Award-winning authors Denise Duhamel and Robert Olmstead will participate in the 15th West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, to be held in Colson Hall on the downtown campus of West Virginia University July 21-24. In addition to Duhamel and Olmstead, the Workshop faculty includes writers who have won the Pen/Revson Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Iowa Short Fiction Award, Pushcart Prize, George Garrett Fiction Prize and other prestigious national and international prizes.

The writers will conduct workshops, present lectures and give readings during the four-day event. Readings are free and open to the public.

“We’re fortunate to have two outstanding writers come to Morgantown to share their work and their writing wisdom,” said Mark Brazaitis, director of the Workshop. “Denise Duhamel is one of the funniest poets I’ve ever read, and her insights into our culture are profound and sometimes disturbing. Robert Olmstead’s work is compelling and moving.”

In addition to being great writers, Duhamel and Olmstead are known as outstanding teachers, said Brazaitis, who also directs WVU’s Creative Writing Program.

Duhamel is the author of numerous books and chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent titles are “Ka-Ching!” and “Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh, 2005),” both from the University of Pittsburgh Press. A winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she has been anthologized widely, including in numerous volumes of “The Best American Poetry.” She has read her work on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and Bill Moyers’ PBS special “Fooling with Words.”

Olmstead is the author of six books, including the award-winning novel “Coal Black Horse,” published by Algonquin Books. He also has published “Elements of the Craft,” a textbook for fiction-writing workshops, and “Stay Here with Me: A Memoir,” plus several stories and essays in literary magazines. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

The other workshop instructors are:

James Harms, a WVU professor, is the author of five full-length books of poetry, including “After West” and “Freeways and Aqueducts.” He has published poems, stories, and essays in “Poetry,” “The Kenyon Review,” “The Antioch Review,” “The Gettysburg Review,” “TriQuarterly,” “Shenandoah” and the “Oxford American.” He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes for his poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

• Workshop leader Ren�e Nicholson has had fiction, nonfiction and poems appear in “Chelsea,” “Mid American Review,” “Perigee: A Journal of the Arts,” “Paste,” “Naugatuck River Review,” “The Honey Land Review,” “Dossier,” and “The Gettysburg Review.”

• Brazaitis, the other workshop leader, has published four books, including “The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala,” winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and “An American Affair: Stories,” winner of the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize.

The Workshop will kick off noon July 21 with a lunch and an impromptu writing exercise, followed by an impromptu reading.

At 8 p.m. July 21, Harms and Brazaitis will read. At 1:30 p.m. July 22, Nicholson and West Virginia poet John McKernan will read; at 8 p.m., Duhamel and Olmstead will read.

The Workshop’s last reading will be held at 8 p.m. July 23 with Workshop participants sharing their work in an open mic format.

The conference’s last event will be a panel discussion on publishing, featuring the entire Workshop faculty, at 9:45 a.m. July 24.

The West Virginia Writers’ Workshop draws writers from all over the country to Morgantown and the WVU campus for four days of workshops, lectures, readings and conversation about writing.

Spaces in the Workshop are still available. The application deadline is June 17. For more information, go to http://english.wvu.edu/centers/projects/wvww.

-WVU-

CONTACT: Mark Brazaitis, Workshop director
304-293-9707, Mark.Brazaitis@mail.wvu.edu

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