Alice Quinn: a class visit

Alice Quinn is the poetry editor at The New Yorker, a position she has held since 1987. Before that, she was poetry editor at Alfred A. Knopf from 1976-86. She teaches at Columbia University's graduate School of the Arts and is the Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America. She has written and edited several books including Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments.

***

Unless you subscribe to The Believer, you won't get to read this interview with Quinn in full, but if you want a look, the opening's a tease. Or you could try this interview with Quinn and The Boston Globe, which will give you some background on her relationship to Elizabeth Bishop. This interview at The Atlantic is excellent--read this one if you skip the others--and this article from The New York Times is worth a look if you want to know who's taking over as poetry editor of The New Yorker when Quinn leaves in November of this year.

***

C. D. Wright

was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She is the author of a dozen books, including the book-length poems, Deepstep Come Shining and Just Whistle. In 1994 she was named State Poet of Rhode Island, a five-year post. She also authored two state literary maps. With photographer Deborah Luster, she published One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana. The project won the Lange-Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and their collaboration exhibited at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City, and the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. among others. On a fellowship for writers from the Wallace Foundation, she curated a “Walk-in Book of Arkansas,” an exhibition that toured throughout her native state for two years.

Her most recent titles are One Big Self: An Investigation (Copper Canyon, 2007), Like Something Flying Backwards, New and Selected (Bloodaxe Editions, 2007), Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil (Copper Canyon, 2005). Rising, Falling, Hovering will be out in 2008, also from Copper Canyon Press.

She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Lannan Foundation. Steal Away: Selected and New Poems was a finalist for the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize. In 2004 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2005 she was given the Robert Creeley Award and elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wright is the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English at Brown University. She lives outside of Providence with her husband, poet Forrest Gander. Their son’s name is Brecht.

***

Here is Kent Johnson interviewing Wright in a piece first published in Jacket magazine, and here is another interview with jubilat. You'll notice references to Stephen Burt's analysis of Wright's work in these interviews, so you might want to look at his book review in the Boston Review.

***

And here is a Lannan Podcast audio event that features Wright reading her work and talking with Stephen Burt. Click play to listen.

***

G. C. Waldrep

holds degrees in American history from both Harvard and Duke and an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. His first book of poems, Goldbeater's Skin, won the 2003 Colorado Prize for Poetry, judged by Donald Revell, as well as a Greenwall award from the Academy of American Poets. His second full-length collection, Disclamor, is scheduled to appear from BOA Editions in 2007. He is also the author of two chapbooks, "The Batteries" (New Michigan Press, 2006) and "One Way No Exit" (Narwhal, forthcoming). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Boston Review, New England Review, Georgia Review, Colorado Review, American Letters & Commentary, Tin House, New American Writing, and other journals. His work has received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Campbell Corner Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He has been selected for residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and elsewhere.

He is also the author of a nonfiction book, Southern Workers and the Search for Community, which won the 2001 Illinois Prize for history. In 2005-06 he served as a visiting professor of poetry and history at Deep Springs College in California. In 2006-07 he served as a visiting assistant professor of English at Kenyon College. He is now an Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University.

***

For Waldrep's commentaries, interviews, and various biographical notes see Image magazine's archived Artist of the Month, this cached page from a defunct blog called Here Comes Everybody, his article from The Boston Review entitled "New England Stories," his "Response and Bio" from Double Room, his first book interview--part of an extensive series of interviews with poets and their first book experiences--at Kate Greenstreet's blog, every other day, and a substantive excerpt from his critical nonfiction book, Southern Workers and the Search for Community (scroll to the bottom of the page for the link).

If you want to hear him read and talk, click on the audio archive link from "Live at Prairie Lights."

For more of his poetry, look up his new book, Disclamor, or do your own Google search for the many many links to individual poems he's published all over the Internet.

***