Every year visiting writers and translators read student manuscripts, offer editorial advice, and present public readings. This is a partial list of recent guests:

Breon Mitchell (spring 2009) is the translator of several books from the German: The Trial by Franz Kafka; The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass; The Color of the Snow by Ruediger Kremer; Knife Edge by Ralf Rothmann; The Silent Angel and The Mad Dog by Heinrich Boell; and The God of Impertinence by Stan Nadolny. He is Professor of Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies and Director of the Wells Scholar Program at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Ron Slate's (spring 2009) collection, The Incentive of the Maggot, was chosen by Robert Pinsky to receive the 2004 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Poetry Prize. Slate's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Three Penny Review, and TriQuarterly. He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University and, after working in business communications for many years, he was chief operating officer of a life sciences start-up and recently launched a social network for family caregivers. He lives in Milton, MA with his wife.

Mark Slouka (spring 2009) is the author of four books: a critique of the digital revolution, War of the Worlds, a collection of stories, Lost Lake, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and two novels, God's Fool and The Visible World. A contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, his essays "Hitler's Couch," "Listening for Silence," and "Arrow and Wound" were selected for inclusion in Best American Essays of 1999, 2000, and 2003. He teaches at the University of Chicago.

Jennifer Chang (fall 2008) is the author of, The History of Anonymity, an inaugural selection of the VQR Poetry Series recently published by the University of Georgia Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, Poetry Daily, A Public Space, and elsewhere. She is chair of the advisory board of Kundiman, an Asian American poetry organization based in New York City, and she is a Commonwealth Fellow and PhD candidate in English at the University of Virginia.

Tom Franklin (fall 2008) is the author of Poachers: Stories, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk. Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program and lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, and their children, Claire and Thomas.

Michael Palma (fall 2008) has published two chapbooks of poetry, The Egg Shape and Antibodies, and one full-length collection, A Fortune in Gold. His translations include prize-winning volumes of Guido Gozzano and Diego Valeri, as well as books by Sergio Corazzini, Armando Patti, Luigi Fontanella, Franco Buffoni, Paolo Valesio, Ljuba Merlina Bortolani, Maura Del Serra (with Emanuel di Pasquale), Alfredo de Palchi (with Luigi Bonaffini), and Enzo Carollo. He edited New Italian Poets with Dana Gioia. His terza rima translation of Dante's Inferno was published as a Norton Critical Edition in 2007.

John Dufresne (fall 2007) is the author of the novels Love Warps the Mind a Little and Deep in the Shade of Paradise as well as a story collection, The Way that Water Enters Stone, and a guide to writing fiction, The Lie that Tells a Truth, which was a Writer's Digest Book Club selection. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University and lives in Dania Beach, Florida, with his wife and son.

Elizabeth Harris (fall 2007) holds MFAs in creative writing and literary translation from the University of Arkansas. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Dakota. Her fiction and translations of Italian fiction have been accepted in journals like Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, The Missouri Review, and The Kenyon Review. Her translation of Giulio Mozzi's "Carlo non sa leggere" is part of the art/fiction book, Il pittore e il pesce (Minimum Fax, Rome).

Mary Morrissy (fall 2007) is the author of three books - a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye, and two novels, Mother of Pearl and The Pretender. Her work has been shortlisted for the UK Whitbread Prize and nominated for the Dublin IMPAC International Award. In 1995 she was awarded the prestigious US Lannan Foundation Award. She is currently the Gerard Manley Hopkins Visiting Professor in British Literature at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

Paul Zimmer's (fall 2007) twelve books of poetry include Family Reunion, which won an Award for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; The Great Bird of Love, which William Stafford selected for the National Poetry Series; Big Blue Train, and Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems. He has also published two books of his memoirs and essays: After the Fire: A Writer Finds His Place and Trains in the Distance. His work has won five Pushcart Prizes and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives on a farm in Wisconsin and spends part of each year in the south of France.

SABINA MURRAY (fall 2006) is the author of the novel Slow Burn and a former Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Ontario Review, New England Review, and other magazines. She also wrote the screenplay for the movie Beautiful Country. She teaches at U. Mass-Amherst.

A.E. STALLINGS (fall 2006) is the author of two poetry collections, Archaic Smile (U. of Evansville) and Hapax (Northwester/TriQuarterly 2006), and the translator of Lucretius's De rerum natura (Penguin Classics). Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry, and the James Dickey Prize from Five Points.

WILLIAM GAY (spring 2006) is the author of three novels (The Long Home, Twilight, Provinces of Night) and a story collection (I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down). Esquire called him "the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern Lit."

THOMAS LYNCH (spring 2006) is an essayist, poet and funeral director of Lynch & Sons funeral home in Milford, Michigan. His collections of poems include "Still Life in Milford" (Norton 1998), "Grimalkin" (Cape 1994), and "Skating with Heather Grace" (Knopf 1986).

ETHAN CANIN (fall 2005) is the author of The Palace Thief, a short story collection whose title story was made into the film The Emperor's Club; Emperor of the Air, a short story collection; and Blue River and For Kings And Planets, both novels. Canin is also a physician and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

PATTIANN ROGERS (fall 2005) has published eleven books of poetry, including Generations (Penguin 2004) and Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems (1994), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. She has been the recipient of two NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Poetry Fellowship.

THOM SATTERLEE (fall 2005) is the author of one volume of poetry, Burning Wyclif (Texas Tech 2006), and the translator of another, Henrik Nordbrandt's The Hangman's Lament (Green Integer 2003). His poetry has appeared in Image, Southwest Review, The Southern Review, and on Poetry Daily. He teaches at Taylor University.

MAURICE MANNING (spring 2005) is the author of Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions (2001), which received the Yale Younger Poets Award, selected by W.S. Merwin, and A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Long Hunter, Back Woodsman (Harcourt 2004).

JEAN THOMPSON (spring 2005) is the author of four novels, Wide Blue Yonder, The Woman Driver, My Wisdom, and City Boy, and three short story collections, Little Face and Other Stories, The Gasoline Wars, and Who Do You Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book.

FRANZ WRIGHT (spring 2004) received the Pulitzer Prize for Walking to Martha's Vineyard. His most recent works include Ill Lit: Selected & New Poems and an expanded edition of translations entitled The Unknown Rilke. He has been the recipient of two NEA grants, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors.

KHALED MATTAWA (spring 2003) was born in Libya and came to the US in his teens. He is the author of Zodiac of Echoes and Ismailia Eclipse, and the translator of three volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hodder Fellowship, an NEA translation grant, and other awards.

COLUM McCANN (spring 2003) was born in Dublin in 1965. His books include Fishing the Sloe Black River, Song Dogs, This Side of Brightness, Everything In This Country Must, and Dancer. His awards include a Hennessey Award in 1990, and The Rooney Prize. He lives in New York.

GERALD STERN (spring 2003) is the recipient of many awards, including the National Book Award, the Lamont Prize, a Guggenheim, three NEA awards, a fellowship from The Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Ruth Lilly Prize. He is the author of What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes from a Life.