The Department of Writing & Poetics is proud of the accomplishments of its students and graduates.
For frequent news from our alumni as well as other news and events related to the Jack Kerouac School, please read our department newsletter, Interzone, which is published four times per year. Also, please visit our events page for events related to and sponsored by the Kerouac School. If you're an alumni and would like to let us know about your recent publications, events, and other accomplishments, please tell us your news!
The following is a selection of publications, honors, prizes and fellowships earned by graduates of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
POETRY
Kerouac School poets have received numerous awards including National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Colorado State Arts grants, Fulbright fellowships, Grammy Awards, American Book Awards, Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Writing. Graduates have been winners of the National Poetry Series, Fence Motherwell Prize, and the Poetry Play Jamboree in San Francisco. Naropa poets have appeared on MTV’s “Spoken Word” and on the PBS series “The United States of Poetry.”
Alumni from the Kerouac school have published many books through independent, corporate, and university publishing houses. Graduates have also been published widely in a variety of print and online magazines, including Aufgabe, Belladonna, Caketrain,
Callaloo,
Chicago Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Double Change, Ecopoetics, Fence, First Intensity, Five Fingers Review, Jacket Magazine,
Meridian, Nerve Lantern, Poetry Project Newsletter,
Slope, and Tarpaulin Sky.
Selected Book Publications (Poetry):
Heather C. Akerberg: dwelling (Burning Deck Press, 2008)
Melissa Benham: codeswitching (Subday, 2003)
Lisa Birman: For that Return Passage: A Valentine for the United States of America (Hollowdeck Pres, 2008)
Mary Burger:Sonny (Leon Works, 2005), Nature’s Maw Gives & Gives (Duration Press, 1999), anthologized in An Anthology of New (American) Poets (Talisman House)
Jim Cohn: The Ongoing Saga I Told My Daughter (Museum of American Poetics Publications, 2009), Quien Sabe Mountain (Museum of American Poetics Publications, 2004), The Golden Body: Meditations on the Essence of Disability (Museum of American Poetics Publications, 2003), Sign Mind: Studies in American Sign Language Poetics (Museum of American Poetics Publications, 1999), The Dance of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge (Writers & Books Publications, 1998), Grasslands (Writers & Books Publications, 1994), Prairie Falcon (North Atlantic Books, 1989), Green Sky (1980)
Joseph Cooper:Touch Me (BlazeVox Books, 2009), Autobiography of a Stutterer (BlazeVOX Books, 2007)
Brenda Coultas: Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations
(Coffee House Press, 2007), A Handmade Museum (Coffee House Press, 2003), The Bowery Project (Leroy, 2003), anthologized in An Anthology of New (American) Poets (Talisman)
Steve Creson:Now. Poems. (Church of the Head Press, 1996), Limestone Cave (Elbow Press, 1991)
Darrin Daniel:figo (Cityful, 1996)
Tracy Davis:First Love and Others (Dead Metaphor, 1996)
Tyler Doherty: Bodhidharma Never Came to Hatboro (Bootstrap, 2005)
Mark DuCharme: The Sensory Cabinet (Bla
BlazeVOX Books, 2007), Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes
Bindery, 2004), Cosmopolitan Tremble (Pavement Saw, 2002), Desire Series (Dead Metaphor, 1999), Near To (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 1999)
kari edwards:Bharat jiva (Belladonna Books / Litmus Press, 2009), NO GENDGER: A Reflection on the Life & Work of kari edwards (Belladonna Books / Litmus Press, 2009), Obedience (Factory School, 2005), Iduna (O Books, 2003), a day in the life of p. (Subpress, 2002), having been blue for charity (BlazeVox Books, 2008), a diary of lies (Belladonna Books, 2002),
obLiqUE paRt(itON): colLABorationS (xPress(ed), 2002), post/(pink) (Scarlet Press, 2000); anthologized in Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text (Pyriform Press, 2002)
Ryan Gallagher:Plum Smash and Other Flashbulbs (Bootstrap, 2005)
Scott Gibson: edited Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepherd (Painted Leaf, 1999)
Trevor Griles:My Gun Will Put a Hole In You (Bold Eagle Press, 2009)
Tim Z. Hernandez: Skin Tax (Heyday Books,
2006) Winner of the 2006 American Book Award
Andy Hoffman: chapbook GESTURE: Collom, Creason, Peters (Cityful Press, 1997)
