Atheneum Faculty for the Class of 2013
Fiction
Merridawn Duckler has published in Carolina Quarterly, Georgia State Review, & Main Street Rag among others with current work in Isotope, Green Mountains Review, Narrative & Night Train. A former Attic student, she is a two-time winner of Society of Professional Journalists Award & was nominated for Best Creative Non-Fiction Anthology 2009 and a Pushcart Prize. Reviews of her work have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Her original scripts have been preformed at the NOW Festival at Red Cat at Disney Hall and other venues in Los Angeles, Stanford, & New York in conjunction with the performance troupe Collage Dance Theatre of Los Angeles. She has been in residency at Centrum, Caldera, and Yaddo, among others. She was a non-fiction runner-up at Writers@Work in Salt Lake City & has won fiction fellowships to the Squaw Valley Writers Community, Wesleyan Writers conference, & Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has taught at the Attic for nearly ten years & is an Associate Editor at Narrative magazine.
G. Xavier Robillard's first novel, Captain Freedom, A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves (Harper Collins) was published in 2009. In addition to writing fiction he produces humiliating videos, writes music and has performed comic monologues for local shows True Stories and LiveWire Radio. A former Attic student, his work has appeared on National Public Radio, in McSweeney's, Cracked Magazine and Comedy Central.com.
Non-Fiction
Karen Karbo is the author of three novels and a memoir, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books. Her memoir The Stuff of Life, won the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, and was a People Magazine Critics’ Choice. Her latest book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman forthcoming in September.
Lee Montgomery is the author of Whose World Is This? Stories, Searching for Emily and The Things Between Us: A Memoir, winner of the 2007 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction in 2008. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Story Magazine, The New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, Tin House, and American Book Review. For ten years she was the associate publisher and editor of Tin House Books and a founder of the Tin House Writers Workshop.
Poetry
David Biespiel's publications are Shattering Air, Pilgrims & Beggars, Wild Civility, & The Book of Men and Women which was named Best Poetry of the Year for 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. He has been honored with a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, a Lannan Fellowship, & a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. David has been, since 2002, the columnist on poetry for The Oregonian, making his the longest-running newspaper column on poetry in the country. In 2010 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle.
Wendy Willis has published her work in the internationally-acclaimed Alhambra Poetry Calendar, as well as in Poetry Northwest, Clackamas Literary Review, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. In addition to her poetry career, Wendy is the deputy director for national programs at the Policy Consensus Initiative and the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Prior to joining PCI/NPCC, Wendy was the executive director for City Club of Portland. She has also served as an assistant public defender for the District of Oregon and a law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr. of the Oregon Supreme Court. Wendy is also a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum Oregon, and an active volunteer in the local food-to-school movement. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and holds a BA from Willamette University.