(Fiction/CNF) CATHERINE TEXIER grew up and was educated in France, and she writes both in French and in English. She has published four novels, Chloé l’Atlantique, Panic Blood, Love Me Tender, and Victorine, and a memoir, Breakup. She was coeditor, with Joel Rose, of the groundbreaking literary magazine Between C and D and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. Her novel Victorine won ELLE Magazine’s 2004 Readers’ Prize for Fiction. Texier’s short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie-Claire, More, Cosmopolitan, Bookforum, and nerve.com, as well as in numerous anthologies. She has recently completed a new memoir, as well as her fifth novel, Russian Lessons, an excerpt from which appeared in the anthology Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories About the Men We Used to Love. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She teaches creative writing at the New School, Brooklyn College. She has lived in Paris and Montreal and now lives in New York City. www.catherinetexier.com

“I love working with students, and I believe – judging from their enthusiasm and their commitment to my workshops – that they enjoy working with me. Some of my most talented undergraduate students have gone on to study fiction in top MFA programs and publish in top literary magazines. But I especially love to work with graduate students because together we can really address issues of craft at a much higher level. Their intuition about writing, their quick understanding of the process and their talent make it extremely rewarding.

"As co-editor of Between C and D, I was involved in the running, printing and distribution of the magazine, as well as the publicity. Mostly, my role was to discover and nurture exciting new writers who went on to establish themselves and brilliantly further their art. I look at teaching in the same spirit: an opportunity to nurture budding writers and help them find their voice. I promote a climate of openness in the classroom, essential, in my mind, to help a writer flourish. At the same time, I teach the discipline of revising and self-editing and try to foster honest critical dialogue. I encourage my students to read avidly, to take emotional risks and keep revising until they get it right.

"The more I teach and the more I write, the more I realize that writing requires brave clear-sightedness coupled with a ruthless pruning of what is not absolutely essential. Depth and economy is what we are after as writers. For me teaching goes hand in hand with writing: one informs the other, in a continual dialogue, and a continual deepening of the craft.”

The current Poet Laureate of Missouri, WILLIAM TROWBRIDGE holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an M. A. in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University.  His poetry publications include five full collections: Ship of Fool (Red Hen Press, 2011), The Complete Book of Kong (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2003), Flickers, O Paradise, and Enter Dark Stranger (University of Arkansas Press, 2000, 1995, 1989),  and three chapbooks, The Packing House Cantata (Camber Press, 2006), The Four Seasons (Red Dragonfly Press, 2001) and The Book of Kong (Iowa State University Press, l986). His sixth collection, Put This On, Please: New and Selected Poems, will be published in 2014 by Red Hen Press. His poems have appeared in more than 30 anthologies and textbooks, as well as on The Writer’s Almanac, in American Life in Poetry,  and in such periodicals as Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, Boulevard, The Southern Review, River Styx, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, and New Letters. He has given readings and workshops at schools, colleges, bookstores, and literary conferences throughout the United States. His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, a Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Yaddo, and The Anderson Center. He is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Northwest Missouri State University, where he was an editor of The Laurel Review/GreenTower Press  from 1986 to 2004. Now living in the Kansas City area, he has been a mentor in the program since its inception. More information is available on his web site:   www.williamtrowbridge.net

“I emphasize sharp observation of the subject and close attention to the nuances of language and form. A love of language, its complexities and possibilities, is an essential trait of a good poet. I try to help students develop their talents both by exposing them to works of selected contemporary poets and by detailed examination of the students’ work. The former is perhaps the most important part of this development. I love to write and to work with those who also love to. I leave theory up to the theorists. And I believe students should see their audience as the educated reading public, not just their social circle or workshop members.”

(Fiction/CNF)  CHARLES WYATTis the author of a collection of linked stories, Listening to Mozart, winner of the 1995 University of Iowa Press John Simmons Award, and Falling Stones: the Spirit Autobiography of S.M. Jones, winner of the 2002 Texas Review Press Clay Reynolds Novella Prize.  His third book, Swan of Tuonela, linked stories, was published by Hanging Loose Press in April, 2006. He is a recipient of a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship in Fiction for his novel in progress, The Last Yellow Chick.  He holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College, an MM from The Philadelphia Musical Academy and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music.  He served for more than twenty years as principal flutist of the Nashville Symphony.  More recently, he has taught creative writing and literature at Binghamton  University,  Denison  University, The University of Central Oklahoma, Purdue  University,  Oberlin  College and the UCLA Writing Program.  His stories and poems have appeared in numerous journals – among them, The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, The New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Marlboro Review, ACM, and Hanging Loose.  www.charleswyatt.com

“I come to teaching creative writing from another place (the world of music).  Musicians listen to each other, and I try to encourage writers to listen to each other (and to themselves) with the same intensity.  Language is heard, even when we are reading.  And writing must be practiced in the same sense that musicians practice scales.  Fiction writers should be as concerned with language as poets – and if fiction writers don’t write poetry, they should be reading it.  I’m particularly interested in helping students learn to follow their own intuition.  Potentially, every writer has a unique approach and an individual voice.  The craft issues are important, of course – I’m very much inclined to tinker – but most writers are in agreement there.  I used to think the purpose of teaching was to save students time (and it is), but sometimes it’s important for writers to have the courage to make mistakes.  A writer who can write upstream and who’s willing to practice what seems difficult may make important new discoveries.”