AWP Board Members

Board Member Bios & Committees

Board Member Bios

Denise Low-Weso, President, Individual Members' Representative Haskell Indian Nations University Denise Low, 2007-2009 Kansas Poet Laureate, is author of Natural Theologies, critical essays (The Backwater Press, 2011) and Ghost Stories of the New West, poems (Woodley 2010). She is editor of Kansas Poems of William Stafford: Poems, Essays, and Interviews (Woodley 2009). She has recent poetry and prose in Yellow Medicine Review, Native Literatures: Generations, Summerset Review, A Poets Guide to the Birds (Anhinga) and Congeries-Connotations Press. She teaches creative writing and fiction at Haskell Indian Nations University. A Letter from the 2011-12 AWP President

 

Francisco Aragón, Vice President, Individual Members' Representative Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame Francisco Aragón is the author of Puerta del Sol and the Editor of an anthology, The Wind Shifts: The New Latino Poetry. His poems have appeared in a range of anthologies, including: Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies; American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement; Bend, Don’t Shatter; Evensong: American Poets on Spirituality; and Deep Travel: Contemporary Poets Abroad. In the area of literary translation, he has published a number of books, including three by Francisco X. Alarcon: Body in Flames, Of Dark Love, and Sonnets to Madness and other Misfortunes. His limited edition chapbooks include Tertulia and Light, Yogurt, Strawberry Milk. His honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize and an AWP Intro Journals Project Award. Francisco Aragón is currently the Director of Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he oversees, among other projects, Momotombo Press.

 

Steve Heller, Vice President, Pacific West Representative Antioch University Steve Heller is Professor & Chair of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Prior to L.A., he taught at Kansas State University for 22 years, including 15 as Chair of the Creative Writing Program. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University and an EdD in English Education from Oklahoma State. His first novel, The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman, received the Friends of American Writers Award and was a selection of Book-of-the-Month Club and QPB. Heller's most recent book, What We Choose to Remember, is a collection of nonfiction narratives from Serving House Press. Heller's individual short stories and essays have appeared widely in journals such as Manoa, New Letters, Colorado Review, and Fourth Genre, and have been reprinted in anthologies such as Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal, and Living Blue in the Red States. He has been a resident of Yaddo and the recipient of an NEA Fellowship Grant and numerous other writing awards and distinctions. He helped found two literary journals, Hawai'i Review and Mid-American Review.

 

Terry Blackhawk, Treasurer, Individual Members' Representative InsideOut Literary Arts Project Terry Blackhawk (http://www.terrymblackhawk.com) is the author of the poetry collections Body & Field, Escape Artist, and The Dropped Hand as well as two chapbooks (Trio: Voices from the Myths and a Greatest Hits from Pudding House Press).  Her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Artful Dodge, and Marlboro Review, on line at Verse Daily and Poetry Daily and in numerous anthologies. Her honors include the 1990 Foley Poetry Prize, the 2002 John Ciardi Prize from BkMk Press (for Escape Artist), the Michigan Governors' Award for Arts Education, grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the 2010 Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod International.  Her fourth poetry collection, The Light Between, is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press.  Blackhawk taught English and Creative Writing for Detroit Public Schools until her retirement in 1996. She holds a BA in Literature (1968) from Antioch College and a PhD in Reading/Language Arts from Oakland University.  In 1995 she founded InsideOut Literary Arts Project (http://www.insideoutdetroit.org), a writers-in-schools program annually serving thousands of students in hundreds of Detroit classrooms, and is one of the founders of the national WITS (Writers in the Schools) Alliance.

 

Richard Robbins, Secretary, Midwest Representative Minnesota State University Richard Robbins studied as an undergraduate at San Diego State University and as a graduate student at the University of Montana. He has published five books of poems: The Invisible Wedding (University of Missouri Press, 1984), Famous Persons We Have Known (Eastern Washington University Press, 2000), The Untested Hand (The Backwaters Press, 2008), Radioactive City (Bellday Books, 2009), and Other Americas (Blueroad Press, 2010). Over the years, he’s received various awards and fellowships, including those from The Loft and the McKnight Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board, The Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Poetry Society of America. He currently directs the creative writing program and Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

 

Dinty W. Moore, ex officio Board Advisor Ohio University Dinty W. Moore is Professor of English at Ohio University and a low-residency instructor for the University of New Orleans' Edinburgh, Scotland Summer Writing Workshops.  He has published three books of creative nonfiction, Between Panic and Desire, The Accidental Buddhist, and The Emperor's Virtual Clothes, a short story collection, Toothpick Men, and the writing guide, Crafting the Personal Essay. His essays and stories have been published in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Harper's, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Utne Reader, Arts & Letters, and Crazyhorse, among others. He also edits Brevity, the on-line journal of concise creative nonfiction. He is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

 

