Current Fellows
Black Earth Institute
Connecting earth, spirit and society through the arts
Richard Cambridge of Massachusetts is widely regarded as one of the
finest poets to emerge from the Slam Poetry movement. His book Pulsa
has just been issued with illuminations by Chicago artist Michelle Warriner
Bolt. Winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, he cofounded "Singing
with the Enemy," a troupe of poets, musicians and performance artists
whose show, !EMBARGO! evokes the devastating effects of the United States'
40-year economic blockade on the people of Cuba. By special invitation,
the troupe performed in Havana, Cuba in July of 1998.
Elizabeth Cunningham is widely known for her feminist visionary fiction.
Her most recent novel, The Passion of Mary Magdalen (Monkfish Book
Publishing Company, 2006) is the centerpiece of The Maeve Chronicles.
Magdalen Rising is forthcoming from Monkfish in 2007, and Elizabeth
is at work on the final volume, Bright Dark Madonna. Her earlier
novels include The Wild Mother, The Return of the Goddess,
and How To Spin Gold (Station Hill Press). An ordained interfaith
minister, she is in private practice as a counselor. Cunningham is also
director of the Center at High Valley in New York's Hudson Valley, where
she celebrates the Celtic Cross-Quarter days. She loves to sing blues
and bluegrass. www.passionofmarymagdalen.com
Judith Roche is the author of two collections of poetry, Myrrh/My
Life as a Screamer and Ghost, is co-editor of First Fish,
First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim, which won an
American Book Award, and has edited a number of poetry anthologies. She
has worked in collaboration with visual artists on several public art
projects, which are installed in the Seattle area. She is Literary Arts
Director Emeritus for the One Reel, an arts producing company and teaches
poetry workshops. Her most recent work has appeared in Exquisite Corpse,
Pebble Review, Wandering Hermit, and several anthologies.
A new poetry collection, Wisdom of the Body, is forthcoming from
Black Heron Press. In spring 2007 she will be Distinguished Northwest
Writer in Residence at Seattle University.
Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, playwright and cultural commentator and Pushcart Prize nominee. She is author of two poetry collections: Femme du Monde (Tia Chucha Press) and The Weather That Kills (Coffee House Press) and two chapbooks, Repuestas! (Belladonna Books) and Mythologizing Always (Telephone Books). Recent publications include the anthologies: Bowery Women: Poems; broken land: Poems of Brooklyn; Poetry After 911; Best American Poetry, 2000; Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard and journals: PMS #8; Court Green; Fifth Wednesday; TriQuarterly; Black Renaissance Noire; Hanging Loose, and The Recluse. Mabou Mines commissioned “The Brooklyn Song” for Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting, a site-specific theater work that premiered in August 2007 and the play ‘Mother’ which premiered at La Mama ETC in 1994. Her poems are on the web as movies at www.sandrapayne.com and Poetry Daily: http://www.poems.com/femmejon.htm.
Art, theater, poetry and music essays, reviews and interviews are in Bomb, the Poetry Project Newsletter, Black Issues Book Review, The Boston Globe, www.tribes.org, and Essence. She is a co-editor of the groundbreaking poetry anthology, Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women, contributing editor to Bomb and Heliotrope and editor of WB, a mimeo literary magazine published in 1975. She writes the “Cosmopolitan in Brooklyn” column for Calabar Magazine. She has written catalogue essay for the artists Rhonda Schaller, Jane Dickson, William Allen and Barbara Westermann, and Rick Powell.
She received fellowships to Bread Loaf, the Millay Colony, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo. She is a recipient of awards from the National Endowment for Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Goethe Institute for travel and research in Germany. She has taught at Pine Manor College; the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church; Parsons School of Design, New School University; Sarah Lawrence College; Naropa University and for Cave Canem.
www.psjones.com
(photo: Teri Slotkin)
Cait Johnson has authored six works of spiritual non-fiction, including Celebrating the Great Mother (co-authored with Maura D. Shaw), a handbook of earth-honoring creative projects and ritual celebrations for parents and children; Cooking Like a Goddess (later reissued as Witch in the Kitchen) which restores a sense of the sacred to cooking and eating; Tarot Games (co-authored with Maura D. Shaw), a revolutionary approach to working with Tarot cards in couples and groups; and Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, a look at the common elemental roots of the great religious traditions. She also writes poetry which, like her books, is grounded in an appreciation of the sacredness in the everyday, feminist spirituality, and the interconnectedness of all things. She is a shamanic practitioner who trained with the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and has a private practice as an intuitive counselor in the Hudson Valley, where she teaches workshops and facilitates rituals, creates goddess-centered art, performs in shamanic theatre pieces, and sings in harmony with others whenever she gets the chance.
