At the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, you'll get a chance to meet accomplished Sewanee faculty members and visiting writers, editors, and performers. These distinguished guests give readings and lead craft classes and workshops; they're here to answer your questions and share in your excitement about the craft.
Guest Authors
Kevin Wilson is the author, most recently, of the acclaimed novels Now is Not the Time to Panic (2022) and Nothing to See Here (2019). His story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (2009), praised by The New York Times Book Review for its "fabulous twists and somersaults of the imagination," won the Shirley Jackson Award and the National Library Association's Alex Award. Wilson's best-selling first novel, The Family Fang, was praised by People as "a wacky wonderful debut"; in 2015, the film adaptation premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Once a dorm counselor for the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, Wilson received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his M.F.A. from the University of Florida. He lives in Sewanee, where he serves as Associate Professor of English and coordinator of the creative writing program.
For more about Kevin Wilson, visit his website: www.wilsonkevin.com.
David Haskell’s classes at Sewanee focus on helping students become better writers and more astute observers of the living world. He was named Professor of the Year for Tennessee, an award given to college professors who have achieved national distinction and whose work shows “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching.” His books, The Forest Unseen (2012), The Songs of Trees (2017), and, most recently, Sounds Wild and Broken (2022), are acclaimed for their integration of science, poetry, and rich attention to the living world. Among their honors include the National Academies’ Best Book Award, John Burroughs Medal, finalist for Pulitzer Prize, Iris Book Award, Reed Environmental Writing Award, National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, and runner-up for the 2013 PEN E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Elizabeth Kolbert described Sounds Wild and Broken as “fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully written."
Most recently, his audio story "When the Earth Started to Sing," which takes listeners to the beginning of sound and song on Earth, has been recognized as a finalist for three Signal Listener's Choice Awards in the categories "Most Innovative Audio Experience," "Best Editing," and "Best Sound Design." You may listen to it here.
Haskell received his BA from the University of Oxford and PhD from Cornell University. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Find him at dghaskell.com or on social media @DGHaskell (Twitter), DavidGeorgeHaskell (Instagram and Facebook).
Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. She's the author of Sister, first published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, Fanny Says (BOA Editions), won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. Currently, she teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program and lives in Asheville, NC, where she volunteers at several different animal sanctuaries. Since 2016, she's been writing about these animals, resisting the kind of pastorals that made her (and many of the working-class folks from the Kentucky that raised her) feel shut out of nature and the writing about it. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of these first nine poems, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. In 2021, Spruce Books of Penguin Random House published Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire, a book she co-authored with Jessica Jacobs, with whom she co-founded the SunJune Literary Collaborative. She's the President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, an annual environmental literary festival set to launch in Black Mountain, NC, in October of 2025.
When you join our songwriting workshop, you'll have the opportunity to create a piece of music with young composers at the renowned Sewanee Summer Music Festival. And stay tuned for a special guest visit to our songwriting workshop, to be announced at a later date. Photo by David Andrews.
Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder's plays include Gee's Bend, Fresh Kills, Looks Like Pretty, The Flagmaker of Market Street, The Furniture of Home, White Lightning, Provenance, A Requiem for August Moon,andEverything That's Beautiful. Her plays have been produced/workshopped at the Royal Court (London), Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center, Cleveland Play House, KC Rep, Northlight, the Arden, B Street Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Hartford Stage, Pioneer Theatre, and the Great Plains Theatre Conference, among others.
Elyzabeth is the recipient of the Osborn Award given by the American Theatre Critics Association. She is a graduate of the dramatic writing program at New York University where she was the Tisch Departmental Fellow, and an alumnus of Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sewanee: The University of the South. http://www.wilderwriting.net.
Leigh Anne Couch has published two books of poetry, Every Lash (University of North Texas Press, 2020) and Houses Fly Away (Zone 3 Press, 2007), and one chapbook, Green and Helpless (Finishing Line Press). Now a freelance editor, she was formerly at Duke University Press and the Sewanee Review. She is founder and editor of SWING, a new literary magazine at The Porch (a literary nonprofit collective in Nashville). Her poems have been published widely in magazines including PANK, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Subtropic, Smartish Pace, Nelle, and the Cincinnati Review, with poetry featured in Verse Daily, Dzanc, Best of the Web, and in The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses (Penguin). She lives in Sewanee, Tennessee with writer Kevin Wilson and their sons, Griff and Patch.
