Visiting Writers - 2012
Alice Thompson
Visiting Writer for the 2012 MFA Residency in Edinburgh
Alice Thompson was born and raised in Edinburgh where she still lives. She studied
English at Oxford University, obtained her Ph.D. on Henry James in 1995, and has since served as Writer in Residence for Shetland, and Novelist in Residence for St.
Andrews University. She also edited the arts magazine, The List.
In 1996 she was joint winner (with Graham Swift) of the James Tait Black
Memorial Prize for Fiction for her first novel Justine. Her second novel Pandora’s Box was shortlisted for the Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. She also
won a Creative Scotland Award which enabled her to write her third novel, Pharos. The Falconer, her fourth novel, was published last year by Two Ravens
Press, which also published The Existential Detective in 2010.
Matthew Frank
Visiting Writer for the 2012 MFA Residency in Glenside
Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of the nonfiction books, “Pot Farm” (The University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books) and “Barolo” (The University of Nebraska Press), the poetry books, “Warranty in Zulu” (Barrow Street Press), “The Morrow Plots” (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books), and “Sagittarius Agitprop” (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books), and the chapbooks “Four Hours to Mpumalanga” (Pudding House Publications), and “Aardvark” (West Town Press). Recent work appears inThe New Republic, The Huffington Post, Field, Epoch, AGNI, The Iowa Review, Seneca Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, North American Review, Pleiades, Crab Orchard Review, The Best Food Writing, The Best Travel Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Prairie Schooner, Hotel Amerika, Gastronomica, and others.
He was born and raised in Chicago. Bitten by the food, wine, and travel bug, he left home at age seventeen, and spent years working in the restaurant industry from Alaska, to the Barolo wine harvest in Italy, and back to the mainland United States. He returned to academia and received his MFA in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction from Arizona State University. He taught creative writing to undergraduates in Phoenix, Arizona, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and poetry to soldiers and their families near Fort Drum in upstate New York on the Canadian border.
He currently teaches Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Northern Michigan University, where he edits for Passages North.
Justin Kramon
Visiting Writer for the 2012 MFA Residency in Glenside
Justin Kramon is the award-winning author of the novel Finny (Random House 2010). A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has published stories in Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, Boulevard, Fence, TriQuarterly, and others. He has received honors from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, Best American Short Stories, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship, and the Bogliasco Foundation. He teaches at Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York City and at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. He lives in Philadelphia.
