
  Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing and
  executive editor of Clemson University Digital
  Press. He is also the author of a number of books
  and articles on such writers as W. B. Yeats,
  James Joyce, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, James
  Dickey, Virginia Woolf, and Leonard Woolf.
  Chapman has edited The South Carolina Review
  since 1996.

Selected Works Yeats and English Renaissance
Literature The W. B. and George Yeats Library A
Short-title Catalog An Annotated Guide to the
Writings and Papers of Leonard Woolf (with Janet
M. Manson) The Countess Cathleen Manuscript
Materials
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Kim Chinquee

• Kim Chinquee, a native of Green Bay, Wisconsin,
  teaches creative writing at Central Michigan
  University. She has a particular penchant for
  hyper-short stories known as flash fiction.
  Each flash fiction piece gives a brief glimpse
  into a seemingly ordinary event whose
  significance the reader must ponder.
• Chinquees published work includes flash fiction,
  short stories, novels, nonfiction, and poetry.
  Over two hundred of her works have been published
  in various journals, and she won the Pushcart
  Prize in 2007.

Selected Works Oh, Baby! (flash fiction
forthcoming, March 2008)
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Brock Clarke

• Brock Clarke hails from upstate New York. He
  currently directs the creative writing program at
  the University of Cincinnati, where he is the
  founding editor of the Cincinnati Review.
  Clarkes writing has earned him many awards, and
  his stories and essays have appeared in
  publications too numerous to list here. When
  previously on the English and Creative Writing
  faculty at Clemson University, he served as
  fiction editor for The South Carolina Review.

Selected Works An Arsonists Guide to Writers
Homes in New England (novel) What We Wont Do
(stories) Carrying the Torch (stories)
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Frank Day

• Professor Emeritus Frank Day was born in 1932 in
  East Parsonsfield, Maine. He taught at Clemson
  University for more than three decades and was
  Head of the English Department from 1994 to 1997.
  The author of books, articles, and essays on
  authors as diverse as Melville, Balzac, DeLillo,
  and Naipaul, Day served as an editor of Clemson
  Universitys literary journal, The South Carolina
  Review, for nearly twenty years.

Selected Works Sir William Empson An Annotated
Bibliography A Readers Guide to Arthur
Koestler Melvilles Use of The Rebellion Record
in His Poetry
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Camille Dungy

• Camille Dungy is an assistant professor in the
  creative writing program at San Francisco State
  University. She has been the recipient of various
  fellowships and awards, and her writing has
  appeared in numerous literary journals and other
  publications, including The Missouri Review, Crab
  Orchard Review, The Mid-American Review, Poetry
  Daily, Tarpaulin Sky, and at fishousepoems.org.
  Dungy is a graduate of Stanford University and
  earned her MFA degree at the University of North
  CarolinaGreensboro.

Selected Works What to Eat, What to Drink, What
to Leave for Poison (poetry)
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Dave Eggers

• Dave Eggerss first book, A Heartbreaking Work of
  Staggering Genius, earned him tremendous critical
  acclaim and commercial success and made Eggers a
  2001 Pulitzer Prize finalist. In addition to
  having authored numerous works of fiction and
  nonfiction, Eggers is the founder of McSweeneys,
  an independent publisher. He also runs a writing
  lab, called 826 Valencia, where he teaches
  writing to high school students and runs a
  publishing program in the summer.

Selected Works A Heartbreaking Work of
Staggering Genius (memoir) What Is the What The
Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (novel)
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Skip Eisiminger

• Sterling Skip Eisiminger is a seasoned writer
  as well as a professor emeritus of English and
  humanities at Clemson University. While teaching
  at Clemson, Skip earned a Ph.D. in English from
  the University of South Carolina under the
  direction of poet James Dickey. Over the past few
  years, Eisiminger has written or edited three
  monographs for Clemson University Digital Press,
  including Integration with Dignity, a book about
  Clemsons peaceful approach to desegregation in
  1963, and Felix Academicus, an anthology of
  essays and poems. Eisminger has also published
  over 25 reviews, poems, and personal essays with
  The South Carolina Review.

Selected Works Integration with Dignity
(nonfiction edited) Felix Academicus (essays)
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John Idol

• John L. Idol is a fourth-generation native of the
  Blue Ridge region whose writing focuses on the
  work of Thomas Wolfe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He
  has written or edited twelve books and penned
  dozens of articles on these two writers, in
  addition to serving terms as editor of the Thomas
  Wolfe Review and the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review.
  A professor emeritus at Clemson University, where
  he taught for over thirty years, Idol is also the
  author of award-winning novel Blue Ridge
  Heritage.

