Lannan Foundation

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

Stephen Wright

Rikki Ducornet

Rikki Ducornet, a cosmopolitan and intellectual artist, has lived in North Africa, South America, France, and Canada. Of her most recent book, Gazelle, the Washington Post writes, “[It] is a sensuous book. A mix of smells pervades its pages, from orange blossoms, perfumes, mint, almonds, limes, roses, jasmine, and long-simmered delicacies to animal dung, vinegar, urine, and long-buried mummies. Great stand-alone sentences are enough to make one’s mouth water.”

Rikki Ducornet Bio and Cross Links

William Gaddis

Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson’s story “Homeless and High” begins, “I arrived penniless in Berkeley in February of 1973, at night, dropped off on Telegraph Avenue by a woman driving around in her commune’s Volvo.” He is the author of the celebrated collection of stories Jesus’ Son, which was made into a feature film by the same name in 1999. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s. His recent novel, Angel, tells the story of a fleeing housewife toting two kids and an ex-Navy, ex-con who all meet on a Greyhound bus.

Denis Johnson Bio and Cross Links

Carole Maso

Paul West

A. R. Ammons

Killarney Clary

Killarney Clary, who received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1992, has published two books of poetry, Who Whispered Near Me, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and By Common Salt.

In a review of Who Whispered Near Me, Gary Young wrote, “There is no glamour here, little drama. Her subjects are prosaic, but her prose captures the internal rhythms of both memory and casual speech, and has been wrenched into a fierce lyricism. Clary’s poetry is a gymnastic of mind. We may feel submerged, lost in someone else’s thought, but her poems are maps, and Clary leads us surely through a maze we discover is nothing less than the rich pattern of a life.”

Ms. Clary was born in Los Angles in 1954, and was educated at the University of California at Irvine, where she received degrees in studio art and poetry writing. She has taught at the University of California at Irvine and at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Killarney Clary Bio and Cross Links

Susan Mitchell