January Jumpstart XXV

Poetry Leader Lisa Coffman (CLOSED)

Poet and essayist Lisa Coffman grew up in East Tennessee and currently lives on California’s Central Coast. She has studied and worked in intensely different environments, all of which feed her writing–New York City, Philadelphia, and Bonn, Germany; the remote high desert of Deep Springs Valley; and the abandoned coal mining town of Glenmary, Tennessee. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Likely, which won Kent State University Press’s Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and Less Obvious Gods, with poems featured in Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and numerous anthologies. Coffman’s nonfiction articles have been published by Oxford American, BBC News, Village Voice, Philadelphia Inquirer and elsewhere. Her writing has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry.

Fiction Leader Robert Gipe (CLOSED)

Robert Gipe won the 2015 Weatherford Award for outstanding Appalachian novel for his first novel Trampoline. His second novel, Weedeater, was published in 2018. His third novel, Pop, was published in 2021. All three novels are published by Ohio University Press. In 2021, the trilogy won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award. From 1997 to 2018, Gipe directed the Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College Appalachian Program in Harlan. Gipe is founding producer of the Higher Ground community performance series, and has served as a script consultant for the Hulu series Dopesick and a producer on the feature film The Evening Hour. Gipe resides in Harlan County, Kentucky. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Registration Info

Registration fee: $150 (Includes coffee and tea before the morning sessions, and lunch Saturday)
Registration Deadline: December 29, 2024 OR UNTIL CLASSES ARE FULL
Hotel Rate: $84 + tax

Call Comfort Inn Oak Ridge at 865-481-8200, mention TMW/January Jumpstart or use our online booking link.