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2008 Speakers

Rod jellema

Rod Jellema, founding director of the creative writing program at the University of Maryland, began his work with poetry workshops and the writing of poetry in mid-career, at age forty. He is the author of four books for poetry, including The Eighth Day: New & Selected Poems (Dryad Press) and A Slender Grace (Eerdmans, 2005). The latter book won the Towson University Prize for Literature and was selected by the Conference on Christianity and Literature as its Book of the Year. The recipient of several writing fellowships at Yaddo, Jellema was also awarded one prize and two writing fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Now in retirement in Washington D.C., he has recently returned to occasional teaching. He moderates the Fortnightly Poetry Consortium at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and from 2005 to 2007 he served as Poet in Residence at the Luce Center for Arts and Religion at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C. He is currently at work on Incarnality: The Collected Poems of Rod Jellema, tentatively scheduled for publication by Eerdmans in 2009.