Workshop leaders Jamie Brickhouse, Stella Connell, Leigh Feldman,
Jessica Handler, Lee Martin, Dinty W. Moore, Michael Rosenwald and Neil White will also serve as
presenters and panelists during the Oxford Creative Nonfiction Conference.
Beth Ann Fennelly is an Associate Professor at the University
of Mississippi, and lives in Oxford, MS. She has received a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Award and a 2006 United
States Artist Grant. She's published three books of poetry, all from W. W. Norton: Open House, which won The
2001 Kenyon Review Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award, and was a Book Sense Top Ten Poetry Pick; Tender Hooks, and
Unmentionables. Great With Child, a book of nonfiction, was published by Norton in 2006. Her
poems have been reprinted in Best American Poetry 1996, 2005, and 2006, Contemporary American Poetry, The
Penguin Book of the Sonnet, The Pushcart Prize, and Poets of the New Century. In 2009, she won a Fulbright
grant to Brazil.
Lee Gutkind, recognized by Vanity Fair as “the
Godfather behind creative nonfiction,” is the author and editor of more than 25 books and founder and editor of Creative
Nonfiction, the first and largest literary magazine to publish narrative nonfiction exclusively. He is Distinguished
Writer-in-Residence in the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University and a professor in the
Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. Gutkind has lectured to audiences around the world—from China to the Czech Republic, from Australia
to Africa to Egypt. He has appeared on many national radio and televisions shows, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central), Good Morning America,
National Public Radio’s Talk
of the Nation and All Things Considered, as well as BBC World. Gutkind is the recipient of grants and awards from many different organizations, from the National
Endowment for the Arts to the National Science Foundation. A prolific author, his most recent books include An Immense New Power to Heal: The Promise of Personalized Medicine and an anthology, At the End of Life: True Stories About How We Die. His new book: You Can’t Make This Stuff UP, is “Reminiscent of Stephen King’s fiction handbook On Writing,” according to Kirkus Reviews—An accessible, indispensable nonfiction guidebook
from an authority who knows his subject from cover to cover.”
River Jordan is a critically, acclaimed author of The
Gin Girl, The Messenger of Magnolia Street, Saints in Limbo, and The Miracle
of Mercy Land, and an essay collection; The Deep, Down, Dirty South; A Southern Girl Recollects. Her
most recent work is the bestselling non-fiction, Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit, (Penguin/Berkley),
a SIBA book of the year award finalist. A former playwright with the Loblolly Theatre Group, her writing is most frequently
cast in the company of William Falkner, Flannery O’Conner, and Harper Lee and has been hailed by reviewers as "a
southern gothic masterpiece." She speaks around the country on ‘The Power of Story’ and is
a favorite at writing conferences for both dry wit and inspirational ability to help others discover their muse. Ms.
Jordan is a weekly contributor to Psychology Today’s Spirituality blog and produces and hosts the
weekly literary radio program, Clearstory, from Nashville where she makes her home.
Virginia Morell is an acclaimed science journalist and author. A contributing correspondent for Science, she has covered
evolutionary and conservation biology since 1990. A passionate lover of the natural world and a creative thinker, her reporting
keeps her in close communications with leading scientists in her fields of interest. Morell is also a regular contributor
to National Geographic and Conde Nast Traveler. In 2004, her National Geographic article on climate
change was a finalist for Best Environmental Article from the Society of Environmental Journalists. In addition to her
journalistic work, Morell is the author of three celebrated books: Ancestral Passions, Blue Nile, and Wildlife
Wars. Her upcoming book, Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, will be published by
Crown in February 2013. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her husband, writer Michael McRae, a Calico cat, Nini, and a smart,
six-year-old American Working Farm Collie, Buckaroo.
Julia Reed was born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1960. She
is a contributing editor at Elle Décor and at Garden & Gun magazine, where she writes a regular
column, “The High & The Low.” She also contributes to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Condè
Nast Traveler, as well as to the websites Taigan.com and wowowow.com. She is a frequent guest on MSNBC and CNN. Reed
began her career at Newsweek magazine. For 20 years, she was a contributing editor at Vogue, where her profile
subjects included everyone from Robert De Niro, Oscar de la Renta, and Sister Helen Prejean to George and Laura Bush, Condoleezza
Rice, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. She is the author of: The House on First Street, My New Orleans Story; Ham
Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and Other Southern Specialties: An Entertaining Life (with Recipes); and Queen of the Turtle
Derby and Other Southern Phenomena, a collection of essays about the south. A new collection of her essays on food and
entertaining, But Mama Always Put Vodka in the Sangria!: Adventures in Eating, Drinking, and Making Merry, will be
published by St. Martin’s Press on April 30, 2013. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, John Pearce, an oil
and gas attorney. She serves on of the board of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and is a trustee of PACT (parents
and children together), an organization founded by Lady Meyer, the wife of the former British ambassador to the United States.
And
many more to come!
