Writers
In this portraiture series of more than 100 writers, Matt Valentine has photographed the best contemporary American poets and novelists, including many Pulitzer Prize winners and National Book Award winners and a Nobel Laureate. These photos have been published in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Review and elsewhere.
Best known for his book Friday Night Lights (which inspired the film and TV series), Buzz Bissinger has also published two other acclaimed nonfiction books. A regular contributor periodicals including Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, and the New York Times Magazine, Bissinger has won many accolades for journalism, including the Pulitzer Prize. In 2009 he co-authored Shooting Stars with basketball superstar LeBron James.
Breyten Breytenbach was born in South Africa and now divides his time between Europe, Africa, and North America. His many books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction include The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, A Season in Paradise and The Windcatcher.
Rita Dove was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her book Thomas and Beulah.
Norman Dubie is author of Ordinary Morning of a Coliseum, The Mercy Seat and several other books of poetry. He founded the creative writing program at Arizona State University.
Poet Stephen Dunn is author most recently of Everything Else in the World, Local Visitations, and Different Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. He lives in New Jersey.
Anne Fadiman won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Her most recent book is a collection of familiar essays, At Large and At Small. Currently, she is Francis Chair in Residence at Yale University.
B.H. Fairchild is author of several books, including Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Art of the Lathe, which won the William Carlos Williams Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award.
Richard Ford is the author of several novels and collections of short stories, most notably Rock Springs, The Sportswriter, and Independence Day, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996.
Nick Flynn has authored two books of poems, as well as a popular memoir about his encounters with his estranged homeless father. He teaches at the University of Houston.
Essayist Adam Gopnik is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His books include Paris to the Moon, Through the Children’s Gate, and Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life.
Philip Gourevitch is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He was editor of the Paris Review for five years, and is author of several nonfiction books, including The Ballad of Abu Ghraib and We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.
Paul Harding’s first novel, Tinkers, was released in 2009 by the Bellevue Literary Press, a small publisher affiliated with Bellevue Hospital in New York. Surprising book critics who had overlooked his novel, Harding was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2010, as well as the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers.
The author of several books of poetry, Edward Hirsch is currently President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Poet, critic and translator H.L. Hix is director of the creative writing program at the University of Wyoming. His book Chromatic was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.
Major Jackson teaches poetry at the University of Vermont, and is Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.
August Kleinzahler won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Sleeping it Off in Rapid City. He is also author of ten previous books of poetry. He lives in San Francisco.
Yusef Komunyakaa teaches poetry at New York University. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Neon Vernacular.
Ted Kooser was Poet Laureate of the United States for 2004 and 2005. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his eleventh book of poetry, Delights and Shadows. He lives in Nebraska.
Stanley Kunitz died in 2006 at the age of 100. He served as United States Poet Laureate in 2000. His many awards include the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Nam Le garnered international praise for his first collection of short stories, entitled The Boat. Born in Vietnam and raised in Australia, Le came to the US to study creative writing at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He was the 2009 recipient of the Dylan Thomas Prize.
Philip Levine is one of the best-respected contemporary poets in the United States. He is winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the American Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize and two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships. He teaches at New York University.
Barry Lopez won the National Book Award for his nonfiction book Arctic Dreams. In addition to journalism and nonfiction, he has written short stories and memoir. He lives in Oregon.
Colum McCann is the author of five novels and two collections of short stories. He won the 2009 National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin.
Despite wide publication and critical attention in the UK, Samuel Menashe was a relatively obscure poet in the US until 2000, when he published The Niche Narrows, attracting the praise of Dana Gioia, Billy Collins, and other prominent poets. In 2004, the Poetry Foundation awarded Menashe their first Neglected Masters award.
W.S. Merwin has published more than twenty books of poetry, including The Shadow of Sirius, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, The Carrier of Ladders, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971, and Migration, which won the 2005 National Book Award. He lives in Hawaii.
Paul Muldoon is Poetry Editor of the New Yorker. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
Alice Notley is author of more than twenty books of poetry. She won the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Paris.
Sharon Olds’s poetry has been widely anthologized. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Dead and the Living. She teaches at New York University and is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Gregory Orr founded the creative writing program at the University of Virginia. His most recent book of poetry is Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved.
Stanley Plumly teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. He won the William Carlos Williams award in 1977. He is the author of several books of poetry and nonfiction.
Barbara Ras’s most recent book is One Hidden Stuff. She is Director of Trinity University Press in San Antonio.
Tom Sleigh’s most recent book of poetry, Space Walk, won the Kingsley Tufts Award. He teaches at Hunter College in New York.
Gary Soto is a poet and novelist living and teaching in Berkeley, California. He was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Poet Gerald Stern won the National Book Award in 1998 for his book This Time: New and Selected Poems. He taught for many years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now lives in New Jersey.
One of Ireland’s most accomplished contemporary writers, Colm Tóibín’s many books include the novels The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, and the story collection Mothers and Sons. He is also a respected journalist and literary critic.
Natasha Trethewey received the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for her second book of poetry, Native Guard. She is Professor of English at Emory University.
Derek Walcott is a poet and playwright. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Originally from St. Lucia, Walcott now lives in New York City.
A major figure in the beat poetry generation, Anne Waldman is now director of the MFA Writing and Poetics Program at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Tobias Wolff is a novelist, memoirist and short story writer. He received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1985. His memoir This Boy’s Life was adapted into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. He teaches at Stanford University.
Charles Wright’s books include Black Zodiac, which won the Pulitzer Prize; Selected Early Poems, which won the National Book Award, and Scar Tissue, international winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
