Milton Center Mentors

The writers below represent some recent mentors for the Milton Center Fellowship.

Click here for a fellowship application.

Scott Cairns

Scott Cairns, currently Professor of English at the University of Missouri, has also taught American literature and creative writing at Kansas State University, Westminster College, University of North Texas, and Old Dominion University. His most recent collection of poetry, Compass of Affection, is due out in 2006. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New Republic, and Spiritus, as well as the anthologies The Best American Spiritual Writing 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2005. His spiritual memoir, Slow Pilgrim, will appear from Harper San Francisco in 2007. He lives in Columbia, Missouri with his family.

Tim Gautreaux

Tim Gautreaux is writer-in-residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he taught for thirty-five years before retiring in 2002. Gautreaux's work has appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. His first novel, The Next Step in the Dance, won the 1999 Southeastern Book Sellers Association Award, while his second novel, The Clearing, won the 2003 Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association Award. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He lives in Hammond, Louisiana, with his family.

Diane Glancy

Diane Glancy teaches Native American literature and creative writing courses at Macalester College. For ten years, she was also the Artist in Residence for the State Art Council of Oklahoma. Her poetry, fiction, scripts and essays have won her numerous accolades, such as the American Book Award, the Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship, and the Native American Prose Award. Her most recent novel, Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea, was published in 2003. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Brenda Hillman

Brenda Hillman holds the Olivia Filippi Chair in Poetry at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California. She has also taught at the Napa Valley Writer's Conference and the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Bright Existence (1993), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Loose Sugar (1997), a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle. Her poetry has earned her fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Peggy Payne

Peggy Payne is a private editorial consultant, and has worked as a freelance writer for 32 years in over 25 countries. She has written articles, reviews and essays for such publications as The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Travel+Leisure, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many others. Her writing has won her such accolades as the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, for Sister India (2002), as well as the 2003 Sherwood Anderson Award. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Janet Peery

Janet Peery is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Old Dominion University, for which she received a 2002 Outstanding Faculty award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Her first collection of short stories, Alligator Dance (1996), won the Whiting Foundation Writer's Award. Since then, her fiction has appeared in such literary journals as Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, 64 Magazine, and American Short Fiction. She is also the author of the novel The River Beyond The World (1996), which was a National Book Award finalist. She lives in Virginia.

Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson teaches at the University of Iowa Writer 's Workshop. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won a PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel, and her second novel, Gilead, (2004), won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. She has also published two critically acclaimed collections of essays, Mother Country (1989), and The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998). Her articles and book reviews have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Iowa.

Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield is the author of seven novels, including Beyond Deserving, a 1991 Finalist for the National Book Award, and A Chance to See Egypt, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters 1997 Fiction Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Institute of Letters, and the Oregon Arts Commission. Her book reviews have appeared in Chicago Tribune, The Oregonian, Dallas Morning News, and Newsday. She has also participated in outreach programs for Oregon Literary Arts and the National Book Foundation. She lives in Oregon.