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 Jane
Bernstein <janebern+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor
(412) 268-6445
When I joined the writing program here in 1991, I thought of myself as a fiction writer. In the years since them, I’ve found myself drawn to other
genres. My new book, Rachel in the World, is a memoir, as were the two books that preceded it. I’ve published essays in such places as Ms., Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, The New York Times Magazine, Self, and Creative Nonfiction and written several scripts, among them the screenplay for Seven Minutes in Heaven, a Warner Brothers film. Works in progress include essays and a novel. Among my honors are two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Fiction, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships, one in fiction and one in Media Arts, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Creative Writing, and a Fulbright Fellowship in 2004 to teach creative writing at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. I have an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and have been a member of the Creative Writing Program here at CMU since 1991.
For more information, check my website www.janebernstein.net.
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 Gerald
Costanzo <gc3d@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of English
(412) 268-2861
Carnegie Mellon University Press, which I founded in 1975, publishes twenty books each year in the fields of poetry, short fiction, memoir, history, art history, education, and business. Perhaps the Press' most notable book has been Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah which in 1987 received The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Commencing in the year 2000, three of the past five Pulitzer winners in poetry either began their careers with or were sustained by Carnegie Mellon University Press. I teach courses in the writing and history of poetry. I have published seven collections of poems and edited four anthologies. For twenty years I was editor of Three Rivers Poetry Journal. My first collection, Badlands, was also the first book published by the noted publisher of poetry, Copper Canyon Press. Two new books, Regular Haunts: New and Selected Poems, and Spiderman for Life: The Collected Poems of James W. Hall (edited with an introduction by Gerald Costanzo) are forthcoming. My work has been honored with two Fellowships in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as by fellowships from the Falk Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. It has also received two Pushcart Prizes.
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 Jim
Daniels <jd6s@andrew.cmu.edu>
Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English
(412) 268-2842
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Jim Daniels won the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize for his book, Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies (Eastern Washington University Press, 2007). Two other books were published in 2007, his third collection of short fiction, Mr. Pleasant (Michigan State University Press), and his eleventh book of poems, In Line for the Exterminator (Wayne State University Press). In 2005, Jim Daniels wrote and produced the independent film “Dumpster,” and Street, a book of his poems accompanying the photographs of Charlee Brodsky, won the Tillie Olsen Prize from the Working-Class Studies Association. In addition, he has edited or co-edited four anthologies, including Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race, and American Poetry: The Next Generation. He has received the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. He is the Thomas Stockman Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Creative Writing Program. At Carnegie Mellon, he has received the Ryan Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Elliott Dunlap Smith Award for Teaching and Educational Service.
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 Sharon
Dilworth <sd20@andrew.cmu.edu>
Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing
(412) 268-6446
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As an artist in mid-career my creative work in fiction explores the tragedies and resonances of middle age. In each of my three latest novels I have attempted to discern the timbre and qualities that have emerged in my own adult life by creating characters whose desires are circumscribed by the landscapes and pasts they can no longer escape. I think my latest writing is more resonant emotionally than my earlier work. It deals more with ambiguity and paradox and attempts to capture the sadness and grace notes of everyday life. The three novels I've written in the past five years explore new emotional complexities from different vantage points. In My Riviera a young woman confronts the challenges of adult relationships while her family is in self-imposed exile in the south of France. In The Cousin in the Backyard , the protagonist is forced to analyze her upbringing and the untidy debris behind middle-class appearances. Finally The Man on the Street examines the adulterous fantasies of an unhappy woman who sees few options for her future. I have been writing or thinking of things to write ever since my 9th birthday when I bought a red journal with its own lock and key. I assumed I would record the wildly exciting moments of my life. My interest in journal writing never developed. Instead I filled the blank pages with my imagination. I have been making up stories about people who don't exist for almost forty years. In the context of developing interdisciplinary links across campus as well as giving students the opportunity to acquire valuable hands-on experience I have helped developed a new course on campus with the College of Fine Arts' School of Drama, the Tepper School of Business and the Entertainment Technology Center "So You Want to Make A Movie." In a year-long course, students, working in production teams will write, shoot, direct, edit, and market their own feature-length film.
