2011 Institute Faculty
Damiano Abeni
The Art of Literary Translation
Damiano Abeni, MD, MPH, is an epidemiologist who has been translating American poetry into Italian since 1973. In Italy, he has published volumes of work by Bidart, Bishop, Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Strand, Simic, C. K. Williams, and many others. With Mark Strand, he edited
West of Your Cities, a bi-lingual anthology of contemporary American poets. His translations appear in numerous Italian journals and he is among the editors of the journal
Nuovi Argomenti. With Moira Egan, he has published books in translation by John Barth, Aimee Bender, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Mark Strand, Josephine Tey, and John Ashbery, whose collection,
Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, won a Special Prize from the Premio Napoli (2009). In 2011, he was awarded (along with Moira Egan) the PREMIO DI POESIA “LA TORRE DELL’OROLOGIO” for the volume
L’uomo che cammina un passo avanti al buio (Oscar Mondadori 2011), a major selection of the poems of Mark Strand, the former Poet Laureate of the United States, who was the Poet in Residence at John Cabot University in Summer, 2009. Abeni has been a Literature Fellow at the Liguria Study Center of the Bogliasco Foundation, a Director's Guest at the Civitella Ranieri Center, and a Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
Carlos Dews
Creative Writing and Literature: How to Read Like a Writer
Born in Nacogdoches, Texas, Dews received his B.A. in Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Minnesota. He taught American literature and creative writing at the University of West Florida from 1994-2003 and served as the Chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages there from 2000-2002. Tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 1999, Dews served as the Founding Director of theCarson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University in McCullers’s hometown of Columbus, Georgia, from 2001-2003. After completing an MFA in Fiction Writing at the New School University in New York in 2008, Dews relocated to Rome, Italy, where he is an Associate Professor and chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University. Dews's books include his edition of
The Complete Novels of Carson McCullers (Library of America) and
"Illumination and Night Glare": The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers (University of Wisconsin). With Carolyn Leste Law, Dews edited
Out in the South (Temple) and
This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class (Temple).
For more information about Carlos Dews, click
here.
Moira Egan
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry and the Art of Literary Translation
Moira Egan’s books are
Cleave;
La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie;
Bar Napkin Sonnets (The Ledge); and
Spin (Entasis Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including
Best American Poetry 2008. With Damiano Abeni, she has published books in translation by John Barth, Aimee Bender, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Mark Strand, Josephine Tey, and John Ashbery, whose collection,
Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, won a Special Prize of the Premio Napoli (2009). In 2011, she was awarded (along with Damiano Abeni) the PREMIO DI POESIA “LA TORRE DELL’OROLOGIO” for the volume
L’uomo che cammina un passo avanti al buio (Oscar Mondadori 2011), a major selection of the poems of Mark Strand, the former Poet Laureate of the United States who was the Poet in Residence at John Cabot University in Summer, 2009. Egan has been a Mid Atlantic Arts Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Writer in Residence at St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, Malta; a Writing Fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center; and a Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
For more information about Moira Egan, click
here.
Elizabeth Geoghegan
Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction: Writing the Eternal City
Elizabeth Geoghegan earned an MFA in Writing from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Creative Writing from The University of Colorado at Boulder, where her graduate thesis
The Sound of Skin was selected for the Ruth Murray Underhill Award. Her writing has been published in
The Cream City Review and several other journals. At present she is completing a story collection called
The Book of Boys and a work of nonfiction about the real Rome. She has lived in Italy since 1999.
George Minot
Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
George Minot was born and raised in a large family in Massachusetts, lived in New York most of his adult life, and now lives in Rome. He is the author of a novel,
The Blue Bowl (Knopf), and the forthcoming
OmGirl. In addition to fiction, he writes non-fiction, works as an environmental communications consultant (writing and editing), and teaches yoga and healing with whole foods. He has a four year-old son, Milo Minot - who is also his uncompromising Italian language teacher.
Previous Institute Faculty
Silvia Esposito
Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
Silvia Esposito was born in Boston, Massachusetts and moved to Rome, Italy when she was eight with her Italian father, American mother and younger sister. She has a B.A. in Psychology and English from Boston University, an Ed.M. from Harvard University, and a Masters in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester in the U.K. She worked as a mental health specialist in a psychiatric hospital for seven years and then moved back to Rome, where she was the program coordinator for the Rhode Island School of Design’s European Honors Program for eight years. She has translated the work of numerous Italian poets into English, and her own poetry has been published in
Women’s Studies as well as in other journals. Her novella
The Truth of the Matter was a finalist in the Quarterly West Contest. She has a special fondness for epileptic cats.