New England Review is pleased to present its annual gathering of Middlebury College alumni and faculty authors during Middlebury’s reunion weekend, Saturday, June 8, at 2:30 p.m. Axinn Center, Room 229. This year brings a range of accomplished alumni from classes ranging from 1979 to 2009, with Sam Collier, Dede Cummings, Meghan Laslocky, and Emilie Trice, along with Middlebury College professor of poetry and creative writing Karin Gottshall. The authors will read from a range of poems, stories, essays, and more. Books will be available for signing; free and open to the public.
Sam Collier ’09 is a playwright, poet, and theater artist. Her play Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King was a finalist for the O’Neill Theater Center’s 2017 National Playwright Conference. Other plays include Silo Tree, Suit of Leaves,thing with feathers, and Quiet, Witches. Her work has been developed by the Chicago Theatre Marathon, Theater Nyx, PTP/NYC, New Ground Theatre, the UNESCO Cities’ Play Festival, and the AWOI Little Festival of Iowa Legends. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Iron Horse, Mortar Magazine, Guernica, and others, and she has held fellowships and residencies with the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Theatre Institute, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She holds an MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa.
Dede Cummings ’79 is a Vermont poet and publisher, and commentator for Vermont Public Radio. At Middlebury College, she won the Mary Dunning Thwing Award and attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as an undergraduate fellow. She has published poems in Mademoiselle, Connotation Press,Mom Egg Review,Bloodroot Literary,and Green Mountains Reviewand was a Discover/The Nation poetry semi-finalist and a 2016 Vermont Studio Center poet. Her first poetry book, To Look Out From, won the 2016 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. Her second collection of poetry, The Meeting Place, is due out in spring 2020 from Salmon Poetry. Dede is the founder and publisher of Green Writers Press in Brattleboro, Vermont, a global press devoted to environmental activism, social justice, and sustainable publishing.
Karin Gottshall, Assistant Professor in English and American Literatures, is the author of two award-winning poetry books: Crocus (Fordham University Press, 2007) and The River Won’t Hold You (Ohio State University Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in national literary journals such as FIELD, New England Review, and Kenyon Review. A 2015 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference poetry fellowship winner, Gottshall lives in Vermont where she teaches at Middlebury College and directs the New England Young Writers’ Conference.
Meghan Laslocky ’89 grew up on a farm in Shoreham, attended MUHS and The Madeira School, and majored in English at Middlebury. Her book, The Little Book of Heartbreak: Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages, was inspired by history’s great love stories, and by her own, both happy and sad. She lives in Oakland, California, with her son and regularly returns to Vermont to spend time with her family and friends here.
Emilie Trice ’04 is an artist, writer, and curator specializing in contemporary visual culture. Her writing has appeared online for the New York Times, Paris Review, Artforum, Artnet, and Dazed Digital, and in international magazines including Sleek (Berlin), SOMA (San Francisco), and DAMn (Brussels). She has written catalogue essays for artists such as Miya Ando and Ted Riederer and has been cited in academic publications including Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science and History.