Ada Limón is the author of three poetry collections, Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed, 2010), This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2005), and Lucky Wreck (Autumn House, 2005). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. After working for a number of years as the Creative Director at Travel & Leisure magazine in New York she currently lives in California. (Ada Limón’s visit is sponsored in part by the Office of Community Engagement.)

Brian Barker is the author of two poetry collections, The Black Ocean (SIU Press, 2011) and The Animal Gospels (Tupelo, 2006), which won the Tupelo Editors Prize. His work as appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, Indiana Review, Blackbird, Pleiades, fugue, and storySouth. He teaches at the University of Colorado Denver and co-edits Copper Nickel.

Jake Adam York is the author or three book of poetry, Persons Unknown (SIU Press, 2010), A Murmuration of Starlings (2008), which won the Colorado Book Award in poetry, and Murder Ballads (Elixir Press, 2005). He has also authored a work of literary history, The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry (Routledge, 2005). He directs the creative writing program at the University of Colorado Denver and co-edits Copper Nickel.

Zachary Mason is the author of the novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, originally published by Starcherone Books in 2007 and reissued by FSG in 2010 to critical acclaim. Mason holds a doctorate from Brandeis in computer science and works for a Silicon Valley startup company. His first literary publication—an excerpt from The Lost Books of the Odyssey—was in Pleiades.

Gabriel Fried ’s first poetry collection, Making the New Lamb Take (Sarabande Books), was named a Best Book of 2007 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His poems have also appeared in American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, The Paris Review, and other journals and magazines. He is Poetry Editor at Persea Books and lives in Columbia, Missouri.

William Trowbridge is the author of five full-length poetry collections, most recently Ship of Fool (Red Hen, 2011) and The Complete Book of Kong (Southeast Missouri State UP, 2003). His work has appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, Boulevard, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, and The Iowa Review, among numerous other important magazines. After many years teaching at Northwest Missouri State, he lives in Lee’s Summit and teaches in the University of Nebraska low-residency MFA writing program.

Tiphanie Yanique ’s novella and stories How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf, 2010) won the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and earned her a “5 under 35” designation from the National Book Foundation. The recipient of a Fulbright and the Boston Review Fiction Prize, among many other honors, Yanique lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches creative writing and Caribbean literature at Drew University. (Tiphanie Yanique’s visit is sponsored in part by the Office of Community Engagement.)

Bruce Snider is the author of two poetry collections, Paradise, Indiana, which won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize and will be published in the spring of 2012 by Pleiades Press, and The Year We Studied Women (U of Wisconsin Press, 2003), which won the Felix Pollak Poetry Prize. A former Stegner Fellow, Snider lives in San Francisco.

Victoria Brockmeier is the author of the poetry collection my maiden cowboy names (Truman State UP, 2009), which won the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems have appeared in Lit, Boston Review, and Pleiades, among other journals. After graduating from UCM she received an MFA from Louisana State University, and is currently finishing a PhD in literature at SUNY Buffalo.

Jennifer Denrow is the author of California (Four Way Books, 2011), a collection of poems, as well as two chapbooks. After graduating from UCM she received an MFA from Washington University in 2007, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Denver.

Ryan Stone is the author of the short story collection Best Road Yet (Press 53, 2010). After graduating from UCM he received an MFA from the University of Missouri St. Louis and currently teaches English at Danville Community College.

Each year, the English Department at the University of Central Missouri holds the David Baker Writing Awards in fiction and poetry. The winners read their work to students, faculty, and members of the community at this celebratory reading.