Judith Baumel, Northeast Representative Adelphi University Judith Baumel is a poet, critic, and translator. She is Associate Professor of English and was Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. She blogs at http://www.judithbaumel.com.  A former director of the Poetry Society of America, her poetry, translations and essays have been published in Poetry, The Yale Review, Agni Review, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.  Her books of poetry are The Weight of Numbers (Wesleyan University Press, 1988) for which she won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and Now (University of Miami Press, 1996) and The Kangaroo Girl (GenPop Books, 2011)

 

Bonnie Culver, Individual Members' Representative Wilkes University Bonnie Culver, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, is the co-founder and Director of the Wilkes University Low Residency Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She is an Associate Professor of English at Wilkes where she has assumed various roles in the past twenty years—faculty member, college dean, and program director. Her twenty plus plays have been produced by community theatres, regional, university, and equity companies from NY to LA. Her play SNIPER won the New Jersey Arts Council Perry Award for Excellence for an original play. SNIPER’s NYC production was listed as “pick of the Week” by the STAR-Ledger, TIMEOUT Magazine, and NY theatre.com, and was included in the Richard and Betty Burdick National Play reading series at Florida Studio Theatres that “showcases the best in contemporary American theatre.” Two of her screenplays were finalists in the Sundance Film Development program and two others have been optioned. She has received individual and institutional grants and awards from the NY State Council on the Arts, the PA Humanities Council, and the Maslow Foundation among others. She has served on several not-for-profit and for-profit Advisory Boards.

 

Oliver de la Paz, Individual Members' Representative Western Washington University Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses (SIU Press), Furious Lullaby (SIU Press), and Requiem for the Orchard(U. of Akron Press). He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry.  A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award, and a GAP grant from Artists’ Trust, his work has appeared in journals like The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry:  The Next Generation.  He teaches at Western Washington University.

 

Cynthia Hogue, West Representative Arizona State University Cynthia Hogue has published seven collections of poetry, most recently, The Incognito Body (2006), Or Consequence; and When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina (co-authored with photographer Rebecca Ross), both in 2010.  Among other awards, she has received Fulbright, NEA, and MacDowell Colony fellowships, and in 2009, a Witter Bynner Translation Residency from the Santa Fe Art Institute.  In 2003, she joined the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at Arizona State University as the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry.

 

Roger Lathbury, AWP/GMU Liaison George Mason University Roger Lathbury teaches at George Mason University & he is the publisher of Orchises Press.

 

Jerod Santek, WC&C Representative Loft Literary Center Jerod Santek is Program Director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where he administers mentorships, grants, and fellowships for writers. A poet and fiction writer, his work has appeared in numerous journals including Ploughshares, Blithe House Quarterly, and Hayden's Ferry Review.

 

Natasha Trethewey, Southeast Representative Emory University Natasha Trethewey is author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast; Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia, which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Her poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, and The Best American Poetry 2000 and 2003. Currently, she is Charles Howard Candler Professor of English at Emory University.

 

Chris Perkowski Nixon Peabody LLP Chris Perkowski is an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of Nixon Peabody LLP, where he concentrates his practice on community development finance. Chris received an M.F.A. from George Mason University in 2002 and was a founding editor of Red Morning Press

Committees

Chicago Conference
Jerod Santek, Chair Chicago 2012
Judith Baumel, Chair Boston 2013
Randy Albers
Francisco Aragón
Lan Samantha Chang
Bonnie Culver
Steve Heller
Parneshia Jones
Allison Joseph
Quraysh Ali Lansana
Corrina Lesser
Elise Paschen
Richard Robbins
Susan Page Tillett
D.W. Fenza (staff)
Christian Teresi (staff)

Development
Francisco Aragón, Chair
Oliver de la Paz
Terry Blackhawk
Amber Withycombe (staff)
D.W. Fenza (staff)

Case-Statement Subcommittee
Francisco Aragón, Chair
Cynthia Hogue
Amber Withycombe (staff)
David Fenza (staff)

Finance
Terry Blackhawk, Chair
Steve Heller
Roger Lathbury
Denise Low-Weso
Amber Withycombe (staff)
D.W. Fenza (staff)
Roberto Perales (staff)

Membership
Judith Baumel, Chair
Jerod Santek
Steve Heller
Director of Membership Services

Nominations and Documents
Richard Robbins, Chair
Terry Blackhawk
Judith Baumel

Pedagogy
Steve Heller, Chair
Judith Baumel
Oliver de la Paz
Cynthia Hogue
Richard Robbins
Natasha Trethewey
Student Representative
Recent Graduate Representative

Personnel
Denise Low-Weso, Chair
Francisco Aragón
Judith Baumel
Roger Lathbury

Professional Standards
Steve Heller, Chair
Judith Baumel
Cynthia Hogue
Richard Robbins
Natasha Trethewey

Publications
Roger Lathbury, Chair
Cynthia Hogue
Francisco Aragón
Dinty W. Moore
Jerod Santek
Supriya Bhatnagar (staff)

Strategic Planning
Denise Low-Weso, Chair
Dinty W. Moore
Jerod Santek
Amber Withycombe (staff)
Supriya Bhatnagar (staff)
D.W. Fenza (staff)

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