2007 Retreat Faculty

Faculty Biographies

Annie Finch is a poet, translator, librettist, editor and critic. Her books of poetry include Calendars (Tupelo, 2003), shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award; Eve (Story Line, 1997); the innovative performance poem The Encyclopedia of Scotland (Salt, 2004); and a translation of The Complete Poems of Louise Labé (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Annie's poems have been featured in media outlets from Voice of America to HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and musical or dance performances inspired by her poetry have been held from the Spoleto Festival to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is also the author of two opera librettos, "Lily Among the Goddesses" and "Marina."

Annie's writings developing her ideas about poetry have been collected in The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2005). She has also edited several groundbreaking, popular anthologies including An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (coedited with Kathrine Varnes, Univ. of Michigan Press, 2002) and A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women (Story Line, 1994). In 1997 she founded WOM-PO, a national listserv devoted to discussion of women's poetry.

Annie holds a BA from Yale, a PhD from Stanford, and is currently Director of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine. A practicing Wiccan, her poetry is inspired largely by her relations with the natural world, especially the landscapes of Maine, where she lives with her husband, the environmentalist Glen Brand, and their two children.

Visit Annie's homepage at www.anniefinch.com.

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Lesley Hazleton's most recent books are Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography (winner, Washington State Book Award) and Jezebel: The Life and Death of Israel's Harlot Queen (due out in 2007). Both are mold-breaking biographies blending in-depth research with historical imagination and exploring the interface between religion, politics, and feminism.

British-born, Lesley lived for thirteen years in Jerusalem, where she worked simultaneously as a psychologist and as a reporter for Time-Life. She then moved to New York for thirteen years, and now seems to be settled, to her own amazement, on a houseboat in Seattle, where she has broken the thirteen-year pattern. When not writing, she kayaks, hikes, or does the important job of simply watching the water.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper's, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Mirabella, and Salon, among many other publications, and includes feature articles, op-ed pieces, book reviews, columns, and essays on a wide range of subjects from politics and the environment to the arts, psychology, religion, travel, cultural and social issues, automobiles, and flying.

Her previous books include Jerusalem, Jerusalem: A Memoir of War and Peace, Passion and Politics (winner, American Jewish Committee Book Award), Confessions of a Fast Woman, and Where Mountains Roar: A Personal Report from the Sinai and Negev Desert.

To read more about Lesley, click here.

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Ellen McLaughlin 's plays have received numerous national and international productions. They include "Days and Nights Within," "A Narrow Bed," "Infinity's House," "Iphigenia and Other Daughters," "Tongue of a Bird," "The Trojan Women," "Helen," "The Persians" and "Oedipus." Her plays have been produced at Actors' Theater of Louisville; The Actors' Gang, Los Angeles; Classic Stage Co., New York; The Intiman Theater, Seattle; Almeida Theater, London; The Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles; the Public Theater in New York City; The Oregon Shakespeare Festival; The National Actors' Theater, New York; and The Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis; among other venues.

Ellen is the recipient of many grants and awards, including Great American Play Contest, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the NEA, the Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, and the Berilla Kerr Award for playwriting.

Ellen is also an actor. She is most well known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," appearing in every U.S. production from its earliest workshops through its Broadway run. Ellen has taught playwriting at Barnard College since 1995. She's also taught at Yale School of Drama and Princeton University, among others. Her most recent publication is "The Greek Plays," published by T.C.G., a collection of eight of her plays.

To hear Ellen performing Tony Kushner's "Homebody/Kabul", click here.

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Kim Ponders' first novel, The Art of Uncontrolled Flight, was published by HarperCollins in 2005. It was a BookSense pick, and the Los Angeles Times compared it with the work of Joseph Heller and James Salter. Her work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Chattahoochee Review, and the Washington Post. Her second novel, Blue Mile, about the Air Force Academy, will be released by Harper Collins in May, 2007. The Art of Uncontrolled Flight is currently being adapted into a screenplay.

Kim grew up near Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Syracuse University. She worked as a small-town reporter in northern California and then went on to fly as a crew member on U.S. Air Force E-3 AWACS surveillance planes during and after the Gulf War. She later served in Korea and Germany. Kim holds an M.S. in international relations from Troy State University in Geilenkirchen, Germany, and an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She currently lives in southern New Hampshire with her husband and two boys, where she is a major in the Air Force Reserves.

Learn more about Kim athttp://www.kimponders.com, and read her blog at
http://blogher.org/blog/kim-ponders.

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Elisa Kay Sparks is an associate professor of English at Clemson University in South Carolina where she also directs the Women's Studies program. Born a Texan, she grew up in Seattle, got her BA in English from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, then an MA and PhD in English at Indiana University, Bloomington. She teaches a wide variety of courses at Clemson, including Introduction to Women's Studies, Science Fiction and Science Fiction Film, Feminist Literary Criticism, and graduate seminars on Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and Modernist London.

Moonlighting as a printmaker, for the last ten years she has been sitting in on the Advanced Printmaking Studio at Clemson, specializing in color-reduction woodcuts. Lately she has been working on integrating her printmaking and literary interests by developing scrapbook and altered book projects for herself and in her classes. Her commitment to merging the verbal and the visual is also shown in the dozens of web sites she has built for her various classes.

