The Richard L. Thomas Chair in Creative Writing
The Richard L. Thomas Chair in Creative Writing brings internationally-recognized poets and fiction writers to Kenyon for one semester each academic year to teach creative writing workshops and literature courses. Some recent occupants of the Thomas Chair include:- Diane Glancy
- Simon J. Ortiz
- Courtney Angela Brkic
- Fanny Howe
- Barry Unsworth
- Claire Messud
- Alan Shapiro
- John Kinsella
- Lewis Hyde
Diane Glancy
Diane Glancy, the 2008-09 Richard Thomas Chair, was a professor at
Simon J. Ortiz
Simon J. Ortiz, the 2007 Thomas Chair, is an Indigenous poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, storyteller, sometime singer, essayist, and editor from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. He taught two courses: Advanced Poetry Workshop and The Indigenous American Novel: Dealing with Contemporary "America." He is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, children's literature, and edited works, including Woven Stone, After and Before the Lightning, From Sand Creek, Speaking for the Generations, Out There Somewhere, Men On The Moon, Beyond the Reach of Time and Change, A Good Rainbow Road, and others. His teaching focuses are Indigenous American Literature, De-colonization and Liberation as Creative Expression, and Indigenous Land, Culture, and Community. A former Acoma Pueblo tribal official, Ortiz is a father of three children and grandfather of eight grandchildren (so far). His most recent writing project is a memoir-like collaboration with Gabriela Schwab focusing on culture, historical trauma, and memory. He also will be a guest editor, along with poet Roberta Hill, of a special issue of The Kenyon Review in early 2009. Ortiz is currently a professor in American Indian Studies and the Department of English at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
Courtney Angela Brkic
Courtney Angela Brkic, the 2006 Thomas Professor of Creative Writing, has worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a forensic archeologist and for the United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague (ICTY). She is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to research women in Croatia's war-affected population, as well as a New York Times Fellowship. She has led creative writing workshops at Newcomers High School in Queens, New York, New York University, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences. Her translations of Croatian Expressionist poet A.B. Simic have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation.Fanny Howe
Fanny Howe, the 2005 Thomas Chair, is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose. Her recent collections of poetry include On the Ground, Gone, Selected Poems, Forged, Q, One Crossed Out, O'Clock, and The End. How is also the author of several novels and prose collections, most recently, The Lives of a Spirit / Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken and Nod. She has written short stories, books for young adults, and the collection of literary essays The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life. She was the recipient of the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for her Selected Poems. She has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts, and the Village Voice, as well as fellowships from the Bunting Institute and the MacArthur Colony. She has lectured in creative writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth, the 2004 Thomas Chair, won England's Booker Prize in 1992 for his novel Sacred Hunger. He is the author of fourteen novels, including The Hide, Mooncranker's Gift, Pascali's Island, Stone Virgin, and Morality Play. Unsworth's 1999 novel, Losing Nelson, joined two of his earlier novels, Pascal's Island and Morality Play, in being short-listed for the Booker Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has held Literary Residencies at the Universities of Durham, Newcastle and Liverpool in Britain, and Lund in Sweden. Unsworth was a Visiting Professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1998-99
Claire Messud
Claire Messud, the 2003 Thomas Professor of Creative Writing, is the author of The Hunters, When the World Was Steady, and The Last Life. Her novels have twice been finalists for the PEN/Faulkner prize, and she has received a both Guggenheim Fellowship and the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a prize presented each year to "a young writer of great promise." She recently received a $250,000 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, designed to "provide her the freedom to devote time exclusively to writing" for the next five years. In addition to Kenyon, she has taught in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, in the Graduate Writing Program at Johns Hopkins, Amherst College and as a writer-in-residence at the University of the South.
Alan Shapiro
Alan Shapiro, the 2002 Thomas Chair, has written eight books of poetry, including The Dead, Alive and Busy, winner of the 2001 Kingsley Tufts Award. This annual prize, awarded by Claremont Graduate University in California, comes with a stipend of $75,000, the largest sum ever awarded for a single book of poetry. He is also the author of three books of prose, including "Vigil," winner of the New England Booksellers Association's Discovery Designation. The poetry editor of the Phoenix Poets Series at the University of Chicago Press from 1994 to 2000 and co-editor of "Greek Tragedy in New Translation" at Oxford University Press, Shapiro has just completed a translation of "The Oresteia," by Aeschylus, to be published this year.
John Kinsella
John Kinsella, the 2001 Thomas Chair, is the author of twenty books whose many prizes and awards include The Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the John Bray Award for Poetry from The Adelaide Festival, The Age Poetry Book of The Year Award, The Western Australian Premier's Prize for Poetry (twice), a Young Australian Creative Fellowship from the former PM of Australia, Paul Keating, and senior Fellowships from the Literature Board of The Australia Council. He is the editor of the international literary journal Salt, a Consultant Editor to Westerly (CSAL, University of Western Australia), Cambridge correspondent for Overland (Melbourne, Australia), co-editor of the British literary journal Stand, International Editor of The Kenyon Review, and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. His poetic reworking of Gotterdammerung, the final part of Wagner's Ring Cycle, recently premiered as part of the Perth International Arts Festival, billed as the largest cultural event ever mounted in Western Australia. Kinsella translated Wagner's mythic tale of the quest for the Ring and the destruction of Valhalla into a contemporary West Australian context, interweaving ideas of environmental destruction, indigenous ownership and gold fever. Among his many other accomplishments at Kenyon, Professor Kinsella launched the Kenyon Chapbook Series, which has begun to publish the work of the college's best student poets.