January 19th: Sheila Kohler and Lisa Siedlarz

Lisa Siedlarz's debut poet collection, I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball, was published in 2009 by Clemson University Digital Press. Lisa holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Western Connecticut State University. She is the editor of Connecticut River Review and managing editor of Connecticut Review. She has won the John Holmes Poetry Prize and the Leo Connellan Award and was nominated for the 2009 Best New Poets Award. She also facilitated a 16-week writing workshop with Vietnam veterans and edited a collection of their work called The Season of Now. Lisa works for Southern Connecticut State University and lives in New Haven.

Sheila Kohler’s most recent novel, Becoming Jane Eyre, will be published in January 2010 by Viking, Penguin. She has written six other novels: The Perfect Place (1989) ; The House on R Street (1994); Cracks (1999); Children of Pithiviers (June, 2001); Crossways (2004); and Bluebird or the Invention of Happiness (, 2007); and three collections of short stories: Miracles in America (1990); One Girl (1999); and Stories from Another World (2003). Her work has been translated in a variety of languages including Hebrew and Japanese and published widely abroad.

Her short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in a host of top publications. A very abbreviated list includes The Antioch Review, the Yale Review, the Boston Globe, Bomb magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Story. Sheila has received the O.Henry twice, the Open Voice Award, the Smart Family Foundation prize, The Willa Cather Prize, and the Antioch Review Prize. In addition, Sheila was a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in 2003-4.

An acclaimed instructor, Sheila has taught creative writing in many programs such as the Bennington Writing Seminars, City College, The New School, the West Side YMCA, and Columbia's program in Montolieu, France. She currently teaches at Princeton.