THE OMI INTERNATIONAL WELCOMES TWENTY THREE WRITERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD FOR THE 2010 SPRING SESSION AT LEDIG HOUSE

The Omi International Arts Center is proud to welcome its spring residents to the Ledig House Writers Residency Program. The session will run from March 19 to June 4.
Two community readings have been scheduled: the first on Saturday, April 10, 5:30 to 7pm will be at the Maryanne Courville Gallery, 341 1/2 Warren st, Hudson, NY.
The second on Saturday May 15, at 5pm, at the Charles B. Benenson Visitors Center, with a BBQ to follow.

All events are free and open to the public.

In the eighteen years since its founding, the Ledig House International Writers' Colony has invited over five hundred writers and translators from more than fifty countries to Columbia County and opened up a vital cultural byway between the Hudson Valley and the rest of the globe. In the last year alone Ledig House has hosted writers from twenty countries including Australia, Germany, India, Denmark, the U.K., Italy, Romania, Hungary, Guatemala, Iran, Bosnia, and Sweden. Here are some details regarding the incoming group of residents:

Russell Working (US, Nonfiction) March 19 – April 8

Russell is a freelance reporter and fiction writer based in suburban Chicago. His short story collection, The Irish Martyr, won the University of Notre Dame’s Sullivan Award. An earlier collection, Resurrectionists, received the Iowa Short Fiction Award and Oregon’s H.L. Davis Award. His Pushcart Prize-winning fiction has been published in venues ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Zoetrope: All-Story. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the South China Morning Post, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines around the globe.

Octavia Randolph (US, Fiction) March 19 – April 8
photo credit: Barbara Simundza
Octavia uses historical fiction to explore the development, dominance, and decline of Anglo-Saxon culture. Her novel-in-progress takes as its primary character the eminent art and social critic John Ruskin, a brilliant, influential, and troubled figure of the 19th century. An excerpt from the novel, under the title of “The Lamp of Truth,” will appear in the Spring 2010 issue of Narrative Magazine. Her Anglo-Saxon/ Norse adventure trilogy, The Circle of Ceridwen, has been widely read on the web.

Dan Sociu (Romania/Translation) March 19 – April 15
photo credit: Oana Sanziana Marian
Dan was born in Botosani, Romania. He studied Political Science and Literature at Universitatea Al. Ioan Cuza, He works as a translator in Bucharest. His translation credits include Charles Bukowski’s Love is a dog from hell, Seamus Heaney’s Bogland, Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, and Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project.

Zia Haider Rahman (UK, Fiction) March 19 – April 15
Born in rural Bangladesh, Zia was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and at Cambridge, Munich and Yale universities. He has worked as an international human rights lawyer and as an investment banker on Wall Street. He is now working on his first novel, The Map of Incompleteness.

Amanda Coplin (US, Fiction) March 19 – April 29
Amanda graduated with an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Minnesota in 2006. She is the recipient of several writing prizes, including a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts (2008-9). Her stories have appeared in literary journals such as the Blue Mesa Review and the Minnesota Monthly Online. A portion of her novel The Orchardist was published in the Fall 2006 issue of Third Coast and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Scott Carney (US, Nonfiction) March 25 – April 25

Scott combines anthropology with long-form investigative journalism. He is a contributing editor for WIRED magazine and his work also appears in Mother Jones, NPR, Fast Company and on National Geographic TV. He is working on a book about the future of the human body for HarperCollins.

Dilys Rose (Scotland, Poetry/Fiction) March 26 – April 15
Dilys has lived in Edinburgh for many years, with writer Brian McCabe, with whom she has two grown up daughters. She writes mostly fiction and poetry, has published ten books and also enjoys collaboration with visual artists and composers. Since 2002, she has taught fiction and poetry on the creative writing masters course at Edinburgh University but is currently on sabbatical leave.

