Jerry Gabriel – Conference Director
Fiction
A 2016 NEA arts grant recipient and author of two collections of stories: Drowned Boy, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and The Let Go (2015, Queen’s Ferry Press).
Elizabeth Arnold
Poetry
Winner of a Whiting Writer’s Award, an Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, and author of five books, including Life (2014, Flood Editions) and Effacement (2010, Flood Editions). Her latest, Skeleton Coast, is out from Flood Editions in January 2017.
Angela Pelster
Creative Nonfiction
Winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association “New Writer Award in Nonfiction” and a 2016 recipient of a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is the author of a children’s novel, The Curious Adventures of India Sophia (2005, River Books), and a collection of lyrics essays, Limber (Sarabande Books, 2014).
Patricia Henley
Fiction
Novelist, short story writer, playwright, and poet, Patricia Henley taught for 27 years in the MFA program at Purdue University. Her most recent publications include Other Heartbreaks (Engine Books, 2011) and Where Wicked Starts, a YA novel co-authored with Elizabeth Stuckey-French (Engine Books, 2014).
Matt Burgess
Fiction
Matt Burgess is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Dogfight, A Love Story and Uncle Janice.
Matthew Henry Hall
Fiction
Matthew Henry Hall is a writer, cartoonist, and performer. His stories for children include The Lucky Hat, What Coyote Brought, and Phoebe and Chub. His cartoons appear in The Missouri Review, Reader’s Digest, The Chronicle of Higher Education and many other publications. He’s opened for Richie Havens and Los Lobos, received a BA and MA in English (from places that really are accredited), and sometimes he takes improv classes in LA at the Groundlings School and the UCB Training Center.
Jessica Papin
Literary Agent – Dystel, Goderich & Bourret
With a background on both sides of the desk, she loves working collaboratively with clients to shape and refine their work. Jessica Papin is interested in the history and politics of the Middle East and broader Islamic world, as well as plot-driven literary and smart commercial fiction, and narrative non-fiction across a range of subjects.
Caroline Casey
Managing Director – Coffee House Press
Caroline Casey joined the Coffee House staff in 2012 as marketing and sales director. She has a background in marketing, publicity, and acquisitions, including stints at Sarabande Books and Stanford University Press, and holds an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
Gregory Donovan
Magazine Editor – Blackbird: An online journal of literature and the arts
Senior editor of the online journal Blackbird and a founding faculty member of Virginia Commonwealth University’s graduate creative writing program, Gregory Donovan is the author of the poetry collections Torn from the Sun (Red Hen Press), a finalist for the 2016 Julie Suk Award, and Calling His Children Home (University of Missouri Press), winner of the Devins Award for Poetry.