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Poetry Pavilion Debuts at National Book Festival

Author Biographies

FRED CHAPPELL
A writer of great versatility, Fred Chappell is the author of seven novels, 15 volumes of poetry, two books of essays, and two books of short stories. His books include Midquest (LSU Press, 1989), More Shapes than One (St. Martin's 1992), and I Am One of You Forever (LSU Press, 1987). The Fred Chappell Reader was published in 1987 by St. Martin's Press. Among his many awards are the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, and the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers of the Academie Francaise. Chappell is the Burlington Industries Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Duke University.

RHINA ESPAILLAT
Rhina Espaillat is a native of the Dominican Republic but has lived in the U.S. since the age of seven. She publishes in English and Spanish and has four poetry collections in print: Lapsing to Grace (Bennett & Kitchel, 1992); Where Horizons Go (Truman State University Press, 1998), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize; Rehearsing Absence (University of Evansville Press, 2001), which won the Richard Wilbur Award; and Mundo y Palabra/The World and the Word (Oyster River Press, 2001), a bilingual chapbook. She has won the Howard Nemerov Award, the Sparrow Sonnet Prize, and prizes from the Poetry Society of America. Retired from teaching school in New York City, Espaillat lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

B.H. FAIRCHILD
B. H. Fairchild grew up working in small-town machine shops in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. His third collection of poetry, The Art of the Lathe (Alice James Books, 1998), was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the California Book Award, and others. Fairchild's latest collection, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (Norton, 2002), earned him the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches English at California State University in San Bernardino.

DANA GIOIA
Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia is an award-winning poet and critic. His third collection of poetry, Interrogations at Noon (Graywolf, 2002), won the American Book Award. Also a best-selling anthologist, Gioia's poetry, essays, translations, and criticism frequently appear in numerous publications. His many books include Daily Horoscope (1986), The Gods of Winter (1991), and Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (Graywolf, 1991; 2001). He has taught as a visiting writer at Colorado College, Johns Hopkins, Sarah Lawrence, Mercer, and Wesleyan University.

TAMI HAALAND
Tami Haaland teaches English at Montana State University-Billings. She won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize for her first book of poems, Breath in Every Room (Story Line Press, 2001). Her work has appeared in Calyx, 5AM, Petroglyph, The Florida Review, and in the anthologies Cowboy Poetry Matters and Ring of Fire: Writers of the Yellowstone Region. She received an M.F.A. from Bennington College in 2000.

X.J. KENNEDY
An award-winning poet and children's author, X. J. Kennedy served four years in the U.S. Navy as a journalist, and then attended the Sorbonne in Paris in 1955. His first collection of poetry, Nude Descending a Staircase (1961), won the Lamont Poetry Selection. His other awards include a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Los Angeles Times Book prize. He has published numerous works for children, including more than 10 collections of verse and two novels. His most recent children's book is Exploding Gravy: Poems to Make You Laugh (Little, Brown, 2002). Kennedy and his wife Dorothy have edited several textbooks, including Knock at a Star: A Child's Introduction to Poetry (Little, Brown, 1999). They live in Lexington, Massachusetts.

LI-YOUNG LEE
Born in Indonesia, of Chinese parents, the poet Li-Young Lee moved to the United States as a young boy. He has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. He is the author of Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001); The City in Which I Love You (1991), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His memoir, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), won the American Book Award. His other honors include a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He lives in Chicago, Illinois with his family.

DAVID LEHMAN
David Lehman is the author of five collections of poems, including The Evening Sun (Scribner, 2002) and The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (Scribner, 2000). His books of criticism include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library; and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991). He edited Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 65 Leading Contemporary Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems (U. of Michigan, 1996), and he is series editor of The Best American Poetry (Scribner), which he initiated in 1988. He teaches at Bennington College and the New School for Social Research.

DAVID MASON
David Mason's two collections of poetry, The Country I Remember (Story Line Press, 1996) and The Buried Houses (Story Line Press, 1991), have earned him honors such as the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize and the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. He is also a formidable critic, contributing to such journals as The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, and The New Criterion. Mason has collected his essays in The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry (Story Line Press, 2000), and co-edited the influential anthology Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (Story Line Press, 1996). Mason has been a Fulbright Writer-in-Residence in Greece, and currently teaches at Colorado College.

E. ETHELBERT MILLER
Born in New York City, the award-winning poet E. Ethelbert Miller received his B.A. from Howard University. He is director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University, a position he has held since 1974. He has published numerous poetry collections, including Whispers, Secrets, and Promises (Black Classic Press,1998) and First Light: New and Selected Poems (1994). His sixth edited collection of poetry is African American Poetry for the 21st Century (Black Classics Press, 2002). He is also the author of the memoir Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer (St. Martin's, 2000). Mr. Miller lives in the District of Columbia.

MARILYN NELSON
Marilyn Nelson's collections of poetry include The Homeplace (LSU Press, 1990), Magnificat (LSU Press, 1994), and The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997). She has also published two collections of verse for children. Her many honors include two Pushcart Prizes, two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship. Since 1978 she has taught English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

KAY RYAN
A poet of extraordinary originality, Kay Ryan's latest book of poems is Say Uncle (Grove Press, 2000). Her first collection, Flamingo Watching (Copper Beech Press, 1994), was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Ryan's poems are frequently published in places such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and The New Republic. She teaches at the College of Marin in California and serves as an advisory editor for Ruminator Review.

LARISSA SZPORLUK
Larissa Szporluk's Dark Sky Question (Beacon Press, 1998) won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and Isolato (University of Iowa Press, 2000) won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her third poetry collection, Inside the Dog-Fish, is forthcoming with Alice James Books in fall 2003. In addition to having received a 1998 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, her poems have been widely anthologized in Best American Poetry 1999, New American Voices, and Young American Poets. She teaches creative writing and women's studies at Bowling Green State University.

For more information, contact the NEA Office of Communications at 202-682-5570.

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