Green Mountain

Writers Conference

 

Meet our writers




Director YVONNE DALEY has published more than 5000 works of fiction and non-fiction and has contributed to National Public Radio. Her most recent book, "A State of Mind: Writing in Vermont," profiles 21 Vermont writers who open their tool boxes and share the tricks of their trade with readers. Daley’s previous book, "An Independent Man," is the biography of Senator James M. Jeffords. The recipient of more than 40 regional and national awards in journalism, Ms. Daley writes for the Boston Globe, the Rutland (Vt.) Daily Herald, Vermont Sunday Magazine, People, Time, The Washington Post, The San Jose Mercury News, West, The Milwaukee Journal, The New York Daily News, Sunset, Caribbean Life and Leisure, Stanford Magazine and other publications. Ms. Daley is a graduate of Barry University and the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. She was the recipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship in Journalism at Stanford University and a Freedom Forum Fellowship at Indiana University. Ms. Daley lives in Rutland, Vt., and San Francisco, where she is a Journalism professor at San Francisco State University and a docent at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. She is currently writing "Octavia Boulevard," a neighborhood memoir from her San Francisco experiences while also researching and writing an investigative non-fiction book on how coal has driven industrial development while polluting almost every aspect of life on the planet, which received funding from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Her areas of emphasis this summer will be on memoir writing, telling truth in different genres, creating character in fiction and non-fiction, profile writing and general writing tips.



JOAN CONNOR 's latest book, "The World Before Mirrors," received the prestigious award in non-fiction writing from River Teeth. Her previous book, "History Lessons," won the Associated Writing Programs' Short Fiction Award in 2005. Her other two collections of short stories, "Here on Old Route Seven and Other New England Stories" and "We Who Live Apart," have also received widespread acclaim. Besides numerous anthologies including the "Pushcart Anthology XXVIII," Ms. Connor's stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, Glimmer Train, The North American Review, The Ohio Review, The Southern Review, The Cimarron Review, TriQuarterly, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, Chelsea Magazine, Manoa, and Shenandoah, among others. Ms. Connor is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Middlebury College's Breadloaf School of English, and the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. Recent fellowships include VCCA, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She is Professor in Fiction Writing at Ohio University and a member of the faculty at the University of Maine's Stonecoast Writing Program. The recipient of an Ohio State Arts Council grant, the John Gilgun Award and the Ohio Writer Award in both fiction and non-fiction, Ms. Connor lives in Athens, Ohio and Belmont, Vt. with her son, Kerry. Besides reading from her most recent work, Ms. Connor will provide tips on essay writing and a discussion of the borders between fiction and non-fiction.



DAVID HUDDLE's fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in Esquire, Harper's Magazine, Story, the New York Times Magazine, and The Best American Short Stories. Among his books of collected short fiction are "Intimates," "Only the Little Bone," "A Dream With No Stump Roots in it," "The High Spirits," and "Not; a Trio." He has also published the poetry collections "Paper Boy," "Stopping By Home," "The Nature of Yearning," and "Summer Lake." He has also published a novella "Tenorman," and two novels, "The Story of a Million Years," and "La Tour Dreams the Wolf Girl." Mr. Huddle's essay collection "The Writing Habit" should be required reading for all developing writers. He has also published a collection of his works entitled "A David Huddle Reader." The recipient of two NEA fellowships, he received a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and an MFA at Columbia University. He teaches writing at the University of Vermont and is on the Faculty of the Board Loaf School of English.



