Sheryl Noethe is both Artistic Director and writer-in-residence for the Missoula Writing Collaborative. She is co-author of the teaching text Poetry Everywhere, reviewed in Kliatt and English Journal as an informative and tremendously valuable resource for teaching poetry, in its third printing. A recipient of a Montana Arts Council Fellowship, she also has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the CutBank Hugo Prize in Poetry, the Emerging Voices Award from New Rivers Press, a McKnight Prize for Literature, and an American Academy of Poetry Award, as well as an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize. She is a recipient of a 2004 Cultural Achievement Award from the Missoula Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, and she has published two collections of poetry, The Descent of Heaven Over the Lake (New Rivers Press, 1984) and Ghost Openings (Grace Court Press, 2000), which won a Northwest Publisher's Best Book Award. She is accomplished in teaching and using sign language.
Megan McNamer, Administrator for the Missoula Writing Collaborative, has degrees in music and ethnomusicology. She worked at a refugee resettlement center and taught World Music at the University of Montana before devoting her time to literary pursuits. Her essays have appeared in Sports Illustrated, Salon, the Sun, Northern Lights, Islands, and in several anthologies, and her film and theater reviews appear regularly in local newspapers.
Nina Alviar, Missoula Writing Collaborative Summer
Camp Director, lives in Missoula, Montana with her brilliant husband, Alex, and her beautiful son, Marquez. She is a writer, a natural birth and breastfeeding advocate, and a full time mother. When not lovingly arguing against (and eventually giving in to) Alex’s editing advice, she plays trains with Marquez and meditates.
