The University of Arizona

Creative Writing Faculty

JASON BROWN 

Associate Professor, Fiction                                                                                                 Director of Undergraduate English                                         more information
jbb@email.arizona.edu

Jason Brown is the author of Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work, published by Open City, 2007 and Driving the Heart and Other Stories (1999). His stories have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harper's TriQuarterly and Story. They have been anthologized in 25 and Under Fiction and Best American Short Stories. He was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Truman Capote Fellowship and was the Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.

                            
ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING

Professor, Nonfiction, Poetry
ademing@email.arizona.edu                                                         more information

Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of three poetry books: Science and Other Poems, which was selected for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence published by LSU in 1997; and Genius Loci published in 2005 by Penquin.  Her new book of poems, Rope, is forthcoming from Penquin in 2009 and a new expanded edition of the anthology, The Colors of Nature, co-edited with Lauret E. Savoy, will be published by Milkweed in 2009. Deming has also published three nonfiction books: Temporary Homelands, The Edges of the Civilized World, which was a finalist for the PEN Center West Award, and Writing the Sacred Into the Real.  She edited Poetry of the American West:  A Columbia Anthology, and co-edited with Lauret Savoy, The Colors of Nature:  Essays on Culture and Identity, and she has published two limited edition chapbooks with Tucson’s Kore Press, Girls in Jungle:  What Does It Take for A Women to Survive in The Arts and Anatomy of Desire:  The Daughter/Mother Sessions, a collaboration with her daughter, the painter Lucinda Bliss.  Her writing has won fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod, a Pushcart Prize, the Gerturde B. Claytor Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Bayer Award in science writing from Creative Nonfiction for the essay “Poetry and Science: A View from the Divide.”  She has taught at the Prague Summer Program and Stonecoast MFA Program.
                           

                       ELIZABETH EVANS                                                                                                                                    

Professor, Fiction                                                                                       evanse@email.arizona.edu                                                        more information
                                                      
Elizabeth Evans is a novelist and short story writer. Her first collection of stories was Locomotion. Her novels include The Blue Hour, Carter Clay (Los Angeles Times' Best  Books of 1999) and Rowing in Eden. Her most recent book is the collection Suicide's Girlfriend (HarperCollins, 2002). Evans is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a residency from the National Writer's Voice Project, fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, Arizona Comission on the Arts, and the James Michener
Foundation                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                      
ROBERT HOUSTON

Professor, Fiction                                                                                   Houston@email.arizona.edu                                                            more information

Robert Houston has published ten novels, including Bisbee '17, The Nation Thief, The Fourth Codex, and a book of translations of the poems of León Felipe.  One of his novels became a feature film, while another toured as a play. Cholo won the West Coast Review of Books' Golden Palm award.  His nonfiction has appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, (for which he reviews regularly), Mother Jones, and elsewhere.  He has been a Fulbright professor to Peru, and has been frequently on the staff of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Bread Loaf School of English.  He is on the Board of the ArtsReach Foundation, which is dedicated to providing creative writing resources and teachers to Native American children and elders. 

                     
FENTON JOHNSON

Associate Professor, Fiction
fenton@fentonjohnson.com                                                         more information

Fenton Johson is the author of two novels, Crossing the River (1989) and Scissors, Paper, Rock (1996), as well as Geography of the Heart: A Memoir, which received both the American Library Association award and the Lambda Literary Award. His most recent book Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey among Buddhist and Christian Monks (Houghton Mifflin 2003 / Mariner paperback 2004) received the Lambda Literary Award for best gay/lesbian nonfiction and the 2004 Kentucky Literary Award in Nonfiction. He has served as a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, and is currently a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, in which he has published two cover essays. He has also become a regular columnist for various opinion pages, usually on issues of faith and religion, including the LA Times and Pacific News Service. His awards include NEA grants in both fiction and nonfiction, a Stegner Fellowship, and a Michener Fellowship. He has been a scriptwriter for PBS documentaries, and his commentaries can be heard on NPR. He is currently at work on his third novel.

                          
JANE MILLER

Professor, Poetry 
jane@email.arizona.edu                                                 more information      

Jane Miller is the author of eight collections of poetry, including A Palace of Pearls, from Copper Canyon Press, which has recently gone into another printing. Her newest book is Midnights, poetry and prose poems, in the Saturnalia Press artist/poet Collaboration Series, #4, with visual art contributed by Beverly Pepper and an introduction by C.D. Wright. Among her earlier collections are The Greater Leisures, a National Poetry Series Selection, and August Zero, winner of the Western States Book Award. She has also written Working Time: Essays on Poetry, Culture, and Travel, part of the University of Michigan's Poets on Poetry Series. She is a recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award for Poetry, as well as a Guggenheim fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.
 

