Robert Bly

Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York living, as they say, hand to mouth.

Beginning in 1954, he took two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop along with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and others. In 1956 he received a Fulbright grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets whose force was not present in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. He determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States and so begin The Fifties and The Sixties and The Seventies, which introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and published as well essays on American poets and insults to those deserving. During this time he lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children.

In 1966 he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau,The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.

His work Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. He frequently does workshops for men with James Hillman and others, and workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He and his wife Ruth, along with the storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, frequently conduct seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.

Recent books of poetry include What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? Collected Prose Poems and Meditations on the Insatiable Soul, both published by Harper Collins. His second large prose book, The Sibling Society, published by Addison-Wesley in hardcover and Vintage in paperback, is the subject of nation-wide discussion. His collection, Morning Poems (Harper Collins), named for William Stafford’s practice of writing a poem each morning, revisits the western Minnesota farm country of Bly’s boyhood with marvelous wit and warmth. He has recently published The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (Henry Holt) in collaboration with Marion Woodman. His new selected poems, Eating the Honey of Words, has recently appeared from Harper Flamingo, as well as his translations of Ghalib, The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib (with Sunil Dutta) from Ecco Press. He has also edited the prestigious Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribners).

Bruce Aiken

Few people are as intimate with the Grand Canyon as Bruce Aiken. For over thirty years, this magnificent landscape has been his home, his livelihood, and his inspiration. Here, Bruce and his wife, Mary, have lived for more than thirty years, tending the park's water supply at Roaring Springs and raising their family of three children. Here, too, Bruce Aiken's art has flourished. The vivid colors, intimate details, and conceptual artistry found in his paintings lend distinction to his own, unique style that some art critics have labeled "authoritative realism." As Bruce says, "My main idea is to paint scenes that say, 'I was here. I saw this. This is a first-hand experience.' Grand Canyon is not only big and beautiful, it's pristine living... it's still wild to me." Aiken's first book, _Bruce Aiken's Grand Canyon: An Intimate Affair_, reflects how the Canyon has uniquely shaped his work.

Erik Bitsui

From ultra-rural rez community of Blue Gap, Arizona, Erik Bitsui is a freelance writer, living and working on the Navajo Nation. He is a graduate of Northern Arizona University. (Jim Ruland and Jennifer Denetdale, two fellow presenters of the 2009 Northern Arizona Book Festival, were his instructors at NAU.) The majority of Erik's work is based on his experiences as a Native American in the 21st century.

Erik was one of the founders of the Northern Arizona Book Festival, and served as the assistant director in 1998-99. He has continued to coordinate community outreach projects in and around the Navajo Nation, including Friday Nights @ The Library at Dine College. Today, Mr Bitsui can be found teaching is people on the rez. He has taught K-12, adult learners of English and college students.

Jennifer Nez Denetdale

Jennifer Nez Denetdale is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She received her doctoral degree in History from Northern Arizona University in 1999. After teaching in the Dept. of Humanities, Arts, and Religion at NAU, she joined the History faculty at the University of New Mexico in 2002. She teaches courses on Native American and Navajo history, Native American women, women in the U.S. West, and Indigenous feminisms. She has research interests in colonialism, nationalism and gender, and environmental and social justice. Her book, Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2007 and her book for young adults, The Long Walk: The Forced Exile of the Navajo, was published by Chelsea House in 2008. She is the author of articles and book chapters on Navajo history and women. Her current research project is a history of Navajo women.

Diana Gabaldon

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting "Scrooge McDuck" comics."

The adventure began in 1991 with the classic OUTLANDER ("historical fiction with a Moebius twist"), continued through five more New York Times-bestselling novels--DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN, THE FIERY CROSS, and A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES--and a nonfiction (well, relatively) companion volume, THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION, which provides copious details on the settings, background, characters, research, and writing of the novels. Gabaldon (it's pronounced "GAH-bull-dohn"—rhymes with "stone") has also written two historical mysteries, LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER, and LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE, as well as several novellas featuring Lord John Grey (which appear together in volume form as LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS).

She is presently working on the seventh volume in the main series, to be titled AN ECHO IN THE BONE (to be released in Fall 2009), the third Lord John novel (LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER), and a graphic novel (based on OUTLANDER) for Ballantine.

In addition, she is working on a contemporary mystery series, set in Phoenix, and has written Highly Scholarly Introductions (with masses of footnotes) to recent Modern Library editions of Sir Walter Scott's IVANHOE, and Thomas Paine's COMMON SENSE.

