Michael Bennett (he/him) (summer 2020 resident) is a writer and educator born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the city and subject he may never escape. Michael holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Chatham University. He teaches young writers at Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School and juveniles incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail. His work has appeared at Homology Lit, Coal Hill Review, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, and elsewhere.
Michael Fischer (summer 2019 resident) is a Moth Chicago StorySlam winner, a Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellow, and a mentor for incarcerated authors through the Pen City Writers program. His work appears in Salon, The Sun, Orion, Guernica, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and his audio essays have been broadcast on CBC Radio’s Love Me and the New York Times's Modern Love: The Podcast. He recently graduated with his MA from the University of Chicago.
Sarah Shotland (summer 2019 resident) is the author of the novel Junkette, and a playwright whose work has been produced in theaters nationally and internationally. She was a 2018 Equal Justice Resident Artist at Santa Fe Art Institute, where she was worked on a collection of essays about her work with the Words Without Walls program, which brings creative writing classes to jails, prisons, and drug treatment centers in Pittsburgh. In addition to directing that program, she's also an Assistant Professor of English at Chatham University.
Alex Donovan (summer 2018 resident) grew up in the Los Angeles area and lives in Azusa, California, with her husband Mark and her cat Mickey. She received her BA in Religious Studies from Stanford University and her MFA in Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She teaches poetry and “writing to heal” workshops and gives talks and retreats for community centers, churches, nonprofits, and the Motherless Daughters San Gabriel Valley Chapter (which she co-founded). She works in the office of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pomona and volunteers with the Episcopal Church’s PRISM ministry to the incarcerated in Los Angeles. She has had her writing published in Presence and Listen (publications of Spiritual Directors International), Pirene's Fountain (Glass Lyre Press), Selfish Zine, Ruminate, and others. She loves camping, hiking, painting, and being with people, and she can't wait to get to know the community at Fort Lyon.
Kathy Conde (winter 2017 resident) won the Crab Orchard Review Jack Dyer Fiction Prize 2014 and placed second in Munster’s Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition 2014. She’s also received prizes and scholarships from the Salem International Literary Awards, Aspen Words, CutThroat: A Journal of the Arts, Good Housekeeping, and Writing by Writers and has recently been a finalist at Glimmer Train and New Letters. She’s been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony, Playa, and Writing by Writers. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, CutThroat: A Journal of the Arts, New Poets of the American West, Orbis Quarterly, Poetry East, South Dakota Review, Southword, Underground Voices, Word Riot, and others. She’s taught writing in the schools and at a halfway house for teens at risk and holds an MFA from Naropa University where she was the fiction editor for Bombay Gin.
Chauna Craig's (fall 2016 resident) short-story collection, The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms, was published by Queen’s Ferry Press in 2016. Her awards include honorable mentions in the Pushcart Prize anthology and in Best American Essays and the Sandra Brown Short Fiction Award. She was a waiter-scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and has been awarded fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center, Hedgebrook, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches creative writing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
John Cotter’s (spring 2016 resident) first novel, Under the Small Lights, appeared in 2010 from Miami University Press. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Volt, The Lifted Brow, New Genre, and Redivider. A founding editor at the review site Open Letters Monthly, John’s published critical work on contemporary novelists, poets, and translators. John graduated Emerson’s Creative Writing program on a Performing Arts scholarship and Harvard’s Extension School with a master’s degree in English & American lit.
Anthony D'Aries (winter 2015 resident) is the author of The Language of Men: A Memoir, which received the PEN/New England Discovery Prize. As Assistant Professor of English and Writing Program Director at Regis College in Weston, MA, Anthony teaches courses in creative writing, creative nonfiction, and rhetoric. He was recently appointed to the board of PEN/New England as a member of the Freedom-to-Write Committee, which offers writing workshops to marginalized populations in prisons, homeless shelters, and halfway houses.