President of the Attic Institute
David Biespiel (pronounced buy-speel) is widely recognized as one of the leading poets of his generation, a liberal commentator on national politics, and also one of the nation's experts in teaching writing. His teaching experience is innovative and vast: He has taught at every level of education, from a one-room schoolhouse to large university campuses, from public high schools to graduate seminars, from teaching poetics at Stanford University to developing national champions in the Olympic sport of diving, and he has lectured and spoken to audiences throughout the United States.
Looking to create an independent writing studio in 1999, David founded the Attic Institute as a haven for writers in Portland's historic Hawthorne district.
Among his 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 and also received the Oregon Book Award, and Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces. He has been honored with a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature.
Since 2008, he as been a contributor to Politico's "Arena," a cross-party, cross-discipline daily conversation about politics and policy among more than a hundred current and former members of Congress, governors, mayors, political strategists and scholars.
In 2010 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle where he serves as a judge for the NBCC annual book awards.
Read David's complete bio and find links to his works on the Web