Voices from the American Land

About the Editors and Advisors


Board of Editors:


Summer Wood
Summer Wood

Voices Director Summer Wood, author of the novels Arroyo (Chronicle Books) and Wrecker (Bloomsbury, 2011), runs a mentorship program for young writers in Taos, New Mexico, and teaches writing to adults at the University of New Mexico’s Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. She lives in the mountains of northern New Mexico and travels frequently, fueling an interest in place she explores in her website www.summerwoodwrites.com. Her non-fiction work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler and other venues. In 2007 Wood was awarded the $50,000 Literary Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation. She and her partner Kathy Namba have three grown sons, and have served as foster parents through New Mexico’s Child Protective Services.

Rennie Golden
Renny Golden

Renny Golden’s book of poetry The Hour of the Furnaces was nominated for a National Book Award in 2000. Golden's book of poetry Blood Desert: Witnesses 1820–1880 (University of New Mexico Press) won the 2010–2011 WILLA Literary Award from the Women Writing the West Foundation. Her most recent book War on the Family: Imprisoned Mothers and the Families They Leave Behind, (NY: Routledge), 2005, was a Finalist for the C Wright Mills Award. Her poetry has been published in: International Quarterly; The American Voice; Literary Review; Americas Review; Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review; Explorations, University of Alaska; Wisconsin Review; Dogwood; West End; & Calyx. Featured in Irish American Poetry from the 18th Century to the Present, ed., Daniel Tobin, (Notre Dame Press), 2007). rennygolden.com

Dorothy B. Bowen
Dorothy Bowen


Dorothy Bunny Bowen is a fiber artist in the ancient medium of wax resist, which she studied in Japan and Malaysia. She holds a BA in studio art and an MA in art history from the University of New Mexico, and has published many articles concerning Rio Grande textiles and contemporary fiber art. Bowen works professionally as a graphic artist and web designer.
www.db-bowen.com


Editorial Advisors:


Darlene Chandler BassettDarlene Chandler Bassett

In 2000, Darlene Chandler Bassett founded A Room Of Her Own (AROHO), a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation which provides innovative arts patronage for women writers and artists. A retired corporate executive, Bassett worked for two decades with famed entrepreneur and arts patron, Eli Broad. At various Broad entities, Kaufman and Broad, Inc., Broad Inc., and SunAmerica, Bassett was the senior human resources officer in charge of organizational planning and development. In this capacity she served as internal consultant to the Chairman regarding the continued development of an innovative corporate culture.
A RoomofHerOwnFoundation.org


Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1934. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky in 1956 and continued on to complete a master’s degree in 1957. In 1958, he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. Berry has taught at Stanford University, Georgetown College, New York University, the University of Cincinnati, and Bucknell University. He taught at his alma mater, the University of Kentucky from 1964-77, and again from 1987-93. The author of more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, Wendell Berry has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1962), the Vachel Lindsay Prize from Poetry (1962), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1965), a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing (1971), the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly Review (1974), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award (1987), a Lannan Foundation Award for Non-Fiction (1989), Membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers (1991), the Ingersoll Foundation's T. S. Eliot Award (1994), the John Hay Award (1997), the Lyndhurst Prize (1997), and the Aitken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review (1998). He lives and works with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Port Royal, Kentucky. — Wendell Berry Books

Gary SnyderGary Snyder
photo c. Dorothy Alexander

Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco in 1930. He has published sixteen books of poetry and prose, including The Gary Snyder Reader (1952-1998) (Counterpoint Press, 1999); Mountains and Rivers Without End (1997); No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1993), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; The Practice of the Wild (1990); Left Out in the Rain, New Poems 1947-1985; Axe Handles (1983), for which he received an American Book Award; Turtle Island (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; Regarding Wave (1970); and Myths & Texts (1960). He has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2003. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis. —www.poets.org

George F. ThompsonGeorge F. Thompson

George F. Thompson has been a professional bookman since 1984, when he became an acquisitions editor with the Johns Hopkins University Press. In 1990, he founded and still directs the Center for American Places, a geographic book publisher now lodged at Columbia College Chicago. Thompson is an author and editor of five books of his own, including Landscape in America (Texas, 1995), which was designated a Notable Book of 1995 by Harper’s magazine. In addition, poems from his chapbook, All Children Should Be Fish, have appeared in The Black Warrior Review, New Orleans Review, New South Writing, and the anthology, Nothing Rich, but Some Things Rare (Gorgas Oak Press, 1982). Born in Colorado, Thompson has lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia since 1983. He has been married to Cynthia Roberts Thompson since 1978, and their daughter, Haley, was born in 1998. Cynthia is a professor of dance at James Madison University.