Creative Writing: Faculty & Visitors
William Rosenfeld directed the creative writing program from 1969 until the 1978 merger and continued in that role at Hamilton until 1995. Each year, Hamilton awards The William Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize in Creative Writing to a graduating senior whose portfolio of poetry, prose fiction or drama is selected by the faculty members in the English Department.
Michael Burkard and Tess Gallagher, who arrived on the Hill in 1975, shared a single faculty position.
Frontispiece of Instructions to the Double
Both published first books of poetry while teaching at Kirkland. Michael published In a White Light (L’Epervier Press, 1977), and Tess published Instructions to the Double (Graywolf Press, 1976).
The frontispiece of Tess’s book featured a drawing by Laura Battle (K’78), which was based on a photograph by Helen Morse (K’77).
Today, Tess and Michael are renowned poets, each having a slew of publications and honors between them. Tess’s most recent collection of poetry is Dear Ghosts, (Graywolf Press, 2006), and Michael recently published Envelope of Night: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1966-1990 (Nightboat Books, 2008). Michael currently teaches at Syracuse University.
Tess Gallagher (bottom left) in a workshop with the following students facing the camera, left to right: Dan D’Amelio (H’79), Jo Pitkin (K’78), Susanne Marcus (K’78), and Kevin McDonough (H’78).
Writers who taught at Kirkland included:
• Natalie Babbitt (children’s writing/illustrating)
• Carl Beier (poetry)
• Michael Burkard (poetry)
• Tess Gallagher (poetry)
• Naomi Lazard (poetry)
• Denise Levertov (poetry)
• Wallace Markfield (fiction)
• William Rosenfeld (fiction)
• Kathy Saltonstall Dewart (poetry)
Writers who read at Kirkland include:
| Poets | Novelists |
| Ciaran Carson | Frederick Buechner |
| Robert Creeley | Gail Godwin |
| David Ignatow | John Irving |
| Carolyn Kizer | Hilma Wolitzer |
| Thomas Lux | |
| Joseph Rosenblatt | |
| John Skoyles | |
| W.D. Snodgrass | |
| Ellen Bryant Voigt | |
| Michael Waters |
Back to Creative Writing main page
Read about “Red Weather” Kirkland’s Literary Magazine
Jo Pitkin K’78
Kirkland College 
Since this page is crowded, can we make the list of poets and novelists who read at Kirkland a sidebar and move the photo down a bit so it isn’t so close to the frontispiece?
Jo
I think so – this one was a little tricky, and we want people to see the links below as well. I’m trying to figure out whether we can create tables, to position items more easily. –JM
I appreciate all the effort that has been put into documenting the creative writing scene at Kirkland. I know that this site is devoted to Kirkland, but the remarkable and eccentric energies circulating in the writing classes at Kirkland benefited from the writers who were teaching at Hamilton. I am thinking of David Rigsbee and David Lehman who taught while I was at Kirkland. They were an important part of the larger writing scene even though they weren’t Kirkland-employed. And, like Tess and Michael, they were just out of graduate school (David may have still been a graduate student) and they contributed to the freshness of the writing scene.
Additions to the poets who read at Kirkland: John Ashbery!
Lawrence Raab.