Faculty in Creative Writing

Lisa D. Chávez
MFA, Arizona State University
Poetry and Nonficton

Lisa D. Chávez was born in Los Angeles and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska. She has published two books of poetry: Destruction Bay and In an Angry Season, and has been included in such anthologies as Floricanto Si! A Collection of Latina Poetry , The Floating Borderlands: 25 Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature, and American Poetry: The Next Generation . Her creative nonfiction has been published in Fourth Genre, The Clackamas Literary Review and other places. Before coming to UNM, she taught at the University of Alaska, in Poland with the Peace Corps, in Japan and in Rochester, NY. In addition to creative writing, she is interested in multicultural American literature. She lives in the mountains with her dogs, a German Shepherd and a Shiba Inu, and has just finished a third book of poetry called An Atlas of Desire.

Marisa P. Clark
Ph.D., Georgia State University
Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry

Marisa P. Clark was born in Biloxi MS, reared in Ocean Springs MS, and came to fruition in Atlanta GA, where she earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Georgia State University. She has had fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in a variety of literary journals. Winner of the Agnes Scott College Prize in both fiction and nonfiction, Marisa has also served as assistant fiction editor of Five Points and an editorial board member for Blue Mesa Review and Amethyst. She is currently re-completing her novel Hermosa and cobbling together the first draft of a nonfiction work tentatively titled "Nobody Knows About My Man": Memoir of an Alter Ego. In addition to teaching creative writing, she directs UNM's ESL Writing Program. Her academic interests include queer studies and multicultural literature. Nonacademic interests include but are in no way limited to travel, dogs, good food, sharks, tattoos, and hurricanes and other disasters both natural and humanmade. When she's not commenting on student writing or preparing for her classes, Marisa keeps busy at home with her golden retriever Jasper, German shepherd Gideon, and African gray parrot Ruby.

Gregory Martin
MFA, University of Arizona
Nonfiction and Fiction

Gregory Martin is the author of Mountain City, a memoir of the life of a town of thirty-three in remote northeastern Nevada, which received a Washington State Book Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Martin's work has appeared in such magazines as Image, Storyquarterly, Orion, and Creative Nonfiction. He received an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1997. He joined the English Department Creative Writing faculty in 2001, where he teaches creative nonfiction and fiction. Martin is currently at work on a novel, The House of Bedlam.

Daniel Mueller
MFA, University of Iowa
Fiction

Daniel Mueller's collection of stories, How Animals Mate, received the Sewanee Fiction Prize and was selected by Esquire Magazine as one of five best collections of short fiction of 1999. Winner of the 1990 Playboy College Fiction Contest, he is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Henfield Foundation, and Universities of Virginia and Iowa. A graduate of Hollins University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has taught as a visiting writer on the Creative Writing faculties of Dartmouth College and Western Michigan University. He joined UNM’s English Department in 2001 and is at work on a novel.

Julie Shigekuni

Creative Writing Program Director
MFA, Sarah Lawrence College
Fiction

Julie Shigekuni, who joined the English Department in 1998, is the author of A Bridge Between Us (Doubleday/Anchor 1995), Invisible Gardens (St. Martin's 2003), and Unending Nora (Red Hen Press Fall 2008). Her short fiction has been anthologized and published in various literary journals, including On A Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast and The Los Angeles Review. She is currently at work on a 60-minute video documentary, Manju Mammas & The An-Pan Brigade, funded by the California Council for the Humanities Documentary Project grant and the Skirball Foundation, and a novella and collection of stories entitled Beep on Me. She has received a Henfield Award, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Julie has taught creative writing at CUNY Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and Mills College. She is also the Development Director of a new Asian American Studies program at the University of New Mexico.

Diane Thiel - On Leave
Associate Professor
MFA, Brown University
Poetry and Nonfiction

Diane Thiel is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction and creative writing pedagogy:  Echolocations (Nicholas Roerich Prize, 2000), Resistance Fantasies (nominated for the National Book Award, 2004), The White Horse: A Colombian Journey (2004, PEN Southwest Book Award/Nonfiction -- one of three finalists), Writing Your Rhythm (2001), Crossroads: Creative Writing Exercises in Four Genres (2005), Open Roads: Exercises in Writing Poetry (2005), Winding Roads: Exercises in Writing Creative Nonfiction (2008), and Cleft in the Wall (chapbook, 1999).  Thiel’s translation of Alexis Stamatis’s poetic novel, American Fugue (a translation that received an NEA International Literature Award -- one of only three awarded in the country) appeared in 2008 from Etruscan Press.  Her work appears in many journals including Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Best American Poetry 1999, is re-printed in over 40 major anthologies from Longman, Bedford/St.Martin’s, Harper Collins, Scribner, Beacon, Columbia University Press, Henry Holt and McGraw Hill, among others, and has been translated widely for international publications.  Thiel’s work has been reviewed and discussed in such venues as Poetry, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, among numerous others.  Her work has received many awards, including the Robert Frost Award and the Robinson Jeffers Award.  Thiel received her BA and MFA from Brown University and has taught creative writing, literature and other courses for over fifteen years.  She is fluent in several languages, has traveled and lived in various countries in Europe and South America, and was a Fulbright Scholar for 2001-2002, in Odessa, on the Black Sea.  For more information, you can visit her webpage here.

Jack Trujillo
MFA, University of Michigan
Fiction

Sharon Oard Warner
Professor

Office: Humanities 255
Hours: On Sabbatical
Phone: 277-6248
E-Mail: swarner@unm.edu

Sharon Oard Warner is Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. She is also Founding Director of UNM's Taos Summer Writers' Conference, which each July attracts writers from across the U.S. and around the world for a week of workshops and community. The Taos Conference was recently recognized by USA Today as one of the ten great writers conferences in the nation. Professor Warner was a contributor to the proposal that recently put the D. H. Lawrence Ranch on the National Register of Historic Places. She was also instrumental in the development of the MFA degree proposal, recently approved by Governor Richardson. The MFA in Creative Writing is the first new degree for the English Department in fifty years.