Workshop Panelists and Teachers
 | Richard Newman Literary Arts Director, Persian Arts Festival: Poet, translator, essayist and educator, Richard Jeffrey Newman is the author of three volumes of poetry: The Silence Of Men (CavanKerry Press, 2006), a book of his own poems and Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan and Selections from Saadi’s Bustan (Global Scholarly Publications, 2004 & 2006 respectively), translations of two masterpieces of 13th century Iranian poetry. As well, he co-translated with Professor John Moyne the poetry in A Bird in the Garden of Angels (Mazda Publishers, 2008), a selection of work by Rumi, also from 13th century Iran. Newman’s poems and essays have appeared in a wide range of journals, including Salon.com, The American Voice, Circumference, Prairie Schooner, Another Chicago Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine and Birmingham Poetry Review. His work has been anthologized in Access Literature (Wadsworth Publishers, 2005), and the title poem from The Silence Of Men has been translated into Dutch. In addition, he has completed a verse translation of a book-length section of Shahnameh, the Persian national epic. Richard Jeffrey Newman is a former Literary Arts Director of Persian Arts Festival, sits on the advisory boards of The Translation Project and Jackson Heights Poetry Festival, and is listed as a speaker with the New York Council for the Humanities. He is Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, where he coordinates the Creative Writing Project. His website is www.richardjnewman.com. |
 | Luis H. Francia: Luis H. Francia is a poet, nonfiction writer, journalist, and playwright. His poetry collections include Museum of Absences and The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems. A chapbook, The Beauty of Ghosts, is due out in 2010. His semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago (2001) won both the 2002 PEN Center Open Book and the 2002 Asian American Writers literary awards. He is the editor of Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English, and co-editor of Fiippin': Filipinos on America, and Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. He is included in the Library of America anthology of immigrant writing, due out later this year. He teaches at New York University and at Hunter College. |
 | Norman Stock: Norman Stock is the author of Buying Breakfast for My Kamikaze Pilot, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Contest. His poems have also appeared in many magazine's, including The New Republic, College English, New York Quarterly, and New England Review, as well as in anthologies and textbooks. His awards include the National Arts Club Scholarship and the Alan Collins Fellowship at Bread Loaf, the Tennessee Williams Scholarship at Sewanee, P &W’s Writers Exchange Award, the Bennington Writers Workshop Poetry Prize, the Writers Voice New Voice Award, and a Tanne Foundation Fellowship. He has twice been a finalist for Poet Laureate of Queens. |