Deborah Paradez
Formalist Track Faculty
Deborah Paredez is the author of four books: the critical memoir American Diva (Norton 2024), the scholarly study Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke 2009) and the poetry collections This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002) and Year of the Dog (BOA Editions 2020), a New York Times Notable Poetry Book and winner of the 2020 Writers’ League of Texas Poetry Book Award. She is the co-founder of CantoMundo, a national organization dedicated to Latinx poets and poetry, and the chair of the MFA writing program at Columbia University.
More at: https://www.deborahparedez.com/
Kathy Fagan
Poetry Seminar Faculty
Kathy Fagan’s sixth poetry collection, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, is Bad Hobby (Milkweed Editions, 2022), available in print and audio. Her previous book, Sycamore (Milkweed, 2017), was a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Award. Fagan’s work has appeared in venues such as The Atlantic, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Poetry. Winner of the National Poetry Series, the Vassar Miller Prize, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, she is the recipient of NEA, Ingram Merrill, Greater Columbus Arts Council, and Ohio Arts Council grants, in addition to Frost Place and MacDowell residencies. Fagan co-founded the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, for which she served two terms as Director and over twenty years as Poetry Editor of The Journal. A Distinguished Professor of English, she teaches poetry and co-edits the annual The Journal/OSU Press Wheeler Poetry Prize Series.
More at: https://www.kathyfagan.net/
Patrick Donnelly
Program Director and Faculty
Patrick Donnelly, director of The Frost Place Poetry Seminar since 2011, is the author of five books of poems, most recently Willow Hammer (Four Way Books, 2025), and Little-Known Operas (Four Way Books, 2019). Gregory Orr wrote “everything he writes is suffused with tenderness and intelligence, lucidity and courage.” Donnelly has taught at Smith College, Colby College, the Lesley University MFA Program, The Frost Place, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and elsewhere. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. With his spouse Stephen D. Miller, Donnelly translates classical Japanese poetry and drama. Their translations in The Wind from Vulture Peak (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013) were awarded the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Donnelly’s other awards include a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and an Amy Clampitt Residency Award.