Meet the 2014 faculty: Michael Byers
By fiction director Lakin Khan At our conference in 2010, Michael Byers had the honor of reading the first night, a plein-air reading in the cool of approaching nightfall, sunset plying along the mountain behind him, full moon nosing its way up in the East. The onrush of words and sensation was the perfect opening […]
Meet the 2014 Faculty: Camille Dungy
This profile is based on an introduction written by conference assistant Kathleen Winter for the 2013 conference. Camille Dungy holds degrees from Stanford and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She was born in Denver. Camille is author of three collections of poems: Smith Blue, which won the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize; Suck […]
Meet the 2014 faculty: Lan Samantha Chang
This profile is based on an introduction written by conference director Andrea Bewick for the 2013 conference. It’s our great pleasure to welcome Lan Samantha Chang back to Napa and the writers’ conference. Sam has been teaching at the conference for many years and, as with many of our beloved faculty who return, we think […]
Fall 2013 alumni update: renown from near and far
Conference alumni have been as busy as ever since our last alumni update in January — earning plaudits and publication around the world. Beverly Bie Brahic (2009, 2010, 2011) wrote to let us know her second collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize, the United Kingdom’s top poetry prize. Eavan Boland, […]
Meet the 2013 faculty: Camille Dungy
Camille T. Dungy is the author of Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow, and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. She is the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain […]
Meet the 2013 faculty: Yiyun Li
This faculty profile comes to us courtesy of past participant Angela Watrous, who conducted an interview with Li for the Fiction Writers Review. What follows below is an excerpt; read the entire interview on the FWR site. “Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996 to study immunology at […]
Meet the 2013 faculty: Jane Hirshfield
Thanks to poetry assistant Iris Dunkle for updating this profile. Poet, essayist, teacher, translator: Jane Hirshfield’s writing persona is multi-faceted, her body of work diverse. But if there is a unifying element in her pursuits, it lies in her formative experience as a student of Zen Buddhism, which has guided her writing and led to […]
Meet the 2013 faculty: Peter Ho Davies
Peter Ho Davies was born to Welsh and Chinese parents and raised in Britain and the U.S., so it’s no surprise that his work concerns itself with the concept of identity. But his works are hardly circumscribed by the labels assigned to him personally. Rather, the liminal figures that people his short stories and novels […]
Meet the 2013 faculty: Linda Gregerson
Thanks to poetry assistant Iris Dunkle for writing this profile. The poet and scholar Linda Gregerson begins her spectacular poem, “Bicameral,” with the line: Choose any angle you like, she said, the world is split in two. On one side, health and dumb good luck (or money, which can pass for both), and elsewhere . […]
Meet the 2013 faculty: Lan Samantha Chang
This is a re-post of conference media manager Catherine Thorpe’s 2011 profile. Lan Samantha Chang was born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Chinese immigrant parents. Growing up, she experienced both the Chinese cultural traditions her family upheld and Midwestern sensibilities — a contrast that honed Chang’s powers of observation and yen for writing. In […]
About the Blog
This blog is for the Napa Valley Writers' Conference community: once and future attendees, friends of the conference, faculty and staff. Please contribute comments, which are reviewed before publishing (usually within 24-48 hours of submission). We look forward to the conversation!