Elisa's scholarly work is now mostly concerned with Virginia Woolf. Making annual trips to England to explore places important to Woolf, she has published a series of articles on parks and gardens in Woolf's life and work, which will soon culminate in a small book. She has also written several articles (and produced a number of prints) exploring similarities in the works of Woolf and the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. An active participant in both the American and British Virginia Woolf Societies, she has just finished co-editing the Selected Papers from the 2005 International Woolf Conference at Lewis and Clark College

Visit Elisa's homepage at http://www.clemson.edu/~sparks.

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Guest Writer

Leslie Marmon Silko is the author of twelve books, a Native American novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and short-story writer whose work is primarily concerned with the relations between different cultures and between humans and the natural world. Leslie was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and grew up at Laguna Pueblo. The Pueblo has been home to members of her family for generations and is where she learned traditional stories and legends from her grandmother Lilly and her Aunt Susie.

Called the most accomplished Native American writer of her generation, an "American Indian Literary Master," Leslie has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," the National Endowment for the Arts' Discovery Grant, the Boston Globe prize for non-fiction, the Pushcart Prize for Poetry, and the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities' "Living Cultural Treasure" Award. Leslie was also the youngest writer to be included in The Norton Anthology of Women's Literature, for her short story "Lullaby."

Leslie has taught English and writing at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Arizona; and the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Leslie has published twelve books: Garden in the Dunes, Love Poem and Slim Man Canyon, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today, Rain, Sacred Water: Narratives and Pictures, Yellow Woman, Almanac of the Dead, Delicacy And Strength of Lace Letters, Storyteller, Western Stories, Ceremony, and Laguna Women: Poems.

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Additional Presenters

Jenoyne Adams is both celebrated author and literary agent, a novelist, poet, and journalist who is also the principal dancer in the West African troupe Abalaye, a compelling stage actor, a martial artist, and a fan of anime. She is a literary agent for Levine/Greenberg New York and represents literary/commercial fiction, young adult, and women's interest. Jenoyne followed her critically-acclaimed, nationally bestselling first novel, Resurrecting Mingus, with Selah's Bed. Her third book will be published by Simon & Schuster in Summer, 2007. A former PEN USA West Emerging Voices Fellow and UCLA Extension Writing Program Community Access Scholar, Jenoyne has been featured in programs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Essence Music Festival, the National Black Arts Festival, the Mark Taper Auditorium, the Schomburg Museum and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Articles on Jenoyne and her work have been featured in Essence, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and other national outlets. Jenoyne majored in Political Science with an emphasis in African American Studies at California State University at Fullerton and studied abroad at the University of Malaga in Malaga, Spain to gain her certificate of fluency in Spanish.  She is a writing consultant for Voices In Harmony, an organization that helps at-risk and under-served youth write and produce theatre pieces around important social issues each year.

To listen to Bill Thompson's interview with Jenoyne Adams about her second novel, Selah's Bed, visit http://www.eyeonbooks.com/ibp.php?ISBN=0684873532.

To learn more about the Levine/Greenberg Agency and Jenoyne's work as an agent, visit http://www.levinegreenberg.com/.

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Mira Bartók is a writer and artist who spent many years working with the ethnographic and natural history collections at the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard's Peabody Museum and other institutions. She has also done extensive anthropological and folklore fieldwork among the Sámi people in Norway's Arctic Circle, as well as in the Middle East and Italy. Much of her writing interweaves personal narrative with her cross-cultural and natural history experience.

Mira has received many awards for both her art and writing, including grants from the Vogelstein Foundation, Pen-America, and the Carnegie Fund for Writers, and a $20, 000 award from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation for painting. She is the author of 30 children's' books on the art and history of world cultures, Mira's essays, book reviews and poetry have appeared in several places, including Kenyon Review, Tikkun, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, and LINK Magazine. Her work has also been sited as a notable mention in The Best American Essay series. Mira is currently at work on an illustrated memoir entitled, The Unnatural History of a Curious Child ; a chapter from her book is forthcoming in The Bellingham Review . Mira was a finalist for AROHO's 2004 Gift of Freedom Award in creative nonfiction.

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Mary Rose Betten , the AROHO Retreat Reading Coach, has won awards for both her writing and performance. Mary Rose is a playwright, poet, and a character actress seen in film, TV series, and soap operas. Three time recipient of the coveted CLIO award for her comedic work in TV commercials, Mary Rose has traveled the United States and Europe with her one-woman show on Mary Magdalene and appeared as a stand-up comic with Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show," on "Merv Griffin" and "Mike Douglas." The Dean Martin Comedy Hour chose Mary Rose to appear at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas as the year's best young comedienne in 1969. More recently, Mary Rose has taught lecturing and homiletics for the archdiocese of Los Angeles where her book and video "Proclaiming God's Word," published by Argus Press, is considered a classic.

