NYU Emerging Writers Series: Ilya Kaminsky, Mark Lawley, Brian Kalkbrenner, Saloni Meghani, and Ronnie Yates

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (TupeloPress, 2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine, and was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine.

After graduating from Dartmouth College, Mark Lawley worked in his mom's stripclub, in a bookstore, in a childcare center, and interned at several magazines. He is a first-year MFA student at NYU, teaches creative writing at Goldwater Hospital, and drives a mobile soup kitchen in Hunt's Point and the South Bronx for Coalition for the Homeless. His fiction has won the Grogan Hardy Prize in Literature and an honorable mention from Zoetrope: All-Story's 2006 Short Story Contest. He has recently finished a novel, entitled Strip Club of God, about the meth labs and inter-strip club warfare in an Oklahoma military town. He spends his free time dancing the Argentine tango, rock climbing, and teaching  . His girlfriend is amazing and can hip throw him really hard.

Brian Kalkbrenner was born and grew up Out West. He is an editor of Soft Targets.

A rental lease in Bombay lasts for 11 months. So since 1990, the yearshe moved to the city from her hometown of Jamshedpur, Saloni Meghani has compulsively changed something major about her life every11 months - job, career, house, city, relationship and, most importantly, her hairstyle. She digs Spider Solitaire.

Ronnie Yates is a poet from Houston, often tardy, always charming.