SLS DIRECTORS & EMPLOYEES

Mikhail Iossel, Founder and Executive Program Director. Mikhail Iossel was born in Leningrad, USSR, where he worked as an electromagnetic engineer and belonged to a circle of underground ("samizdat") writers, and emigrated to the United States in 1986. After receiving an MA degree in English/Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire, he was awarded a Wallace Stegner fellowship in fiction at Stanford University. He subsequently taught creative writing, both on the undergraduate and graduate levels, at the University of Minnesota, New York University, the New School, St. Lawrence University, Union College and currently is on the faculty of the Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) writing program. Numerous publications in samizdat magazines in the former Soviet Union. Author of Every Hunter Wants to Know, a collection of stories (W.W. Norton) and co-editor (with Jeff Parker) of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive, 2004). a book of essays. Stories published in literary magazines in the US and abroad, translated in several foreign languages, anthologized in Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. Recipient of the NEA (1993) and the Guggenheim Foundation fellowships (1999). Founder (in 1998) and executive director of the Summer Literary Seminars, Inc., program--one of the world's largest international literary conferences (St. Petersburg, Russia; Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya; Vilnius, Lithuania; Montreal, Canada).

Ann Ward, Programs Coordinator and Kenya Program Director. Originally from Kingston, Ontario, Ann Ward is co-creator of Montreal’s WithWords Press and a graduate of the English and Creative Writing Program at Concordia University. Her poetry has appeared in MsGuided, CV2 and Feathertale, and her fiction has appeared in Branch, and was chosen by Colum McCann to appear in the 2009 Fish Anthology in Ireland. Ann lives in Montreal.

Jake Levine, Lithuania Program Director. Jake Levine is a poet hailing from Tucson, Arizona. He has a chapbook, The Threshold of Erasure (spork press), and his work has been published by Stretching Panties, Back Room Live, EOAGH, Retort and elsewhere. Jake is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant for Poetry in Lithuania for 2010/2011 and is currently teaching American Literature at Vilnius University. He got his MFA at the University of Arizona in 2010, where he was awarded a Warnock Fellowship, Hattie Locket Prize, Intro Award, and Foundation Award for his poesy. He taught poetry and composition at the University of Arizona and won the Johnnie Raye Harper teaching award. He served on the board of directors of POG and in Poetry for the Tucson Festival of Books. He was editor-in-chief of Sonora Review, is now a poetry editor at Spork Press, and now keeps busy as an organizer of Summer Literary Seminars and as curator of the Vilnius Bagel Reintroduction Project. He’s given some papers at conferences worldwide and recently learned to make refried black beans.

Mike Spry, Program Advisor, is a graduate of the Concordia University Creative Writing program, and the author of the short story collection Distellery Songs. (Insomniac Press 2011). He is also the author of Jack (Snare Books, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Quebec Writer's Federation A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry.

Thomas Burke, Program Advisor. Mr. Burke grew up outside Chicago and writes fiction and nonfiction. He received a BA from Union College and an MFA from UMASS Amherst. He has lived in Asia and Europe, and spent time in South America, Central America, and Africa . He teaches writing and lives in New York City.

Jeff Parker, Program Advisor. Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman and the collection of stories The Taste of Penny. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Walrus, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Matrix, and others. He co-edited the anthologies Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia and Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States. For his work in hypermedia, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001. Parker has a BA in Journalism from the University of Florida and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. He teaches at the University of Toronto.

John Goldbach, Program Advisor. He is the author of Selected Blackouts (Insomniac Press, 2009) and received his MA from Concordia University in Montreal, where he lives.

Melissa Bull, French-language liaison, government supplicant and grant writer. A graduate of Concordia's creative writing program and a native Montrealer, Melissa works as a writer and editor for a handful of mags and as a translator for the Musée d'art de Joliette. Her poetry and fiction have been published in a variety of anthologies and a chapbook of her stories, Eating Out, was published in 2009.

Binoy Zuzarte, Social Media Coordinator, graduated from McGill University and now tweets and tumbls from Toronto. He writes poetry and is currently researching the interface between linguistics, social media, and literature.

Ian Sullivan Cant is a writer, artist, and graphic designer. He designed the logos for SLS and would like to design things for you too: iansullivanc@gmail.com @iansullivancant"