D. Robert Lessig:Conjugation (Rodent Press, 1995)
Rachel Levitsky: Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Under the Sun (Futurepoem Books, 2002), Dearly, (A+Bend Press, 1999), Cartographies of Error (Leroy Chapbook Series, 1999), The Adventures of Yaya and Grace (Potes and Poets Press, 1999)
Travis Macdonald:
The O Mission Repo (Fact-Simile Editions, 2008)
David Madgalene: Kali (Round Barn Press, 2009)
Kaisa Ullsvik Miller: Unspoiled Air (Fence Books, 2008)
Lesléa Newman, Nobody’s Mother (Orchard House Press, 2008)
Thomas R. Peters, Jr.: Listen to My Machine (Rodent Press), over the roofs of the world (Cityful Press, reprinted by Dead Metaphor in 2000), 100 missed train stations (Holy Mackerel Press, reprinted by Farfalla / McMillan & Parrish, 2002), The Book of Silence (Left Hand 2005 & 2006), Selected Poems 1986-2006 (2007)
Andrew K. Peterson:
Museum of Thrown Objects (BlazeVOX Books, 2010), My Worth (Black Lodge Press, 2010), Between Here and the Telescopes (with Elizabeth Gutherie)(Slumgullion Press, 2008)
Michelle Naka Pierce:As Transient As Square Or Inside 32 (tir aux pigeons, 2008), Beloved Integer (Bootstrap Press /
Pub Lush, 2007), TRI/VIA (Erudite Fangs/PUB LUSH, 2003)
Chuck Pirtle: The Landscape (Atelier des Arts du Livre, 1990), Talaria (Rodent Press, 1994)
Laurie Price: Except for Memory (Pantograph Press, 1993),
Under the Sign of the House (Detour Press, 1999), The Assets (Situations Press, 2000), and Minim (Faux Press e-book, 2002)
Jeni Olin:The Pill Book (Faux Press, 2008) Blue Collar Holiday (Hanging Loos Press, 2005), A Valentine for Frank O’Hara (Smokeproof Press / Erudite Fangs,
1999)
Nicholas Michael Ravnikar:Just Talking Shit (Detumescence, 2006)
Max Regan: Take (Hollowdeck Press, 2005), faithless (Rodent Press)
Joseph Richey:Riding the Big Earth: Poems 1980-86 (National Poetry Foundation, 1987)
Randy Roark:Elegies (Elik Press, 2004), S.F. Notebooks (Elik Press, 2003), Jean Cocteau: The First Half (Laocoon Press, 2003), Dissolve: Screenplays to the Films of Stan Brakhage (Cityful Press, 2002), Mona Lisa’s Veil: New and Selected Poems, 1979-2001 (Baksun Books, 2002), Dialogue of a Hundred Preoccupations (with Tamra Spivey, Laocoon Press, 2002), One Night (with Anne Waldman, Nest Egg Books, 2001), Hymns (Dead Metaphor Press, 2000), and Awakening Osiris (Selva Editions, 1996)
Eleni Sikelianos: The Abstracted Heart of Hours and Days, (Bonfire Press, 2008), The California Poem (Coffee House, 2004), The Book of Jon (City Lights, 2004), The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls (Green Integer, 2003), Earliest Worlds (Coffee House Press, 2001), Blue Guide (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 1999), The Book of Tendons (Post Apollo Press, 1997),To Speak while Dreaming (Selva Editions, 1993)
Jenny Smit:Egon (Involute Press)
Luis Humberto Valadez, What I’m On (University of Arizona Press, 2009)
Chris Vitiello:Irresponsibility (Ahsahta Press, 2008), Nouns Swarm a Verb (Xurban Books, 1999)
Danielle Vogel: lit (Dancing Girl Press, 2008)
Richard Wilmarth: Trying To Make Sense Out Of The Absurd (Dead Metaphor Press, 2001), Confessions of a Red Sox Fan (Publishers Circulation Corp, 1998), Alphabetical Order (Dead Metaphor Press, 2001), The Henry Miller Acrostics (Dead Metaphor Press, 1996), Voices in the Room (Dead Metaphor Press, 1993), Poised for War (Sabotage Press, 1991)
Laura Wright:Part of the Design (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2005), Hunger Is a Place (Last Minute Productions), Hide: What’s Difficult (Poetry New York Editions), Everything Automatic (Belladonna Books, 2000)
Katie Yates: Reference (We Press), so difficulty (Rodent Press)
PROSE
Alumni/ae have been awarded National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Pushcart Prize, and the Lambda Literary Awards. Graduates have also been winners of the Raymond Carver Contest, Prism International Short Story Award, Story Magazine Competition, Boulder Weekly Short Fiction Competition, Dana Award in the Novel, Ernest Hemingway First Novel Award, Atlantic Monthly Student Fiction Competition, Highlights for Children Fiction Writing Award, James Baldwin Award for Cultural Achievement, American Academy’s Nicholas Screenplay Award, Green River Writers Novel Contest, Footpaths to Creativity Center Award, and Next Generation Indie Book Award. Graduates have also won Fulbright fellowships, and have had residencies at Camargo and Yaddo Colony.
