Lannan Foundation

Thomas Berry

Richard K. Nelson

Simon Armitage

Jack Gilbert

Edward P. Jones

Edward P. Jones (Fiction) was born in 1950 in Washington, DC. He received a scholarship to Holy Cross College and earned his MFA at the University of Virginia. He has taught fiction at Princeton University, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. For 19 years, prior to being laid off in early 2002, he worked for a tax analysis firm in Arlington, VA. Following the publication in 1992 of his short story collection, Lost in the City, he won a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a PEN/Hemingway Award and the collection was short-listed for a National Book Award. His first novel, The Known World, published in 2003, is also short-listed for a National Book Award.

Edward P. Jones Bio and Cross Links

Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol’s books have set the agenda for social change for three decades, covering issues such as illiteracy, homelessness, racial segregation, and poverty in America. His publications include Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace, and Ordinary Resurrections. For his book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Kozol visited 60 schools in 11 states over a five-year period and finds, despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, many schools serving black and Hispanic children are spiraling backward to the pre-Brown era. His most recent book, Letters to a Young Teacher, is a guide into “the joys and challenges and passionate rewards of a beautiful profession.”

Jonathan Kozol 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

Cyrus Cassells

Cyrus Cassells is the author of four books of poetry, including his most recent collection, More Than Peace and Cypresses (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). Among his honors are a Lannan Literary Award, a William Carlos Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Lambda Literary Award. He is a tenured associate professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos.

Cyrus Cassells Bio and Cross Links

Denise Levertov

Paul West