Faculty
Fiction: Chris Abani - Chris Abani's prose includes Song For Night (Akashic, 2007), The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007), Becoming Abigail (Akashic, 2006), GraceLand (FSG, 2004), and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985). His poetry collections are Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon, 2006), Dog Woman (Red Hen, 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). He is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award & the PEN Hemingway Book Prize.
Poetry: Camille Dungy - Camille T. Dungy is the author of What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006), a finalist for the PEN Center USA 2007 Literary Award and the Library of Virginia 2007 Literary Award. Dungy has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Cave Canem, the Dana Award, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Sewanee Writer's Conference. Once the Writer-in-Residence at Rocky Mountain National Park, Dungy has also been awarded fellowships and residencies by the Norton Island/Eastern Frontier Society, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation. A graduate of Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro's MFA Program, Dungy is currently Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and print and online journals. You can find recent work on From the Fishouse, Drunken Boat, Electronic Poetry Review, and MiPoesias. She is assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006).
Hear the word: www.fishousepoems.org
Nonfiction: Shane Book - Shane Book was raised in Canada and Ghana. He was educated at the University of Western Ontario, the University of Victoria, New York University where he was a New York Times Fellow in Poetry, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Stanford University where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing.
His writing appears in numerous U.S., U.K., and Canadian literary journals, including PN Review, Volt, and Boston Review and has been collected in many American and Canadian anthologies, including Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, Revival: An Anthology of Black Writing and Breathing Fire 2. His work also appears online in audio and print format, most recently at From the Fishouse, Harp & Altar, and Poetry Mountain. He has published book reviews and feature-length non-fiction pieces in numerous newspapers and magazines and his own writing has been reviewed in publications across North America.
Shane is a fellow of the Cave Canem Workshop/Retreat for African American Poets, and has received scholarships to attend the Naropa University Summer Writing Program, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Co-founder of the literary publisher, Smoking Lung Press, his honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize, The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, a San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, the Charles Johnson Award, and a National Magazine Award.
Shane has taught film, literature, and creative writing at New York University and the University of Iowa and was Writer-in-Residence at Randolph-Macon Women’s College. He currently teaches at Stanford University and is directing and producing the documentary film Laborland.