Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,858 undergraduates from all 50 states and 74 countries and offers 44 majors in the arts, humanities, literature, foreign languages, social sciences, and natural sciences, as well as joint engineering programs with Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In addition to its undergraduate liberal arts program, the school also has graduate schools, the Middlebury College Language Schools, the Bread Loaf School of English, and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, as well as its C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad international programs. It is the among the Little Ivies, an unofficial group of academically selective liberal arts colleges, mostly in the northeastern United States.
The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is an author's conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1926, it has been called by The New Yorker "the oldest and most prestigious writers' conference in the country." Bread Loaf is a program of Middlebury College and at its inception was closely associated with Robert Frost, who attended a total of 29 sessions.
Craig Arnold was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, Shells (1999), was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His many honors include the 2005 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature, The Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, an Alfred Hodder Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a MacDowell Fellowship.
C. Dale Young is an American poet and writer, physician, editor and educator of Asian and Latino descent.
Jennifer Grotz is an American poet and translator who teaches English, creative writing, and literary translation at the University of Rochester, where she is Professor of English. In 2017 she was named the seventh director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.
Bruce Bond is an American poet and creative writing educator at the University of North Texas.
Michael Robert Collier is an American poet, teacher, creative writing program administrator and editor. He has published five books of original poetry, a translation of Euripides' Medea, a book of prose pieces about poetry, and has edited three anthologies of poetry. From 2001 to 2004 he was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. As of 2011, he is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park and the poetry editorial consultant for Houghton Mifflin.
Martha Rhodes is an American poet, teacher, and publisher.
Patrick Phillips is an American poet, professor, and translator. His 2015 poetry collection, Elegy for a Broken Machine, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Poetry, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, DoubleTake, New England Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, and have been featured on Garrison Keillor's show The Writer's Almanac on National Public Radio. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen, and teaches writing and literature at Drew University. Patrick Phillips grew up in Gainesville, Georgia, and now lives in New York City.
Victoria Chang is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic.
Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (2010), and the essay collections, Abandon Me (2017) and Girlhood (2021).
Shann Ray is an American poet, novelist, and scholar of forgiveness. He writes poetry and literary fiction under the name Shann Ray in honor of his mother Saundra Rae, and social science as Shann Ray Ferch. He is the author of the novel American Copper, American Masculine: Stories, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke: Stories, Sweetclover: Poems, Atomic Theory 7: Poems and Balefire: Poems. He is also the editor with Larry C. Spears of Conversations on Servant Leadership: Insights on Human Courage in Life and Work and The Spirit of Servant Leadership, and the editor with Jiying Song of Servant Leadership and Forgiveness: How Leaders Help Heal the Heart of the World. His work has appeared worldwide in literary magazines and scientific journals, including Poetry (magazine), McSweeney's, Poetry International, Narrative Magazine, the Journal of Counseling and Development, the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, and the Voices of Servant Leadership Series.
Alan Heathcock is an American fiction writer. He grew up in the Chicago suburb of Hazel Crest, Illinois and attended the University of Iowa, where he graduated in 1993 with a BA in Journalism. Heathcock earned MFAs from both Bowling Green State University (1996), and Boise State University (2003). He lives in Boise, Idaho.
Donna Baier Stein is an American author, publisher, and copywriter.
Joyce Hinnefeld is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction.
Pamela Erens is an American writer who appeared on a list compiled by the Reader's Digest of "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now". She has written three critically acclaimed novels for adults, a highly praised novel for middle schoolers, and the memoir/critical hybrid Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life. Her debut novel, The Understory (2007), was a fiction finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,. Erens's second novel, The Virgins (2013), received accolades from many sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. It was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her third novel, Eleven Hours, was published in May 2016. It was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New Yorker, NPR, and Kirkus. Erens's middle grade novel, Matasha, was published in June 2021. Erens has also written essays and critical articles for publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
Melissa Scholes Young is an American writer.
Matthew Minicucci is an American writer and poet. His first full-length collection, Translation, won the 2015 Wick Poetry Prize, and his second collection, Small Gods, won the 2019 Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award in Poetry. Having received numerous fellowships and residencies, including with the National Park Service, the C. Hamilton Bailey Oregon Literary Fellowship, the Stanley P. Young Fellowship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the James Merrill House, Minicucci was named the 2019 Dartmouth College Poet-in-Residence at the Frost Place.
