is a Reader in Commonwealth literature in the Department of English at the University of Poona. His publications include a collection of poems, Slide Show (Leeds: Peepal Tree Books, 1992); short stories, One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul-City (Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1995); plays, The Wisest Fool and Other Plays (Bombay: The Brown Critique, 1996). He has edited several anthologies and books of criticism. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Bombay, with a thesis on the attitudes toward love and nature of Whitman and Tagore. He received the Nehru Centenary Post-doctoral Fellowship from the Government of India, and a travel fellowship from India's National Academy of Letters. Dr. Rao is currently at work on a biography of the Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel. He attends the IWP as a fellow of the AT&T Foundation.
is an exciting voice in Polish drama, specializing in highly original dramatic miniature forms of radio theater. Some of her work has been translated into German and appeared on the Polish Radio 3 and the Sud Deutsche Rundfunk. Her publications include When the Mind's Asleep, the Answering Machine Turns On (for Dialog, 1993); The Passion in the Bottle ( forDialog, 1995); (for Format, 1991). She holds the M.A. in the theory of culture from the University of Wroclaw. During a previous tourist visit to the United States, Ms. Amejko says, she spent hours in the Museum of Broadcasting listening to old radio plays. She is chief editor of a non-commercial student radio station in Wroclaw, a position she has held since 1987. She is a USIA grantee.
is a professor and director of the Bolivian National University Institute for the Study of the Humanities. His works have received international recognition: in 1991 he received the first prize in radio playwriting granted by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Koln (WDR) of Germany; his work was later broadcast in Spanish, German, and Flemish. Among his other honors are the first prize at the national Franz Tamayo poetry competition in 1988. He is the author of five literary works, primarily poetry, with a new collection in progress. Dr. Orihuela earned the Ph.D. in literature from the University of California, Davis. Since 1982 he has taught creative writing, Latin American literature, 18th-century American literature, and playwriting. He was visiting professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene, and previously taught at the National University of San Andres in La Paz.
is a commissioned playwright with the Melbourne Theatre Company. Her one-act play Family Running for Mr. Whippy was nominated for the 1995 Best New Australian Play, and produced by the theatre companies of Melbourne and Sydney, and adapted for Australian national radio. The Australia Council gave her two grants to script the film Great Darkness Light. The film Sparks, for which she wrote the screenplay, won awards for best screenplay and best film at the 1990 Australian Film Institute Awards; the movie subsequently won prizes at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in France. She studied scriptwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and holds the BA from Murdoch University. She is currently writing a children's book commissioned by Fremantle Arts Press. She is at the IWP through the USIA.
teaches playwriting, directing, and creative writing in the drama department of the University of Skopje. Her most recent play, The Place Where I Have Never Been, was staged this year in Ljubljana (Slovenia). She received her theatre and film training at the University of Ljubljana, and earned the M.A. from the Kiril I Metodij University in Skopje. Her many publications include a collection of plays in English, A Dream and Other Works (Metaforum, Skopje, 1996); several screenplays including The Disappearance of Susana Arsova (1993). Most of her performances have toured in Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Serbia, and Bosnia. She is the IWP's first representative from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and she is at the IWP through a grant from the USIA.
(born in Concepción, 1962) is literary editor of the supplement Zona de Contacto for Santiago's leading newspaper, El Mercurio. One of the literary leaders of his generation, Mr. Gomez is the author of two short story collections, Adi-s, Carlos Marx, nos vemos en el Cielo ('Goodbye, Karl Marx, We'll See You in Heaven'; 1992), Partes del cuerpo que no se tocan ('Don't Touch These Body Parts'; 1997); a novel, Vidas Ejemplares ('Exemplary Lives'; 1994); and he edited, with 1994 Chilean IWP participant Alberto Fuguet, two anthologies, Cuentos con Walkman (1993) and McOndo (1996). His play Extra-as Costumbres Orales was staged by Teatro La Feria in 1996, and won the Premio Concurso Nacional de Dramaturga; he adapted and directed Palomita Blanca for Teatro Arena in 1997. Vidas Ejemplares was a finalist for the prestigious Romulo Gallegos Prize, and Adios Carlos Marx... received recognition from the Municipality of Santiago. At the University of Iowa, he plans to complete a second novel, as well as work on television adaptations of stories by young Chilean authors. He is here through a grant from the Fundaci-n Andes.
