University of Southern Maine

Visiting Writers

Upcoming Guest Faculty

Jamie Cat Callan has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, The Missouri Review, Story, Best American Erotica and in many other places.  She is the author of three novels for young adults, a relationship book called "Hooking Up or Holding Out" and the creator of "The Writers Toolbox" a kit of writing games and exercises culled from 25+years of teaching creative writing (Chronicle Books).  Her latest book "French Women Don't Sleep Alone" is forthcoming in 2009 from Kensington. 

Jamie’s literary awards include the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, The Goldwyn Award in Screenwriting, The New York State Council on the Arts Grant, First Prize in the Writers Digest Fiction Competition (twice), a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Grant, a Bread Loaf Writing Conference Fellowship in fiction, and artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Djerassi Foundation, The Dorland Mountain Artist Colony, VCCA International, The Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.

Jamie has taught her unique right brain approach to writing at Yale University, Wesleyan University, NYU, UCLA, Falmouth Night School, Educational Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, The YMCA Writers Voice Program, at Grub Street in Boston and through Media Bistro in New York City. Jamie's web page

Jaed Muncharoen Coffin is the author of the memoir, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants, a 2008 Book Sense Notable Selection. His next memoir, Rough House at Marlintini’s, has earned him a Resident Fellowship at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, and will chronicle his career fighting as a boxer in an Alaskan bar. Jaed Coffin

Alison Hawthorne Deming was born and grew up in Connecticut.  She is the author of Science and Other Poems, selected by Gerald Stern for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of two additional poetry books, The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence, and Genius Loci. 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 Rea.  Her writing has won the Pablo Neruda Prize from NIMROD, Pushcart Prize, the Gertrude 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.”    Her poems and essays have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Orion, The Pushcart Prize XVIII: Best of the Small Presses, Verse and Universe: Poems on Science and Mathematices, The Norton Book of Nature Writing, and Best American Science and Nature Writing. She currently is Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. Alison's web page

Mark Melnicove For more than 30 years, Mark Melnicove has created and published found and other varieties of poetry in magazines and books. From 1979-1996, Melnicove and Bern Porter performed their poetry as "The Eternal Poetry Festival." Melnicove's small presses, The Dog Ear Press and Tilbury House, published over 100 titles, including six titles by Porter. Melnicove received his MFA from Bennington College in literature and writing, and teaches creative writing, humanities, and film studies at Falmouth HS, Falmouth, Maine.

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Creative Nonfiction Faculty

Fiction Faculty

Poetry Faculty

Popular Fiction Faculty