Princemere Writers Series

The Princemere Writers Series brings emerging and established writers to Wenham, to read from campus stages, and to visit creative writing classrooms. Many of their names are below.

The 2024-25 and 2023-24 Princemere Writers Series were dedicated to creative writing professor Lori Ambacher, and featured writers who knew and worked with her.

Some of our Princemere writers include Lori Ambacher, MFA SUNY Binghamton and editor Wail! Magazine; C.B. Anderson, winner of the Mark Twain Award for short fiction; Sven Birkerts, editor of AGNI, author of The Gutenberg Elegies, NEA and Guggenheim winner; Jonathan Bennett Bonilla, MFA Warren Wilson, author of What Matter Who’s Speaking: Residue; Paul Borgman, author of Genesis: the Story of We Haven’t Heard; Daniel Bosch, winner of the Boston Review Poetry Prize, author of Crucible; John Canaday, author of The Invisible World, winner of the Walt Whitman Award; Gwen Carr, author of My Mother’s Machine and Stars and Songs; Brad Davis, winner of the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize; Peter Davison, poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly and author of The Fading Smile; Carol Dine, winner of the Frances Locke Memorial Poetry Award; Andre Dubus III, author of Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin; Rhina Espaillat, author of Lapsing to Grace and winner of awards from Poetry Society of America; Rachel Held Evans, author of Evolving in Monkey Town, Henry Ferrini, filmmaker, writer/director of Lowell Blues and Polis is This; Joshua Fishburn, MFA from Seattle Pacific and humanities teacher at the Waring School; Jonathan Fitzgerald, MFA University of Massachusetts Boston, author of Not Your Mother’s Morals; Ryan Flayerty, MFA University of New Hampshire, winner of the Lena Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series; Scott Frey, Tampa Poetry Prize winner for Heavy Metal Nursing; Anna Friedrich, author of Under the Terebinth; Erica Funkhouser, professor of poetry at MIT and winner of a Guggenheim; Alison Gerber, winner of the Frederick Buechner Award for Excellence in Writing; Julia Glass, National Book Award winner for Three Junes; Malcolm Guite, chaplain at Girton College, Cambridge, author of Waiting on the Word; Denise Frame Harlan, MFA Seattle Pacific, winner of the Duncan Eat/Write Fellowship; Matthew E. Henry, author of the Colored page and Teaching While Black; Sorina Higgins, award-winning author of Caduceus; Doug Holder, co-president of NEPC and author of Last Night at the Wursthaus; Pete Holmes, creator/star of “Crashing” and host of “You Made It Weird” podcast; Burl Horniachek, editor of To Heaven’s Rim; Joseph Hurka, author of Fields of Light and winner of the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award; Jean Janzen, author of Snake in the Pasonage; Bill Jolliff, poet-in-residence, George Fox University, author of The Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier; Jo Kadlecek, author of Fear: A Spiritual Navigation; Carolyn Kerr, MFA Goddard College; Nora Kirkham, author of Landing; Yalla Korwin, author of To Tell the Story; Fred Edson Lafortune, founder of Echo Culture, author of En nulle autre; John Leax, poet-in-residence, Houghton College, author of The Task of Adam; Klaus Luthardt, author of When Love Had a Face; Nick Maione, author of Infinite Arrivals, a National Poetry Series finalist; Paul Mariani, former chair of English at UMass Amherst and Boston College, NEA & Guggenheim winner; Thomas Mathe, MFA University of Vermont; Colleen Michaels, founder/director of The Improbable Places Poetry Tour; John Mirisola, M.F.A. from University of California, Riverside; January O’Neil, executive director of the Mass Poetry Festival, winner of the Paterson Award; Micheal O’Siadhail, author of The Gossamer Wall and winner of the Marten Toonder Prize for Literature; Peter Orner, MFA Iowa Writer’s Workshop, winner New York Times Editor’s Choice Book; Bryan Parys, MFA University of New Hampshire, author of Wake, Sleeper; Bill Pierce, senior editor of AGNI and winner of a Pushcart Prize for Crucibles; Robert Pinsky, two-term American Poet Laureate; Marko Pogačar, author of Pijavice nad Santa Cruzom and director of Goranovo proljeće poetry festival; Pilar Quintana, winner of the La Mar de Letras award; Stephen Riel, Massachusetts Cultural Council artist grant winner; Lisa Rosenberg, runner-up for the Yale Younger Series Award; Karen Halvorsen Schreck, author of All Are Welcome Here; J.D. Scrimgeour, winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction for Themes For English B; Ted Sider, author of Four Dimensionalism; Dan Sklar, author of Flying Cats (actually swooping) New and Selected Poems; Margaret Smith, author of Journal Keeper and The Holy Struggle; Pauline Stevick, author of Beyond the Plain and Simple; Katie Umans, MFA University of New Hampshire; Jeanne Murray Walker, author of Coming Into History, winner of PEW and NEA fellowships.