A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, the most recent novel in the main OUTLANDER series, opened simultaneously at #1 on the bestseller lists of four countries, and won both a Quill Award and the Corine interntational literary prize for fiction.

Dr. Gabaldon holds three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and Quantitative Behavioral Ecology, (plus an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters (though no one has yet explained to her just what a humane letter is) and spent a dozen years as a university professor with an expertise in scientific computation before beginning to write fiction. She has written scientific articles and textbooks, worked as an editor on the MacMillan ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMPUTERS, founded the scientific-computation journal SCIENCE SOFTWARE QUARTERLY, and has written numerous comic-book scripts for Walt Disney. None of this has anything whatever to do with her novels, but there it is.

She and her husband, Douglas Watkins, have three adult children and live in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Mark Gibbons

Mark Gibbons is a Montana poet. A lifelong resident of the Big Sky state, he lives with his wife in Missoula where he writes and teaches poetry for the Missoula Writing Collaborative, the Montana Arts Council, and Very Special Arts Montana. He has also worked most of the physical labor jobs available to blue-collar descendants determined to stay in Montana at all costs. For the last decade Gibbons has driven truck and moved furniture to make ends meet. He received a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana where he studied with Greg Pape and Jack Gilbert. Influenced by the Beats, Bukowski, and rock and roll, Gibbons’ poems strive for music in plain spoken language. His poems have appeared in numerous journals around the country. His first collection, a chapbook Something Inside Us, appeared in 1995. A second chapbook, Circling Home, won the Scattered Cairns Press chapbook competition in 2000. Gibbons’ first full length collection of poems, Connemara Moonshine, was published by Two Dogs Press in 2002. blue horizon, also from Two Dogs Press, appeared in 2007. War, Madness, & Love, a joint collection of poems with Appalachian poet Michael Revere came out in December of 2008 from R & R Publishing. An abridged bilingual edition of Connemara Moonshine is being negotiated with a French publisher for release in 2009 or 2010. A new collection, Forgotten Dreams, is looking for a publisher.

The Salish poet, Jennifer Greene, says: “Mark Gibbons is a real Montana writer. He is a person deeply moved and shaped by this place, but his work is an authentic reflection of who he is as a person. He is not, in any way, writing about stereotypes about this place or about life in the West. In that way, his work is honest, authentic and universal.”

Ed Lahey, 2008 winner of the Governor’s Arts Award for a lifetime achievement in Literature, says: “Mark Gibbons is titanically gifted. He knows the hidden secret of love is mortality. Though his work is black ass dark and often violent, it is essentially spiritual if not religious, coming from the heart of a church without walls.”

Poet/songwriter Paul Zarzyski says: “blue horizon, Gibbons’ second book, reads more like a selected works choreographed from a dozen books written over a 50-year career. I wish I could let the poetry reading world know about this otherworldly lumper-poet living in obscurity in Missoula, where Dick Hugo, were he still with us, would most certainly be screaming Gibbons’ praises from the roof of the Liberal Arts building. Or better yet, Harold’s Milltown Bar & Laundromat. These poems speak my lingo to my ticker in spades!”

T. Greenwood

T. (Tammy) Greenwood was born and raised in rural Vermont. She left Vermont for graduate school and received her MA in English from Northern Arizona University in 1994. She also holds a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington.

She is the author of four novels: Breathing Water, Nearer Than the Sky, Undressing the Moon and Two Rivers. Two of her novels have been Booksense 76 picks, and Two Rivers is a January 2009 IndieBound Indie Next selection. BookPage claims: "Two Rivers is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder, with its quiet New England town shadowed by tragedy, and of Sherwood Anderson, with its sense of desperate loneliness and regret...Even the protagonist’s name, Harper, calls to mind To Kill a Mockingbird, with its painful racial entanglements also set in a small town...Greenwood fills her novel with memorable characters...It’s to Greenwood’s credit that she answers her novel’s mysteries in ways that are believable, that make you feel the sadness that informs her characters’ lives." Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, calls Two Rivers a "stark, haunting story of redemption and salvation...a memorable, powerful work." And Lee Martin (author of The Bright Forever) writes, “Two Rivers is a convergence of tales, a reminder that the past never washes away, and yet, in T. Greenwood's delicate handling of time gone and time to come, love and forgiveness wait on the other side of what life does to us and what we do to it. This novel is a sensitive and suspenseful portrayal of family and the ties that bind."

