Three Distinguished Visiting Writers

will be teaching in the Cornell English Department during Spring Term 2008

Denis Johnson, poet, fiction writer, playwright, essayist, memoirist, and journalist, whose most recent book, the novel Tree of Smoke (2007), just won the National Book Award, and who has two plays being produced by Campo Santo (in the Bay Area), including Everything Has Been Arranged, on Dec. 6-8, 2007;

Mark Doty, memoirist and poet, whose most recent book is Dog Years (2007), and whose poetry collection My Alexandria (1993) won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and

Paul Lisicky, memoirist and fiction writer, whose most recent book is the novel Lawnboy (2006), and who is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship.

Each of the visiting writers will teach one undergraduate writing course. Additionally, the writers teach in the English 581/Writers at Work series of guest seminars, a course that is open only to graduate student writers. Funding for the three Visiting Writers has been provided by two anonymous donors who are alumni of Cornell.

Denis Johnson is the author of several novels, plays, and volumes of verse. His latest novel, Tree of Smoke, won the 2007 National Book Award for fiction.

Mark Doty's new book, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming by HarperCollins this spring, and includes work from his seven previous collections. He is also the author of three memoirs, most recently Dog Years, a New York Times bestseller, and a book-length essay, Still Life with Oyster and Lemon.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Short Takes, Open House, Boulevard, Flash Fiction, and many other anthologies and magazines. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he's the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a fellow. He lives in New York City, and has taught at NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, Antioch University-Los Angeles, The University of Houston, and The Bread Loaf Writers Conference. A new novel, Lumina Harbor, is forthcoming.