Selected Works Hawthorne and Women Engendering
and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition (edited,
with Melinda M. Ponder) Blue Ridge Heritage An
Informal History of the Family of John Nicholson
Idol (novel)
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Major Jackson

• Major Jackson is an established poet and a
  professor of English and creative writing.
  Jackson has published his poetry in the American
  Poetry Review, Boulevard, Callaloo, Post Road,
  Triquarterly, and The New Yorker, among many
  other anthologies and journals. An award-winning
  writer, his poems have attracted national
  attention. Currently, Jackson is a fellow at the
  Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard
  University as well as a professor at the
  University of Vermont.

Selected Works Hoops (poetry) Leaving Saturn
(poetry)
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Bill Koon

• A South Carolina native and a professor of
  English at Clemson University, where he teaches
  courses in American and southern literature, Bill
  Koon is the author of Hank Williams, So Lonesome,
  a biography about the life and music of the
  country music legend. Formerly head of the
  English department, Koon was a Fulbright
  Professor in southern studies to Austria and
  director of a National Endowment for the
  Humanities Institute on southern studies. Along
  with his duties at Clemson University, he writes
  a weekly column for the Greenville Journal,
  usually on southern topics.

Selected Works Hank Williams, So Lonesome
(biography) Classic Southern Humor (anthology
edited) Old Glory and the Stars and Bars
(anthology edited)
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Laurence Lieberman

• Laurence Lieberman is a professor of English at
  University of Illinois. He has published fourteen
  books of poetry and three books of criticism. His
  poems have appeared widely in numerous journals
  and anthologies. Liebermans poetry was featured
  in the spring 2006 and fall 2007 issues of The
  South Carolina Review, and the covers of those
  numbers were graced with reproductions of such
  art by Barbados painter Ras Ishi as inspired the
  poems.

Selected Works Caribs Leap Selected and New
Poems of the Caribbean (poetry) Hour of the Mango
Black Moon (poetry) Flight from the Mother Stone
(poetry) Beyond the Muse of Memory Essays on
Contemporary American Poetry (criticism)
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Karon Luddy

• Karon Luddy grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina,
  then moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, which
  has become her second hometown, and where she
  worked for over twenty-five years in sales and
  marketing. During a mid-life renaissance, Luddy
  left her corporate job to focus on writing. In
  2002, The South Carolina Review published her
  first short story, And Heres To You, Mrs.
  Robinson. In May 2005, she received her MFA in
  Creative Writing from Queens University as well
  as a book contract for her first novel. Her first
  poetry collection, Wolf Heart, was published by
  Clemson University Digital Press in 2007.

Selected Works Spelldown (novel) Wolf Heart
(poetry)
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Kevin McIlvoy

• Kevin McIlvoy is the editor-in-chief of the
  literary magazine Puerto del Sol. His teaching at
  New Mexico State University has won awards he
  also teaches in the creative writing program at
  Warren Wilson College. McIlvoy is the author of
  several novels, and his short stories have
  appeared in such literary journals as The
  Southern Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, The
  Missouri Review, and Chelsea.

Selected Works A Waltz (novel) The Fifth Station
(novel) Little Peg (novel) Hyssop (novel)
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Michelle Martin
Festival co-organizer

• Michelle Martin is an associate professor in the
  English department at Clemson University and
  Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, as
  well as a writer on various topics, her foremost
  being childrens literature and African American
  studies. In addition to her two book-length
  works, Martins scholarship has appeared in
  numerous literary journals and scholarly
  publications.

Selected Works Brown Gold Milestones of African
American Childrens Books Sexual Pedagogies Sex
Education in Britain, Australia, and America,
1879-2000 (co-edited)
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Richard Michelson

• Whether as a poet or a childrens author, Richard
  Michelson proves that talent cannot be limited by
  medium. As a poet, Michelson has won numerous
  awards and was a finalist for the Pablo Neruda
  Prize. As a childrens author, his acclaim may be
  even greater Michelson is the winner of a New
  Yorker Best Book Award and a Childrens Book
  Committee Book of the Year. He is also known for
  his collaborations with artist Leonard Baskin,
  experiences which he recounts in the forthcoming
  issue of The South Carolina Review (spring 2008).

Selected Works Battles and Lullabies
(poetry) Too Young for Yiddish (childrens) Masks
(poetry) Semblant (poetry)
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Ronald Moran

• Ronald Moran spent his youth in the Northeast but
  has lived much of his life in the South. He spent
  twenty-five years as a member of Clemson
  Universitys faculty, assuming numerous positions
  before retiring in 2000. An award-winning author,
  Moran has published nine books of poetry, and his
  poems and essays are frequently published in
  journals and magazines. He has been a regular
  contributor to The South Carolina Review ever
  since Volume 1 appeared in 1968.

