Poetry Faculty
Last year’s information below. Sign up for our email list to receive updates for the 2025 conference.
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The Winter Getaway is well known for its challenging and supportive workshops led by accomplished writers and artists. Get to know our poetry faculty by reading some of their work online, and then working with them in January.
Facilitator
Peter E. Murphy
Peter E. Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a nightclub and drove a taxi. He is the author of eleven books and chapbooks of poetry and prose including two books of writing prompts. More than a dozen excerpts of his forthcoming memoir, Once Upon a Time You Lived in a Castle, have been published as standalone pieces in journals, including “Looking for Thelma,” winner of the 2018 Wilt Nonfiction Chapbook Prize and “Storming the Castle,” winner of the 2019 First Chapter Memoir Prize sponsored by Arch Street Press. The founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University, Peter has received dozens of awards and fellowships and has led hundreds of workshops for writers and teachers. Read a poem by Peter and learn more on his website.
Peter will facilitate Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop.
Poetry Faculty
Grisel Y. Acosta
Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta (she/they) is a full professor at the City University of New York-BCC, where they teach Latinx literature and creative writing. Her book, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere (Get Fresh, 2021), was a 2020 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist. They are the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019), featuring over 30 Latina contributors. Select work is in Best American Poetry, The Baffler, Platform Review, Kweli Journal and Acentos Review. Grisel is the Creative Writing Editor at Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, a Macondo Fellow, a VONA alum and a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet. Current projects include Spanish translations for the Bronx Museum, a Mellon Foundation-funded oral history project on Latinos in Chicago and her latest manuscript, titled Wild. Read a poem by Grisel.
Grisel will lead Taking the Fear Out of Form: A Poetry Workshop.
celeste doaks
celeste doaks is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields, and editor of the poetry anthology Not Without Our Laughter. Her chapbook, American Herstory, was Backbone Press’s first-place winner in 2018. Herstory contains poems about the artwork former First Lady Michelle Obama chose for the White House. celeste is a Carolina African American Writers’ Collective (CAAWC) member and has received fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Atlantic Center of the Arts, Community of Writers Squaw Valley and the Fine Arts Work Center. A professor for over a decade, her poems, reviews and cultural essays have appeared in multiple US and UK online and print publications including Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, The Millions, Huffington Post, Chicago Quarterly Review, Obsidian: Literature Magazine, The Hopkins Review, Asheville Poetry Review and others. Read poems by celeste and visit her website.
celeste will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
Catherine Doty
Catherine Doty is a poet, cartoonist and educator living in Boonton, New Jersey, and the author of Wonderama (winner of the 2022 Paterson Poetry Prize) and Momentum, volumes of poems from CavanKerry Press. She is the recipient of Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has taught poetry for many years in many, many places. Visit her website and read poems by Catherine.
Catherine will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
R.G. Evans
R.G. Evans’ debut collection of original songs, Sweet Old Life, was released in 2018. His original music has been featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller. He has performed his songs at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, in Los Angeles for RATTLE magazine, at the Smithsonian Institution and all over the state of New Jersey. Also a poet, Evans’ books include Overtipping the Ferryman, The Holy Both and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. He teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Learn more on his website and YouTube channel.
R.G. will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Hitting the Right Note: A Songwriting Workshop.
Luray Gross
Luray Gross, storyteller and writer, is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Lift from Ragged Sky Press. Her love of the spoken and written word began during her childhood on a busy dairy farm in Pennsylvania. She was the recipient of a Fellowship in Poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and named one of their Distinguished Teaching Artists. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County, PA, and resident faculty at the Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, NH. Her poem, “The Perfection of Zero,” was featured by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project. Known for her engaging teaching style, she has worked with thousands of students ranging in age from three to eighty-three. Read a poem by Luray.
Luray will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
Le Hinton
Le Hinton, poet and teacher, is the author of seven collections, including Elegies for an Empire (2023) and Sing Silence (2018), both from Iris G. Press. His work has been widely published and can be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, the Baltimore Review, the Skinny Poetry Journal, the Progressive Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, the Summerset Review and elsewhere. His poems have received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize. His poem “Epidemic” won the Baltimore Review’s 2013 Winter Writers Contest. In 2014 it was honored by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, and in 2021 it was featured on the WPSU program, “Poetry Moment.” His poem “Our Ballpark” can be found outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, PA, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.
Le will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
Nancy Reddy
Nancy Reddy is the author of the poetry collections Pocket Universe and Double Jinx and co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her first book of narrative nonfiction, The Good Mother Myth, is forthcoming with St. Martin’s Press. Her essays have appeared in Slate, Poets & Writers, Romper, The Millions and elsewhere. The recipient of grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, she teaches writing at Stockton University and writes the newsletter Write More, Be Less Careful. Visit her website and read a poem by Nancy.
Nancy will co-host the Publishing Chat, as well as lead Tutorials in Poetry and Prose and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
Christine E. Salvatore
Christine E. Salvatore received an MFA from The University of New Orleans where she taught in its undergraduate college as well as at Tulane University. She is a thesis advisor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, and teaches literature and writing in the MFA Program at Rosemont College, Stockton University and at a public high school in South Jersey. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including [Pank], The Cortland Review, Diode, The Literary Review, Mead Journal, The Southeast Review and elsewhere. Her work is also included in the craft book More Challenges for the Delusional and is featured in the art book Mother Monument by Holly Trostle Brigham and Maryanne Miller. Learn more on her website and read poems by Christine.
Christine will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
J. C. Todd
J. C. Todd is author of five books of poetry, including Beyond Repair (2021), a special selection in the Able Muse Press Book Award, and The Damages of Morning (Moonstone Press, 2018), a finalist for a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award. A commended winner of the 2021 National Competition of the Poetry Society of the UK and the winner of the 2016 Rita Dove Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Gargoyle, One Art, Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and other journals. J. C. has been a Fellow of the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and arts residency programs including Ucross and Ragdale. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Program at Rosemont College and is a Dodge Poet. Read a poem by J. C. and learn more on her website.
J. C. will lead Tutorials in Poetry and Poetry Incubator: A Generative Writing Workshop sessions.
Vincent Toro
Vincent Toro is a Puerto Rican poet, playwright and professor. He is the author of two poetry collections: Tertulia (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Stereo.Island.Mosaic. (Ahsahta, 2016), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Vincent is a recipient of the Caribbean Writer’s Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize, the Spanish Repertory Theater’s Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award, a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellowship, a New York Council for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and a New Jersey State Council for the Arts Fellowship. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Rider University, a Dodge Foundation Poet and a contributing editor for Kweli Literary Journal. His third poetry book, HIVESTRUCK, is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in 2024. Read a poem by Vincent.
Vincent will lead Serious Play: A Poetry Workshop.
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