Graduates of Naropa’s prose track regularly publish in magazines such as Harper’s, Bomb, Fence, Story,Grand Street, Rain Taxi, and The Quarterly. Alumni/ae have published in the following anthologies: Paraspheres, Saints of Hysteria, Looking Back: Stories of Our Mothers and Fathers, Magical Blend Magazine, Bloomsbury Review, and more.
Selected Book Publications (Fiction):
Gary Allen: The Missionary Who Forgot His Name (Selva Editions, 1994)
Brenda Coultas:Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations (Coffee House Press, 2007), The Bowery Project (Leon, 2003), A Handmade Museum (Coffee House Press,
2003), Early Films (Rodent Press, 1996)
Jimmy Gleacher:Silly Little Rich Girl (Casperian Books LLC, 2009), Its How You Play the Game (NAL Trade, 2003; Simon & Schuster, 2002)
Tim Z. Hernandez: Breathing, In Dust (Texas Tech University Press, 2010)
Laird Hunt:Ray of the Star (Coffee House Press, 2009)The Exquisite (Coffee House Press, 2006), Indiana, Indiana (Coffee House Press, 2003), The Impossibly (Coffee House Press, 2001),The Paris Stories (Smokeproof Press, 2001), Dear Sweetheart (Smokeproof Press, 1999)
Sean Murphy:The Hope Valley Hubcap King (Bantam 2004, 2002, winner of the Ernest Hemingway First Novel Award), The Finished Man (Bantam/Dell, 2004, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), The Time of New Weather (Delta, 2004)
Lesléa Newman: author of over 50 books including Heather Has Two Mommies, A Letter To Harvey Milk, Writing From The Heart, In Every Laugh a Tear, The Femme Mystique, Still Life with Buddy, Fat Chance, and Out of the Closet and Nothing to Wear
Gavin Pate:The Way to Get Here (Bootstrap, 2006)
Shawn Rohrbach: Cast The First Stone (2010), Strays and Other Stories (Sabella Press,
2009), Feast Days of the Saints (Cacoethes,
2009), Playing the Game (Cacoethes, 2008)
Rowland Saifi, Karner Blue Estates (Black Lodge Press, 2009)
Selected Book Publications (Nonfiction):
Lisa Birman: Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (co-editor with Anne Waldman) (Coffee House Press, 2004)
John Cohn:Sign Mind: Studies in America Sign Language Poetics (Museum of American Poetics)
Marlowe Fawcett: co-wrote and co-directed The Other Half for Piper Films
Jenice Gharib: short play Some Kiss We Want was performed in February 2007
Kevin Kilroy: play The Silence of Malachi Ritscher, directed by Lewis Lain, was put on by Theatre 5.2.1 in Chicago, 2007.
David Madgalene: directed the film Cities of the Dead
Dagny McKinley: wrote Eccentricities of a Butterfly, produced by The Great American Laughing Stock Company in 2009
Lesléa Newman: award-winning short story, A Letter To Harvey Milk has been made into a film and adapted for the stage.
Dylan Patterson: produced and directed two documentaries: The Other Road and Jabberwocky in Mexico
Karin Rathert: novella, Prairie Fire was adapted for the stage and won the Mae West Playwrights Festival award
Randy Roark: produced cable TV documentaries, including “The Task” (on Jack Collom); a retrospective on the films of Stan Brakhage; and a performance of the words and music of John Cage, featuring Anne Waldman and four musicians.
Sue Salinger showed her video work at the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change conference on media and social change in Oxford, England, and at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England.