John T. Price is the author of the memoirs Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships (Da Capo Press, 2008) and Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands (U. of Nebraska Press, 2004). Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1966, he attended the University of Iowa, where he earned his B.A. in Religion, M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing and Ph.D. in English. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and other recognitions, his nonfiction writing about nature, family, and spirit has appeared in many journals, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies including Orion, The Christian Science Monitor, Creative Nonfiction, Isotope, and Best Spiritual Writing 2000. He is a Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he teaches nonfiction writing, and lives with his wife Stephanie and two sons in the Loess Hills of western Iowa.
Mary Swander is author of the recent memoirs The Desert Pilgrim
and Out of this World as well as three books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth
House, Driving the Body Back, and Succession. Swander
has also co-authored a musical, Dear Iowa, with composer Christopher
Frank, which has been produced across the Midwest and on Iowa Public Television.
Swander is a regular commentator on National Public Radio's Sunday Week-end
Edition. Her numerous awards include Whiting Award, a National Endowment
for the Arts grant for the Literary Arts, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award,
and the Nation-Discovery Award. She is a Distinguished Professor of English
at Iowa State University, and raises ducks and geese and a large organic
vegetable garden.
Brenda Peterson is the author of three novels: River of Light (Knopf, 1978), Becoming the Enemy (Graywolf Press, 1988), and Duck and Cover (HarperCollins, 1991) which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her two collections of essays: Living by Water (Fawcett/Columbine, 1994) and Nature and Other Mothers (HarperCollins, 1992) established her as a leading nature writer and she was extensively profiled in the two-volume reference work America's Nature Writers (Charles Scribners, 1996). She was also featured in Edge Walking on the Western Rim: New Works by 12 Northwest Writers (Sasquatch, 1994). Her creative non-fiction work Sister Stories (Viking/Penguin 1995, paperback 1997), was hailed by the New York Times as an "inspiring, thought-provoking and strong book." Peterson's non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Seattle Times, and magazines such as New Age Journal, Sierra, Orion and The Utne Reader.
Annie Finch is the author of four volumes of poetry and poetry in translation. Her poetic vision has also encompassed libretto and other musical and theater collaborations as well as five innovative anthologies about poetry and two books of poetics.
A practicing Wiccan, she considers herself a religious poet as well as a formalist, a feminist, an experimentalist, and a traditionalist. Her startlingly innovative yet traditional poems on themes including sex, nature, childbirth, and earth spirituality have been appreciated as at once accessible, challenging, and enjoyable.
Finch's recent works include Calendars (Tupelo, 2003, shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award); a reissue of her early longpoem, The Encyclopedia of Scotland (Salt Press, 2004); and a book of essays on poetry, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self ( University of Michigan Press, 2005). Since 2005 she has served as Director of the Stonecoast graduate creative writing program at the University of Southern Maine.
www.anniefinch.com
(photo: Miriam Berkley)
Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) is an internationally recognized public speaker and author of poetry, fiction, and essays. Her two new books are Rounding the Human Corners (Coffee House Press, April 2008) and People of the Whale (Norton, August 2008).
Her other books include novels Mean Spirit, a winner of the Oklahoma Book Award, the Mountains and Plains Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer; Solar Storms, a finalist for the International Impact Award, and Power. WW Norton is her publisher. Her poetry, The Book of Medicines was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other poetry has received the Colorado Book Award, Minnesota State Arts Grant, an American Book Award, and a prestigious Lannan Fellowship. In addition, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from both the Native Writers Circle of the Americas and Wordcraft Circle. Her nonfiction includes Dwellings, A Spiritual History of the Land; and The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir. In addition, she has, with Brenda Peterson, written Sightings, The Mysterious Journey of the Gray Whale for National Geographic Books, edited several anthologies on nature and spirituality, and written the script Everything Has a Spirit, a PBS documentary on American Indian Religious Freedom. Hogan has received the Mountains and Plains Lifetime Achievement award and has been inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. She has worked with Native youth in horse programs. A Professor Emerita from the University of Colorado, she is now the new Writer in Residence for The Chickasaw Nation and lives in Oklahoma.
Environmental issues are her major focus in all of her work, writing, and teaching. She has also been involved for thirteen years with the Native Science Dialogues and the new Native American Academy and for four years with the graduate SEED Institute.
Regie Gibson is a poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator who has performed, taught, and lectured at schools, universities, theaters and various other venues on two continents and in seven countries. Most recently in Havana Cuba. Regie and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film love jones, based largely on events in his life. The poem entitled "Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina)" appears on the movie soundtrack and is performed by the film's star, Larenz Tate. Regie performed "Hey Nappyhead" in the film with world-renowned percussionist and composer Kahil El Zabar, composer of the score for the musical The Lion King. (from The Poetry Jam Collective)