NB: The coronavirus pandemic obliged us to cancel the 2020 Moss Wood Retreats. These were the scheduled proctors - we hope to welcome them back to Moss Wood when it is once again safe for us to gather together.
Josh Kalscheur
Josh Kalscheur is a poet, teacher and editor, who won the 2013 Four Ways Book Levis Prize for Tidal, a book of poems situated geographically and culturally in Chuuk, Micronesia, where he lived from 2007 to 2009. When describing his work, James Longenbach, the judge of the Levis Prize, said that, “the poems make the act of recording the world seem indistinguishable from an act of the highest imagination. Every perspective (male, female, old, young, outsider, insider) is rendered here in a language whose inventiveness feels inexhaustible—syntax, line, and diction colluding to build poems that are themselves the world in which the poet walks.”
His second manuscript, Picture of Health, explores the paranoia surrounding mental and physical health through ekphrasis, and has been a semifinalist for the Cleveland State Book Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as well as the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, his poems have appeared widely, including in Slate, Boston Review, FENCE, and The Nation.
An experienced teacher, Kalscheur has taught English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University, SUNY-Fredonia, Oak Hill Penitentiary, Madison College and now at UW-Madison, where he completed his MFA in 2011 while also acting as the inaugural poetry editor of Devil’s Lake. He will soon be teaching a monthly poetry workshop with the Arts and Literature Laboratory (ALL) and will again be teaching poetry to gifted and talented high school students this summer as a part of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern. He and his partner Katie live in Madison, WI.
Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire is best known as the author of Wicked, the multi-million copy bestseller that inspired the much loved Broadway musical. Among his other adult novels are Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, an adaptation of the Cinderella story; Mirror Mirror, a retelling of Snow White set in Renaissance Tuscany; After Alice, an invention on Lewis Carroll’s immortal childhood; and Son of a Witch, a sequel to Wicked.
In addition, Maguire has written about two dozen children’s books, including Egg & Spoon, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Title currently in development by Universal Studios as an original musical film, and Matchless, illustrated by the author, a re-illumination of Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl.”
A long-time occasional reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Book Review and other journals, Gregory Maguire is widely respected as a critic and as an advocate of books for the young. Maguire helped found and, for a quarter-century, co-directed Children’s Literature New England, an educational charity intended to focus attention on the significance of literature in the lives of children. He was also a cofounder of Wondermore (formerly the Foundation for Children’s Books).
Though his adult novels have sold over ten million copies, Maguire’s devotion to children and their needs has continued to engage him in writing for children and in promoting literacy efforts around the world. A popular speaker, he has appeared in museums and theaters across the nation as well as countless grade schools, high schools, and colleges. He and his husband, the painter Andy Newman, have three adopted children and live in New England and in France.