The Lindsay J. Cropper Memorial Writers series was inaugurated in the Fall of 2004. The Series has evolved in a short time into one of San Diego’s premier literary events.

Admission is free and it is open to the public.

PAST WRITERS INCLUDE:

Meena Alexander

Mark Strand

Dorianne Laux

Li-Young Lee

James Tate

Chitra Divakaruni

Chang-rae Lee

John J. Clayton

Percival Everett

Danzy Senna

Andrew Zawacki

BIOGRAPHIES:

2004 Writers Series

DORIANNE LAUX

Dorianne Laux is the author of three collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Awake (1990), introduced by Philip Levine, What We Carry (1994), finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Smoke (2000). She is also co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton,1997). Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, was published by W.W. Norton in fall of 2005.

Her work has been published in magazines such as Agni, The American Voice, Art/Life, Barrow Street, Best American Poetry, Best of the American Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, DoubleTake, Five Points, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Ms. Magazine, The New England Review, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Solo, The Southeast Review, The Southern Review, The Washington Post , ZYZZYVA and Diverse Publications: The International Journal of Erotica. She is listed in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry and her poems have been translated into French, Italian, Korean, Romanian and Brazilian Portuguese. She was invited to read at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in 2001 by Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz.

Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize for poetry, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Laux is an Associate Professor and works in the University of Oregon’s Creative Writing Program. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, poet Joseph Millar, and her daughter Tristem.

Bio courtesy of Blue Flower Arts
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LI-YOUNG LEE

Li-Young Lee’s father, personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, moved his family to Indonesia and helped to found Gamaliel University. In 1959, after spending nineteen months as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, Lee's father fled Indonesia with his family to escape anti-Chinese sentiment. Between 1959 and 1964 the Lee family travelled through Hong Kong and Japan before settling in the United States.

Lee has attended the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He has also taught at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. Lee has written several poetry collections including Book of My Nights (2001), The City in Which I Love You (1990, Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets for 1990), and Rose (1986, New York University's 1986 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award ). His memoir, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995), received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee's poems have also been published in three Pushcart Prize: Best of Small Presses and "1900~2000 Gay Writers Coalition" anthologies.

His honors include a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer's Award, grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Lee currently resides with his wife, Donna, in Chicago, Illinois.

Bio courtesy of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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JAMES TATE

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, James Tate is the author of Return to the City of White Donkeys (2004); Memoir of the Hawk (2002); Shroud of the Gnome (1998); Worshipful Company of Fletchers (1995), which won the National Book Award; Selected Poems (1991), which won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the William Carlos Williams Award; Distance from Loved Ones (1990); Reckoner (1986); Constant Defender (1983); Riven Doggeries (1979); Viper Jazz (1976); Absences(1972); Hints to Pilgrims (1971); The Oblivion Ha-Ha (1970); and The Lost Pilot (1967), selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

He has published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is currently a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

He has taught poetry at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, and Emerson College. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has worked since 1971. He is a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, along with Dara Wier and Peter Gizzi.
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2005 Writers Series

CHITA BANERJEE

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the bestselling author of the novels Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices; the story collections The Unknown Errors of Our Lives and Arranged Marriage, which received several awards, including the American Book Award; and four collections of prize-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., Zoetrope, Good Housekeeping, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Best American Short Stories 1999, and The New York Times. Born in India, Divakaruni lives near Houston.

Bio courtesy of Anchor Books
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CHANG-RAE LEE

Chang-rae Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea and emigrated to the US in 1968, aged two. He grew up in the New York City area and began his university education at Yale, before moving on to the University of Oregon, where he gained his MFA. His first novel, Native Speaker, was an enormous critical success on both sides of the Atlantic: billboards in Times Square hailed him as the new literary talent, while in London Jason Cowley remarked that Native Speaker was better than all of the books he had read as a Booker judge. Native Speaker won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the American Book Award and the ALA Book of the Year Award.

A Gesture Life grew out of four years work. It originally focused on the experience of a Korean comfort woman, and was told from her perspective. Chang-rae Lee went to Korea to interview surviving comfort women, where some them mentioned ethnic Koreans among the Japanese soldiers. After working for nearly two years on the novel in progress, Chang-rae Lee discarded what he had written, retaining only one character from the first draft—Doc Hata. He currently combines writing with teaching, and he directs the MFA programme in creative writing at the Hunter College of City University, in New York.