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 Yona
Harvey <yharvey@andrew.cmu.edu>
Assistant Teaching Professor, Director, Creative Writing Program
(412) 268-9156
My experiences in archives and information science, as a writer in the schools, and as a collaborator with other artists all inform my work as an emerging poet. Expanding the ways in which poetry is written and read interests me most. I like to borrow from many schools of poetry, especially those that challenge the more widely accepted (or perhaps familiar) mode of linear narrative—though I love a good story. Using non-poetry texts to read and compose poetry is also of interest to me at home and in the classroom. Such texts include, but are not limited to, The Poetics of Space, The Not So Big House, The Design of Everyday Things, music reviews, fashion magazines, old grammar primers, and even cookbooks. I am constantly searching for new audio archives and rare recordings in poetry, which are becoming more accessible on The Internet. Most recently, I’ve been experimenting with flash fiction and personal essay. In addition to Pushcart nominations, my work has received a Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council grant and a Barbara Deming Award. Recordings and texts of some of my poems are housed at the outstanding Fishouse Audio Archive.
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 Terrance
Hayes <thayes@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of Creative Writing
(412) 268-9195
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The dimensions of culture remain at the center of my professional and personal goals, permeating not only the themes of my work, but my relationships with audiences, colleagues and students. At Carnegie Mellon University, I developed Out Poetry, a Readings in Poetry course exploring the intersections of poetry and the public sphere. I have read and conducted workshops in prisons, high schools and at various colleges and universities throughout the country. My work has been featured on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and in journals like Poetry and the New Yorker. Publishers Weekly listed Wind in Box, my most recent collection, as one of the top 100 books published in 2006. Hip Logic, my second book was a 2001 National Poetry Series selection and Muscular Music, my debut collection, received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Other honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Whiting Foundation. There are recurring explorations of identity and culture in my work and rather than deny my thematic obsessions, I work to change the forms in which I voice them. I aspire to a poetic style that resists style. In my newest work I continue to be guided by my interests in people: in the ways community enriches the nuances of individuality; the ways individuality enriches the nuances of community.
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Hilary
Masters <hm05+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of English and Creative Writing
(412) 268-6443
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My working experiences as a journalist, a Broadway press agent, and even some history in politics, have all found a place in my writing. My work sounds themes of abandonment--different kinds of abandonment, physical, spiritual and moral--while it tries to represent men and women caught in the socio-political fabric of America. From my first novel (The Common Pasture, 1967) racial injustice has been a consistent referral as well as questions of gender. So, eight novels, two collections of short stories, a biographical memoir and, most recently, a collection of personal essays, In Montaigne's Tower. In May of 2005 U. of Pittsburgh Press will publish my book length essay, "Shadows on a Wall", an account and recreation of the 1940 meeting between the Mexican muralist Juan O'Gorman and E.J. Kaufmann, the Pittsburgh "merchant prince" who built Fallingwater. In 2004, my family memoir Last Stands: Notes from Memory was republished by SMU Press with an introduction by Phillip Lopate and an afterword by myself. My new novel Elegy for Sam Emerson will be published by SMU press in 2005, and my essays and short stories have been included in the different Best of the Year anthologies. My work has also received The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
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 Jane McCafferty <janem@andrew.cmu.edu>
Associate Professor of Creative Writing
(412) 268-7177
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I have been primarily a fiction writer for most of my adult life, but find myself leaning toward non-fiction and very short prose pieces now. I've really enjoyed working with the photographer Charlee Brodsky, responding to her photos as a prose writer and poet. I'm interested in the relationship between the verbal and visual, and that's what I get to explore working with Charlee. I'm currently contributing to her project on images of mental illness in our culture, along with her project on Homestead. I'm also at the very beginning of field research for a book I want to write on a very unusual family in Pittsburgh and their experiences with several adoptions. I teach a variety of fiction and non-fiction courses. My favorite of these is Literary Journalism; I'm always awed by what many students are able to produce in this genre. I'm teaching a new course called The Literature of Mysticism, where we look at the tradition of mystical writing in all the world religions. I'm the author of three books, Director of the World and other stories, which won the Drue Heinz prize, One Heart, a novel, and Thank You For the Music, a second book of stories. Over the course of three years I wrote a second novel and ended up thinking it was a failure. This may have something to do with why I'm currently leaning toward non-fiction.
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