ANDER MONSON    

Assistant Professor, Nonfiction                                                                 ander@email.arizona.edu                                           more information

Ander Monson's most recent book is the winner of the 2006 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Neck Deep and Other Predicaments (Graywolf, 2007). He also has a book of nonfiction, Vanishing Point, forthcoming in 2010 from Graywolf Press and The Available World, a new book of poetry, Sarabande Books in 2010.  He is the author of a collection of fiction, Other Electricities (Sarabande Books, 2005), winner of the John C. Zacharis prize from Ploughshares and a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize, and one of poetry, Vacationland (Tupelo Press, 2005). His work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Believer, Ninth Letter, Boston Review, Quarterly West, Best American Essays 2008, and The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 2.  He is a 2007 recipient of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship. Monson is the designer, editor, and publisher of the literary journal, DIAGRAM, and the founder and editor of New Michigan Press. He earned his MFA in Fiction and Poetry at the University of Alabama. Find his website here: http://otherelectricities.com.
 

MANUEL MUÑOZ

Assistant Professor, Fiction
munozm@email.arizona.edu                                                         more information

Manuel Muñoz is the author of two story collections, The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007) and Zigzagger (Northwestern University Press, 2003). His work has appeared in The New York Times, Epoch, Glimmer Train, Swink, Puerto del Sol, The Boston Review, and Mid-American Review, forthcoming in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 and has aired on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. A finalist for the 2007 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, Muñoz is the recipient of a Constance Saltonstall Foundation Individual Artists’s Grant, a 2006 NEA literature fellowship, and most recently the 2008 Whiting Writers' Award. Munoz earned his MFA at Cornell University and his BA from Harvard.
 

STEVE ORLEN

Professor, Poetry 
sorlen@email.arizona.edu                                                            more information

Steve Orlen has published Permission to Speak, A Place at the Table, The Bridge of Sighs , Kisses, & This Particular Eternity. His newest collection, The Elephant’s Child: New & Selected Poems, was published in August 2006 and was a finalist for the PEN International Award. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999 and has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. He has been a visiting faculty member at University of Houston (2003), Warren Wilson College , Goddard College and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.
 

C.E. POVERMAN

Professor, Fiction                                                                            poverman@email.arizona.edu                                                       more information

C.E. Poverman's most recent novel, On the Edge, was published by Ontario Review Press and later became a St. Martin 's mass market paperback. A collection of short stories, Skin, was published by Ontario Review Press in 1992. It was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He won an Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction for his book of stories, The Black Velvet Girl. He is the author of Susan and Solomon's Daughter, both published by Viking. Solomon's Daughter was included in the Penguin Contemporary Fiction series. His third novel, My Father in Dreams, was published by Scribners. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and has been included in O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Telling Stories, and The Iowa Award: The Best Stories from Twenty Years. His stories have been cited numerous times in Best American Short Stories and O. Henry, and his stories have appeared in magazines ranging from the Iowa Review to Playboy. In 1994 he held a Chesterfield Screenwriting Fellowship at Universal Studios. Since then, he has introduced screenwriting to the MFA program. In 2002, he was an Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Innovation in Teaching Award. He just finished a new novel, Love By Drowning.        

                        
BOYER RICKEL

 Lecturer, Poetry                                                                                                                   boyerr@email.arizona.edu                                                             more information

Boyer Rickel's most recent book of poetry, remanence, was published by Parlor Press, 2008. His first book of poems, arreboles, was published by Wesleyan University Press. Taboo, a collection of autobiographical essays, appeared in spring 1999 from University of Wisconsin Press. He won a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship in 2001.

                                
 AURELIE SHEEHAN

Associate Professor, Fiction 
Director of Creative Writing Program
asheehan@email.arizona.edu                                                       more information

Aurelie Sheehan is the author of the short story collection Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant and two novels, The Anxiety of Everyday Objects and History Lesson for Girls, released in paperback June 2007. She has received a Pushcart Prize for creative nonfiction, a Camargo Fellowship, the Jack Kerouac Literary Award, and an Arizona Commission on the Arts Project Award. Her stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in many magazines, most recently The Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, Epoch, and The New England Review. She is the director of the creative writing program.