Lesley University Writers' Conference

Conference Faculty

Steven Cramer is the author of four poetry collections: The Eye that Desires to Look Upward; The World Book; Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand; Goodbye to the Orchard, which was named a 2005 Honor Book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and won the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club. A recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, Steven directs the low-residency M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University.

David Elliott is the award-winning author of The New York Times best-selling picture book, And Here's to You!; the middle grade novel, The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle; the Evangeline Mudd series; and many other books for young people. His most recent novel, Jeremy Cabbage and the Living Museum of Human Oddballs and Quadruped Delights has been optioned by Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox. David is a faculty mentor in Lesley's MFA in Creative Writing program.

Marcie Hershman is the author of the novels Tales of the Master Race and Safe in America, and the memoir, Speak to Me: Grief, Love and What Endures. Her essays and reviews have appeared widely: The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, Poets & Writers, Tikkun, Agni, Ms., ArchitectureBoston, Ploughshares, in anthologies, and on NPR. Among her awards are those from the Bunting Institute/Harvard University, the L.L.Winship/Boston Globe Foundation, the St. Botolph Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She teaches at Tufts University and in Lesley University's M.F.A. in Creative Writing program.

Rachel Kadish is the author of the novels From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied: a Love Story. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Story, Tin House, Zoetrope, New England Review, Bomb, and the 1998 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and have been read on NPR. Her work has been anthologized most recently in Lost Tribe: New Jewish Fiction from the Edge, The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt, and Who We Are: On Being (And Not Being) a Jewish Writer in America.

Michael Lowenthal is the author of three novels: Charity Girl, Avoidance, and The Same Embrace. His stories have appeared in the Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Tin House, and have been widely anthologized, most recently in Best New American Voices 2005, and Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge. The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers’ conferences, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Hawthorneden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal teaches creative writing at Boston College and in Lesley’s M.F.A. program in Creative Writing. He also serves on the Executive Board of PEN New England.

Afaa Michael Weaver refers to his previous career as a blue collar worker as his literary apprenticeship. In his last year of factory work he received a contract for his first book of poetry, Water Song. After graduating from Brown University’s graduate writing program, his plays, Rosa and The Last Congregation, were produced. He has since published nine books of poetry, including Multitudes, The Ten Lights of God, and Sandy Point. Weaver is the recipient of fellowships from the National Education Association, the Pew Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2001, as a Fulbright Fellow, he taught at National Taiwan University. At Simmons College in Boston, he is the Alumnae Professor of English, director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center, and Chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference.

Guest Faculty

Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes, the 2002 winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, The Whole World Over, and I See You Everywhere. She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Prizes for her short fiction include the Tobias Wolff Award, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella, and three Nelson Algren Awards. She lives with her family in Massachusetts.

• "Enormously accomplished...rich, absorbing, and full of life…" The New Yorker review of Three Junes.
• "Three Junes brilliantly rescues, then refurbishes, the traditional plot-driven novel…" The New York Times review.
• "Rich, intricate and alive with emotion…" The New York Times review of  I See You Everywhere.

M.T. Anderson, author of picture books for children, and novels for young adults, including among many, Handel, Who Knew What He Liked, Strange Mr. Satie, Me, All Alone, at the End of the World, Whales on Stilts: M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales and its sequel, The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen. Feed, a National Book Award Finalist, was honored with the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among many other major awards. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I won the 2006 National Book Award for Young People and was listed second on The New York Times' list of Notable Children's Books of 2008. Volume II was published in 2008. M. T. Anderson lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• "Feed demonstrates that young-adult novels are alive and well and able to deliver a jolt." The New York Times review.
• "The hallmarks of Anderson’s style are a sharp ear for adolescent voices, a sometimes perverse sense of humor and an interest in the corrosive effects of groupthink…." The New York Times review of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume I.
• ...I believe Octavian Nothing will someday be recognized as a novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called "encyclopedic" in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensive and deeply textured pattern." Jerry Grisold, The New York Times review of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume II.

Gail Mazur is the author of five poetry books: Nightfire, The Pose of Happiness, The Common, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001, and Zeppo’s First Wife: New & Selected Poems. Zeppo was the winner of the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Mazur’s poems have been published widely in magazines, including Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and The New Republic. She is the 2008-2009 Fellow in Poetry at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Distinguished Writer in Residence in Emerson College’s M.F.A. Program.

• "Colloquial as well as eloquent, pitch perfect no matter how difficult her material…" National Book Award 2001 jury citation.
• "Part of the pleasure in these poems is their simultaneous large scope and measured, deceptively quiet voice." Robert Pinsky, Poet's Choice, The Washington Post.