Conference Faculty

Guest Speakers

Billy Collins, Poetry

Billy Collins is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning and Picnic, Lightning. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York and a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College. Mr. Collins was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001-2002.

Bharati Mukherjee, Fiction

Bharati Mukherjee has taught creative writing at Columbia University, New York University and Queens College. She is currently a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. The author of several books of fiction, Ms. Mukherjee won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988 for The Middleman and Other Stories.

Frank McCourt, Memoir

Frank McCourt is the author of Angela's Ashes, for which he won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Boston Book Review's Non-Fiction Prize, the ABBY Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Mr. McCourt taught in the New York City public schools for twenty-seven years, the last seventeen of which were spent at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He is also the author of 'Tis.

Clark Blaise, Short Story

Clark Blaise is the former head of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is the author of sixteen books, most recently Time Lord: Sir Sanford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time.

Roger Rosenblatt, Literary Essay

Roger Rosenblatt is a contributing editor and writer for Time and The New Republic and he appears as a regular essayist on PBS' NewsHour. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Emmy, two George Polk Awards and the Peabody Award.

Matthew Klam, Creative Nonfiction

Matthew Klam was named one of the twenty best young fiction writers in America by The New Yorker in 1999. He's a recipient of a Robert Bingham/PEN Award, a National Endowment of the Arts, a Whiting Writer's Award, and an O Henry Award. His first book, Sam The Cat and Other Stories, was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, among others, and by Borders for their New Voices series. He has taught creative writing at St. Albans School, American University, Stockholm University in Sweden and Southampton Graduate Campus.

Melissa Bank, Fiction

Melissa Bank is the author of the best-selling The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. She was the winner of the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and has published stories in The North American Review, Zoetrope, Ascent, and Other Voices. Bank holds an MFA from Cornell University, and divides her time between New York City and Sag Harbor. She is currently working on a new novel.

Carol Muske-Dukes, Poetry

Carol Muske (Carol Muske Dukes in fiction) is a poet, novelist and essayist whose most recent publication is the collection of poetry, Sparrow, released by Random House in 2003. She is the Director of the new PhD Program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California, where she teaches English and Creative Writing. Muske Dukes, a critic for the New York Times Book Review and the LA Times Book Review, is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Castagnola award from the Poetry Society of America and several Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Los Angeles.

Christopher Durang, Playwriting

Christopher Durang's plays, The Nature and Purpose of the Universe, Titanic, A History of the American Film, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Beyond Therapy and Baby With the Bathwater, among others, have appeared both on and off Broadway. His screenplays include Beyond Therapy, The Nun Who Shot Liberty Valence, The Adventures of Lola and The House of Husbands (co-authored with Wendy Wasserstein). Durang has received numerous honors, including an Obie Award, a Guggenheim fellowship and a Tony nomination. A graduate of both Harvard and the Yale School of Drama, he currently co-chairs the playwriting program at Juilliard.

Susan Kinsolving, Poetry

Susan Kinsolving's recent book of poems, The White Eyelash was published by Grove Press in 2003 and critically acclaimed by Poetry, The Los Angeles Times, American Poet, and Talisman. Her previous book Dailies & Rushes was a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award 1999 and named in "Best Poetry of 1999." It was critically acclaimed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, The Library Journal, Vanity Fair, among others. Her books were selected and edited by the eminent poet and critic, Richard Howard.

As a guest lecturer and reader, she has presented her work at schools, clubs, and libraries in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, Switzerland, and throughout the United States. She originated a poetry reading series for The New York Public Library and pro bono, administrated it for nine years. Her first book of poems, Among Flowers was commissioned by Clarkson N. Potter at Random House.

Heather Macadam, Young Writers Workshop

Heather Dune Macadam teaches creative writing at Savannah College of Art and Design and holds her MFA from Southampton Graduate Campus. Her novel, The Weeping Buddah was a finalist for the Nero Wolf Awards and is still receving national attention. Her first book, Rena's Promise — a Story of sisters in Auschwitz, was nominated for a National Book Award and received international acclaim as it was translated into a number of languages. Ms. Macadam has been published by The New York Times, The Advocate, and Racing Home: New Stories by Award-Winning North Carolina Writers, where one reviewer remarked she writes like "an archangel with an avenging pen." You can also hear her quirky perceptions on life and teaching on NPR's-All Things Considered, where she is a "semi-regular" commentator.

Robert Reeves, Writers Conference Director

Robert Reeves is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, both published by Crown, as well as short fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Kirkus Review hailed Doubting Thomas as "a zesty, classy original," and Patricia Holt of the San Francisco Chronicle called Peeping Thomas "funny, disturbing, and brilliant." Reeves, who regularly teaches at Southampton Graduate Campus, has also taught writing at Harvard and Princeton.

Guest Speakers

Carla Caglioti

Carla Caglioti has been the "behind the scenes" administrator for the Southampton Graduate Campus Writers Conference for many years. She is also the Assistant Dean for Scheduling and Program Information at Southampton Graduate Campus of Long Island University. Caglioti, a closet scribbler, has a long-time love of the written word. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in English Literature and is interested in the influence of technology on the writing process (from the quill to the computer).

Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron is the author of two collections of essays, Crazy Salad and Scribble, Scribble. Her screenplays include Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. Ephron graduated from Wellesley College and worked as a reporter for the New York Post before beginning a career as an essayist and screenwriter. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Authors Guild, the Directors Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Annette Gordon-Reed

Annette Gordon-Reed became interested in Thomas Jefferson in elementary school after reading a children's biography of him, narrated by a fictional slave boy. At fourteen, she joined the Book-of-the-Month Club (after having concealed her status as a minor) to receive Fawn Brodie's biography, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait. She continued her study of Jefferson's life at Dartmouth College, where she majored in History, graduating in 1981. She attended Harvard Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review. Gordon-Reed is Professor of Law at New York Law School. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy and the editor of Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History.

Bruce Jay Friedman

Bruce Jay Friedman's brand of Jewish humor lies somewhere between Woody Allen's dark, paranoid musings and Henny Youngman's quick-fire one-liners. An author, screenwriter and playwright, Mr. Friedman started his career as an editor and short story writer. Friedman began writing novels in the early 1960s. He turned to the screen in 1971 with The Owl and the Pussycat, adapted from William Manhof's play. He went on to provide the story for Neil Simon's The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and to write the successful comedies Stir Crazy and Doctor Detroit. Friedman's book, The Lonely Guy's Book of Life, provided the basis for the Steve Martin vehicle, The Lonely Guy (1984). Neil Simon did the adaptation, while TV veterans Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels (of Taxi fame) wrote the screenplay. In 1984, Friedman enjoyed a major success with Splash (Friedman was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay). As an actor, Friedman has appeared in two films directed by Woody Allen: Another Woman (1988) and Husbands and Wives (1992).

Kaylie Jones

Born in Paris, Kaylie Jones received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her MFA from Columbia University. She attended the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language Study in Moscow. Jones is the author of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, which is loosely based on her experiences growing up in an expatriate artistic home as the daughter of famed novelist, James Jones. Included in her other publications are the novels Celeste Ascending and Speak Now. She currently teaches poetry and fiction in the New York City public schools, where she is a writer in residence, and fiction at Southampton Graduate Campus. Jones lives with her husband and daughter in Manhattan.

Joyce Carol Oates

In the early 1980s, Joyce Carol Oates surprised critics and readers with a series of novels, beginning with Bellefluer, in which she reinvented the conventions of Gothic fiction, using them to reimagine whole stretches of American history. Just as suddenly, she returned, at the end of the decade, to her familiar realistic ground with a series of ambitious family chronicles, including You Must Remember This, and Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart. To date, she has published 37 novels and novellas, including a series of experimental suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. She has also published 23 volumes of short stories, seven volumes of poetry, four volumes of plays and many volumes of short stories, as well nonfiction works on literary subjects ranging from the poetry of Emily Dickinson, the fiction of Dostoyevsky and James Joyce, to studies of the gothic and horror genres, and on such non-literary subjects as the painter George Bellows and the boxer Mike Tyson. She is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University, and continues to live in Princeton, with her husband of over 35 years. In 1996, Joyce Carol Oates received the PEN/Malamud Award for "a lifetime of literary achievement."

Chip Cooper

Chip Cooper is an award-winning photographer with four published photography books. He has shown his work in exhibitions from France to Costa Rica to Washington, D.C. He is a past recipient of an art fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. His images from Silent in the Land were included in Communications Arts Photography Annual. He is currently an instructor in the Art Department and Director of Photography at the University of Alabama. His photography can be found in Common Threads: Photographs and Stories from the South and Silent in the Land.

Dan Menaker

Daniel Menaker worked at The New Yorker for twenty-six years, twenty of them as Senior Editor. He has won two O. Henry Awards, and is the author of two story collections, The Old Left and Friends and Relations. His novel, The Treatment, was a 1998 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is currently Executive Editor in Chief of Random House Publishing Group, overseeing Ballentine, The Ballentine Readers Circle, Del Rey, Presidio Press, and One World, as well as Random House, Villard, The Modern Library, Random House Trade Paperbacks and he is a contributor to such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Slate Online Magazine.

Lou Ann Walker

Lou Ann Walker’s book, A Loss for Words, a memoir, won a Christopher Award. Some of her other books include: Hand, Heart & Mind. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Life, Allure, Parade, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times Book Review, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Writer, and The Hopewell Review. Formerly an editor at Esquire and New York Magazines, Walker has taught at Southampton Graduate Campus since 1996, and was a consultant in establishing the MFA program. She has lectured on writing at Smith College and Yale University, and taught at Marymount Manhattan College and Columbia University. The author of several screenplays, she’s a member of the Writers Guild of America.

Meg Wolitzer

Meg Wolitzer is the author of six novels, including The Wife, Surrender, Dorothy, and This is Your Life (which was made into a motion picture, directed by Nora Ephron, and co-written by Ephron and her sister, Delia Ephron). Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize, and she is a frequent contributor of short plays and personal essays on WNYC’s The Next Big Thing. Her new novel, The Position will be out from Scribner in March 2005.

David Rakoff

David Rakoff is the author of the essay collections Fraud (Doubleday 2001) and the forthcoming Don't Get Too Comfortable(Doubleday 2005). He is a regular contributor to Public Radio International's "This American Life," Outside Magazine, and is writer-at-large for GQ. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Salon, Slate, The New York Observer, and Seed Magazine, among others.