Greenwood has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

She lives in the Washington D.C. area with her husband and their two daughters, though the rest of her family all now lives in Flagstaff. She teaches creative writing at The George Washington University and at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD. She is also an aspiring photographer. Her next novel, The Hungry Season, will be published in February 2010.

Matthew Henry Hall

Once up a once, Matthew Henry Hall got paid to teach college English classes; Matt will present his cartoons, stories and insights on students as well as some highly ineffective teaching techniques in a presentation titled, "I Will Now Set Myself On Fire." Matt's boorish, self-aggrandizing achievements include having many of his cartoons published in various periodicals such as The Missouri Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Reader's Digest as well as in books, the most recent being, What They Didn't Teach You In Graduate School. His children's picture book, Phoebe and Chub, is a 2009 Grand Canyon Reader Award nominee.

Lois and Steve Hirst

The Hirsts first came to teach for the Havasupai in 1967, beginning a relationship that has persisted for forty years. As tribal employees, Lois directed Havasupai education programs while Steve worked for the tribal council. During the Hirsts’ years in Havasu Canyon, the Havasupai asked them to research and document their efforts to regain their ancestral lands. Their book _I Am the Grand Canyon_ is the outcome of that work. The Hirsts left the Havasupai in 1983 for Lois to earn a doctorate at Northern Arizona University. In 1985, she became professor of educational leadership at Northern Michigan University. In 1996, she received the Michigan Board of Governors’ Distinguished Faculty award. The Hirsts reside in Flagstaff, where they are docents at the Museum of Northern Arizona, lead Elderhostel tours, and serve as interpretive rangers for a unique Forest Service/National Park Service partnership. They continue their friendship and work with the Havasupai people.

Seth Muller

Seth Muller was born and raised on the East Coast, but he truly fell in love with the Southwest. He moved to Arizona in 2001. This love for the rugged and open country blended with his lifelong passion for the written word. In 2005, he published a collection of short stories called The Solar Constant. “Seth Muller has made something new. His voice is unique. His imperfections break open to reveal the heart of a geode, a galaxy, a dandelion going to seed on the Southwest wind,” writes Mary Sojourner, author of Bonelight: Rituals of Loss and Desire.

Seth partnered with Flagstaff-based book publisher Salina Bookshelf and wrote the first three books of a young-reader fantasy fiction series called Keepers of the Windclaw. The series follows a Navajo girl named Ellie Tsosie who learns how to communicate with birds. The gift gives her insight into the Natural and Animal Worlds and leads her on an adventure. The first book, The Mockingbird’s Manual, is scheduled for a March 2009 release.

Seth currently lives with his wife Jane and daughter Grace in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he works as a magazine editor and contributor.

Tony Norris

Storyteller, Folk Singer & Cowboy Historian of the Southwest

If Garrison Keillor were raised on cornbread and beans…

No western entertainer does it all with the warmth and wit of Tony Norris. Based in Flagstaff, Arizona, he is a regular at storytelling festivals, cowboy poetry gatherings, schools, campfires, and corporate conferences. Young and old alike are captivated by his homespun charm and rich tenor voice. With the accompaniment of his big Martin guitar and healthy doses of humor, he invites the adventurous spirit in each of us to leave the everyday world behind and journey into the old West. Performing solo or in an ensemble, his concerts are for those who want to hear the old songs, learn about the West, relax and have a good time.

As folklorist, Tony brings to life the Appalachian, cowboy, and indigenous cultures of the Southwest on radio and in college settings, and conducts workshops in storytelling for adults. In addition, he produces CD packages for those who want to preserve their personal memoirs and/or family histories. He can create CD masters from existing recordings or will interview and record informants in a location of their choice.

Rod Parnell

Rod Parnell is Professor of Geology and Environmental Sciences at Northern Arizona University, Chair of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Education, and Director of the Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit. He received his Ph.D. in Geology from Dartmouth College in 1982. Rod has been a faculty member at St. Lawrence University, the University of Virginia, and Northern Arizona University. He has chaired the Geology Department and the Environmental Sciences Program while at NAU. He has published extensively on the effects of acid rain, volcanic emissions, and sulfide mineral deposits on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and on the biogeochemistry and geomorphology of Southwestern US rivers. Rod works with the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center of the U.S. Geological Survey, performing biogeochemical and geomorphological research and monitoring to aid in adaptive management of Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River's flow through Grand Canyon. He has a long-term interest in the impacts of acid deposition, acid mine drainage, and acid rock drainage on the ecosystems of the San Juan and La Plata Mountains.

