Faculty
Keep checking back, as we are constantly adding new conference writers, editors, and agents!
Tracks
Fiction || Creative Nonfiction || Magazine || Young Adult || Poetry
Fiction
Janet Fitch
Janet Fitch was born in Los Angeles, a third-generation native, and grew up in a family of voracious readers. She is the author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. Her other novels include Kicks and Paint it Black.
A graduate of Reed College, Janet is a faculty member in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, where she teaches fiction. She also edits fiction manuscripts privately, and lectures on special topics in fiction writing.
Some of her favorite authors include Fyodor Dostoevsky and Edgar Allan Poe.
Louis Bayard
With his three most recent novels, The Black Tower, The Pale Blue Eye and Mr. Timothy, Louis Bayard, in the words of the Washington Post, has ascended to "the upper reaches of the historical-thriller league." A New York Times Notable author, he has been nominated for both the Edgar and Dagger awards and has been named one of People magazine's top authors of the year.
Louis is also a nationally recognized essayist and critic whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, Ms., Nerve.com and Preservation. His other novels include Fool's Errand and Endangered Species (Alyson). He is a contributor to the anthologies The Worst Noël and Maybe Baby (HarperCollins) and 101 Damnations (St. Martin's).
Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson has received both critical and popular praise for his Sheriff Walt Longmire novels The Cold Dish, Death Without Company, and Kindness Goes Unpunished (Viking/Penguin) with starred reviews in Kirkus, Booklist and Publisher’s Weekly. All three have been made Booksense selections and Killer Picks. The Cold Dish was a DILYS Award Finalist. Death Without Company was selected by Booklist as one of the top-ten mysteries of 2006, won the Wyoming Historical Society’s fiction book of the year, and was a finalist for the Mountains & Plains Bookseller’s Association’s Book of the Year. Another Man’s Moccasins, the fourth in the series, was number nineteen in Bookscan’s nationwide bestseller’s list.
Patricia Smiley
Patricia Smiley is the best-selling author of the Tucker Sinclair mystery series. Her short fiction has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. Patty has served on the faculty of various writer’s conferences, including the Surrey International Writer’s Conference in British Columbia, Canada, and the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, California.
She has worked with the Los Angeles Police Department for fourteen years, nine years as a volunteer and four years as a Specialist Reserve Officer assigned to the Los Angeles International Airport in the Airport Crimes Investigative Unit. Currently, she is assigned to Pacific Area Detectives as a Burglary and Theft investigator.
Benjamin Percy
Benjamin Percy is the author of a novel, The Wilding (forthcoming from Graywolf Press in fall of 2010), and two books of stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007), and The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, Men's Journal, the Paris Review, Orion, Glimmer Train, Chicago Tribune, and many others.
His honors include a Whiting Writer's Award, the Plimpton Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories. His story "Refresh, Refresh" has been adapted into a graphic novel — co-authored by filmmaker James Ponsoldt and illustrated by Eisner-nominated artist Danica Novgorodoff — published by First Second Books (a division of Macmillan) in 2009. He teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.
Tim Sandlin
Tim Sandlin is a novelist and screenwriter. His novels include Sex and Sunsets, Western Swing, Honey Don't, the GroVont Trilogy, Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty and the forthcoming Rowdy in Paris. His movie credits include the Showtime original Floating Away, based on Sorrow Floats, and Skipped Parts, a TriMark film. He is also a contributor to the New York Times Book Review and has judged several writing competitions, including the Western States Book Awards.
www.timsandlin.com'
Tina Welling
Tina Welling is the author of the novels Fairy Tale Blues and Crybaby Ranch, published by NAL/Penguin. She has lived in Wyoming 30 years and resides in Jackson Hole. Her non-fiction has been published in The Writer, Body & Soul and other national magazines as well as four anthologies. She has won awards and writers residencies and has served as judge for writing competitions and on panels for writers' conferences. She conducts creative writing workshops wherever invited. Her next novel, Cowboys Never Cry, will be published in the fall of 2010.
