Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing: The Bennington Writing Seminars

Core Faculty

Ed Ochester, Poetry

Ochester's books of poetry include The Land of Cockaigne (Story Line, 2001), Snow White Horses: Selected Poems 1973-1988 (Autumn House, 2000), Cooking in Key West (Adastra Press, 2000), Changing the Name to Ochester (Carnegie Mellon, 1988), Miracle Mile (Carnegie Mellon, 1984), and Dancing on the Edges of Knives (University of Missouri Press, 1973). He is the editor of the Pitt Poetry Series at the University of Pittsburgh Press, and he is also the general editor for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction at the press. With Peter Oresick, he edited The Pittsburgh Book of Contemporary American Poetry and, with Judith Vollmer, he edits the poetry magazine, 5 AM. Ochester has received fellowships in poetry from the NEA and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He received the George Garrett Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and the "Artist of the Year" award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a major cash award given annually to one established artist in Western Pennsylvania, selected from all fields. Educated at Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin, Ochester has taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and was for twenty years the director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. He lives, as he says, "in the sticks" outside Pittsburgh.

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