Academics
Lake Forest Literary Festival 2007 > Bios
Stephen Young began as an assistant at Poetry (Chicago) in 1988 and served as Senior Editor for many years before he became Program Director at The Poetry Foundation in 2003. He received an Everett Helm Fellowship for work on Dear Editor: A History of POETRY in Letters, co-edited with Joseph Parisi. With Joseph Parisi, he also co-edited The POETRY Anthology 1912-2002 and Between the Lines: A History of POETRY in Letters 1962-2002.
Albert Goldbarth has won the National Book Critics Circle Award not once but twice. For many years a resident of Chicago, he is the author of over twenty books of poems, including Budget Travel Through Space and Time and, most recently, Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems 1972-2007. He is also the author of five collections of essays, including the PEN award-winning Many Circles.
Srikanth Reddy’s book of poems Facts for Visitors appeared to universal acclaim in 2004. His critical writing appears regularly in The Harvard Review, and he has recently completed his soon-to-be-published second book, Mechanical Bird. He teaches at the University of Chicago.
Ray Bianchi is a force of nature in the Chicago poetry scene. While he has lived in Brazil and Bolivia, he remains a Chicagoan and a militant White Sox fan. His books of poems include Circular Descent and American Master. He is one of the editors of The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Millennium.
Joel Craig lives in Chicago, where he works as a deejay and graphic designer. His poems have appeared in Fence, Bridge, Spoon River, Iowa Review and elsewhere. He is the co-founder and curator of The Danny’s Reading Series, Chicago’s best poetry series. He is also a member of the art collective Pulseprogamming.
Kristy Odelius recently received the prestigious Charles Goodnow Award for her poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, and she has recently completed her first book, Strange Trades. After a year in Sweden she has recently returned to teachinga at North Park University in Chicago.
