Past Distinguished Visiting Writers

We are responsible for the quality of our vision, we have a say in the shaping of our sensibility. In the many thousand daily choices we make, we create ourselves and the voice with which we speak and work.
                                        —Carolyn Forché

• Jo Ann Beard, October 2009
• Charles Baxter, October 2009
• Philip Schultz, September 2009
• Jean Valentine, March 2009
• Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, February 2009
• A. O. Scott, February 2009
• Stephen Dunn, October 2008
• Barbara Hurd, October 2008
• Robert Olen Butler, February 2008
• Yusef Komunyakaa, March 2008
• Vivian Gornick, April 2008
• Scott Russell Sanders, September 2007
• Cornelius Eady, February 2007
• Marge Piercy and Ira Wood, September 2006
• Bill Roorbach, February 2006
• Madison Smartt Bell and Elizabeth Spires, October 2005
• Lee Gutkind, February 2005
• Maxine Kumin, October 2004
• George Saunders, January 2004
• Joyce Carol Oates, September 2003
• Phillip Lopate, April 2003
• Carolyn Forché, October 2002
• W. P. Kinsella, April 2002
• Sharon Olds, October 2001
• Adrienne Rich, October 2001
• Donald Hall, April 2001
• Barbara Ehrenreich, October 2000
• Judy Grahn, March 2000
• Joy Williams, February 2000
• William Kennedy, September 1999