Lise McClendon
Novelist Lise McClendon has been writing about Jackson Hole for fifteen years, starting with The Bluejay Shaman, but only recently moved here. She is the author of six mystery novels, including Blue Wolf, One O'clock Jump, and Sweet and Lowdown. She has taught writing through the Writer's Voice Project and the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, for many years. She has served on national boards of Mystery Writers of America and International Association of Crime Writers/North America. She has lived in Montana and Wyoming for twenty-five years.
John Byrne Cooke
John Byrne Cooke has lived in Jackson Hole since 1982. He has published three historical novels, The Snowblind Moon, South of the Border, and The Committee of Vigilance. He created and wrote the documentary series Outlaws and Lawmen for the Discovery Channel. His first nonfiction book, Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007.
www.johnbyrnecooke.com/writing
Tiffanie DeBartolo
Tiffanie DeBartolo started her career as a screenwriter and filmmaker, writing and directing Dream for an Insomniac, which starred Ione Skye and Jennifer Aniston.
Her first novel, God-Shaped Hole, was released in 2001; her second novel, How To Kill a Rock Star, in 2005. And she most recently finished writing the text to a graphic novel about Jeff Buckley, tentatively titled So Real: The Adventures of Jeff Buckley.
She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in addition to her writing career, Tiffanie is the Chief Executive Super-Goddess of the indie record label Bright Antenna. Noted skills and non-skills: Her rock-n-roll Jeopardy prowess would humble you, she makes a mean peach pie, and she can only type with two fingers.
Kyle Mills
Kyle Mills is the New York Times bestselling author of ten political thrillers. He initially found inspiration from his father, a former FBI agent and director of Interpol, who is still able to put Kyle in touch with the people who give his books such realism. Avid rock climbers and mountain bikers, he and his wife have lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for fifteen years but these days are running for warmer climates in the winter.
www.kylemills.com
Deborah Turrell Atkinson
Inspired by Tony Hillerman’s tales of the Navajo, Deborah Turrell Atkinson writes novels that weave the legends and folklore of the Hawaiian Islands into suspenseful mysteries, a perspective of Hawaii the tour books never show. The series consists of four novels, Primitive Secrets (2002), The Green Room (2005), Fire Prayer, (2007), and Pleasing the Dead, (2009).
Atkinson lives in Honolulu and is president of the Hawaii chapter of Sisters in Crime. She also serves on the board of the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a recipient of the University of Hawaii’s Meryl Clark Award for Fiction.
Shawn Klomparens
Shawn Klomparens is the author of the novels Jessica Z. and Two Years, No Rain. He studied English Literature and Geological Sciences at Ohio University before coming to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1994 for what he thought would be a one-year visit for skiing and cycling. He ended up staying in Jackson where he now resides with his wife and two children, and is working on his third novel.
Creative Nonfiction
Winifred Gallagher
Winifred Gallagher's previous books are Just the Way You Are: How Heredity and Experience Create the Individual, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions. She has written for many magazines, from The Atlantic Monthly to Rolling Stone. She lives in Manhattan and Long Eddy, New York.
Tim Cahill
Tim Cahill is a founding editor of Outside and for years wrote the "Out There" column. The travel adventure writer knows no limits when it comes to picking his assignments: he's gotten up-close with great white sharks, sailed in 30-below-zero Antarctic weather, and trekked through Death Valley on a grueling summer day. Cahill's books include Road Fever, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg. His work has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times Book Review, and other national publications. He won a National Magazine Award in 2003, the same year he received a Lowell Thomas Gold Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He also co-authored the Academy Award nominated documentary, The Living Sea. Cahill lives in Montana, in the shadow of the Crazy Mountains.
John Byrne Cooke
John Byrne Cooke has lived in Jackson Hole since 1982. He has published three historical novels, The Snowblind Moon, South of the Border, and The Committee of Vigilance. He created and wrote the documentary series Outlaws and Lawmen for the Discovery Channel. His first nonfiction book, Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007.
www.johnbyrnecooke.com/writing
Karol Griffin Young
Karol Griffin Young is the author of Skin Deep: Tattoos, The Disappearing West, Very Bad Men and My Deep Love for Them All (Harcourt, 2003). She earned the Wyoming Arts Council 2000 Doubleday award, an annual grant to "honor a woman writer of exceptional talent." Her work has appeared in Northern Lights; Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos; Fourth Genre; Red Rock Review; and other publications. She teaches in the English Department at Central Wyoming College. She has also worked as a tattoo artist, photographer, horse wrangler, salvage-yard car crusher, and phone-sex operator. She is currently embroiled in the literary possibilities of the Wyoming oil field.