Bill Plotkin

Bill Plotkin, PhD, is a depth psychologist, wilderness rites guide, and ecotherapist. As the founder of Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute, he has, since 1981, guided thousands of people through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision quest. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, whitewater river boatman, and mountain-bike racer. His doctorate in psychology is from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1979, on a solo winter ascent of an Adirondack peak, Bill experienced a “call to adventure,” leading him to abandon academia in search of his true calling. He is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library, 2003) and Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (New World Library, 2008).

Bill Plotkin: Nature and the Human Soul

Nature & the Human Soul introduces an innovative developmental psychology that shows how fully and creatively we can mature when we allow soul and wild nature to guide us. Plotkin presents a model for a human life span rooted in the patterns and rhythms of wild nature, a template for individual development that ultimately yields a strategy for cultural transformation. This book explores nature’s ways — and every vital culture’s ways — for raising healthy children; preparing adolescents for the initiatory adventure that opens the way to mature, authentic adulthood; and enhancing the cultural artistry and fulfillment of adult and elder lives.

Wayne Ranney

As a geologist, author and guide, Wayne Ranney loves to share his appreciation of earth history with anyone who is curious about landscapes and how they may have formed. He has a passion for landscapes and how cultures either thrived or withered because of those landscapes. He also loves foreign travel, ancient peoples and hiking in the great outdoors. His association with high quality educational organizations such as the Museum of Northern Arizona, Grand Canyon Field Institute, Coconino Community College, Smithsonian Journeys, and TCS Expeditions means that no matter where he might travel, he will learn about and enjoy the varied beauties of this planet. His newest book, "Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau," is published by the Grand Canyon Association and is now available for sale. ALCP is co-written with Dr. Ron Blakey, a former professor of Ranney's at Northern Arizona University, and contains dozens of his dazzling portrayals of the numerous former landscapes that once graced the Colorado Plateau.

Alberto Álvaro Ríos

Alberto Álvaro Ríos, born in 1952 in Nogales, Arizona, is the author of ten books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. His books of poems include, most recently, The Theater of Night, winner of the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award, along with The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, a finalist for the National Book Award, Teodoro Luna’s Two Kisses, The Lime Orchard Woman, The Warrington Poems, Five Indiscretions, and Whispering to Fool the Wind. His three collections of short stories are, most recently, The Curtain of Trees, along with Pig Cookies, and The Iguana Killer. His memoir about growing up on the Mexico-Arizona border—called Capirotada—won the Latino Literary Hall of Fame Award and, most recently, was designated as the One Book Arizona choice for 2009.

Ríos is the recipient of the Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Walt Whitman Award, the Western States Book Award for Fiction, six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction, and inclusion in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, as well as over 200 other national and international literary anthologies. His work is regularly taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance and both classical and popular music.

His next book, The Dangerous Shirt, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

Ríos is a Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University, where he has taught for over 26 years and where he holds the further distinction of the Katharine C. Turner Endowed Chair in English.

His reading at the Northern Arizona Book Festival this year is generously supported by One Book Arizona who selected his book, Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir, as their 2009 winner.

Brought to Arizona in 2002, and coordinated by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records (ASLAPR), ONEBOOKAZ is a program that brings communities together through literature. Beginning in April every year, this program encourages communities across the State of Arizona to read the same book at the same time and participate in discussions and programs centered around that book. More information is available at www.onebookaz.org.

Jim Ruland

A graduate of Northern Arizona University, Ruland’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Believer, Esquire, Hobart, McSweeney’s, Oxford American and Salt Flats Annual, among others, and his short story collection, Big Lonesome, was published by Gorsky Press in 2005.

In addition, Ruland has worked as a freelance radio correspondent for National Public Radio's "Day to Day" and regularly contributes pop culture articles to the San Diego CityBeati and book reviews to the L.A. Weekly and Los Angeles Times. He is a columnist for Razorcake, America’s only non-profit punk rock zine, and the organizer and impresario of the L.A.-based reading series, Vermin on the Mount (vermin.blogs.com).

He has recently completed a novel about America’s first sports celebrity, John L. Sullivan, which was written with the support of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Ruland lives in Southern California with his wife, the visual artist Nuvia Crisol Guerra, and works in an Indian Casino.