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FacultyFACULTY 2008
SPECIAL GUESTS
JOSIP NOVAKOVICH
moved from Croatia to the US at the age of twenty. He has published a novel, APRIL FOOL’S DAY (in ten countries), three story collections (INFIDELITIES: STORIES OF WAR AND LUST, YOLK, and SALVATION AND OTHER DISASTERS) and two collections of narrative essays. His work was anthologized IN BEST AMERICAN POETRY, THE PUSHCART PRIZE collection, and O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES. He has received the Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Ingram Merrill Award, an American Book Award, and he has been a writing fellow of the New York Public Library. He teaches in the MFA program at Penn State University and is currently a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in Nevada.
ELIZABETH CRANE
is the author of two collections of short stories from Little, Brown, WHEN THE MESSENGER IS HOT and ALL THIS HEAVENLY GLORY. Her work has also been featured in publications including Washington Square, New York Stories, Sycamore Review, Book, Florida Review, Eclipse, Bridge, Sonora Review, the Chicago Reader, Sleepwalk, the Believer, McSweeney's Future Dictionary of America, The Banana King, and All Hands On: The 2ndhand Reader. She received the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, granted by The Chicago Public Library Foundation, in October 2003. A New York City native, she now lives in Chicago with her husband and teaches writing at Northwestern's School of Continuing Studies and the University of Chicago.
PHILLIP ROBERTSON
has been covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the American news and culture website, Salon.com. He has also reported for Time magazine, BBC World Service Radio, National Public Radio in the United States and the Christian Science Monitor. Over the past six years, he has published more than sixty feature articles in Salon, using first person narrative to communicate the effects of conflict on ordinary people. In 2003, Robertson was a finalist for the USC/Annenberg award for online journalism in the breaking news category. His story, "In the Mosque of Imam Ali" was chosen by David Foster Wallace to appear in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2007. His latest story is "The Octopus in the Cathedral of Salt," published in the Virginia Quarterly Review’s fall 2007 issue.
SESSION MODERATORS
GINA FRANGELLO
has published the novel, MY SISTER'S CONTINENT, and short stories in venues such as Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, Swink, Clackamas Literary Review and the anthology, HOMEWRECKER: AN ADULTERY READER . From 1997 to 2007, Gina served as executive editor of Other Voices, editing work that was later selected for BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY. In 2004, she edited the anthology FALLING BACKWARD: STORIES OF FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS, and launched Other Voices' fiction book press, OV Books, as an imprint of Dzanc Books. Gina has taught fiction and nonfiction workshops, as well as literature, at several Chicago universities. Her journalism and book reviews have appeared in the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune. Her second novel, LONDON CALLING, is forthcoming in Fall 2008.
JENNIFER NIX
is a former National Public Radio producer ("On the Media") and staff writer for Variety. Her writing has also appeared in New York, the New York Observer, The Nation, Village Voice, National Law Journal, Working Woman, Wired, Salon, AlterNet, FireDogLake, DailyKos and other media outlets and blogs. For Chelsea Green Publishing in 2004, Jennifer acquired and edited George Lakoff's DON'T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT, and pioneered a web-based marketing model that resulted in Lakoff's work spending several months as a national bestseller. In 2006, as a New Politics Institute fellow, and with Working Assets, Jennifer published Glenn Greenwald's HOW WOULD A PATRIOT ACT? The book received unprecedented coverage in the blogosphere and quickly became a New York Times bestseller.
GUEST LITERARY AGENT
ANNA GHOSH
has been an agent at Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency in New York since 1995 where she represents a wide variety of adult fiction and nonfiction books. She is particularly interested in literary nonfiction, history, science and books on social and cultural issues. Her recent titles include The New York Times bestsellers SIN IN THE SECOND CITY: MADAMS, MINISTERS, PLAYBOYS AND THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA’S SOUL by Karen Abbott (Random House) and THE LAST TRUE STORY I’LL EVER TELL: AN ACCIDENTAL SOLDIER’S ACCOUNT OF THE WAR IN IRAQ by John Crawford (Riverhead).