Laurie Gunst
Laurie Gunst was born and raised in Richmond Virginia, the youngest daughter in a Jewish family with a paternal ancestor who fought for the Confederacy and a mother who campaigned for civil rights. She was partly raised by the African American women who worked for her family, and the experience of growing up between these two worlds has shaped her life and writing
After earning a doctorate in history from Harvard and a master’s in journalism from Columba, she published her first book in 1995. Born Fi’ Dead: A Journey Through the Jamaican Posse Underworld is her account of ten years she spent exploring that island’s gang life and the political corruption that spawned it. Her second book, Off-White (2005), is a memoir of her family—both sides—and the fierce contradictions of being what the title says.
She’s presently at work on a new book, LoveSick, a mind/body exploration of love’s downside: when the stress of being with the wrong person sends your health south. Laurie Gunst lives in Dubois, Wyoming.
Magazine
Tim Cahill
Tim Cahill is a founding editor of Outside and for years wrote the "Out There" column. The travel adventure writer knows no limits when it comes to picking his assignments: he's gotten up-close with great white sharks, sailed in 30-below-zero Antarctic weather, and trekked through Death Valley on a grueling summer day. Cahill's books include Road Fever, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg. His work has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times Book Review, and other national publications. He won a National Magazine Award in 2003, the same year he received a Lowell Thomas Gold Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He also co-authored the Academy Award nominated documentary, The Living Sea. Cahill lives in Montana, in the shadow of the Crazy Mountains.
Jeff Chu
Jeff Chu is an articles editor at Fast Company, the New York-based business magazine. He leads the magazine’s coverage of philanthropy and social entrepreneurship (a.k.a. do-gooder stuff) as well as urban affairs. He also writes; his recent stories include an investigation into legal and ethical problems at the furniture retailer Design Within Reach and a profile of Rwanda’s audacious and risky development strategy. Before coming to Fast Company, he spent a very long nine months at the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio and seven years at Time magazine, where he was a London-based staff writer (his first cover story was on Britney Spears and her Swedish songwriter, Max Martin) and then a New York-based writer and editor.
A graduate of Princeton and the London School of Economics, Jeff was a 2004 Phillips Foundation fellow (his project examined complaint in American history) and will be a media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in 2012. He is now at work on his first book, an exploration of the intersection between homosexuality and Christianity in America.
Katie Ives
A graduate from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Katie Ives is the senior editor of Alpinist magazine. Her fiction, nonfiction and translations have appeared in Rock & Ice, Alpinist, Urban Climber, the American Alpine Journal, She Sends, The Mountain Gazette, Patagonia Field Reports, Circumference and 91st Meridian. In 2004 she won the Mammut/Rock & Ice Writing Contest, in 2005 she received a scholarship to attend the Banff Mountain Writing Program, and in 2008 she placed third in the UKC/Kendal Mountain Festival short-story competition.
Young Adult
Mackie d'Arge
Mackie d'Arge is the author of Lifting the Sky, (Bloomsbury USA, 2009) a young adult novel that takes place on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Her book won the 2009 Wyoming State Historical Society's Fiction Award. An artist and rancher, Mackie has made Wyoming her home since 1975. She lives in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains in Crowheart.
Joni Sensel
Joni Sensel is the author of books for young readers and others with a taste for the fantastic. Her novels include The Farwalker's Quest and The Timekeeper's Moon, published by Bloomsbury, as well as Reality Leak and The Humming of Numbers, published by Henry Holt. Numbers was a Junior Library Guild Selection. She’s also the author of two picture books, one of which won a 2001 Henry Bergh Honor, and a variety of nonfiction for adults. She lives in the woods near Mt. Rainier with two dogs and sundry elk.
