Fiction Writers

Karen Shepard - Karen Shepard is the author of the novels An Empire of Women and The Bad Boy's Wife. Her work has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Self, Bomb, and other publications. She teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, writer Jim Shepard, and their three children.

Jim Shepard - The author of five previous novels, Jim Shepard lives with his family in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Paul Park - Paul Park is an American science fiction author and fantasy author. He lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. He teaches a Reading and Writing Science Fiction course at Williams College. He has also taught numerous times at the Clarion West Writing Workshop.

Andrea Barrett - Andrea Barrett is an acclaimed American writer. Barrett received her B.A. in biology from Union College and briefly attended a Ph.D. program in zoology. She began writing fiction seriously in her thirties, but was relatively unknown until the publication of Ship Fever, a collection of short stories which won the National Book Award in 1996. Barrett received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001 and her book Servants of the Map was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Barrett is particularly well known as a writer of historical fiction and her work reflects her lifelong interest in science as many of her characters are scientists, often nineteenth-century biologists. Barrett currently teaches at Williams College and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program.

Non-Fiction Writers

Elizabeth Winthrop - Elizabeth Winthrop grew up in Washington, D.C., the only girl in a family of six children. Her father was Stewart Alsop, the political journalist. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied with Grace Paley and Jane Cooper. Ms. Winthrop worked for a number of years as an editor in the children's book department of a major publisher. In 1972 she published her first book, Bunk Beds.  Ms. Winthrop lectures in schools and libraries around the country. She lives in New York with her two children.

Elizabeth Kolbert - Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of The Prophet of Love. She was a reporter for the New York Times for fourteen years before becoming a staff writer covering politics for the New Yorker. She and her husband, John Kleiner have three sons. They recently moved from New York to Williamstown, MA.

Creative Non-Fiction Writer and Playwright

Jennifer Mattern - Jennifer Mattern is a playwright and freelance writer based in western Massachusetts.  A native of Philadelphia, PA, she holds a BA from Grinnell College in Iowa and an MFA in Theatre (Playwriting/Acting) from Sarah Lawrence College in New York.  Jenn and her dear Canadian hubby reside in an old mill town with two daughters, two dogs, and an odd assortment of vintage postcards.

Poets

Cassandra Cleghorn - Cassandra Cleghorn received her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. from Yale University. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including the Paris Review, Yale Review, Western Humanities Review, Southwest Review, and Seneca Review. She was a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant Finalist in Poetry in 2000. She has taught at Williams College in Massachusetts since 1990 where she is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English. Her most recent project is a collaboration of poetry and music. The quartet, Merge (comprised of Cleghorn, saxophonist Erik Lawrence, drummer Allison Miller, and bassist Rene Hart), issued the CD Merge in October and have begun performing in clubs and colleges.

Larry Raab - Lawrence Raab is the author of What We Don't Know About Each Other, a National Poetry Series selection, Collector of Cold Weather, Other Children, and Probable World. He has received the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Bess Hokin Award for Poetry, and poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Breadloaf Writers Conference. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review and many other publications. He is currently professor of English at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1976.

Biographer

Susan Quinn

Local Historian

Joe Manning - Joe Manning is a freelance journalist, poet, photographer, composer, lyricist and artist. His book, Steeples: Sketches of North Adams (Flatiron Press 1997), is in its third printing. It has been required reading for several courses at Williams College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He followed that with Disappearing Into North Adams (Flatiron Press 2001). His most recent book is Gig At The Amtrak (Flatiron Press 2005), a collection of his poetry.