Conference Faculty
If you have ever dreamed of studying with professional writers who know the publishing world inside and out, this is your chance.
Our faculty is composed of expert teachers who are also successful authors and scholars. They will introduce you to the exciting challenges of studying creative writing and literature at the college level.
Raul Palma is the author of A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (Dutton) and In This World of Ultraviolet Light (Indiana University Press), which won the 2021 Don Belton Prize. His writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction at Ithaca College, where he is the associate dean of faculty in Ithaca College's School of Humanities and Sciences.
Matt Davis is the author of When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter's Tale and the first English-language children's book published in Mongolia, The Magic Horse Fiddle. His book, A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore, is due out in November with St. Martin's Press. Matt's long-form journalism and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the LA Review of Books, and Guernica, among other places. He has been a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing to Syria and Jordan; a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas; and an Eric Schmidt Fellow at New America in Washington, D.C. Matt lives in D.C. with his wife and two young sons. You can learn more about him at his website: matthewdaviswriter.com
Matt Davis is the author of When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter's Tale and the first English-language children's book published in Mongolia, The Magic Horse Fiddle. His book, A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore, is due out in November with St. Martin's Press. Matt's long-form journalism and
essays have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the LA Review of Books, and Guernica, among other places. He has been a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing to Syria
and Jordan; a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada-Las
Vegas; and an Eric Schmidt Fellow at New America in Washington, D.C. Matt lives in
D.C. with his wife and two young sons. You can learn more about him at his website:
Bushra Rehman's dark comedy, Corona, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books
about NYC. She is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism
and author of the collection of poetry Marianna's Beauty Salon, described by Joseph
O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of
their foreign home–and surviving.” Her new novel, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is
a modern classic about what it means to be Muslim and queer in a Pakistani-American
community was chosen as a Best Book and Editor's Choice by The New York Times, The
New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, Good Morning
America, Goodreads, The Chicago Review, BuzzFeed, Lit Hub, Lambda Literary, BookRiot,
PopSugar, The AV Club, E! News, Ms. Magazine and more.
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello (she/her) is the author of Hour of the Ox (Pittsburgh, 2016), winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She co-translated
Yi Won's The World's Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Translation Grand Prize from the Literature
Translation Institute of Korea. Cancio-Bello has received fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, Knight Foundation, and American Literary Translators
Association, and her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, and more. She is co-founder of the Adoptee Literary Festival and serves as a program
manager for Miami Book Fair. www.MarciCalabretta.com