Kettle Pond Writers' Conference

2023 KETTLE POND FACULTY

Mary Bonina is the author of My Father’s Eyes: A Memoir (2013), and two collections of poetry—Living Proof (2007) and Clear Eye Tea (2010)—all published by Cervena Barva Press. In collaboration with Paul Sayed, she wrote the poems “Grace in the Wind,” the inspiration for his composition of the same title, written for piano, cello, and soprano. Mary Bonina has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, and she has been a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in residence several times since 2002 when she was the finalist for the Goldfarb Family fellowship. She was awarded a VCCA-France residency at Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France. Bonina is a member and, for more than a decade, served on the Board of Directors of the Writers Room of Boston. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, Mark Pawlak.

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Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. He has also authored four previous chapbooks, most recently GESUNDHEIT! (Glass Poetry Press, 2019), a collaboration with Sam Herschel Wein. Chen’s work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.

Christopher Citro is the author of The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books, 2015) and If We Had a Lemon We'd Throw It and Call That the Sun (Elixir Press, 2021). His awards include a 2019 fellowship from Ragdale Foundation, a 2018 Pushcart Prize for Poetry, and first place in the 2015 Poetry Competition at Columbia Journal. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, Alaska Quarterly Review, Narrative, Blackbird, Pleiades, and in such anthologies as Best New Poets, Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence, Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio, and They Said: An Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing. His creative nonfiction has appeared in Boulevard, Quarterly West, The Florida Review, Passages North, Colorado Review and elsewhere. He currently teaches private creative writing classes online and lives in sunny Syracuse, New York.

Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He is a professor of postcolonial literature at Bennington College, and has taught poetry at The New School, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College, amongst others. As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2021 received a Marian Goodman fellowship from Independent Curators International for his research on Black experimental documentary. He is the recipient of the 2021 QUEER|ART|PRIZE for Recent Work, and a 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction.

Brian Hall bicycled in western and eastern Europe for two years after attending Harvard University, and wrote his first book about those experiences: Stealing from a Deep Place (Hill and Wang, 1988). His most recently published novel, The Stone Loves the World (Viking, 2021), tells a story of two families – one made up largely of scientists and the other of artists – whose worlds collide in pursuit of a lost daughter. Other major works include Fall of Frost (Viking, 2008), I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company (Viking, 2003), Madeleine’s World (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), The Saskiad (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), The Impossible Country (Godine, 1994), and The Dreamers (Harper and Row, 1989). Brian Hall has published in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He occasionally teaches at Colgate University and currently lives in Ithaca, New York.

Mark Pawlak is a poet, editor, and publisher. He is author of nine poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies, most recently Reconnaissance: New and Selected Poems and Poetic Journals. His tenth collection will be published in early 2024. Pawlak’s work has been translated into German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish, and has been performed at Teatr Polski in Warsaw. In English, his poems and prose have appeared widely in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Anthology of Poetic Journals and in the literary magazines New American Writing, Mother Jones, Poetry South, The Saint Ann’s Review, and The World, among many others. His latest publication is the book-length memoir My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov (MadHat Press, 2021). Pawlak has been a co-editor/publisher of Brooklyn-based Hanging Loose Magazine and Press for 43 years, and is currently managing editor. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Caroline Rayner is a poet and music writer from Richmond, VA. She is the author of THE MOAN WILDS (Shabby Doll House, 2023). Her poetry can be found in Annulet, b l u s h, KEITH LLC, Black Warrior Review, Peach Mag, Shabby Doll House, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she taught composition and creative writing. She also served as assistant managing editor of jubilat. Her essays, reviews, and interviews can be found in Tiny Mix Tapes and elsewhere.

Kem Joy Ukwu's fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Carve Magazine, PANK, Jabberwock Review and Auburn Avenue. Her short story collection, Locked Gray / Linked Blue, was selected as a finalist for the 2016 New American Fiction Prize and was published by the Kindred Books Imprint of Brain Mill Press. Locked Gray / Linked Blue was also selected as a 2018 Foreword INDIES Winner (Bronze Award in Literary). Kem led workshops as an Institute Scholar at the 2016 and 2018 Writing from the Margins Institute at Bloomfield College. Her screenplay, "Stats" (adapted from her published short story of the same title), was a Fall Selection for the 2022 Big Apple Film Festival's Agents and Managers Lab and a Quarterfinalist for the 2023 Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices Screenplay Competition. Born and raised in the Bronx, she lives in New Jersey with her husband.