Lannan Foundation

Sinéad Morrissey

Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1972, grew up in Belfast, and holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. She has published three collections of poetry: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002), and The State of the Prisons (2005). Her awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award, and the Michael Hartnett Prize for Poetry. She has twice been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Sinéad Morrissey Bio and Cross Links

Valzhyna Mort

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus (former Soviet Union) in 1981. Her first collection, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes, was published prior to her moving to the U.S. in 2005. Her first US poetry collection is Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), co-translated by the husband-and-wife team of Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Pultizer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright. The book has been translated into Swedish and Russian. It is the first Belarusian-English poetry book ever published in the U.S.

Mort received the Crystal of Vilenica award in Slovenia in 2005 and the Burda Poetry Prize in Germany in 2008. She has been a resident poet at Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Germany, and has received a fellowshiip at Gaude Polonia, Warsaw, Poland. Her English translations of Eastern-European poets are included in the anthology, New European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008). Valzhyna currently teaches at the University of Baltimore and her next collection, written in English, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

Valzhyna Mort Bio and Cross Links

Gary Paul Nabhan

Howard Norman

Dennis O'Driscoll

Dennis O’Driscoll, one of Ireland’s most widely published and respected critics of poetry, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland. A civil servant since the age of 16, he works for Irish Customs in Dublin.
He has published six collections of poetry, the most recent being Exemplary Damages. He has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, and the Harvard Review. O’Driscoll, who received a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1999, was a featured author for Readings & Conversations in 2001 and 2003.

Dennis O'Driscoll Bio and Cross Links

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver’s poetry, with her lyrical connection to the natural world, has firmly established her in the highest realm of American poets. She is renowned for her evocative and precise imagery, which brings nature into clear focus, transforming the everyday world into a place of magic and discovery. Her recent books include Owls and Other Fantasies, Why I Wake Early, and New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. As poet Stanley Kunitz has said, “Mary Oliver’s poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing.” Oliver lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Mary Oliver Bio and Cross Links

Cynthia Ozick

Glenn Patterson

Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1961, and holds an MA in Creative Writing from East Anglia University, England. He is the author of seven novels including Burning Your Own (1988), for which he was awarded the Rooney Prize and a Betty Trask first novel prize, The International (1999), Number 5 (2003), That Which Was (2004), and The Third Party (2007). A collection of his journalism was published as Lapsed Protestant in 2006. In 2005 he was elected to Aosdána, which recognizes artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. A memoir, Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times, has just been published in the UK and Canada.

Glenn Patterson Bio and Cross Links

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, brought up in Leeds, England, and now lives in New York City. He is the author of three works of non-fiction and eight novels, as well as the editor of two anthologies. His latest novel, Dancing In The Dark, re-imagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (1874-1922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Fellowship.

Caryl Phillips Bio and Cross Links

David Quammen