Selected Works Sudden Fictions (poetry) Getting
the Body to Dance Again (poetry) Diagramming the
Clear Sky (poetry) Saying These Things
(poetry) The Blurring of Time (poetry)
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Keith Morris
Festival co-organizer

• Keith Lee Morris is a professor of creative
  writing at Clemson University. He is also the
  author of one novel (with a second in the works)
  and an anthology of short fiction. His stories
  have appeared in numerous publicationsincluding
  New Stories from the South, The Sun, Ninth
  Letter, and The New England Review, among
  othersand his work was recently recognized with
  a Eudora Welty Prize in fiction. Morris is the
  fiction editor for The South Carolina Review.

Selected Works The Greyhound God (novel) The
Best Seats in the House and Other Stories
(stories)
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Darlin Neal

• Darlin Neal is an author of both fiction and
  nonfiction in addition to her completed novel
  and collection of short stories, she is currently
  at work on a memoir. Her work has been published
  in many literary journals, and her short story
  collection, Rattlesnakes and the Moon, was
  selected as a finalist for the G. S. Sharat
  Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. Neal, who is a
  lecturer in the creative writing and literature
  program at Clemson University, has been equally
  successful as an educator. To date, her students
  have gone on to win OHenry and Mary McCarthy
  awards. Recently, she edited a special online
  issue of The Mississippi Review.

Selected Works Rattlesnakes and the Moon
(stories)
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Ron Rash

• Raised in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, Ron
  Rash currently holds the John Parris Chair in
  Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina
  University. Rash is the author of novels, poetry
  collections, and short story collections. He has
  been the recipient of numerous awards, including
  the O. Henry Prize, the Appalachian Book of the
  Year Award, the Southern Book Award, and the Sir
  Walter Raleigh award.

Selected Works One Foot in Eden (novel) Saints
at the River (novel) The World Made Straight
(novel) Eureka Mill (poetry) Among the Believers
(poetry) Chemistry and Other Stories (stories)
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Tom Rash

• Tom Rash is the Basic Skills Coordinator at
  Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.
  Over the years, he has written a variety of
  literary essays and book reviews, and he has
  worked as a professional proofreader. Presently,
  he is working on a documentary film, with Steve
  Agnew, on the influence and reputation of Thomas
  Wolfes famous first novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
  The film is entitled Look Homeward, Angel A
  Buried Classic. He is also leading a campaign to
  save the cabin Wolfe lived in during his last
  visit to Asheville.

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Vivian Shipley

• Vivian Shipley is the editor of the Connecticut
  Review at Southern Connecticut State University.
  She is the Connecticut State University
  Distinguished Professor. She is also the author
  of five chapbooks and seven books of poetry.
  Shipley is the recipient of numerous awards and
  has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize.

Selected Works Hardboot Poems New and Old
(poetry) All of Your Messages Have Been Erased
(poetry forthcoming) When There Is No Shore
(poetry) Gleanings Old Poems, New Poems (poetry)
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Elizabeth Stansell

• Elizabeth Stansell grew up in the Southeast and
  has resided in the Upstate of South Carolina for
  the last ten years. She received her masters
  degree in English from Clemson University, where
  she currently teaches full-time. At Clemson,
  Stansell won the 2005-06 Shilstone Memorial Award
  for outstanding masters thesis with her work
  entitled Saintly Virgins, Demon Lovers, and
  Ideal Mothers Representations of Women in
  Neo-Victorian Fiction. During her graduate
  studies, Stansell visited the Ted Hughes papers
  at Emory University, which resulted in an
  essayTed Hughes and the Evolution of
  Skylarkssubsequently published in the Spring
  2006 issue of The South Carolina Review. Her
  continued interest in Ted Hughes has led to a
  study of the collaboration between Hughes and
  artist Leonard Baskin, as well as between Baskin
  and Richard Michelson.

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Mark Winchell

• Mark Royden Winchell has taught at Clemson
  University since 1985 and currently directs
  Clemsons program in the Great Works of Western
  Civilization. His writing includes several
  award-winning biographies and books of criticism,
  among other works. Over the past quarter-century,
  Winchell has published over 120 essays and
  reviews in periodicals of all types. He has also
  edited twelve issues of the South Carolina Review
  and served as the journals long-time book-review
  editor.

Selected Works Talmadge A Political Legacy, A
Politicians Life (biography with Herman E.
Talmadge) Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern
Criticism (criticism) Reinventing the South
(essays) The Cause of Us All Cultural Politics
and the American South (nonfiction forthcoming)