Bio courtesy of granta magazine
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2006 Writers Series

MEENA ALEXANDER

Meena Alexander was born in Allahabad and divided her childhood between India and the Sudan. From her cross-cultural perspective, Alexander writes in, Raw Silk, Triquarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press, with moving intensity of post September 11 events as she evokes violence, and civil strife, love, despair, and a hard-won hope. This autobiographical cycle of poems reflects the surrealism of such a life and is shot through with the frissons of pleasure and pain, of beauty and tension that mark a truly global existence. Meena Alexander is the author of several books of poetry. Illiterate Heart, also from Triquarterly Books, won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award. Her memoir Fault Lines, chosen as a Best Book of 1993 by Publishers Weekly-- was recently reissued by the Feminist Press at The City University of New York, in a post 9/11 edition, with a new chapter entitled "Lyric in a Time of Violence." She lives in New York City where she is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Centerer of the University
Bio courtesy of PoetsUSA.com
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MARK STRAND

Mark Strand is a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada on April 11, 1934. His early years were spent in North America, while much of his teenage years were spent in South and Central America. He earned his B.A. from Antioch College in 1957. He then studied painting under Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned a B.F.A in 1959. On a Fulbright Scholarship, Strand studied nineteenth-century Italian poetry in Italy during 1960-1961. He attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop the following year and earned an Master of Fine Arts in 1962. In 1965 he spent a year in Brazil as a Fulbright Lecturer. Strand has since taught at many universities and published eleven books of poetry, in addition to translations from the poetry of Rafael Alberti and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, among others. He left his position as Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 2005, and currently teaches at Columbia University.

In 1981, Strand was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress during the 1990-1991 term. Strand has received numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for A Blizzard of One.

Bio courtesy of Wikipedia
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2008 Series

JOHN J. CLAYTON

Clayton, born and raised in New York City and educated at Columbia College and Indiana University, has taught modern literature and fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst since 1969. He has also been Visiting Professor at Mt. Holyoke College. His stories have been published in most major periodicals and have won prizes in O.Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize Stories. His second collection, Radiance, won the Ohio State University award in short fiction and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 1998. His second novel, The Man I Never Wanted to Be, was also published in 1998. An essay about his work appeared in the Fall, 1998 Yale Review.

John J. Clayton's third novel, Kuperman’s Fire, about criminal evil, Jewish heritage, and the miracle of survival, will be published in July, 2007. His new collection, Wrestling with Angels: New and Collected Stories, will appear in fall, 2007. Recent stories have appeared in AGNI on-line and in Missouri Review, Fall, 2005. The on-line story was listed as one of the year’s ten best, and the story in Missouri Review has been chosen for the new Pushcart Prize anthology. Recently, he has also appeared in AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, and often in Commentary. A new story will appear in TriQuarterly in January,2008. His work and videotaped interview will appear in the fifth volume of Listening for God.
Clayton’s stories have often been reprinted; he has read them at universities, libraries, and synagogues. In November 2003 he was featured speaker for the Luce Program in Scripture and the Literary Arts at Boston University. “The Man Who Could See Radiance” was read at Symphony Space in New York and has been aired often on NPR since fall, 2001 as part of the Selected Shorts series. It is part of the audio anthology, Getting There From Here: Best of Selected Shorts. back to top

PERCIVAL EVERETT, NOVELIST

“Percival's talent is multifaceted, sparked by a satiric brilliance that could place him alongside Wright and Ellison.” — Publisher's Weekly

Percival Everett is the author of fifteen novels, three collections of short fiction, and one volume of poetry. Among his novels are Wounded, Glyph, Erasure, American Desert, For Her Dark Skin, Zulus, The Weather and The Women Treat Me Fair, Cutting Lisa, Walk Me to the Distance, Suder, The One That Got Away, Watershed, God's Country, his short story collection is Big Picture, and his poetry book is re:f (gesture). He is the recipient of the Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection Big Picture) and a New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel Zulus). His stories have been included in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Short Stories. He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991. He teaches fiction writing, American Studies and critical theory and he has taught at Bennington College, The University of Wyoming and the University of California at Riverside. He is currently at the University of Southern California.

With these novels and collections of stories to his credit, Everett has developed a reputation as a wordsmith. One critic describes him as a lyrical writer, whose “stark and sometimes powerful prose” leaves a lasting impression. His 1994 book God’s Country drew measured praise from the New York Times: “[The novel] starts sour, then abruptly turns into Cowpoke Absurdism, ending with an acute hallucination of blood, hate and magic. It’s worth the wait. The novel sears.”

Born and raised in Columbia, S.C., Everett spent a childhood “filled with books,” he says. As an undergraduate at the University of Miami, majoring in philosophy and biochemistry, he discovered the writings of early 20th-century analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein held that most philosophical problems were semantic— misunderstandings caused by imprecise language. “I was seduced completely by Wittgenstein,” Everett says. “He still informs my way of thinking. The root for me is matters of language.”

