Dean Bakopoulos

Assistant Professor (M.F.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, '04)

Dean Bakopoulos was born and raised in metro Detroit, which is the setting of his first novel, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (Harcourt), a New York Times Notable Book. He has lectured at Michigan, Cornell, UW-Madison, and other universities about the economic and environmental problems facing the post-industrial Rust Belt, and has published related essays and criticism in The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, The Progressive, The Believer, and Real Simple. His one-act plays "Phonies" and "Wayside" have been produced at Alley Stage in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

The winner of a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he is the former director of both the Wisconsin Book Festival and the Wisconsin Humanities Council. He is currently at work on a book of nonfiction, as well as a television series based on his first novel. His second novel, My American Unhappiness, will be published in late 2010.
 

Barbara Hass

Associate Professor (M.F.A., University of California-Irvine, '82)

In 2006 The Haas celebrated 25 years of publishing fiction. Her first published short story ('81) appeared in The North American Review, the oldest literary mag in our country. Abe Lincoln was once a subscriber, back in the day! The Haas is rather a modest, reserved individual, so one can only imagine the pride she surely feels in having had fiction in continuous print since 1981.

Bridging that multi-decade period of fiction publication, The Haas has had short stories in such journals as Glimmer Train,The Antioch Review, Quarterly West, The Georgia Review, Epoch, American Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, The Cimarron Review and others. She is a repeat contributor of stories to The Hudson Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and The North American Review. The U.S. government has put its broad seal of approval on all fiction Haas-related in the form of a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. The Haas is the author of a short story collection, When California Was an Island.

Fern Kupfer

Associate Professor (M.S., Iowa State University)

Fern Kupfer is the author of four books including the best-selling Before and After Zachariah, a true story about family life with a severely disabled child. All of her books have been translated, published internationally and reviewed in dozens of major venues including The New York Times, Newsday, People magazine and The Washington Post; three books have been serialized; two have received movie options. Her first novel, Surviving the Seasons, was nominated for the Jewish Book Award. No Regrets (Zwei Freundinnen) was reprinted in a special edition of popular books by German publishers, Roman Fischer in 2000.

Before joining the faculty at Iowa State in 1990, Kupfer did free-lance advertising for Impressions Inc, Long Island, New York. She has published hundreds of articles and columns in newspapers and commercial magazines including Newsweek, Newsday, Family Circle, Redbook, Women’s Day, Cosmopolitan, Writer’s Digest, The Ladies Home Journal, American Way, The Women’s Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Parents Magazine.

Kupfer’s personal essays are frequently anthologized in collections including the bestseller Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America and Mirror, Mirror: Women Writers on Fairytales. Her columns have been reprinted in education and first-year composition texts including: The Macmillan Writer; The Reading and Writing Process; Outlooks and Insights: A Reader for Writers; and Essay: Reading with the Writer’s Eye.

Debra Marquart

Professor (M.L.A., Moorhead State University)

Debra Marquart is a professor of English at Iowa State University. Her work has appeared in numerous journals such as North American Review, Three Penny Review, New Letters, River City, Crab Orchard Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Sun Magazine, Southern Poetry Review, and Witness

In the seventies and eighties, Marquart was a touring road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Her collection of short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories draws from her experiences as a female road musician. Marquart continues to perform with a jazz-poetry rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she has released two CDs: Orange Parade (acoustic rock); and A Regular Dervish (jazz-poetry).

Marquart’s work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction Award (Crab Orchard Review), the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater’s Prize from New Rivers Press, the Minnesota Voices Award, the Pearl Poetry Award (Pearl Editions), the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Prize for her memoir, The Horizontal World.

A performance poet, Marquart is the author of two poetry collections: Everything’s a Verb and From Sweetness. Her memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was published by Counterpoint Books in 2006, and she’s currently at work on a novel, set in Greece, titled The Olive Harvest.

Selected publications

• The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere (Counterpoint Books, 2006)
• From Sweetness: Poems (Pearl Editions, 2002)
• The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories (New Rivers Press, 2001)
• Everything's a Verb: Poems (New Rivers Press, 1995)

Benjamin Percy

Assistant Professor (M.F.A., Southern Illinois University)

Benjamin Percy was raised in the high desert of Central Oregon. He is the author of a novel, The Wilding (Graywolf, 2009), and two books of stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, Men’s Journal, the Paris Review, the Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, and Best American Short Stories. His honors include a Whiting Award, the Plimpton Prize and a Pushcart Prize. His work has been translated into French (Albin Michel), Italian (Random House Italy) and German (Random House Germany), as well as published in the UK (Jonathan Cape -- Random House UK).

