Creative Writing
Faculty
Whitney Otto
Visiting Associate Professor of Creative Writing, fall 2009
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Whitney Otto was born and raised in Pasadena, CA. She has a BA in History and an MFA in Writing (fiction) from the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of four novels: How To Make An American Quilt, Now You See Her, The Passion Dream Book, and A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity. Her work has also appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers. How To Make An American Quilt was a New York Times Bestseller, a film, a NYT Notable Book and nominated for the first Art Seidenbaum Award from the Los Angeles Times.
Peter Rock
Associate Professor of Creative Writing, 2001-, on leave, fall 2009
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Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the author of the novels My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, as well as the story collection The Unsettling. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both appeared widely. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Crystal Williams
Associate Professor of Creative Writing, 2000-, on sabbatical, 2009-10
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Crystal Williams’ third collection of poems, Troubled Tongues, was chosen by Marilyn Nelson for the 2009 Long Madgett Poetry Award and was short-listed for the Idaho Prize. It was published in January, 2009. Her poetry appears in the American Poetry Review, 5AM, Callaloo, Court Green, Luna, Fourth River, The Indiana Review, and in the anthologies: American Poetry: The Next Generation, Poetry Nation, Sweet Jesus, and Beyond the Frontier, among others. Raised in Detroit, Michigan and Madrid, Spain, she is currently working on two plays and a collection of essays. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University. She lives with her adopted poodle Oliver—a dog's dog, a dog among dogs, the super duper top dog. They spend as much time as they can in Chicago, Illinois, roaming the lake front and keeping tabs on the stars.