Fall 2011 Residents

September 2011

Casey Charles is the winner of the 2010 Washington Square Poetry Award. His chapbook Controlled Burn (Pudding House 2007) was named as one of the Missoula Independent’s books of the year in 2007. He teaches Shakespeare in Missoula, Montana.

Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com) is a two times Pushcart Prize nominated-poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, blogger, and educator whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poems, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, and an upcoming nonfiction book of personal essays and poetry.

Erin Kelley’s short fiction has been published in literary journals worldwide, including Kyoto, the Philippines Free Press, Monkeybicycle and Keyhole. Erin was a finalist for the 2009 Philippines Free Press Literary Award, the country’s most prestigious award for short fiction. She currently works as assistant editor of Thrive Magazine.

Ellen Goldstein received my MFA from Emerson College in 2003. She has had poems published in “Mid-American Review,” “New Hampshire Review,” “Measure,” “Muddy River Review,” and “Subtropics,” among others. Her work also has appeared in two anthologies “Letters to the World,” and “Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains.”

A.S Penne is author of two books and innumerable publications in international literary journals. She facilitates writing workshops for adults and young children. “Once A Soldier,” her most recent work, is a three-act stageplay that chronicles the long-term effects of war on successive generations of veterans’ families. The play is scheduled for production in Spring, 2012. She is a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

This is Georgia Clark’s second time at Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency. Georgia is an award-winning and widely published Australian author, journalist and producer She writes for teen and women’s lifestyle magazines and various online beasts such as So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway and Idol. In 2007 she won a national freelance film and TV pitching competition for an original vampire drama series, which bought her a ticket to New York. Her first novel, She’s With The Band, was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2008. Hailing from Australia and currently based in Brooklyn, New York, she rarely uses the phrase ‘g’day’.

Cara Hoffman is the author of So Much Pretty (Simon and Schuster 2011). Hoffman grew up in an economically depressed town in upstate New York. She dropped out of high school, bought a one-way ticket to London with her savings, and spent the three years writing and working as an agricultural laborer and runner in Europe and the Middle East. Hoffman received her Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from Goddard College in 2009. She has been a guest lecturer at Cornell University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and taught English at Lehman Alternative Community School and Tompkins Cortland Community College. She lives in Manhattan with her son.

Elizabeth Besescu has a Bachelors in Philosophy and a Masters in Internet Strategy Management, but found life wasn’t complete without writing. For the past five years she’s taken classes with Mary Carroll Moore at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center and has finished the first draft of her novel, Left of Center, a story of love, betrayal and loss and remaking one’s life set in East Texas between 1891 and 1953.

Sanderia Smith received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Fiction from Arizona State University. An excerpt from her upcoming novel “Mourning Bench” appeared in Mythium Literary Journal. Another will appear in Jennifer Wallach’s forthcoming book Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-1967, and in Sabal Literary Journal. Sanderia has received numerous grants and Scholarships including Writers’ Colony at Diary Hollow, Vermont Studio Center, and the 2011 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. She is currently a Ph.D candidate at the University of Texas Dallas.

October 2011 residents

Chloe Yelena Miller’s poetry has been published in literary journals such as Alimentum, The Cortland Review and Narrative. Her work was a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and a finalist for the Narrative Poetry Contest. Poems published in Narrative were chosen as ‘Poem of the Week’ and ’30 Poems to Inspire’. Chloe blogs regularly about writing from a teacher’s perspective (she teaches creative and composition writing at George Mason University and Fairleigh Dickinson University) chloeyelenamiller.blogspot.com/ and about Italian language and food at farelascarpetta.blogspot.com/. She has an MFA in from Sarah Lawrence College.

Roberta Bienvenu has published poems and essays in many journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, New England Review, and Crazyhorse. Retired from teaching Writing and Literature at Johnson State College in Johnson, VT, she currently is working on a memoir called It Must Give Pleasure, as well as on a book of poems, Karst Topography. She lives in Northern Vermont.

Julie Morin’s first novel, WATER FOR THE TIN HOUSE, was a finalist in the 2003 Pirate’s Alley Writing Competition and was later represented by Trident Media. She currently is working on a novel entitled SMOKE AND SOLACE.

In addition to writing, Julie studies acting and has performed in many local productions in her home city of Tucson, Arizona.

Susan Eisenberg is a poet, nonfiction author, and visual artist who works within and across forms. Her essay about her introduction to the craft of poetry will be included in Denise Levertov, In Company. She is author of We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction, a New York Times Notable Book that draws on memoir and oral history; and the poetry collections, Blind Spot and Pioneering. Among the first women in the country to achieve journey level status as a union electrician, she has been framing and re-framing the issues and experiences of tradeswomen for more than three decades. She holds a BA in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan, an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College, and a master electrician’s license. She is currently a Resident Artist/Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

Kathy Peterson is a poet working on an pen and ink illustrated poetry manuscript. She holds a BS from Univ. of MN in secondary math education and studio arts minor and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She recently studied poetry at San Miguel Poetry Week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Julia Dahl is a freelance journalist who specializes in crime and justice. Her feature articles have appeared in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and Salon, The Columbia Journalism Review; and many others. In 2009, She was awarded a John Jay/H.F. Guggenheim fellowship in criminal justice journalism and was invited to be a contributing editor and staff writer for The Crime Report.org, a non-profit criminal justice news site run by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice. She holds a BA in English from Yale, an MFA in fiction from the New School, and an MA in journalism from American University. She is working a literary novel about a young female New York City reporter who becomes involved in the murder of a Hasidic Jewish woman.

Lisa Blackwell currently writes short stories and non-fiction to highlight the quality-of-life struggles of women in today’s fast paced world. Her work has been published in Makeshift Magazine, Innerchange Magazine, Phati’tude Literary Magazine, and the anthology Woman’s Work: The Short Stories by Michelle Sewell. She has an upcoming short story that will appear in the literary magazine CALYX. Her latest work is the self-help guide for women titled, Are You a Mule or a Queen?: How to Have Other Honor Your Wishes and Value Your Time.

Pete MacDonald is working on a literary novel about an older man who decides he must answer for crimes he committed in the distant past. He has published fiction and non-fiction in the New York Times, Barrelhouse Magazine, Inkwell, Flashquake, and has a story forthcoming in The Battered Suitcase. He lives in Seattle, WA.

Jenny Klion has had her short plays and performance pieces produced in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, at venues such as Dance Theater Workshop, and the Knitting Factory. Ms. Klion received her B.A. in Theater Arts/Dance from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq—Mime, Mask, Movement Theater—in Paris, France. She is a former member of the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco, and the Big Apple Circus in New York City, more recently, she was a staff writer on the CBS prime-time game show Power of 10.

Nancy Anne Miller was born in Bermuda. She has a Masters in Literature in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Her poems have been published in Edinburgh Review, Stand, Caribbean Writer, Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Postcolonial Text. In 2008, she was a fellow at MacDowell Colony.

Liz Dolan’s first poetry collection, They Abide, was recently published by March Street Press. She has also published poems, memoir and short stories in New Delta Review, Rattle, Harp Weaver, The Cortland Review, Illuminations, Prism International Quarterly, Philadelphia Stories and Natural Bridge, among others. Her work in Mudlark was chosen for The Best of the Web by Web Del Sol. A five-time Pushcart nominee, she lives in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.