Carey Westbrook: produced a three minute movie The Story of a Life
TRANSLATION
Translators have won a New York State Council for the Arts Translation Grant and other honors.
Selected Book Publications (Translation):
Mary Burns:Poems from Classical Chinese
Richard Froude: Tarnished Mirrors: Poems of Charles Baudelaire (Muffled Cry, 2004)
Ryan Gallagher: The Complete Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus (Bootstrap, 2008)
Mike O’Connor: One With the Snowy Night: Selected Poems of Chia Tao (Tangram, 1999), The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China (Wisdom Publications, 1998); The Basin: Life in a Chinese Province Poems & Translations (Empty Bowl, 1989)
John Sakkis:Maribor (Post-Apollo Press, 2010)
John Wright:A Cabin in the Woods: A Dialog between King Guaire and his brother Marban (Boar Hog Press).
PRESSES & BUSINESSES
Naropa alumni have founded presses, journals, production houses, film companies, and design businesses.
Amy Arenson, Mark Bernheim, Joan Harvey and Veronica Stapleton contributed critical essays to the anthology Richard Brautigan: A Collection of Essays.
Tim Armentrout's annual writing course at Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg was featured in West Virginia's Register-Herald Reporter newspaper.
Junior Burke, chair of the Writing & Poetics Department, won New Millennium Competition award for Media Blues, an essay on Jack Kerouac.
Clara Burns was appointed the Library Services Director for Front Range Community College in the College Hill Library at the Westminster campus.
Matt Corry won a Colorado Arts Council grant.
Danika Dinsmore was hired as Executive Director of Eleventh Hour Productions in October of 2000.
kari edwards won New Langton Art’s Bay Area Award for Literature in 2002.
Jack Greene received a Colorado Arts Council grant for his poetry in 2000.
Laura Hawley placed a story in The Best New American Voices 2002 (judged by Joyce Carol Oates) and secured an agent.
Tim Z. Hernandex won the American Book Award (2006) for his book of poetry, Skin Tax.
Brian Jacobs received a grant from Fund For Teachers, which sent him to South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Britain, and France. He also received his second Fulbright scholarship to study in China.
Vishal Khanna received a Fellowship in Literature from the North Carolina Arts Council in 2005.
AC Lambeth was a finalist in the 2004 William Faulkner/William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition and is an award winner in the 2006 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for the Short Story.
Brooke Lehrer was hired to be the program director of SlamChops in New York, a subsidiary of Slam in the Schools, which originated from the Mayhem Poets.
Jesse Marisol was offered an internship with Atlantic Monthly magazine.
Kaisa Ullsvik Miller won the Fence Books Motherwell Prize for Unspoiled Air.
Sean Murphy's novel The Hope Valley Hubcap King, (Bantam/Dell, 2002, 2004), won the Hemingway Award for a First Novel and was a 2003 Book Sense pick. He was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for The Finished Man (Bantam/Dell, 2004)
Lesléa Newman has been selected by the Northampton Arts Council as Poet Laureate of Northampton.
She has received Poetry Fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation
and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Highlights for Children Fiction Writing Award, the James Baldwin Award for Cultural Achievement, and two Pushcart Prize Nominations.
Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists.
Mike O’Connor received National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2003.
Shin Yu Pai was awarded the 2008 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize from the Olympia Poetry Network for her poem “Footprint.”
Chuck Pirtle: Winner of a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for his contribution to Anthology of American Folk Music (Smithsonian Folkways)
Laurie Price: Winner of
1993 Wallace Alexander Gerbode year-long paid poetry award, which allowed her to live in Mexico working on various projects, including a text/sculpture/installation series that was exhibited in Mexico City under the title Desde Dentro Hacia Fuera (Inside Out).
Karen Rathert was the winner of Mae West Playwrights Festival award for Prairie Fire.
Shawn Rohrbach’sOpen Your Heart with Bicycling: Mastering Life Through Love of the Road received
the Indie Book Award for Sports and Fitness in 2008, and Honorable Mention at the 2007 London Book Awards.
Eleni Sikelianos is a winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing.
Jenny Smith is founder of Prazska Skola Poetiky, a Czech and international school of poetics in Prague and Program Assistant at the Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church, NYC
Mary Tischler has accepted a position as writer-in-residence with the InsideOut Literary Arts Organization in Detroit, Michigan.
Lisa Trank, a prose writer and poet, received a grant from the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute.
