Lannan Foundation

Chris Abani, Poet, Writer - Marfa, Summer 2004

Chris Abani's novels are GraceLand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004) and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985). His poetry collections include Dog Woman (Red Hen, Fall 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). He teaches in the MFA Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. A Middleton Fellow at the University of Southern California, he is the recipient of the 2001 PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the 2001 Prince Claus Award and a 2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship.
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Benjamin Anastas, Writer - Marfa, Fall 2006

Benjamin Anastas is the author of two novels, An Underachiever’s Diary (1998, Dial Press) and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG, 2001), which was named among the year’s Notable Books in The New York Times.  His novella Versace Enthroned with Saints Margaret, Jerome, Alex and the Angel Donatella appeared in The Yale Review and was awarded the magazine’s Smart Family Foundation Prize for fiction in 2005.  His reviews, essays and fiction have appeared in a number of publications including Bookforum, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Men’s Vogue and GQ.

Marfa is a remarkable place for any number of reasons, but I will always remember it as the green garden on the horizon that I pedaled towards on an old blue bike while my head rang with sentences and paragraphs I had yet to write down.  I arrived with approximately 15 pages of text and a few more pages of notes.  I left with the first half of the novel written and a very clear idea of where the rest of the book needs to go.  For this I give thanks to the Inca Doves, and the hummingbirds, and the trains that seemed ways to whistle their arrival…

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Michael Ashkin, Artist - Marfa, Spring 2001

Michael Ashkin was born in Morristown, NY, in 1955, and was educated at the Art Institute of Chicago. He began painting when he was 30, following an academic background in Arabic and Hebrew languages, and multiple jobs in teaching, computer programming, and investment banking.

Mr. Ashkin’s work has been shown at such New York galleries as Leo Castelli, Exit Art, and White Columns, as well as at venues in Chicago and California. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Dan Beachy-Quick, Poet - Marfa, Spring 2005

Dan Beachy-Quick received his MFA at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches in the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He is the author of two books, North True South Bright, named one of Fence magazine’s Best Books by Emerging Writers fall 2003; and Spell, a book-length reverie on Moby Dick.  His poems have appeared widely.

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Peter Behrens, Writer - Marfa, Fall 2008

Peter Behrens, a native of Montreal, is the author of one novel, The Law of Dreams, which was nominated for the 2008 International Impac Literature Prize.  His collection of short stories, Night Driving, was published in 1987. Stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, Brick, Best Canadian Stories (twice), Best Canadian Essays, The Atlantic Monthly, and many anthologies.  He held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University, and was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  He lives in Maine.

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Sherwin Bitsui, Poet - Marfa, Summer 2005

Sherwin Bitsui is Dine of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and is the recipient of the 2000-01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, and more recently, the 2002 University of Arizona Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Award. His first book, Shapeshift, is available from the University of Arizona Press. Originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, he lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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Charles Bowden, Writer - Marfa, Spring 2001

Charles Bowden is the author of eleven books including A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Dog; Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family; Juárez: The Laboratory of our Future; Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America; Desierto: Memories of the Future; Red Line; Blue Desert; and (with Michael Binstein) Trust Me: Charles Keating and the Missing Billions.

He is a contributing editor of Esquire, and also writes for other magazines such as Harper’s and The New York Times Book Review, as well as for newspapers. Winner of the 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, he lives in Tucson, Arizona.

“I wrote [A Shadow in the City] in Marfa, Texas, in a house loaned to me by a foundation as part of their writers’ program.  This is the second book I have written in that house thanks to the kindness of the outfit.  So I would like to thank the folks at the Lannan Foundation.  And issue an apology to the town of Marfa for once again being a hermit in their midst and remaining largely ignorant of their fine community.  It seems when one is blessed with the loan of a Lannan house, one enters and hardly ever leaves the walls again. I did see things out my window that make me wish this were not my fate.  The Davis Mountains and Big Bend region of Texas are good earth.  Well, better than good.”

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Mary Caponegro, Writer - Marfa, Winter 2006

Mary Caponegro is the author of the short story collections Tales from the Next Village, The Star Cafe, Five Doubts, and The Complexities of Intimacy. She is the Richard B. Fisher Family Professor of Writing and Literature at Bard College.  William Gass said of her work, “The music of Mary Caponegro’s stories is to the mouth what wine is. Readers will find themselves lost among answers, intoxicated, knowing only that these are stories unlike any others before or since, which is, for this reader at least, a relief, a challenge, and a godsend.”

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Thomas Centolella, Poet - Galisteo, Spring 2000

Thomas Centolella is the author of several books of poetry including Terra Firma, selected by Denise Levertov for the 1990 National Poetry Series, and Lights & Mysteries, which received the 1996 Poetry Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. In 1992 he was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

Mr. Centolella was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the College of Marin California, and in the California Poets in the Schools Program. He is currently living in San Francisco. He has just completed his third book of poetry.

During his residency Mr. Centolella worked on new poems and some short prose pieces and gave a public reading at Downtown Subscription in Santa Fe.

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Marilyn Chin, Poet - Marfa, Winter 2003

Marilyn Chin is the author of The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty, winner of the PEN Josephine Miles Award; Dwarf Bamboo; and, most recently, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow. She is currently on the faculty of the M.F.A. program at San Diego State University.

“The breathtaking, expansive desert landscape cleared my brain of excess baggage; and the gift of time gave me the freedom to not only write but to reassess my life.  The night sky of Marfa is so huge that one can’t help but to transgress the borders of one’s own limited imagination.  I believe that I wrote some of my best work here.”

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