Mark Irwin, Elizabeth Robinson, and Christopher Kondrich, Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Mark Irwin was born in Faribault, Minnesota, and has taught at Case Western Reserve, the University of Iowa, Ohio University, the University of Denver, the University of Colorado/Boulder, the University of Nevada, and Colorado College. The author of seven collections of poetry, The Halo of Desire (1987), Against the Meanwhile, Wesleyan University Press (1989), Quick, Now, Always, BOA (1996), White City, BOA (2000), Bright Hunger, BOA (2004), and Tall If, New Issues (2008), he has won The Nation/Discovery Award, four Pushcart Prizes, National Endowment for the Arts and Ohio Art Council Fellowships, two Colorado Council for the Arts Fellowships, two Colorado Book Awards, the James Wright Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He lives in Colorado, and Los Angeles, where he teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

Elizabeth Robinson (video above) is the author of several books of poetry, including COUNTERPART (Ahsahta Press, 2012), THREE NOVELS (Omnidawn, 2011), ALSO KNOW AS (Apogee Press, 2009), THE ORPHAN & ITS RELATIONS (Fence Books, 2008), INAUDIBLE TRUMPETERS (Harbor Mountain Press, 2008), UNDER THAT SILKY ROOF (Burning Deck Press, 2006), and APPREHEND, the 2003 winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize. She has also received grants from the Fund for Poetry, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Boomerang Foundation. Educated at Bard College, Brown University, and the Pacific School of Religion, Robinson has most recently served as the Hugo Fellow at the University of Montana.

Christopher Kondrich is the author of Contrapuntal, a New Measure Poetry Prize finalist, which was recently published in the Free Verse Editions poetry series by Parlor Press. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Cimarron Review, Free Verse, Guernica, Meridian, Seneca Review, Verse Daily and Washington Square, while his reviews on contemporary poetry have appeared in Colorado Review, CutBank, Jacket2 and Rain Taxi. A recent winner of The Paris-American Reading Series Contest, he is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver where he is an editor for Denver Quarterly.