Rananim Faculty

Amy Beederis the author of Burn the Field (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006) and Now Make An Altar (2012). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, AGNI, and many other journals. She lives in Albuquerque and has taught poetry at the University of New Mexico and Taos Summer Writers Conference. A recipient of the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, a Louis Untermeyer Bread Loaf Scholarship, the Witness Emerging Writers Award, and a James Merrill Fellowship, she has worked as a freelance reporter, a political asylum specialist, a high-school teacher in West Africa, and an election and human rights observer in Haiti and Suriname.

Rananim classes taught: Struck by Lightning: Poetry & Risk

Stephen Benz has published two books: Guatemalan Journey (University of Texas Press) and Green Dreams: Travels in Central America (Lonely Planet). For several years, he wrote feature articles and essays for Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. His essays and stories have also appeared in Best American Travel Writing, TriQuarterly, Creative Nonfiction and many other journals. He’s currently working on a book about American travelers in Cuba.

Rananim classes taught: A Sense of Style: Writing Energetic Prose

Paul Bogard is author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light (Little, Brown, 2013) and editor of Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark (U of Nevada Press, 2008). His new book, The Ground Around Us , will be published by Little, Brown in 2017. A native Minnesotan, Paul has lived and taught in Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Reno, northern Wisconsin, and Winston-Salem. A graduate of Carleton College, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Nevada-Reno (PhD in Literature and Environment), Paul is now an assistant professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he teaches creative writing and environmental literature.

Rananim classes taught: Introduction to Travel Writing

Sara Michas-Martinis a Former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and has also taught creative writing at Goddard College, University of Michigan, the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Stanford’s Online Writers Studio, and as a writer-in-the-schools. Her book Gray Matter (Fordham University Press) received the 2013 Poets Out Loud Prize. Other awards include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and scholarships to the Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley and Napa Valley Community of Writers’ Conferences. Her poems and essays have appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Believer, Best New Poets, CURA, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, jubilat, Prairie Schooner, Threepenny Review and elsewhere.

Rananim classes taught: Write Where You Are: A Mindful Approach

Sawnie Morrisis winner of the 2015 New Issues Poetry Award for Her, Infinite , forthcoming in March of 2016. She has been the recipient of a Poetry Society of America George Bogin Memorial Award and, for her chapbook in The Sound a Raven Makes (Tres Chicas Books, 2006), a co-winner of the New Mexico Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Lana Turner ; Pool: A Poetry Journal ; Denver Quarterly ; www.drunkenboat.com , The Journal , Women’s Review of Books , and Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion . Her writing about poetry has won a Texas PEN Literary Award. She has extensive experience teaching at the University of New Mexico and Southern Methodist University, in Taos, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as privately.

Rananim classes taught: The Story within the Story: Unleashing the Poem at the Center of Our Lives

Daniel Muelleris the author of two collections of short stories, How Animals Mate (Overlook Press 1999), which won the Sewanee Fiction Prize, and Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey (Outpost 19 Books 2013). His work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Story Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, CutBank, Joyland, Surreal South, Another Chicago Magazine, The Mississippi Review, Story, The Crescent Review, and Playboy. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Henfield Foundation, University of Virginia, and Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He directs the creative writing program at University of New Mexico and serves on the creative writing faculty of the Low-Residency MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte.

Rananim classes taught: Image in Narrative: The Picture Tells the Story

Emily Rappis the author of two works of nonfiction, Poster Child: A Memoir, and The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, O the Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Salon, Slate, the Huffington Post, the Rumpus, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. She is a regular correspondent for the Boston Globe. She is the Joseph Russo Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico and is on faculty in the University of California-Riverside MFA program. She lives in Madrid, New Mexico with her family.

Rananim classes taught: Moments of Rupture: Writing Your Life; Brief Encounters – Creative Nonfiction

Candace Walsh  is the author of Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity (Seal Press 2012), a 2013 New Mexico – Arizona Book Awards winner. Her writing has appeared in numerous national and local publications, in Newsday, Travel + Leisure, Sunset, Mademoiselle, New York magazine, and New Mexico Magazine. She has also worked on staff at Condé Nast International, Mothering Magazine, and currently, as the managing editor of New Mexico Magazine. She edited Seal Press anthologies Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women (a Lambda Literary Award finalist) and Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On. Her essays have been published in the anthology Here Come the Brides, on Slate.com, The Huffington Post, and in the Santa Fe Reporter. Her screenplay Birthquake, co-written with Laura M. André, was a quarter-finalist in the 2013 Screen Craft Comedy Screenplay Competition. She lives in Santa Fe with her wife Laura M. André, their two children, and two dogs.

Rananim classes taught: Beginning Creative Nonfiction: Epiphany Deliveries: Writing Creative Nonfiction that Sings

Summer Woodis the author of two novels: Raising Wrecker, set amid the giant trees of Northern California’s magical Lost Coast, and Arroyo, placed in the fictional terrain of northern New Mexico. Raising Wrecker was recognized with the 2012 WILLA Award for Contemporary Fiction and was a Book-of-the-Month Club Selection and a BookBrowse Editors’ Choice. The 2007 recipient of the $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation, Wood currently serves as Executive Editor for Voices from the American Land. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Cutthroat, Flyway, the Indiana Review, and other places, and she has taught at the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference since 2008. Together with Kathy Namba she has raised three sons and three dogs.

Rananim classes taught: Write It New: Fiction/Narrative Non-Fiction; Writing Scenes – Fiction and Creative Nonfiction