Mary Rose's stage credits include "The Madwoman of Challiot" at Los Angeles' Odyssey Theatre, "Guys & Dolls" with Milton Berle in the Music Center, and a drama desk recipient for the musical "Three." As a playwright, she's written "The Bar Off Melrose" published by Samuel French, "Mary M.," "People Of The Passion," "Hildegarde, 2000," "Terrible Is This Place," and "Is Anybody Home?" "Becoming Alleluia" will premiere in Los Angeles on September 30, 2006. Mary Rose's chapbook, "Hanging out with Loose Words," published by Foothills Press, contains work published in anthologies, RATTLE, and The Writer Magazine where she was the winner of their Poetry Spotlight series.

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Darlene Chandler Bassett , founding president of AROHO, is not a writer. She is a retired corporate executive who was changed forever by meeting Mary Johnson at Ghost Ranch in 2000. Inspired to create a unique foundation, which would help women writers and artists, she began her new life as an arts patron and advocate for creative women. While still a corporate executive, Darlene spent her precious vacation weeks shooting portraits of native peoples. She journeyed to Tibet and the Amazon, and followed Margaret Mead's trail in New Guinea, always traveling alone. After retiring to New Mexico at age 43 her attention turned to taming the clay around her adobe ranchito and she became a master gardener. Currently she serves as the resident landscape consultant to Sandoval County. She also designed the garden for her home in central France where, since 2002, she spends every spring and fall with her husband, tearfully leaving her two Airedale terriers behind.

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Kate Gale Ph.D , 2005-2006 President of PEN USA, and president of American Composers Forum/LA writes poetry, novels and librettos. Like many of the women associated with AROHO, Kate has taken the road less traveled. Rather than become a writer with a tenured track job, she became a writer with two small children. Rather than mourn the lack of literary community in her adopted city of Los Angeles, she decided to create one in the form of Red Hen Press, Los Angeles' literary jewel, The Los Angeles Review, a literary magazine, the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Series, the Geffen reading series, and a Writers in the Schools program for underserved communities. At forty, feeling the need for some validation, she completed her PhD in literature from Claremont Graduate University, ran her first marathon and climbed Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower forty-eight.

Kate's Rio de Sangre, an opera with Don Davis, was performed in part at Disney Hall in November 2005 and her opera Paradises Lost was performed in part at the New York City Opera in May 2006. For Kate, the journey has just begun. She has a novella and new librettos in process, a literary community to energize and new women writers to mentor. For her the AROHO community feels like a homecoming and Ghost Ranch a natural home space. All the ink stained wenches should be so lucky. Kate holds a PhD in American Literature from Claremont Graduate University and has published four books of poetry, a novel, a bilingual children's book, and is editor of three literary anthologies. Kate is also a member of AROHO's Board of Directors.

For more about Kate and Red Hen Press, visit www.redhen.org.

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Meredith Hall is the 2004 recipient of the Gift of Freedom Award, a two-year writing grant from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her first book, a memoir titled Without a Map, will be published by Beacon Press in 2007. Meredith's essay "Shunned" was awarded the 2005 Pushcart Prize and was named in "Notable Essays" in The Best American Essays. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Southern Review, Creative Nonfiction and many other journals and anthologies, including a best of collection from The New York Times, due out in 2007.

Meredith was awarded the Maine Arts Commission's Individual Artist Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2005 Rona Jaffe Award. She has received residencies from Mac Dowell Colony, Jentel Arts, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and Djerassi. Before returning to school at age 40 to graduate summa cum laude from Bowdoin College, Meredith was owner and president of Renaissance Construction, for the renovation and resale of houses in Boothbay, Maine. Meredith teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives on the coast of Maine.
Click here to read an interview with Meredith Hall.
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Mary Johnson , creative director of AROHO's Retreats, is the writer whose need for a room of her own was the catalyst for Darlene Chandler Bassett to found AROHO. She continues work on her memoir Donata: Twenty Years with Mother Teresa, about her life as a nun in the Missionaries of Charity.

Mary has led retreats and workshops at various locations in the United States and Europe for people from every walk of life for over thirty years. Her work with the homeless, people with traumatic brain injuries, and AROHO's women writers (is there a pattern here?) have given her special satisfaction. She continues to teach spirituality, creative writing, and Italian.

Mary received an MFA from Goddard College and a diploma in religious studies from Regina Mundi Institute in Rome. Mary's work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Pulse, Texas Review, and Pitkin Critical Review. Mary also wrote the entry on Mother Teresa for the Eighth Volume of The Interdisciplinary Biographical Dictionaries of the Western World's Great Cultural Eras (edited by Joseph Nordgren, forthcoming). Mary lives with her husband Lucas Lund and their neurotic dog and queenly cat in Nashua, New Hampshire.

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Robin Vidimos is a mechanical engineer by profession and a book reviewer by passion. Her engineering career has taken her to construction sites; her reading has transported her to far more exotic locales. She holds degrees from Georgia Tech, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Denver. Long an avid reader, Robin cut her teeth on book reviews for Moms Online, an early forum on America Online and wrote her first review for the Denver Post in 1997. Since then, the Post has run more than 400 reviews and author interviews by Robin Vidimos, and excerpts from her reviews appear frequently in publisher press releases. Robin lives with her family in Denver.

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