Merrill House to Host Writers Reunion

Over the last 15 years, the James Merrill House Program in Stonington has sponsored 27 Merrill Fellows: poets, novelists, and nonfiction authors who have come to live in Stonington and work in the home of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, James Merrill. For the first time, during the weekend of August 5-7, the Merrill House Program will host a reunion of former Fellows, culminating in a public reading on Saturday August 6th at 5:00 PM at the LaGrua Center.

Nine writers will return to Stonington to relax, catching up with old friends, and reminiscing about their time in Stonington. “We want to make this a casual and welcoming event that will remind the Fellows that they can come home again,” said Merrill House Program Director, Lynn Callahan. “We plan to make this an annual event open to all previous Fellows.”

All of the returning Fellows will participate in the reading at the LaGrua Center on Saturday August 6th at 5:00 PM. This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow. The LaGrua is at 7 Stonington Commons, 32 Water Street in Stonington. For further information, call 401-524-3450.

The James Merrill House is a non-profit organization operated by the Stonington Village Improvement Association whose purpose is to preserve the Stonington home of the Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, James Merrill, and make this exceptional space available as a residence for writers. In addition, the James Merrill House operates a number of outreach programs including writing workshops in the schools and community, reading groups, and public seminars and lectures. For more information about the James Merrill House visit http://www.jamesmerrillhouse.org .


Author biographies. 

Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection, winner of the William L. Crawford Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize, and a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Conjunctions, Ninth Letter, PEN America, Chicago Review, and Fairy Tale Review, and in anthologies including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He has worked as an editor at Small Beer Press, and has been a resident at Yaddo. He received his BA from Bard College and his MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has since taught fiction writing. He is currently at work on a new novel, The Something Tree.

Christina Davis Davis is the author of "Forth A Raven" (2006). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Jubilat, New Republic, Pleiades, Paris Review and other publications. She is the recipient of residencies from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and of several Pushcart Prize nominations. In 2009, US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan chose Davis to receive the Witter Bynner Fellowship of the Library of Congress. Davis is graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford, and she is curator of poetry at the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University.

Daniel Hall is the author of three collections of poems: Hermit with Landscape (selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets), Strange Relation (selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series), and Under Sleep (winner of the 2008 Thom Gunn Award). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim and Whiting Foundations; and he spent a year in Asia as an Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he is the Writer in Residence at Amherst College.

Richie Hofmann is a poet and a graduate student in English at Emory University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Criterion, Southwest Review, Literary Imagination, The Antioch Review, The Warwick Review, and other journals, and has been honored with the Academy of American Poets Prize and the AWP Intro Journal Project Award.

Cate Marvin first book, World's Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinksy for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize and published by Sarabande Books in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Her poems have appeared in The New England Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Fence, The Paris Review, The Cincinnati Review, Slate, Verse, Boston Review, and Ninth Letter. She co-edited with poet Michael Dumanis the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006). Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published by Sarabande in August 2007. A Whiting Award recipient and 2007 NYFA Gregory Millard Fellow, she teaches poetry writing in Lesley University's Low-Residency M.F.A. Program, is an associate professor in creative writing at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, and co-founder and director of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts.

Michael Snediker is Associate Professor of Poetry and American Literature at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. His book, Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood and Other Felicitous Persuasions (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), examines 19th- and 20th-century American poets, as their work intersects with and challenges current paradigms in literary and queer theory. His chapbook, Nervous Pastoral (dove|tail press, 2008), is excerpted from a full-length manuscript written during his time in Stonington. Snediker’s poems have appeared in journals including The Black Warrior Review, court green, Crazy Horse, Cream City Review, MARGIE, and Pleiades. His first poetry manuscript, Castor & Pollux, was a finalist for prizes including the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Lena-Miles Wever Todd

Bruce Snider is the author of two books of poetry, “The Year We Studied Women” (University of Wisconsin Press) winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in poetry, and the forthcoming “Paris, Indiana” (Pleiades Press), winner of the 2011 Lena-Miles Weyer Todd Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, PN Review, Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, and Prairie Schooner. He has been a James A. Michener fellow in poetry and playwriting at the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers as well as a Wallace Stegner fellow and Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. He currently lives and teaches in San Francisco.

Michael Tyrell (born Brooklyn, New York) is an American poet, editor, actor, and writing teacher. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published his poems and reviews in many journals, including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and The Paris Review. He studied acting at New York University, where he currently teaches writing. From 2001 until 2007, he was the book review editor of the literary magazine Chelsea. Tyrell had a cameo in the 2007 movie Husband for Hire.

Jason Zuzga is a PhD student in English at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is focusing on 18th century poetics and natural history. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in journals such as The Yale Review, FENCE, jubilat, VOLT, LIT, Cue, and The Seneca Review. He received an MFA in poetry and nonfiction from the University of Arizona, and was a recipient of a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center residency for 2001-2002, before which he worked in the editorial department at Alfred A. Knopf. He is currently the nonfiction editor of FENCE.