Brockport Writers Forum

A series readings and interviews started in 1967 at the State University of New York College at Brockport by English Department faculty member, fiction writer Gregory FitzGerald. Subsequent directors of the Forum include William Heyen, A. Poulin, Jr., Peter Marchant, Rodney Parshall, and Stan Rubin. The current co-directors are poet Ralph Black and fiction writer Anne Panning.

Over 200 authors have appeared at the Forum since its inception, including Archibald MacLeish, Robert Bly, James Dickey, Galway Kinnell, John Berryman, W.S. Merwin, W.D. Snodgrass, Joyce Carol Oates,Howard Nemerov, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, James Wright, Richard Wilbur, Anne Waldman, Billy Collins. Nearly all of the readings have been recorded, and all of the intereviews have been preserved on video, providing an invaluable educational resource.

The Forum also conducted a Summer Writer's Workshop for several years during the 1980s, and has also sponsored residencies, several symposia, and an annual Poetry Prize competition. It continues to offer the Art of Fact Award. A number of international authors have come to the Forum, including Bosnian writer Asmir Kujovic, Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky, Moroccan fiction writer Leila Abouzeid, and South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.

The presence of the Forum on the Brockport campus had a significant impact on direction of the English Department on both the undergraduate and graduate level. A Master of Arts in English with a creative writing dissertation was introduced in 1971, attracting many students who went on to establish national and international reputations in writing. Those who studied creative writing at Brockport include poet Li-Young Lee, poet and editor Michael Waters, novelist and non-fiction writer James Howard Kunstler, poet and publisher Antonio Vallone, and poet, editor and publisher Frank Judge.