VERANDAH PORCHE is a poet, performer and writing partner whose work explores the relationships between individuals and communities. Based in rural Vermont since 1986, she has published two books of poems, "The Body's Symmetry" and "Glancing Off," and has published in Ms., The Atlantic, The Village Voice, The New Boston Review and Vermont Organic Farmer, among others. During the past thirty years, she has traveled from her home in rural Vermont, writing with and for people in grange halls and garages, elementary schools and Elderhostels, nursing homes and daycare centers, mansions and soup kitchens, board rooms and basements, homes and jails, literacy programs and colleges. In so doing, Ms. Porsche has developed a practice called "told poetry" or shared narratives that enable people who need a writing partner to create, preserve and share personal literature. She has been engaged in residencies at Real Artways in Hartford, CT., and Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, Vt. Her project with Hartford, Ct. resulted in a published collection of her poems, In 1998, the Vermont Arts Council awarded her its prestigious Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the cultural life of Vermont. Ms. Porche lives in Guildford, Vermont. She is currently working on a new collection of work spanning the last two decades. She will lead us in writing two sessions of writing poetry.

 



TOM SMITH, a graduate of SUNY-Albany and Rutgers-New Brunswick, has been publishing poetry since 1959 in such magazines as Virginia Quarterly Review, Chicago Review, American Scholar, Beyond Baroque, Beloit Poetry Review, Iowa Review and New York Quarterly. A professor emirtus at Castleton State College where he taught from 1964 to 1995, Mr. Smith has published one novel, "A Well-Behaved Little Boy," and eight volumes of poems: "Jack's Beans," "Splending the Light," "Some Traffic," "Singing the Middle Ages," "Traffic," "The Broken Iris," "Waiting on Pentecost," "Cow'sleap: a Nightbook," and "Trash: the Dahmer Sonnets." He has given frequent readings of his poetry at the Beyond Baroque Foundation in Venice, Ca., at Notre Dame in Illinois, at West Point and the Citadel, at the Poetry Society of America in New York City, at annual conferences of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts at Fort Lauderdale, at Canterbury's Christ Church College, England, and elsewhere. Mr. Smith lives in Castleton, VT., with his wife Virginia DeAngelis. He is also an actor who has appeared in many roles in summer stock. Mr. Smith will again lead small workshops, working closely with poets' work in progress.



BARON WORMSER is the author of six books of poetry and a poetry chapbook, co-author of two books about teaching poetry and the author of a memoir. He teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program and directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching in Franconia, New Hampshire. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He served as poet laureate of Maine from 2000 to 2005 and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Maine at Augusta in 2005. His books include the poetry collections "The White Words," "Good Trembling," "Atoms, Soul Music and Other Poems," "When," "Mulroney & Others," "Subject Matter," and a chapbook "Carthage" and a memoir, "The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living Off the Grid."



CHUCK CLARINO has worked as a journalist for 25 years, writing for the Rutland Herald, Vermont Sunday Magazine, Vermont Life, Varsity Sports New England, the Green Mountain Journal, Velo News and other publications. He has appeared frequently on television and radio as a sports commentator and analyst and, with his wife, Yvonne Daley, has published many travel stories. He is also an essayist and memoirist whose family stories and personal recollections delight the reader with historical detail and humorous anecdote. Mr. Clarino's short stories have been published widely, including in New Mellennium, which awarded his memoir pieces, "Randazzo: Jewels of Memory," and "Farley Binkey." He'll conduct a workshop on ways to use environmental details to add context, atmosphere and credibility to fiction and non-fiction works.



GEOF HEWITT is well known in Vermont as a poet, performer and writing workshop leader. The author of three collections of poems, including the most recent, "Only What's Imagined," and three books for teachers, Mr. Hewitt frequently completes in "poetry slams," generally three-minute performance readings judged by the audience. Along with instruction in more traditional forms and narrative poetry, he will lead us in a "Slam" workshop to get our imaginations working. As Co-director of the Vermont Adolescent Literacy and Learning Initiative, has led reading workshops in Vermont classrooms and correctional facilities.

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About the conference | Our writers | How to register
Green Mountain Writers Conference
Tinmouth, Vermont | July 28 - Aug. 1, 2008

How to register
Green Mountain Writers Conference
Tinmouth, Vermont | July 28 - Aug. 1, 2008