Florian Vetsch (Switzerland, Nonfiction/Poetry/Translation) March 27-April 23
photo credit: Amsel
Residing in St.Gallen, Florian studied German literature, philosophy, and criticism. He has published two books of poetry, teaches German literature and Philosophy, and is a contributor to several literary magazines and newspapers. He has translated Paul Bowles, Ira Cohen, Jan Heller Levi, Ed Sanders, and Mark Strand. Florian has edited anthologies and a reader for the literature of the legendary Moroccan city of Tangier, entitled Tanger Telegramm (2004). In the fall, his own texts (poems, essays, anecdotes, impressions) on the city of Tangier will come out under the title Tanger Trance.

Philip Dwyer (Australia, Nonfiction) April 9 – June 4

Phillip is Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has published widely on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. He is the editor of Napoleon and Europe, and has co-edited (with Alan Forrest), Napoleon and His Empire. He is the author of Napoleon: The Path to Power, 1769-1799 (New Haven, 2008). He is currently writing the sequel.

Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece, Fiction) April 9-29
photo credit: Dimitris Tsoumplekas
Amanda has published five novels, two short story collections and many children’s books. She has received the Revmata Award for her first story “Life is colourful out there” and the Diavazo Novel Award for her novel Wishbone Memories. The American translation of her book of interlinked stories I’d Like (Dalkey Archive) won the NEA International Literature Prize. In 2004 she was a DAAD Fellow in Berlin.

Saskia de Coster (Belgium, Fiction) April 16 – May 13
photo credit: Johan Jacobs
Saskia is a one of the foremost and prolific young writers of the Low Countries. She has published five novels and her latest is This is mine. Collaborating with artists from various disciplines, Saskia completed a graphic novel with video artist Nicolas Provost, wrote lyrics for bands such as Dez Mona, and completed an oratory for 400 children. She is currently working on a 'film that is a book'. www.saskiadecoster.com

Ece Temelkuran (Turkey, Nonfiction/Fiction) April 16 – May 13

Ece is one of Turkey’s best-known journalists and political commentators, writing regularly for the Turkish newspaper Haber Turk. She is the author of several fiction and non-fiction books. The Deep Mountain is coming out in New York and in London in May (Verso Books). Her latest novel The Sounds of Bananas is being translated into Arabic. She was a visiting fellow in Oxford University and published several articles in Le Monde Diplomatique, Courrier International, The Guardian and Eurozine. Ece has won numerous awards for her work, including the Pen for Peace Award.

João Tordo (Portugal, Fiction/Nonfiction/Screenwriting) April 16 – May 16
photo credit: Goncalo Santos
João was born in Lisbon and has lived in London and New York, where he studied journalism and creative writing. Currently he works as a freelance journalist and writer for different newspapers and magazines. He also works as a screenwriter. In 2001 he was awarded the Young Talents award by the Clube Português de Artes e Ideias. He has published three novels to critical acclaim. In 2009 he won the José Saramago Book Award 2009 for his latest novel, Three Lives.

Lucy Fricke (Germany, Fiction) April 19 – May 13
Lucy was born Hamburg and now lives in Berlin. She worked as script and continuity supervisors for films and TV before she studied prose and drama at the Leipzig University. Her debut novel Durst ist schlimmer als Heimweh was published by Piper in 2007. She has received numerous prizes and scholarships; she also curates literary events, most recently the „HAM.LIT“ festival for young German literature and music in Hamburg in February 2010. Her second novel will be published by Rowohlt in late 2010.

Katherine Silver (US, Translation) April 30 – May 27
photo credit: Yukari F. Meldrum
Katherine is an award-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American literature. Her most recent translations include Senselessness and The She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya, and César Aira’s The Literary Conference. Whereabouts Press published her collection of contemporary Chilean fiction—Chile, A Traveler’s Literary Companion— in 2003. She has translated plays, screenplays—some for major motion pictures—and a wide assortment of academic and other nonfiction books. She is currently working on the translation of Daniel Sada’s Almost Never for Graywolf Press.