Filmmaker James Ponsoldt adapted Refresh, Refresh into a screenplay, which won the Lynn Auerbach Award from the Sundance Institute and a "fast track" fellowship from the LA Film Festival; filming will begin in the spring of 2009. Refresh, Refresh is also being adapted into a graphic novel, written and illustrated by Danica Navgordoff at First, Second Books.  

 In addition to writing regularly for Esquire, Ben is juggling several novel manuscripts and hammering out an original screenplay.

To learn more about him, visit his website, www.benjaminpercy.com.

Stephen Pett

Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of Utah)

Pett is the author of two books, Pulpit of Bones (William Morrow), poetry, and Sirens (Vintage), a novel. His stories and poems have appeared in a number of journals. His stories have been listed on the Honor Roll in the Best American Short Stories and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Recently back from a two-year stint teaching at the Native American Preparatory School in New Mexico (where he was twice picked by students as Teacher of the Year), he edits the journal Flyway. He received his MA from Hollins College and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah.

Selected publications

• Sirens. (1990.)
• Pulpit of Bones.(1986.)
• Short stories in Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Fiction Network.

Mary Swander

Distinguished Professor (M.F.A., University of Iowa)

Mary Swander's most recent work is a book of non-fiction entitled The Desert Pilgrim (Viking, 2003). Other works include her memoir called Out of this World (Viking, 1995), three books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth House (Alfred Knopf, 1994), Driving the Body Back (Alfred Knopf, 1986), Succession (University of Georgia Press, 1979), as well as a book of literary interviews, Parsnips in the Snow (with Jane Staw, University of Iowa Press, 1990).

Ms. Swander has also edited three books: The Healing Circle: Authors on Recovery from Illness (Plume, 1998, with Patricia Foster); Bloom and Blossom , a collection of garden literature from Ecco Press (1997); and Land of the Fragile Giants, an edited collection of non-fiction and art work on the Loess Hills (with Cornelia Mutel, University of Iowa Press, 1994).

The University of Iowa Press reprinted Driving the Body Back in 1998. Ms. Swander adapted Driving the Body Back to the stage and this piece, along with her co-authored musical, Dear Iowa (with composer Christopher Frank), have been produced across the Midwest and on Iowa Public Television. Ms. Swander performs her own work and also gives solo readings throughout the United States.

Swander has won numerous awards including a Whiting Award (The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, 1994), a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Literary Arts (1986), two Ingram Merrill Awards (1980, 1986), the Carl Sandburg Literary Award (The Chicago Public Library, 1981), and the Nation-Discovery Award (The Nation magazine, 1976). Publisher's Weekly named Parsnips in the Snow one of the best books of 1990, and the Garden Writers Association of America awarded Swander their Quill and Trowel Award for best magazine writing of 1993. Ms. Swander has published individual poems, essays, short stories and articles in such places as The Nation, National Gardening Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Poetry magazine. She lives in Ames and Kalona, IA, where she raises sheep and goats and a large organic vegetable garden.

Robert Tremmel

 Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of Iowa)

Creative Writing interests

Teacher education, composition

Selected publications

• Zen and the Practice of Teaching English. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann, 1999.
• Driving the Milford Blacktop. Kansas City: BkMk Press, 1991.
• "Zen and the Art of Reflective Practice in Teacher Education." Harvard Educational Review.
• "Country Life and the Teaching of English." Research in the Teaching of English 29 (1995).
• "Beyond Self-Criticism: Reflecting on Teacher Research and T.A. Education." Composition Studies 22 (1994).
• Poetry published in: Poetry Northwest; Zone 3; Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review; Southern Poetry Review; Coe Review; Stand Alone; Chattahoochee Review; Descant; New Delta Review; Aethlon; Voices on the Landscape: Contemporary Iowa Poets.

   

David Zimmerman

Assistant Professor (M.F.A., University of Alabama)

David Zimmerman attended Emerson College for film studies and then went on to earn an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama. He has worked as a publicist at St. Martin’s Press in NYC and taught writing at Georgia Southern University, Dilla University College in Ethiopia, South College in Savannah and the University of Wisconsin, where he was also a fiction fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. His first novel, Socket, was published by Anvil Press. He is currently at work on a novel, The Deep Moans Round.