Santa Fe Writers Conference New Mexico

FACULTY

2008 FACULTY & GUESTS
SUSAN GONZALES ABRAHAM and DENISE GONZALES ABRAHAM, the daughters of Cecilia Gonzales Abraham, the hero of the Cecilia books. Cecilia's Year has been selected as the Best Books for Young Adults in 2004 by the Texas Institute of Letters.

ELLEN BERKOVITZ has written art criticism for Art in American, Art News and Editor of Santa Fe Trend Magazine.

SANDRA BLAKESLEE is an award-winning science writer for the New York Times. For the last ten years, she has carved out a specialty in neuroscience, although her "Science Times" articles cover many topics.

SALLIE BINGHAM is an author, playwright, poet, and feminist. She is the author of seven books, including the best known, Passion and Prejudice: A Family Memoir, an account of the breakup of her family publishing empire. She has also penned more than a dozen plays. Her latest book, Red Car is a collection of short stories.
ELENA DÍAZ BJORKQÜIST is the author of a collection of short stories about Morenci, Arizona, entitled Suffer Smoke, and is the author of a collection of young adult stories, Water from the Moon. Elena is also a Chautauqua performer, an artist, and historian

DENISE CHÁVEZ is a performance writer, novelist, and Director of the Border Book Festival in Mesilla, NM. Her books include The Last of the Menu Girls, Face of an Angel, Loving Pedro Infante, and her most recent, a memoir entitled , A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food, and Culture.

NATALIE GOLDBERG, whose latest book, Old Friend from Far Away, is the most recent addition to a long list of books. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, broke open the world of creativity and started a revolution in the way we practice writing in this country. The book has sold over one million copies and has been translated into 13 languages. Natalie has been practicing Zen meditation and teaching seminars in writing as a practice for the last twenty-five years.
LEIGH HABER is vice-president and editorial director of a new imprint, Modern Times. The imprint is a division of Rodale, publishing a wide range of non-fiction; including current affairs, journalism, politics, memoir, and narrative non-fiction. Over the course of her career, she has worked with Steve Martin (three books, including Shopgirl), Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth, and a forthcoming book on solutions to the climate crisis), Bill Maher, Laurie Garrett, Peter Jennings, Marcus Mabry, Brooks Hansen, and William Greider.

BARBARA HARRELSON is a writer and lecturer living in Santa Fe.
ANNA JANE HAYS a graduate of UNM, has come home to Santa Fe after many years as Vice President/Editor-in-Chief of Book Publishing at Children's Television Workshop in New York. At SESAME STREET she led the editorial team in developing educational picture books, storybooks, and print activity books specifically for preschoolers. She is the author of numerous SESAME STREET books and other children's books for U.S. and European publishers, including READY, SET, PRESCHOOL! and KINDERGARTEN COUNTDOWN, recently published by Alfred A. Knopf. This summer Random House published her latest Step-Into-Reading title, SMARTY SARA.
Anna Jane now lives and writes in Santa Fe

LAURA HAYS is the author of several short stories and novellas.
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Anne Hillerman is the author of Children’s Guide to Santa Fe , The Insiders Guide to Santa Fe , Done in the Sun and Ride the Wind: USA to Africa . Her newest books, Santa Fe’s Best Restaurants and Santa Fe Gardens will be released in January, 2009 Upcoming Hillerman’s Landscape: Travels with Chee and Leaphorn, a photographic book
Anne currently is a director of Wordharvest Writers Workshops and the Tony Hillerman Writers Conference: Focus on Mystery. She has received awards for her work from the National Federation of Press Women, and the New Mexico Press Association. She worked as editorial page editor and arts editor for the Albuquerque Journal North and the Santa Fe New Mexican, and an for both papers and was the editor of New Mexico Almanac.

PAGE LAMBERT is the winner of two Fellowships for Literary Excellence, awarded by the Wyoming Arts Council in prose and poetry; Lambert has received six additional literary awards. An excerpt from her nonfiction work-in-progress, Sweetwater: A Mountain Cabin, A Life Unfolding, was a finalist for the 2006 Mad Blood Literary Award.

Consuelo Luz, Chilean-Cuban singer/songwriter, explores her Sephardic roots adapting ancient Jewish prayers and ballads from Spain, the Mediterranean and the Middle East into new "World Music" style songs in a passionate marriage of Jewish and Latin soul.

Barbara with her husband, Bill, and daughter Jennifer Mammoli.

BARBARA BEASLEY MURPHY has written books for young adults and younger children for 30 years. She has won the Zia Award for Miguel, the Christopher Award for the New York Kids Book,, and a fellowship to the Breadloaf Writers Conference.

LISA DALE NORTON is the author of the upcoming 'Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir '(St. Martin's Press, August 2008) and the critically-acclaimed memoir, 'Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills.'
Lisa inspires audiences throughout the world with her passion for the power of personal stories to change lives. She teaches Creative Nonfiction and Memoir Writing for the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and also works with private clients across the country who are writing Narrative Nonfiction books.
LESLEY POLING KEMPES lives in and writes about Abiquiu, New Mexico. Her other books include: Valley of the Shinning Stone; The Story of Abiquiu, published by the University of Arizona Press; The Harvey Girls: Who Opened the West, and a novel, Canyon of Remembering.
JULIE SHIGEKUNI teaches creative writing at the University of New Mexico. She has won several awards for her writing, including the PEN Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, a Henfield award, and the Japanese American National Literary Award. Doubleday/Anchor published her first novel, A Bridge Between Us, in 1996.

CAROLYNE WRIGHT has published eight books and chapbooks of poetry, including A Change of Maps, Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire, Premonitions of an Uneasy Guest, Stealing the Children, and Carolyne Wright: Greatest Hits 1975-2001; a collection of essays, A Choice of Fidelities: Lectures and Readings from a Writer's Life ; and volumes of poetry translated from Spanish and Bengali. Just published is the anthology Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women. Wright's investigative memoir of her experiences in Chile on a Fulbright Study Grant during the presidency of Salvador Allende, The Road to Isla Negra, won the PEN / Jerard Fund Award and the Crossing Boundaries Award

NANCY WOOD is an award-winning poet, novelist, photographer, and children's book author.
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Ellen Bradbury-Reid
Conference Director
as executive director of Recursos, Ellen strives to create an atmosphere that encourages an active intellectual and artistic exchange of ideas and to bridge the gap between academic and popular audiences. She has established many successful programs under her tutelage, such as the Smithsonian Institution Seminars, the Southwest Literary Center, Arts of the Americas and Natural History Study Tours. With advanced degrees in art history, Ellen is sought as a lecturer and consultant for many prestigious arts organizations around the country and has served the arts in other prominent roles, such as Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM and Curator of Primitive Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis, MN

The Santa Fe Writers Conference is presented by the Southwest Literary Center, a division of Recursos de Santa Fe, a private not-for-profit organization which presents nationally-recognized seminars & conferences in the arts, sciences, letters, & humanities. Funders include the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers Tax.