(born in Kuantan, 1952) is research officer and language planning officer at the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka literary organization of Malaysia. He also teaches scriptwriting and drama part time at the National Art Academy in Kuala Lumpur and is a freelance writer/director for theatre and television. He is the author of ten plays, among them The Opera House (1988), which received multiple national awards; books for children and young adults; twenty scripts for documentary video, and eighty essays, works of criticism and reviews, including co-authorship of A History of Modern Malay Literature, vol. 2 (1992), Introduction to Malay Traditional Arts (1992); he edited Modern ASEAN Plays: Malaysia (1994). He holds the BA (hons.) from the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang. The Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Malaysia is his sponsor.
(born in Budapest, 1956) is chief editor of literature and theatre at Hungarian Television (MTV), and as a well-established playwright is regularly commissioned to translate and to stage plays with English-language origins. He received his training in Hungarian language and literature, English language and literature, and comparative literature at Eotvos Lorand University, and held a Fulbright Fellowship at Columbia University in 1992-93. He is a member of the Hungarian Writers' Union and PEN. Mr. Bekes has published ten books, several novels and collections of short fiction and plays. He is supported by a grant from the United States Information Agency.
(born in Central Otago, 1945) is the author of four poetry collections: Heartwood (Caxton Press, 1989); Of Elephants etc (untold press, 1990); The Persistent Levitator (Victoria University Press, 1994), and Still Talking (forthcoming, to be launched at the Christchurch Arts Festival, July 1997). The Persistent Levitator was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards in 1995. Her plays have been performed in theaters in New Zealand and produced on National NZ Radio; Glad and the Angels was winner of the Aoraki Festival Playwriting Competition. Since 1991, Ms. Hall has been the poetry editor of Takahe magazine and currently teaches at Hagley Community College in Christchurch; she directed the Creative Writing Summer School at Canterbury University and taught many writing workshops in Christchurch, Wellington, and Dunedin. She has also performed her poetry at various book festivals, exploring the "communal possibilities of poetry" through collaboration with an Irish uillean pipe player and music composers. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, among them the Oxford Book of New Zealand Poetry (1997). The Arts Council of New Zealand/Toi Aotearoa is providing joint support with the IWP for her participation in the program.
(born in Budapest, 1969) has had his first, prizewinning play stag‚ed at one of Hungary's most celebrated theaters; this play ,The Shooting Party, won a drama competition on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. His novel, Linesman Marton is Cold (Budapest, 1995) received the 1995 Sandor Brody Prize for Best First Book in Hungarian literature. His translations cover a range of contemporary works: the poems of Derek Walcott, Charles Simic; fiction by John Berendt, Richard Preston (The Hot Zone), and Stephen King; plays by Caryl Churchill and Thomas Middleton. Mr. Hamvai holds the MA in English literature and linguistics from Elte University, and did a year of graduate research at Oxford. He is currently editor of a literary periodical at the Eotvos Kollegium and of a journal of linguistic studies at Elte University. He was appointed to the program by the US Information Agency.
(born 1970, Moscow) has written five plays which have been produced in Russia and elsewhere, and have been translated into English, French, German, Cezch, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian and Korean. Her play Tanya-Tanya is currently running at five different venues in Eastern Europe, including Fomenko's Workshop in Moscow, the Satire Theater in St. Petersburg, and Prague's On Zabrodle. The play received the First Drama Debut Award in the Moscow Debuts Festival, and Ms. Mukhina was proclaimed best playwright by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. Her play Yu was produced in Moscow and Tatarstan, and won an award from the magazine Playwright. Her plays have been published in magazines such as Playwright and Contemporary Drama. She currently works as a program editor for the TV channel TNT. Her participation in the IWP is supported by the United States Information Agency.
