“The faculty was excellent; they were the gems of the program.  It was a perfect balance of small group, large group, alone time and social time.  I learned so much in five short days and had so much fun.  I absolutely hope this institute happens every year.”
Debra Stulberg, 2007 Interlochen Writers Institute Participant


Artistic Director and Faculty: Anne-Marie Oomen 
Interlochen Arts Acedemy Instructor of Creative Writing

Anne-Marie Oomen is author of Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields, both Michigan Notable Books (Wayne State University Press); Uncoded Woman, a collection of poems (Milkweed Editions) and several chapbooks. She is represented in New Poems of the Third Coast:  Contemporary Michigan Poetry and edited Looking Over My Shoulder: Reflections on the Twentieth Century.  She has written many plays including the award-winning Northern Belles and Wives of An American King—based on the James Jesse Strang story.  She has served on the boards of Glen Arbor Art Association, Michigan Writers, Old Town Playhouse and Michigan Humanities Council.  She serves as Chair of Creative Writing at Interlochen Arts Academy and instructor for the Solstice Conference of Pine Manor College and several other national conferences. 

Faculty: Fleda Brown

Fleda Brown was born in Columbia, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She earned her Ph.D. in English (specialty in American Literature) from the University of Arkansas, and in 1978 she joined the faculty of the University of Delaware English Department.  While at the University of Delaware she founded the Poets in the Schools Program, which she directed for more than twelve years. Her books, essays and individual poems have won many awards. Her sixth collection of poems, Reunion (2007), was the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize from the University of Wisconsin. 

She has read and lectured in secondary schools, retirement communities, libraries, bookstores, a prison for delinquent adolescents, Rotary Clubs, AAUWs and many universities and colleges, from Oxford University, London, to small liberal arts colleges. She has slept in a bunkhouse and has read with cowboy poets in North Dakota, and she has read for the Governor of Delaware and for the Delaware Legislature. She served as poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-2007, when she retired from the University of Delaware and moved to Traverse City, Michigan. She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, and she spends summers with her husband, also a retired English professor, at their cottage on a small lake in northern Michigan. Between them, they have four children and ten grandchildren.

Faculty: Steve Amick

Guest Faculty: Michael Delp
Interlochen Arts Acedemy Instructor of Creative Writing

Mike Delp’s most recent book, The Last Good Water, was published in 2003. He lives on Green Lake and spends most of his time on the Boardman River at the Reeling Waters Lodge. For the past year he has been researching the link between shamanism and the language of the natural world. He is currently an instructor of creative writing at Interlochen Arts Academy and is also the director of the Reeling Waters Coalition dedicated to preserving Michigan Water.

B.A., Alma College; Additional studies, Western Michigan University and Central Michigan University. Articles and poems published in regional and national magazines. Twice winner of the Passages North/NEH Poetry Competition. Editor of Contemporary Michigan Poetry: Poems from the Third Coast, PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. Collection of Poems: Over the Graves of Horses, Under the Influence of Water, a volume of short stories, essays and poems, and The Coast of Nowhere, Meditations on Rivers, Lakes and Streams.

Reading by Jack Driscoll 
Interlochen Arts Acedemy Instructor of Creative Writing

Jack Driscoll is the author of four books of poems, a collection of short fiction and four novels. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, the AWP Short Fiction Award, the Barnes & Nobel Discovery of Great New Writers Award, the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award, seven PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards and a Library of Michigan Award. His work has appeared in over two hundred journals, among them Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review and Civilization. In addition to teaching at Interlochen Arts Academy, he serves on the faculty of Pacific University, where he teaches fiction workshops.