Robert Hass was born in San Francisco. He attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California and received both an MA and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University.
His books of poetry include Time and Materials (Ecco Press, 2007), which won the 2007 National Book Award; Sun Under Wood: New Poems (1996); Human Wishes (1989); Praise (1979); and Field Guide (1973), which was selected by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series.
About Hass’s work, Kunitz wrote, “Reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. You scarcely know, until you feel the undertow tug at you, that you have entered into another element.”
Hass has also co-translated several volumes of poetry with Czeslaw Milosz, most recently Facing the River (1995), and is author or editor of several other collections of essays and translation, including The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (1994), and Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry (1984).
Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. In addition to writing poetry, criticism, and translations, Hass has increasingly involved himself in public life over the course of his career. He became a well-known spokesman for literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness. As U.S. Poet Laureate, he criss-crossed the country lecturing and working in what he has called “places where poets don’t go,” such as corporate boardrooms and civic groups.
Hass received the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. Currently, Robert Hass lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, poet Brenda Hillman and he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Asilomar 59: Main Speakers
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. Now living in Northern California with her partner Alix and her teenage son, Wolf Michael, she describes herself as a feminist, a working class story teller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet and a happily born-again Californian.
She was awarded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Allison says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. “It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change.” However, she admits, she would never have begun to publish her stories” if she hadn’t gotten over her prejudices, and started talking to her mother and sisters again.”
Allison received mainstream recognition with her novel Bastard Out of Carolina, (1992) a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. The novel won the Ferro Grumley prize, an ALA Award for Lesbian and Gay Writing, became a best seller, and an award-winning movie. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Cavedweller (1998) became a national bestseller, NY Times Notable book of the year, finalist for the Lillian Smith prize, and an ALA prize winner. Adapted for the stage by Kate Moira Ryan, the play was directed by Michael Greif, and featured music by Hedwig composer, Stephen Trask. In 2003, Lisa Cholendenko directed a movie version featuring Krya Sedwick.
The expanded edition of Trash (2002) included the prize winning short story, “Compassion” selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003.