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. |
 | Mario Susko: Mario Susko, a witness and survivor of the war in Bosnia, moved to the US in 1993, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook in the early 70s. He has lived in the US more than half of the past 40 years, and currently teaches in the English Department at Nassau Com. College, NY. He is the recipient of several awards, including the 1997 and 2006 Nassau Review Poetry Award, the 1998 Premio Internazionale di Poesia e Letteratura Nuove Lettere (Naples, Italy), the 2000 Tin Ujevic Award for Versus Exsul for the best book of poems published in Croatia in 1999, the 2003 SUNY Chancellor's Award for the Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the 2008 Editor's Choice Award in Poetry given by Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression. His poem "Conversion," published and nominated by Dream Catcher, was short-listed for the 2004 Forward Poetry Prize. The author of 29 poetry collections, Susko is also known as an editor and a translator of novels by Saul Bellow, J. G. Ballard, William Styron, Bernard Malamud, E. L. Doctorow, Donald Barthelme, and poetry by Theodore Roethke, e. e. cummings, among others, as well as the integral edition/translation of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. His recent books include an anthology of modern Jewish- American short stories A Declaration of Being, which he co-edited with Myron Schwartzman and translated into Croatian, poetry collections Eternity on Hold (Turtle Point Press, 2005), the Croatian edition of the book (Meandarmedia, 2006), Life Revisited: New and Selected Poems (cyberwit press,India, 2006), Closing Time (Harbor Mountain Press, 2008), the Croatian edition (Meandarmedia, 2009), and Epi/Logos (erbacce press, UK, 2011). His poetry appeared in anthologies and journals in the US, UK, Croatia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Russia, Hungary, Italy, and Poland, among others. |
 | January Gill O'Neil : January Gill O'Neil is the author of Under-life (CavanKerry Press, December 2009). Her poems and articles have appeared in The MOM Egg, Crab Creek Review, Ouroboros Review, Drunken Boat, Crab Orchard Review, Callaloo, Babel Fruit, Edible Phoenix, Literary Mama, Field, Seattle Review, Stuff Magazine, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Read Write Poem, and Cave Canem anthologies II and IV. In 2009, January was awarded a Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. She is featured in Poets & Writers magazine's January/February 2010 Inspiration issue as one of their 12 debut poets. A Cave Canem fellow, she is a senior writer/editor at Babson College, and runs a popular blog called Poet Mom. |
 | 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. |
 | 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. |