David Irland (US, Fiction) April 30 – June 4
David was born in New Jersey and currently lives in the western part of Massachusetts. He is a recipient of an MFA from the Brown University writing program. David spent many decades on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where, among other things, he worked as a commercial fisherman, traditional wooden boat builder, small business owner, newspaper reporter and carpenter. He is currently working on a novel about an expatriate American indefinitely extending a writing assignment on the Tyrrhenian coast of Tuscany, and, like his protagonist, would prefer to live close to the ocean.

Jan Fastenau (The Netherlands, Translation) May 2-30

At university, Jan studied Journalism and Art History. He has worked as a sailor, plumber, and carpenter, traveling throughout Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to India. He has also traveled North America, South America, and Australia. In 1988 he earned a MA in Translation Studies from the University of Amsterdam and has worked as a literary translator since then. Currently he is working on Frederick Reiken’s novel Day for Night.

Irina Reyn (US/Russia, Fiction) May 6-16
photo credit: Amy C Elliott
Born in Moscow, Irina immigrated to the United States in 1981. She is the author of the novel What Happened to Anna K. and the editor of the nonfiction anthology Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State. Her work has appeared in publications like One Story, Tin House, Poets & Writers, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Irina is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh

Ye Mimi (Taiwan, Poetry/Screenwriting) May 7-June 4

Mimi is the winner of the Roma Poesia Film Festival Best Movie Award and has read her poetry at a number of international events including Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2007 and Page-Turner, the Asian-American Literary Festival. A recent graduate of the Chicago Art Institute Film Studio Program, she lives in New York, where she is completing a film internship and working on her second volume of poetry, tentatively titled, The More Car, the More Far.

Kenny Fries (Canada/US, Nonfiction) May 7 – June 4

Kenny is the author of The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, which received the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, and Body, Remember: A Memoir. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. He has been a Creative Arts Fellow of the Japan/US Friendship Commission and the NEA, a Fulbright Scholar to Japan, and received an innovative literature grant from the Creative Capital Foundation.

Bradley Bazzle (US/Fiction, Nonfiction) May 14-June 4

Bradley spent the last three years in Bloomington, Indiana, where he earned an MFA in creative writing at Indiana University. Before that he lived in Brooklyn, where he wrote and performed sketch comedy with Trophy Dad, whose videos appeared on Fuse TV, the VH1 and MTV websites, and live forever on Youtube. His fiction appears in Opium and Cold Mountain Review, and his nonfiction in Indiana Review and the essay collection Critical Insights: Benjamin Franklin (Salem Press). He also writes screenplays.

Shannon Leone Fowler (US/UK, Nonfiction) May 14 – June 4
photo credit: Thayer Allyson Gowdy
Shannon has predominantly worked as a marine biologist. After studying Australian sea lions for her thesis, she taught marine ecology in the Bahamas and Galapagos, led a university course on killer whales in the San Juan Islands, spent a number of seasons as a Marine Mammal Biologist in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and worked as a science writer at National Public Radio. Currently based in London between Polar seasons, she’s recently begun writing creative nonfiction.

Ramon Erra (Catalonia, Fiction/Nonfiction) May 14 – May 27
photo credit: Lisbeth Salas
Born in Vic, Catalonia, Ramon has a degree in Political Science and contributes to various media outlets. He has won book prizes in the short story genre, making a name for himself with his short story collections Stramonium White Flower and Gunpowder of the Fourth of July. In 2008 he published the novel UNTYING THE KNOT IN THE HANDKERCHIEF (winner of the Salambó and Qwerty Prizes). He has written a nonfiction book, SEE YOU IN BOSNIA. He is now writing a second novel.

Aoibheann Sweeney (US, Fiction) May 21 – June 4
Aoibheann earned her B.A. at Harvard University, and her MFA at University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. She has been a resident fellow at the MacDowell Colony and at Yaddo. She has written book reviews for the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World and The Village Voice Literary Supplement. Her first novel, Among Other Things I’ve Taken Up Smoking, won the Lambda Literary Award in 2007. She is currently Director of the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

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