He has worked as a musician, a ranch hand and a high school teacher. In addition to writing Everett is a painter, a woodworker and a flyfisherman. He trains mules on his ranch outside of Los Angeles.

“If part of the mission of the artist is to expand the thinking of the culture in which he exists, I have my work cut out for me.” —Percival Everrett back to top

DANZY SENNA, NOVELIST

“Senna's dynamic storytelling illuminates personal revelations that are anything but black and white.”—Entertainment Weekly

Danzy Senna's debut novel, Caucasia, the story of two bi-racial sisters growing up in racially charged Boston during the 1970's, became an instant national bestseller. It was the winner of the BOMC Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and of an Alex Award from the American Library Association. It was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, one of Glamour's three best books of the year by a new writer, one of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books of the Year for Young Adults, and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It was also a book club selection of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and the Contra Costa Times. Caucasia examined the politics of race with rare honesty and clarity. The LA Times called Caucasia as compelling as any you are likely to encounter, and a book that explores both the centrality and the lunacy of racial identity in America. It sparked a newfound focus on bi-racial cultures in America, a part of our population that does not fit into any clean category.

Senna's second novel Symptomatic (Riverhead Books), is a psychologically astute novel that continues to examine the complicated topic of race. In Symptomatic, her narrator is a biracial young woman often mistaken for white; she develops a friendship with an older, similarly mixed-race woman that begins as an antidote to loneliness and alienation, but gradually grows into something both complicated and frightening. Symptomatic is a psychological thriller rooted in the very extremes she avoids in Caucasia. Elle Magazine writes, “Symptomatic proves the raves [for Caucasia] were right on target...Senna throws everything into her literary stew–ambition, love, obsession, jealousy, and race.”

In addition to fiction, Senna also writes essays on issues of race, identity, and gender. Senna has also written extensively on the frequent experience of being mistaken for white, and how it’s led to an uncomfortable exposure of prejudices and intolerance in those around her. She lives in LA. back to top

ANDREW ZAWACKI

Andrew Zawacki is an American poet, critic, editor, and translator. His first book By Reason of Breakings won the 2001 University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series, chosen by Forrest Gander.[1] Work from his second book, Anabranch, was awarded the 2002 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. The volume also includes his 2001 chapbook Masquerade, selected byC.D. Wright to receive the 2002 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award.[2] He has coedited the international literary magazine Verse with Brian Henry since 1995 and has taught at the University of Georgia since 2005. back to top

2008/2009 Series

JEAN VALENTINE

"For me, Jean Valentine's poems, like dam walls, seem to have been shaped by the enormous, unseen pressure of what lies behind them.” —Lynn Emanuel

Jean Valentine is the current state poet of New York (2008–2010). She won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker, in 1965. Her tenth and most recent book of poetry is Little Boat (Wesleyan, 2007). Her previous collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965–2003, was the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

Valentine has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the NEA, The Bunting Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, The New York Council for the Arts, and The New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the Maurice English Prize, the Teasdale Poetry Prize, and The Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, Columbia University, and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, among many other places. back to top

JERICHO BROWN

“To read Jericho Brown’s poems is to encounter devastating genius.” —Claudia Rankine

Jericho Brown worked as speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans and a B.A. from Dillard University, and he has served as poetry editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. The recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego where he teaches creative writing. His first book is Please (New Issues, 2008). back to top

NATASHA TRETHEWEY

“Trethewey is clearly a poet to savor.” —Maxine Kumin

Natasha Trethewey is author of Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006), for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002) which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association, and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Her poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, and The Best American Poetry 2000 and 2003. Currently, she is Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.

Her first collection of poetry, Domestic Work (2000), was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. In her introduction to the book, Dove said, "Trethewey eschews the Polaroid instant, choosing to render the unsuspecting yearnings and tremulous hopes that accompany our most private thoughts—reclaiming for us that interior life where the true self flourishes and to which we return, in solitary reverie, for strength."

Natasha Trethewey's muscular, luminous poems explore the complex memory of the American South history that belongs to all Americans. The sequence forming the spine of her most recent collection follows the Native Guard, one of the first black regiments mustered into service in the Civil War. In Trethewey's hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, a plaque honors Confederate POWs, but there is no memorial to these vanguard Union soldiers. Native Guard is both a pilgrimage and an elegy, as Trethewey skillfully employs a variety of poetic forms to create a lyrical monument to these forgotten voices. Interwoven are poems honoring Trethewey's mother and recalling her parents interracial marriage, still illegal in 1966 in Mississippi. Native Guard is a haunting, beguiling narrative, caught in the intersections of public and personal testament. back to top