(fiction writer, playwright, West Bank/Palestine; born 1941, Sawahra) has published numerous books of fiction for adults and children, including, most recently, Qalat Marian, Qalalfata (Said Marian, Said the Boy, The Union of Palestinian Writers, 1996) and Oghniet Al Mahar (The Song of Oysters, Dar Al-Quds, 1995). He is currently working on a novel, Al-Madina Thatafajren Ba'Id (The City of Faraway Dawn), as well as an autobiography and scripts for five television series. In 1990 he received a prize from the Association of Jordanian Writers. Mr. Shuqair studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Damascus, and currently works as chief editor of Dafater Thaqafieh (Cultural Notebook) and as Director General in the Department of Literature at the Ministry of Culture in Ramallah. His participation in the IWP is supported by the United States Information Agency.
is Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana, and just completed a term at the University as acting director of the School of Performing Arts, while serving as Administrator of the CODESRIA African Humanities Institute Program. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin. Best known as a poet, Dr. Anyidoho has published several poetry collections, including A Harvest of Our Dreams (1984), Earthchild (1985), and Ancestrallogic & Caribbeanblues (1993). He has also published several book chapters and scholarly essays in various journals, and edited works on African literatures, including The Word Behind Bars & The Paradox of Exile (Northwestern University Press, 1997) and a recent special issue of the journal Matatu. Dr. Anyidoho is currently President of the African Literature Association. His participation in the International Writing Program is supported by the Program in African Studies and the IWP.
(born 1951, Tbilisi) is a freelance professional poet and writer; translator of Russian writers, among them Maiakowski and Mandelshtam; and host of a radio program in Tbilisi, "Darchi Norchi" (Stay Young). He is also a playwright at the State Rustaveli Theatre and Youth Theatre. Among his publications are Damoukidebloba (Independence) with A. Darchashvili, 1999; poems in XX Century (the Georgian literary journal), 1998; German folk ballad translations, 1997; and a selection of English sonnet translations, 1997. Mr. Kubaneishvili has been the most active and outspoken player in the changing world of Georgian poetry in the past decade. He appeared on the literary scene in 1990 with his book Reaktiuli Klubi (The Reactive Club), which is a collection of poems and radio plays. His poetry touches upon general issues of mankind, as well as describing everyday routine. Also reflected in his poetry are the tensions in the political and public life of Georgia. With the release of his book came T-shirts with logos and slogans distributed widely among young people and the general public. Mr. Kubaneishvili also translates the works of international writers and poets, and through poetry and performance uses his fluency in English, Russian, and German-as well as in Georgian-to make provocative statements about humanity and world civilization at the dawn of the new millennium. Mr. Kubaneishvili is the IWP's first representative from the Republic of Georgia. He is attending the IWP through a grant from the US Information Agency.
Halina Cieplinska-Bitner (translator, poet, essayist, Poland) has translated more than 25 American and English titles, among them H.D. Thoreau's Walden, and novels by Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and John Hawkes. A winner of numerous awards and fellowships, she is also the author of critical essays on the transcendental movement, and of the play "A Cheap Alibi." After a career in the publishing industry, she is now the editor-in-chief of the Translation Department at the Polish branch of the TV station Canal +. Her 1999 residency participation was supported by the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation.
[bio rev 3/2012]
writes under the pen name Hwang JiWoo. He is professor and chair of the Department of Playwriting at the Korean National University of Arts. He led a new wave of deconstructionist poetry in the 1980s, which was part of the new "rhetoric of resistance" in Korean literature. His subsequent work is described as embodying a native spirit, with its Korean Zen Buddhist traditions interwoven with paradox, vitality and wit. He is the author of six poetry collections, among them Even the Birds Leave the Land (1983), A Lotus in the Crab's Eye (199), I'll Sit Alone in a Darkened Pub (1998); four plays, including A Diary on the Fat Sofa (staged in 1994), Thirty Days in Prison, staged in 1999), and Bride May (2000). Hwang Jaewoo studied aesthetics and art history at Seoul National University. His education was interrupted by a forced enlistment in the army following his imprisonment for student activism against the military dictatorship. His work has received numerous national awards, including the Contemporary Literature Prize of 1991 and the DaeSan Foundation Prize in 1999. Recently, he published a play, A Materialistic Man (2003), and a translation of his poetry, Even Birds Leave the World (trans. Christopher Merrill and Won-Chung Kim), is forthcoming from White Pine Press.
