Below are biographies of some of the Creative Writing scholars teaching in the English Department:  

Paul Griner, a former Fulbright Scholar, is the author of the short story collection Follow Me (Random House), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and the novels Collectors (Picador) and The German Woman (Harcourt). His work has been published in Ploughshares,  Playboy, Zoetrope, The Telegraph of India, and many other magazines, journals, and anthologies and has been translated into a half dozen languages. He is the recipient of UofL’s Oustanding Teaching Awards at both the college and university levels as well as well as the Graduate School’s Outstanding Mentor Award.  He has a BA in History from the University of New Hampshire, an MA in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard, and an MA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. 

Brian Leung is the author of the short story collection, World Famous Love Acts (Sarabande), winner of the Mary McCarthy Award for short fiction and The Asian American Literary Award for Fiction.  His novels are Lost Men (Random House) and Take Me Home (Harper/Collins) which won the 2011 Willa Award for Historical Fiction. His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction appear in numerous magazines and journals. Leung is currently the Director of Creative Writing at UofL and is a board member of the nonprofit organization, Louisville Literary Arts. 

Kiki Petrosino’s publications include a collection of poems, Fort Red Border (Sarabande) and a chapbook, The Dark is Here (Forkift Ink).Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The New York Times, Tin House, Jubilat, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Along with a colleague, she co-edits Transom, an electronic poetry journal (http://www.transomjournal.com). Petrosino holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has been awarded two staff scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and a post-graduate writing fellowship from the University of Iowa. Her latest collection of poems will be released from Sarabande in 2013. 

Jeffrey Skinner’s collection of poetry, Glaciology will be published in 2013 by Southern Illinois University Press.  His prose book, The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-help Memoir, was published in 2012 by Sarabande Books.  He has published five previous collections of poetry: Late Stars (Wesleyan University Press), A Guide to Forgetting ( a winner in the 1987 National Poetry series, chosen by Tess Gallagher, published by Graywolf Press), The Company of Heaven (Pitt Poetry Series), Gender Studies (Miami University Press) and Salt Water Amnesia (Ausable Press).  He has written an informal text on creative writing for high school students, Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens (Chicago Review Press), and, with the poet Sarah Gorham, edited an anthology, Last Call: Poems on Alcoholism, Addiction, & Deliverance (Sarabande Books).  His poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Georgia, Iowa, and Paris Reviews.  Skinner’s writing has gathered awards from such sources as the National Endowment for the Arts (2 NEA Individual Artists Fellowships), the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the state arts agencies of Connecticut, Delaware, and Kentucky.  Three of his plays have been finalists in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Conference competition, He has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, McDowell and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown.  Skinner has been Poet-in-Residence at the Robert Frost House, the Arts Festival of Ireland, and the James Merrill House. 

Sena Jeter Naslund, Writer in Residence, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, where she attended public schools and received the B.A. from Birmingham-Southen College. She has also lived in Louisiana, West Virginia, and California. She received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her recent works include Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette (2006) and  Adam & Eve, forthcoming in September 2010. She is the author of the novel Four Spirits, the national bestseller Ahab's Wife, Ice Skating at the North Pole, The Animal Way to Love, Sherlock in Love, and the short-story collection The Disobedience of Water. Her short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and many other journals. For twelve years, she directed the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisville, where she teaches and holds the title Writer In Residence.  In 1980 she was appointed University of Louisville's first Distinguished Teaching Professor, and in 2000 she received the President's Award for Distinguished Creative Activity. She is editor of the literary magazine The Louisville Review, which she founded in 1976, and the Fleur-de-Lis Press at Spalding University, where she is Program Director of the Spalding Brief-Residence Master of Fine Arts in Writing, and she has taught at the University of Montana and Indiana University.  She has served as Visiting Eminent Scholar at the University of Alabama-Hunstville in 2008 and 2010, and as Pascal Vacca Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Montevallo. She is a recipient of the Harper Lee Award and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. 

Bronwyn T. Williams writes and teaches creative nonfiction as well as courses in rhetoric and composition (and is no relation to the romance novelists who uses his name as a pseudonym). All of his writing, including his research, involves elements of creative nonfiction. He has published essays on creative nonfiction in several journals and anthologies, including the  forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Creative Writing. He is also on the editorial board of New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. He has an MA in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Composition Studies from the University of New Hampshire. Before returning to teaching he worked in journalism for newspapers, magazines, and public radio.  

Estella Conwill Majozo (on leave) is a Professor of English at the University of Louisville. Her books include Jiva Telling Rites (Third World Press, 1991); Libation: A Literary Pilgrimage through the African American Soul (Harlem River Press, 1991); Come Out the Wilderness: Memoir by a Black Woman Artist (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1999); and Middle Passage: 105 Days (Africa World Press, 2002).  Her plays include Freedom Clothes: The Saga of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn on the Underground Railroad (Kentucky Heritage Council/Kentucky African Heritage Commission Grant 2002); and Ringshout the Rout,e which has been developed into a National Rite of Initiation into African American Culture. Her commissioned public art monuments (with her Brother, Houston Conwill, and architect Joseph DePace) include Revelation: Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Memorial at Yerba Buena Garden, San Francisco (cited byEbony Magazine as the most unique of all the King Monuments); Rivers: Langston Hughes Memorial at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture--a Cosmogram under which lies the ashes of poet, Langston Hughes (recognized by the Excellence in Design Award, Art Commission of New York);The Stations Project at The Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University (selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of the best projects in the nation 1993);and The New Ringshout: Memorial Tribute to African Burial Ground in the Federal Building, New York City. Honors also include “Salute to the Seven Sisters, Pleiades Award” (2006); J. T. Stewart Literary Award at Hedgebrook (2000). Distinguished Alumni Fellow, University of Louisville, (1999).