MFA Faculty

• M.A., English, Simmons College
• M.Phil., Drama and English, University of London
• M.F.A., Creative Writing, Bennington College

Nathalie Handal is an award-winning poet and playwright. She has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab world. She is the author of numerous books including Love and Strange Horses,winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, and an Honorable Mention at the San Francisco Book Festival and the New England Book Festival. The New York Times says it is “a book that trembles with belonging (and longing).” She is the co-editor of the landmark anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond, called a “beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. She has been involved either as a writer, director or producer in over twenty theatrical or film productions worldwide, most recently her work was produced at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Bush Theatre in London. Handal is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, a Fundación Araguaney Fellow, recipient of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature 2011, and an Honored Finalist for the Gift of Freedom Award. She has read her poetry worldwide, has been featured on PBS The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR Radio as well as The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, Mail & Guardian, The Jordan Times and Il Piccolo; and her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. She teaches and lectures nationally and internationally, most recently in Africa, at Columbia University and as Picador Guest Professor, Leipzig University, Germany. Handal writes the blog-column, The City and The Writer for Words without Borders magazine. Her new collection, Poet in Andalucía, is forthcoming Spring 2012.

Born in 1965 Mike McCormack is the author of two collections of short stories Getting it in the Head and Forensic Songs, and two novels Crowe’s Requiem and Notes from a Coma.

In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature and Getting it in the Head was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A short film, which he scripted from one of the stories in that collection, was long listed for an Academy Award in 2003. In 2006 Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award; it was recently published by SOHO Press in New York. He was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in 2007 and he has been the recipient of several bursaries from the Irish Arts Council.

He has taught in numerous schools and universities. He currently teaches on the MA in Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway and on the MFA in Creative Writing at the American College in Dublin. He was visiting professor at Willamette University, Illinois in 2001 and recently he has taught in the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin.

He currently lives with his wife in Galway.

• M.F.A., Vermont College of Fine Arts

April Ossmann has over twelve years’ experience in book publishing. She was an editor at University Press of New England from 1996 – 2000, and executive director of Alice James Books from 2000 – 2008. In 2009, she launched her consulting business, helping poets to get published. She edits book manuscripts and offers publishing advice to poets hoping to find a publisher. She is the author of Anxious Music (Four Way Books, 2007), and has published poetry in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Harvard Review and Colorado Review; and in anthologies including From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009); and is the recipient of several awards for her poetry, including a Prairie Schooner Readers’ Choice Award. She has also published essays including Thinking Like an Editor: How to Order Your Poetry Manuscript (Poets & Writers, March/April 2011), and a biography/critical study of poet Lynda Hull in American Writers Supplement XXI (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2011).She teaches private tutorials, and poetry workshops at The Writers Center in White River Junction, Vermont, using a non-traditional workshop method she developed intended to teach poets to revise their work more objectively (as an editor would). She has taught creative writing and literature courses at Lebanon College and at the University of Maine at Farmington, and speaks about editing and publishing at colleges, universities, and other venues.

• M.A., English, , Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
• Ph.D., Literature and the Environment, University of Nevada, Reno

Suzanne Roberts is a travel/nature writer, memoirist, and poet. Her books include the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (University of Nebraska Press), and the poetry books Plotting Temporality (Pecan Grove Press, 2012),Three Hours to Burn a Body: Poems on Travel (Cherry Grove Collections, 2011), Nothing to You (Pecan Grove Press, 2008), and Shameless (Cherry Grove Collections, 2007). Her essays have been anthologized in The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader (Mountaineers Press, 2011), Tahoe Blues (Bona Fide Books, 2012), and elsewhere. Her poems, stories, and essays have been published in many literary journals, such as Smartish Pace, ZYZZYVA, ISLE, Poems & Plays, Fourth River, The MacGuffin, National Geographic Traveler, Alligator Juniper, Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, and South American Explorers. Suzanne was named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic’s Traveler. She is a two-time recipient of the McMillan and Randall Reid Creative Writing Awards from the University of Nevada Reno, and she won first prize in the Fourth River International Poetry Contest. She is the recipient of the 2011 Eda Kriseova Fellowship in Prague. She currently lives in South Lake Tahoe, California.

• M.F.A., University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast

Patricia Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and one of NPR’s top five books of 2008; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection.  Her latest is Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House and both Best American Poetry 2011 and Best American Essays 2011. She is also the author of Africans In America, the companion book to the groundbreaking PBS series, the children’s book Janna and the Kings and the editor of the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. She is a 2012 fellow at both the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history.  She is a professor at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island, and is on the faculty of the new low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.