Kurt Brown Biography

Kurt Brown is founding director of the Aspen Writers’ Conference, now in its 26^th year, founding director of Writers’ Conferences & Centers (a national association of directors) now in its 12^th year, past editor of Aspen Anthology and past President of the Aspen Writers’ foundation.

His poems have appeared in many literary periodicals, including The Ontario Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Indiana Review, The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Kansas Quarterly, Crazyhorse, etc.

He is the editor of three annuals: The True Subject, Graywolf Press (1994), Writing it Down for James, Beacon Press (1995), and Facing the Lion, Beacon Press (1996) which gather outstanding lectures from writers’ conferences and festivals as part of the Writers on Life and Craft Series. He is also the editor of Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and their cars (1994), Verse & Univers: Poems about Science and Mathematics (1998), and co-editor with his wife, poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, of Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants & Bars (1997), all from Milkweed Editions. He is the editor of a new collection, The Measured Word: on Poetry & Science, from the University of Georgia Press in 2001.

He is the author of five chapbooks: The Lance & Rita Poems, which won the Sound Post Press competition in Columbia, Missouri (1994); Recension of the Biblical Watchdog, which won the Anamnesis Poetry Chapbook Competition (1997); A Voice in the Garden: Poems of Sandor Tádjèck published by beyond Baroque Literary/ Arts Center (1998); Mammal News, Pudding House Press (2000); and Fables from the Ark, which won the Woodland Press Poetry Chapbook Competition (2002).

His first full—length collection of poems, Return of the Prodigals, was published by Four Way Books in 1999. A second collection, More Things in Heaven and Earth, was published by Four Way books in 2002.

He teaches a graduate poetry workshop at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.