Stadler Center Staff

Shara McCallum
Director

Shara McCallum is the author of four books of poetry: The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK, 2011), This Strange Land (Alice James Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Song of Thieves (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), and The Water Between Us (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), which won the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals in the US, the UK, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Israel, have been reprinted in textbooks and anthologies of American, African American, Caribbean, and World Literatures, and have been translated into Spanish and Romanian. Her personal essays have been published in The Antioch Review, Creative Nonfiction, Witness, and elsewhere. For her poetry, she has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, individual artist grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, an international writers residency at the Heinrich Boll Cottage (Ireland), and an Academy of American Poets Prize.  At Bucknell, she is Director of the Stadler Center for Poetry and Professor of English.

Andrew Ciotola
Operations Manager

Ciotola received his BA from Gettsyburg College, where he graduated with honors in English literature, and his MA in English from Bucknell University. As operations manager, he oversees the daily business of the Stadler Center. He is also the managing editor and book review editor for West Branch, Bucknell's nationally distinguished literary journal. A native of New York state, Ciotola is a longtime resident of Central Pennsylvania.

Jamaal May
Stadler Fellow 2012-13 (Second Year)

Jamaal May was raised by two auto workers in Detroit, MI, where he eventually taught poetry in public schools. After making a living as a self-taught poet and musician, Jamaal went on to publish two chapbooks, earn an MFA from Warren Wilson, and be featured in Callaloo, Indiana Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review among other journals, films, and broadcasts. He's the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Bucknell University where he was named the 2011-2013 Stadler Fellow. His first full-length collection, Hum won the 2012 Beatrice Hawley Award and will be published fall 2013 by Alice James Books.

Carolina Ebeid
Stadler Fellow 2012-13 (First Year)

Carolina Ebeid holds a degree from the Michener Center for Writers, where she served as poetry editor for the Bat City Review.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Agni-online, H_NGM_N and other journals.  She is currently at work on her first manuscript. 

G. C. Waldrep
Editor, West Branch & Director, Seminar for Younger Poets

G.C. Waldrep is the author of Goldbeater's Skin (winner of the 2003 Colorado Prize for Poetry), Disclamor (2007), and Arichembalo (2009, Winner of the Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press). His fourth full-length collection, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts—in collaboration with John Gallaher—is due out from BOA Editions in April 2011. His work has received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets, the Campbell Corner Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He held a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Waldrep holds a Ph.D. in American history from Duke University and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. At Bucknell, he is the Margaret Ley Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing, edits West Branch, and directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. He also serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.

Associated Faculty & Staff

Christopher Camuto
Associated Faculty

Camuto is the author of four works of non-fiction—A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge (1990), Another Country: Journeying Towards the Cherokee Mountains (1997), Hunting from Home: A Year Afield in the Blue Ridge Mountains (2003), and Time and Tide in Acadia: Seasons on Mount Desert Island (2009)—and numerous essays. He lives on Wolftree Farm where he manages an 80-acre eco-restoration project about which he is writing in Works & Days: Notes on a Woodland Farm. He is also at work on a memoir about travel in southern Italy and Siciliy, a meditation on the relation of pre-Socratic philosophy and landscape, as well as two volumes of verse- A Hunter's Book of Hours and Learning to Travel. He joined the faculty of Bucknell in 2004.

Paula Closson Buck
Associated Faculty

Paula Closson Buck is the author of two books of poems, The Acquiescent Villa (1998) and Litanies Near Water (2008), both from Louisiana State University Press. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Gettysburg Review, among other magazines. She is at work on new poems as well as a novel, set in Greece and West Berlin before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and some personal essays on wintering in Greece. A professor of English at Bucknell, she teaches creative writing (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction).

Carmen Gillespie
Associated Faculty

Carmen Gillespie is a professor of English, director of the Griot Institute for Africana Studies, and University Arts Coordinator. In addition to article and poem publications, she is the author of the scholarly works A Critical Companion to Toni Morrison (2007), A Critical Companion to Alice Walker (2011), and the Editor of The Clearing: Forty Years with Toni Morrison, 1970-2010 (2012). Carmen has also published a poetry chapbook, Lining the Rails (2008) and a poetry collection, Jonestown: A Vexation, which won the 2011 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize. Carmen's awards include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, for Excellence in Poetry, and grants from the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. Essence  named Carmen one of its 40 favorite poets in commemoration of the magazine's 40^th anniversary.

Deirdre O'Connor
Associate Director, Seminar for Younger Poets

Deirdre O'Connor's book, Before the Blue Hour, was the winner of the Cleveland State Poetry Prize for 2001. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Natural Bridge, and Painted Bride Quarterly, among others, and new poems are forthcoming in Crazyhorse and Pebble Lake Review. Her second manuscript of poems, "Mouth of the Sparrow" has been a frequent finalist and will annoy her until it finds a home.  She is Director of the Bucknell Writing Center and Associate Director of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.

Robert Rosenberg
Associated Faculty

Robert Rosenberg is Associate Professor of English and teaches fiction courses at Bucknell.  He holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan, as a Fellow of the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and has taught in both Istanbul and the White Mountain Apache Reservation. His short fiction has appeared in Witness, Cimarron Review, and Copper Nickel. His novel, This Is Not Civilization (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), was a Borders Original Voice, a BookSense, and a New York Times Paperback Row selection. He is currently at work on a novel set in Istanbul, for which he was awarded a 2010 NEA Literature Fellowship.

Claire Watkins
Associated Faculty

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of Battleborn (Riverhead Books). Her work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, One Story, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from the University of Nevada Reno and an MFA from the Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. Watkins is the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for rural Nevada teens.