Susan Juby
Susan Juby is the author of several books, including the Alice MacLeod series, Another Kind of Cowboy and Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance and Cookery (HarperCollins). Her work has been nominated for many awards including the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and several of her books have been chosen as Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Another Kind of Cowboy was an ALA Rainbow book. Getting the Girl was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America and for the Arthur Ellis Award by the Crime Writers of Canada. Her memoir, Nice Recovery (Viking), will be out in April.
Her books have been published all over the world and her first book, Alice, I Think, was adapted into a thirteen part television series that aired on CTV and the Comedy Network. Susan lives in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, Canada, with her husband and her dog. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the University of British Columbia.
Patti Sherlock
Patti Sherlock's latest book, A Dog for All Seasons, St. Martin's, 2010, describes her years with Duncan, a border collie who helped her on an Idaho sheep farm and saw her through many cycles of change. Sherlock has written two other nonfiction books and three novels for young adults. Letters from Wolfie, Penguin-Putnam, which won numerous awards, told the story of a 13-year-old boy who volunteered his dog to be a scout dog during the Vietnam war. Her other books are Taking Back Our Lives, a meditation book, Some Fine Dog and Four of a Kind, Holiday House, and Alone on the Mountain, Doubleday, which chronicled the life of western shepherds.
Poetry
Kate Northrop
Kate Northrop’s first collection of poems, Back Through Interruption (Kent State University Press 2002) won the Stan and Tom Wick First Book Award. Her second collection, Things Are Disappearing Here (Persea Books 2007) was the finalist for the James Laughlin Award and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Her new collection, Clean, is forthcoming from Persea. Northrop teaches in the MFA program at the University of Wyoming.
H.L. Hix
H. L. Hix teaches at the University of Wyoming. His recent poetry books include Chromatic, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award; God Bless (2007), a “political/poetic discourse” built around sonnets and sestinas and villanelles composed of quotations from George W. Bush; a set of four sequences collectively called Legible Heavens(2008); and a verse biography, Incident Light (2009).
wiki.wyomingauthors.org/HL+Hix
Kimberly Johnson
Kimberly Johnson is the author of two collections of poetry, Leviathan with a Hook and A Metaphorical God (Persea Books 2002 and 2008), and of a translation of Virgil's Georgics (Penguin Classics 2009). Her poetry, translations, and scholarly essays have appeared widely in publications including The New Yorker, Slate, The Iowa Review, and Modern Philology. Recipient of grants and fellowships from the Utah Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, Johnson holds an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a PhD in Renaissance Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is married to the poet Jay Hopler.
Jay Hopler
Jay Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1970 and has earned degrees from New York University, The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies including The American Poetry Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Eclipse, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Literary Review, Mid-American Review, The New Delta Review, New Voices: 1989—1998 (Academy of American Poets), The New Yorker, Poetry International, Sonora Review, Under the Rock Umbrella: Modern American Poets from 1951—1976 (Mercer University Press), The Wallace Stevens Journal, and many others.
His book of poems, Green Squall (Yale University Press, 2006) was winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, received the 2007 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, a 2006 Florida Book Award (Silver Medal in the Poetry Category), a 2006 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award (Bronze Medal in the Poetry Category) and a 2007 National “Best Books” Award from USA Book News. The Killing Spirit: An Anthology of Murder-for-Hire, his first book, was published in the United States and Europe by The Overlook Press and Canongate Books in 1996. Hopler’s next book, The Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets, will be published by Yale University Press in 2010.
Hopler is Assistant Professor of English (Creative Writing/Poetry) at the University of South Florida and divides his time between Tampa and Salt Lake City where he lives with his wife, the poet, Kimberly Johnson.
Laurie Kutchins
Laurie Kutchins has published two previous books of poetry. The Night Path (BOA Editions, 1997) received the inaugural Isabella Gardner Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Between Towns was winner of the Texas Tech University Press First Book Award in 1993. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, West Branch, and Denver Quarterly. Kutchins has also published prose essays in The Georgia Review, LIT, and in the anthologies A Tough and Tender Kinship, and A Place on Earth: Nature Writers from North America and Australia.
She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at James Madison University. She has also been a visiting writer at the University of New Mexico, and a faculty member of the Taos Summer Writers Conference where she offers workshops exploring the intersection of the creative and therapeutic processes.