{"id":992,"date":"2026-04-07T18:14:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/?page_id=992"},"modified":"2026-04-21T00:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:25:08","slug":"writers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/chesapeake-writers-conference\/writers\/","title":{"rendered":"Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writers<\/strong><\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Crystal Oliver \u2013 Director<\/b><\/a><\/h3>\n

Crystal Oliver is a poet and songwriter living in Southern Maryland with particular interests in literary citizenship as community service, studies in songwriters, and professional literacy. She is a lecturer of English, an adjunct professor of Music, the Director of the Chesapeake Writers\u2019 Conference, and the Poetry Editor at EcoTheo Review. Her areas of teaching specialization include creative writing, the poetics of song, and feminist and multicultural critical approaches to the literature of music, magic, and addiction. She has also taught at Pratt Institute, The City University of New York, and Brooklyn College, among other places. She has released four albums: Fixing to Break (MW Records, 2002), Bessie\u2019s Last Stand (2003), Voter (2007), and Light it Up (2012). Her writing has appeared in Bluestem, The Brooklyn Review, The Delmarva Review, Woman, and Southern Maryland: This Is Living.<\/p>\n

Oliver received the 2022 Jordan Teaching Exemplar Award and the 2022 Andy Kozak Faculty Contribution to Student Life Award. She received the Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award from the University of Maryland, College Park, and earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

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Karen Leona Anderson<\/b><\/a><\/h3>\n

Poetry<\/b>
\nKaren Leona Anderson is the author of the poetry collections\u00a0Receipt<\/em>\u00a0(Milkweed Editions) and\u00a0Punish honey<\/em>\u00a0(Carolina Wren). Her work has most recently appeared in\u00a0POETRY magazine, Pleiades, Little Star, EcoTheo Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, ZYZZYVA, The Best American Poetry,<\/em>\u00a0and other journals and anthologies; her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Grant. She is a professor of English at St. Mary\u2019s College of Maryland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Randle Browning<\/b><\/a><\/h3>\n

Randle Browning is a writer from Texas interested in art, family, and landscape. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, The New York Review of Architecture, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, the Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere, and has been supported by the Jentel Artist Residency. Randle holds an MA in English Literature from Boston College and an MFA from Columbia University, where she served as print editor of the Columbia Journal and now teaches creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter and is working on a nonfiction book about five generations of her Texas family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

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Matt Burgess<\/b><\/h3>\n

Fiction<\/strong>
\nMatt Burgess is the author of the critically acclaimed\u00a0novels\u00a0Dogfight, A Love Story\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Uncle Janice.\u00a0<\/i>He has published short stories in a variety of magazines, written extensively for film and television, and is currently the chair of the English and Creative Writing department at Macalester College.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Jennifer Cognard-Black<\/b><\/a><\/h3>\n

Food Essays<\/strong>
\nA professor of English, Jennifer Cognard-Black teaches a variety of creative writing and literature courses, including classes in the literatures of food, food writing, and food justice. A Fulbright Scholar to both Slovenia and the Netherlands, she received the 2020 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, considered the \u201cNobel Prize for teachers.\u201d Jennifer is the author or co-editor of six books, including Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal (NYU Press 2014) and Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically (NYU Press 2024). She also publishes short fiction under the pen name J. Annie MacLeod in such journals as Story, Versal, So to Speak, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among other places. In addition, Jennifer produces lecture series for Audible, including an Audible Original called \u201cBooks that Cook: Food & Fiction.\u201d And although she has lived in Maryland for a quarter century, Jennifer still considers herself a Nebraskan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

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Erik Dionne<\/b><\/h3>\n

Youth Workshop<\/b><\/strong>
\nErik Dionne is a songwriter, musician, producer, and poet living in Southern Maryland where he has been teaching high school English for 14 years. He teaches several courses including digital composition and creative writing, while also facilitating extracurricular clubs which provide opportunities for students to collaborate, create, and share their art with their school and local communities. He released his first album, Questionable Motives, under the artist name Dog Army in 2021, and will release his second album, Woodwose: Exigence & Exodus, in 2026. His music has appeared in Plectrum Magazine, American Pancake, and Alt77, among other publications. His poetry has appeared in the journals Noir Nation and Wingless Dreamer, and featured on BBC Future. Additionally, Erik contributes album reviews for the online magazine Groove Art Universe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Eva Freeman<\/b><\/h3>\n

Writer-in-Residence<\/strong>
\nEva Freeman is a writer whose work has appeared in Granta, Citizen, The Catamaran Literary Reader, Salt Hill Journal, and Black Renaissance Noire, among others. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland and a BA in English from Yale University. She has received support from the de Groot Foundation, Hedgebrook and Kimbilio. Her personal essay, \u201cThe Coptic Cross,\u201d was included on the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses\u2019 \u201cReading List for Black History Month 2025,\u201d and her debut novel, The Blood of Both, is represented by Lauren Abramo at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. She is a former network news producer and currently lives in Brooklyn with her family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

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Jerry Gabriel<\/b><\/a><\/h3>\n

Fiction<\/strong>
\nJerry Gabriel\u2019s first book of fiction, Drowned Boy, won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and was published in 2010 (Sarabande Books). It was a Barnes and Noble \u201cDiscover Great New Writers\u201d pick and was awarded the 2011 Towson Prize for Literature. His second book of fiction, The Let Go, was published in 2015 (Queen\u2019s Ferry Press). His stories have appeared in One Story, Epoch, Fiction, Five Chapters, The Missouri Review, failbetter, and Big Fiction, among other publications. His work has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize, and he has received grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2004), the Bread Loaf Writers\u2019 Conference (2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts (2016). He is the Project Director for\u00a0SlackWater<\/em>:\u00a0A Journal of Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland.<\/em>\u00a0His first novel,\u00a0Deserters<\/em>, will be published by Acre Books in May 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Allison Glaser<\/b><\/h3>\n

Conference Assistant<\/strong>
\nAllison is a Junior at St. Mary\u2019s College of Maryland studying English with minors in Philosophy and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is the Assistant to the Chesapeake Writers\u2019 Conference, a Writing & Speaking Center peer tutor, and the English Program Student Ambassador. Additionally, she serves as the Acting President of the SMCM AVATAR Literary Magazine. She is passionate about literature and writing, specifically poetry and creative non-fiction. She is acutely interested in how writing shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

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Crystal Oliver \u2013 Director Crystal Oliver is a poet and songwriter living in Southern Maryland with particular interests in literary citizenship as community service, studies in songwriters, and professional literacy. She is a lecturer of English, an adjunct professor of Music, the Director of the Chesapeake Writers\u2019 Conference, and the Poetry Editor at EcoTheo Review. Find out more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"parent":927,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"full-width-content","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-992","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/992\/revisions\/1054"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smcm.edu\/signature-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}