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Main Street
Farmington, ME 04938
Phone: (207) 778-7425
FAX: (207) 778-xxxx
TDD: (207) 778-7000
E-mail: gretchen.legler@maine.edu


Meet the BFA Faculty

Gretchen LeglerGretchen Legler's most recent nonfiction, On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station Antarctica was published by Milkweed Editions in November 2005. Legler has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota, where she also earned a Ph.D. in English and Feminist Studies. Essays from her collection of literary nonfiction, All The Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman’s Notebook (Seal Press, 1995), have won two Pushcart Prizes, and have been widely excerpted. Her work on American women nature writers and ecocriticism has appeared in Studies in the Humanities and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment. Essays from her current work have been published in The Georgia Review , The Woman's Review of Books, and Orion. She teaches the beginning and advanced nonfiction workshops, the senior seminar in writing, literature courses in nonfiction, and composition. For a selection of Gretchen Legler's work, click here.

Pat O'DonnellPatricia O'Donnell has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The North American Review, Agni Review, Prairie Schooner, Short Story, The American Literary Review, and other journals. She has had stories anthologized in Woman Runners: Stories of Transformation, Four Minute Fictions, The Nightshade Nightstand Reader,The Quotable Moose, and others. Among her awards is the Martin Dibner Award in Fiction, 2004. She teaches Fiction Writing, Advanced Fiction, Seminar in Writing, 20th Century Short Fiction, and Composition. View a selection of Patricia O'Donnell's work here.

Jeff ThomsonJeffrey Thomson's second collection of poems, The Country of Lost Sons, inaugurated a new poetry series from Parlor Press at Purdue University in February 2004. His third book of poems, Renovation, was part of the Carnegie Mellon University Press poetry series in 2005. His first book, The Halo Brace, was brought out in a limited edition letterpress version from Birch Brook Press in 1998. His recent work was awarded a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and, most recently, the 2008 Individual Artists Fellowship in the Literary Arts from the Maine Arts Commission. Other poems of his have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the Masters Poetry Contest and the Academy of American Poets Prize on three occasions. He has also been awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers Conference and a Writers @ Work fellowship for his poetry. He received his PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri in 1996. He teaches beginning and advanced poetry workshops. View a selection of Jeffrey Thomson's work here, or here.

Wes McNair Wesley McNair is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim foundations, an NEH fellowship in literature, and two NEA fellowships in poetry. His other awards include the Robert Frost Prize; the Jane Kenyon Award; prizes from Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Yankee magazines; The Sarah Josepha Hale Medal for his "distinguished contribution to the world of letters"; and two honorary doctoral degrees for literary distinction. McNair twice served on the Nominating Jury for the Pulitzer Prize and wrote the scripts for an Emmy Award-winning series on Robert Frost that aired on PBS. Featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac and NPR's Weekend Edition, his work has appeared in the Pushcart Prize annual, two editions of The Best American Poetry, and more than fifty anthologies. He has published 14 books, including poetry, essays and edited anthologies. He has a volume of poetry and a new anthology forthcoming. For further information about his work and samples of his poems, click here.
Michael BurkeMichael Burke is a native of northern California and a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, with a degree in Philosophy (1977), and of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with an MFA in English - Creative Writing (1984). His book, The Same River Twice (University of Arizona Press) which appeared in 2006, deals with his career as a whitewater and wilderness river guide. His nonfiction has appeared in Outside, Islands, Yankee, The New York Times, The Sunday Times (South Africa), Down East, New England Monthly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Boston Globe, and Country Home. He is the Director of the Honors Program at the University of Maine at Farmington. He has taught and lived in London and Cape Town, South Africa.
Elizabeth Cooke, assistant professor of English (M.A., University of New Hampshire) teaches English Composition and occasional courses in the Creative Writing program. Publications include two novels, Complicity and Zeena, a work of nonfiction, Tong-Ting Finds a Family, and short stories in the River Review and an anthology, The Quotable Moose.
Penelope Schwartz RobinsonPenelope Schwartz Robinson's essay collection Slippery Men was selected by Katha Pollitt for the Stonecoast Book Prize and published by New Rivers Press in 2008. It received Honorable Mention in Nonfiction from the Maine Literary Awards in 2009. She is the recipient of the 2009 Individual Artist Award in the Literary Arts as well as a Good Idea Grant, both awarded by the Maine Arts Commission. Other honors include an AWP Intro Journal Award in Nonfiction and a notable mention in Best American Essays 2005 and 2009. Her work is featured in Alimentum, Ascent, River Teeth, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She has presented numerous spoken essays on both National and Maine Public Radio, written columns for several newspapers and for more than twenty years has been a member of Saturday Morning Club, a group of women writers and scholars. Penelope Schwartz Robinson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program and a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. She teaches the introductory nonfiction workshop. For a sample of Penelope Schwartz Robinson’s work, click here.

Jan Watson-HeinJan Watson-Hein has an MFA in Writing from Columbia University, where she also worked as a Teaching Fellow. She is the recipient of the Carnegie Mellon Foundation grant and is the author of a novel, Asta In the Wings, from Tin House Books. Jan has worked extensively as an editor in both trade and educational publishing and has written for several several Language Arts textbooks. She continues to work as a freelance editor and currently teaches Fiction Writing and English Composition at UMF.

http://tinhousebooks.com/index.shtml

Jayne DeckerJayne Decker, Artistic Director for the Sandy River Players, is an award winning playwright who has directed numerous productions at UMF Alumni Theatre. Some of her most recent directing work includes the musicals Fiddler on the Roof and Oliver! and productions of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jayne has also presented workshop productions of her original plays Stars Falling (winner of the 2002 Maine Playwriting Award), Jelly Moonshine, and Songbird, a touring play about the Iraq War. Her most recent script, Cracked Shells, a play about domestic violence, was commissioned by Franklin County Network’s Peace in Our Families and was featured again at the 2009 Maine Women’s Studies Conference. Jayne has an MA from the University of Maine and teaches courses including Writing for the Stage and Screen and Social and Political Theatre.
Luann YetterLuann Yetter has a BA in Creative Writing from Macalester College and a MS in Education from the University of New England. Her work has appeared in publications such as Down East, Yankee and Face magazine. She has been a freelance columnist and feature writer for the Lewiston Sun Journal for over fifteen years. She teaches Feature Writing and Composition.

 

 

 

©2007 University of Maine at Farmington