(born 1957, Fort Portal) is head of the French department at the Kitante Hill School in Kampala, where he teaches English and French. He is a graduate of Makerere University, and studied at the University of Clermont Ferrand in France and at the CELAB of Bjumbura. His first novel, Cherished Dreams, was published by Macmillan (London), and he is at work on a second novel, Prominent Figures. Mr. Mugarra's work is notable for its control of language, and its humor and instinct for dealing with social issues and mores in a manner appealing to Ugandans and other readers in the Great Lakes region. Two of his plays, written in French, have been performed in Uganda, Burundi, and France. His participation in the IWP is provided by the U.S. Department of State.
(born 1961, Gdynia) leads the Memory Project of the University of Warsaw's gender studies department and teaches the history of foreign literature. In addition to teaching, her prolific career includes literary commentary, writing novels, and writing and directing plays. She initiated Poland's earliest creative writing workshops. She writes monthly columns for Gazeta Wyborcza, the Polish edition of Marie Claire, and Pani. Her numerous publications include the novel Absolute Amnesia (1995), a fiction collection, Blue Menagie (1997), and monographic studies and a 4-act play, "The Book of Em" (1999) based on the Polish literary figure Maria Komornicka. After being granted political asylum in the United States in 1986, she wrote, directed, and appeared in a one-person play, Hollywood, at the Open Center in New York and took courses in drama, playwriting and directing. She returned to Poland in 1996, where she resumed her active literary career. She holds the MA in literature from the University of Gdañsk. The Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation is providing her support to attend the IWP.
(poet, playwright, India; born 1954, Bangalore) is the author of four books of poems in Kannada; eight plays which were staged and published; two books on literary and theatre criticism, and two books of poetry translations. H.S. Shiva Prakash has taught English in several colleges in Karnataka, and is currently English editor for Indian Literature at the Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi. His poetry, plays, and translations have received awards from the Karnataka Sahitya Academy, and the productions of several of his plays have received national recogntion in India. Prof. Shiva Prakash has been actively involved in workshops for young playwrights and poetry translation, and his lectures on Indian theatre have brought him to Berlin, Cambridge, and the Nehru Centre in London. His most recent works include the play "Shakespeare's Dream Ship," anthologized in Same-Sex Love in India (St. Martin's Press, 2000). He earned the Ph.D. from Bangalore University in 1998. His participation in the IWP is supported by the University of Iowa.
(born 1962, Limerick) has been honored by his countrymen for his abilities to interpret the dynamics of the old/new Ireland. Culturally engaged in a context of nostalgia for a troubled history and for the promise of a brilliant future, he represents the "other voice of the new and buoyant Ireland." His playPigtown was selected for presentation in the prestigious international Dublin Fringe Theatre Festival for October 2000, and he recently took part in the annual Stewart Parker Trust workshop at the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland. His other honors include the special award this year from the Limerick Corporation for "Outstanding Contribution to the Culture Life of the City." Since 1980, Mr. Finn has been involved in cultural communication, as producer for Big L Radio, freelance press photographer, Founder-Director of the Island Theatre Company and the Umbrella Project Street Theatre Company, weekly columnist for the Limerick Post, and actor in over 30 theatre productions as well as television and films. His other plays include "The Crunch" (1992), "Charlie Chaplin's Mother Was an Irishman" (1995), "Nevereverland" (1998), and "The Affair in the Square" (2000). His participation in the IWP is provided by the U.S. Department of State.
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