Connie May Fowler
Below Sea Level: Full Immersion Workshops for Serious Writers, Founder
Faculty Member
Remembering Blue Fiction Writing Workshops: Writing Weekend at Alligator Point, Florida
The St. Augustine Project Writers Conference
www.conniemayfowler.com
Connie May Fowler is a novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. Her most recent work, The Problem with Murmur Lee, was published by Doubleday in January 2005 and by Broadway Books in March 7, 2006. It was chosen as Redbook’s premier book club selection. In 2002 she published When Katie Wakes, a memoir that explores her descent and escape from an abusive relationship. She is the author of five critically acclaimed novels including River of Hidden Dreams, Remembering Blue which was awarded the Chautauqua South Literary Award and Before Women had Wings, recipient of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award from the League of American Pen Women. Three of her novels have been Dublin International Literary Award nominees. Ms. Fowler adapted Before Women had Wings for Oprah Winfrey. The result was an Emmy-winning film starring Ms. Winfrey and Ellen Barkin. Her work has been translated into 15 languages and is published worldwide. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, London Times, International Herald Tribune, Japan Times, Oxford American, Best Life, and elsewhere. She writes a culinary and culture column for Forum, a publication of the Florida Humanities Council. In 2007 Ms. Fowler performed in New York City at The Player’s Club with actresses Kathleen Chalfont, Penny Fuller and others in an adaptation based on The Other Woman, an anthology that contains her essay “The Uterine Blues.” In 2003 Ms. Fowler performed in The Vagina Monologues alongside Jane Fonda and Rosie Perez in a production that raised over $100,000 for charity. She is currently writing her seventh book, a novel with the working title How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly. In addition to writing, Ms. Fowler has held numerous jobs including bartender, food caterer, nurse, television producer, TV show host, antique peddler, and construction worker. From 1997-2003 she directed the Connie May Fowler Women Wings Foundation, an organization dedicated to aiding women and children in need. From 2003-2007 she served as the Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College and directed their visiting author series Winter With the Writers. Ms. Fowler travels the country, speaking on topics such as writing, self-employment in the arts, literacy, domestic violence, child abuse, environmental issues, and popular culture. She teaches writing workshops and seminars globally. She is the founder and CEO of Below Sea Level: Full Immersion Workshops for Serious Writers. She is a Florida native.
Dorothy Allison
Faculty Member
The St. Augustine Project Writers Conference
www.dorothyallison.net
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. Now living in Northern California with her partner Alix and her teenage son, Wolf Michael, she describes herself as a feminist, a working class story teller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet and a happily born-again Californian. Awarded the 2007Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, Allison is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The first member of her family to graduate from high school, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian college on a National Merit Scholarship and in 1979, studied anthropology at the New School for Social Research. An award winning editor for Quest, Conditions, and Outlook—early feminist and Lesbian & Gay journals, Allison's chapbook of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me, was published with Long Haul Press in 1983. Her short story collection, Trash (1988) was published by Firebrand Books. Trash won two Lambda Literary Awards and the American Library Association Prize for Lesbian and Gay Writing. Allison says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. "It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change." However, she admits, she would never have begun to publish her stories " if she hadn't gotten over her prejudices, and started talking to her mother and sisters again." Allison received mainstream recognition with her novel Bastard Out of Carolina, (1992) a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. The novel won the Ferro Grumley prize, an ALA Award for Lesbian and Gay Writing, became a best seller, and an award-winning movie. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Cavedweller (1998) became a national bestseller, NY Times Notable book of the year, finalist for the Lillian Smith prize, and an ALA prize winner. Adapted for the stage by Kate Moira Ryan, the play was directed by Michael Greif, and featured music by Hedwig composer, Stephen Trask. In 2003, Lisa Cholendenko directed a movie version featuring Krya Sedwick. The expanded edition of Trash (2002) included the prize winning short story, "Compassion" selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003. Dorothy Allison will be writer in residence at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia, Spring, 2008. A novel, She Who, Is forthcoming from Riverhead.
Joy Harris
Faculty
The St. Augustine Project Writers Conference
After teaching emotionally handicapped children for six years, Joy Harris left the public school system in 1981 to work with Robert Lantz as a literary agent. In 1990 Ms. Harris established her own agency selling all rights pertaining to works of fiction and non-fiction. Her interest is in working directly with writers to help guide their careers, negotiate on their behalf, and protect their work; she takes great pleasure in finding new authors and, of course, in reading. During her twenty-six years in the publishing industry Ms. Harris has worked with numerous reputable authors, many of whom she has represented since their first published work. Among Ms. Harris’s clients are: Luc Sante, recipient of an Academy of Arts and Letters Award and author of Evidence, Low Life and The Factory of Facts; Jeffrey Kluger author of Lost Moon-Apollo 13; Whitney Otto author of How to Make an American Quilt,The Passion Dreambook, and A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity; Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Arabian Jazz, Crescent, The Language of Baklava, and the new novel Origin; Kaye Gibbons, bestselling author of Ellen Foster and Charms for the Easy Life; Catherine Texier author of Love Me Tender, Panic Blood, the world-wide acclaimed Breakup – The End of a Love Story and Victorine; Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair contributor, founder of Tin House Magazine and author of Use Me; Judith Freeman, Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Chinchilla Farm, Set For Life, A Desert of Pure Feeling and Red Water; Larry Leamer author of King of the Night, The Kennedy Women, The Kennedy Men and Sons of Camelot; Connie May Fowler author of Sugar Cage, The River of Hidden Dreams, Before Women Had Wings, Remembering Blue, When Katie Wakes, and The Problem with Murmur Lee; Sena Jeter Naslund author of NYT bestseller Ahab’s Wife and the highly acclaimed Four Spirits and the just published Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette; Allison Pearson, author of the bestseller I Don’t Know How She Does It; new author Dylan Landis, who has been published in Tin House and is the recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship; Sigrid Nunez, author of The Last of Her Kind; William Cohan, author of the upcoming The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co., the World's Most Elite and Enigmatic Investment Bank; and new thriller author Chelsea Cain, whose novel Heartsick will be published in the fall of 2007. Several authors have had successful films produced based on their work such as Jeffrey Kluger whose Lost Moon became the celebrated Apollo 13, Connie May Fowler’s Before Women Had Wings was an Oprah Winfrey television film and Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt.
Kate Sullivan
Faculty
The St. Augustine Project Writers Conference
Kate Sullivan is the founder and editor of WordSmitten Quarterly Journal and WordSmitten.com. She has reported on the book publishing industry for more than seven years and has interviewed such contemporary literary luminaries as Frank McCourt and Z.Z. Packer. Prior to her work with WordSmitten, she wrote for Hawaii Investor Magazine and a daily newspaper in Hawaii. A graduate of UCLA, she studied black and white photography with Robert Fichter and Robert Heinecken. She currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Laura van den Berg
Faculty
The St. Augustine Project Writers Conference
Laura van den Berg attends the MFA program at Emerson College, where she is the editor-in-chief of Redivider: a journal of new literature and art and an assistant editor at Ploughshares. Her first collection of short stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, will be published by Dzanc Books in the Fall of 2009. Her her short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Northwest Review, Third Coast, The Greensboro Review, The Baltimore Review, Hobart, The Sycamore Review, The Indiana Review, The Literary Review, StoryQuarterly, and American Short Fiction, among others. Her fiction has received awards from Glimmer Train and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has taught writing at Emerson College and is presently a faculty member at Grub Street, Boston's only independent writing center, where she teaches fiction workshops and "Surviving the Slushpile," a seminar on literary magazine publishing. She is a Florida native currently living in Boston.
