Our Alumni
The Creative Writing Program is proud to count among its graduates writers and teachers who have met with tremendous success. Among our distinguished alumni are:
- Kyoko Mori: Kyoko is currently teaching at Harvard University as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Creative Writing. Her works include the work of creative non-fiction Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures (1997); the memoir The Dream of Water (Henry Holt & Co. 1995); the novels Stone Field, True Arrow (2000), One Bird (1995), and the award-winning Shizuko's Daughter (1993); and the volume of poetry Fallout (1994).
- Henri Cole: Henri's most recent book of poetry, Middle Earth (2003), was named a finalist for the Pulizer Prize. His other volumes of poetry include The Marble Queen (1986), The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (1989), The Look of Things (1995), and The Visible Man (2000). His work also appeared in February 2004 in The New Yorker. Henri currently teaches at Smith College and in Bennington's long-distance MFA program.
- Maurice Kilwein Guevara: Maurice currently teaches both poetry and fiction here at UWM--in addition to serving as the coordinator for the Creative Writing Program. He is the former President of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and has published three volumes of poetry: Autobiography of So-and-So: Poems in Prose; Poems of the River Spirit; and Postmortem. In addition, he has been appointed to visiting professor or writer positions at Universidad de las Américas in Mexico and Syracuse University, and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Bogotá, Colombia.
- Rene Steinke: Rene's novel The Fires was published in 1999. She currently teaches at Farleigh Dickinson University and serves as the Editor of The Literary Review.
- Marilyn Taylor: Marilyn teaches here at UWM and is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Subject to Change (forthcoming in 2004), Exit Only, Shadows Like These, and The Accident of Light. Her poems are also widely published in a variety of leading journals, and she was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the City of Milwaukee.
- Frederick Highland: Fred's novel Ghost-Eater was published in 2003 by St. Martin's Press.
- Ron Tanner: Ron recently published the collection of short stories A Bed of Nails, which was selected by Janet Burroway as the recipient of the G.S. Sharat Chandra Fiction Prize. His work has also appeared in The Iowa Review, The Quarterly, Indiana Review, Washington Review, Story Quarterly, and The Massachusetts Review. Ron is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Faulkner Society Award for Short Fiction, and the New Letters Literary Award in short fiction. He currently teaches writing at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.
- Jose Dalisay: Jose teaches English and Creative Writing and chairs the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Philippines Creative Writing Center. His work includes the novel Killing Time in a Warm Place, the collection of essays The Best of Barfly, and the collection of short stories Sarcophagus and Other Stories among other works. In 1998, he was named to the Philippine Centennial Honors List as one of the 100 most accomplished Filipino writers of the past century. Jose also wrote the screenplay to The Kite, the 2001 Philippines entry for the Academy Awards.
- Brenda Cardenas: Brenda's poems have appeared in Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, After Hours, RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century, Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School, Under the Pomegranate Tree: The Best New Latino Erotica, Prairie Schooner, and Tamaqua. Brenda has recently served as a co-editor for a book entitled Between the Heart and the Land / Entre el corazón y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest, an anthology of 30 poets, published by MARCH/Abrazo Press (Chicago), 2001. She has also released the poetry CD Chicano, Illnoize: The Blue Island Sessions, a collaborative project with Sonido Ink(quieto), a spoken word and music ensemble which she founded, (Despicable Records, 2001).
- Caroline Knox: Caroline's collection A Beaker: New and Selected Poems appeared from Verse Press in May 2002. Her previous books are The House Party, To Newfoundland, Sleepers Wake. Her work has appeared in American Scholar, Harvard, Massachusetts Review, New Republic, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry, which awarded her the Bess Hokin Prize. Caroline's poems have been in Best American Poetry 1988 and 1994, and she has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and The Fund for Poetry. In 2002-2003 she was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard, completing a fifth book, He Paves the Road with Iron Bars.
- Barbara Joosse: Barbara is the author of over twenty children's books, including Alien Brain Fryout, Ghost Wings, I Love You the Purplest, and Stars in the Darkness. She also has an extensive website for her readers (www.barbarajoosse.com) which introduces them to the magic of writing and stories.
- Lupe Solis: Lupe's collection Laundromat Blues draws upon his dual Polish-Chicano heritage to, as Rudolfo Anaya writes, "reveal the turbulent adolescent years and the cruelty of urban streets. And yet there is tenderness in the stories. [He is] an arresting new voice in the great stream of Midwest literature."
- Antler: Antler is the author of Factory (City Lights), Last Words (Ballantine) and most recently, Selected Poems. He has won the Walt Whitman Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He was the City of Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2002-2003.
