Keynote and Featured Speakers

Gregory Maguire is the author of six novels for adults and more than a dozen novels for children. His adult novels, all published by HarperCollins, are Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, A Lion Among Men, and Son of a Witch. Maguire has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships. He was artist in residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and has received fellowship residencies at Blue Mountain Center, New York; the Hambidge Center, Georgia; The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Vermont. Maguire received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Tufts University.

Robert J. Sternberg is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Psychology, and Adjunct Professor of Education at Tufts University. He is also Honorary Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. Prior to accepting his positions at Tufts, he was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Psychology, Professor of Management in the School of Management, and Director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise at Yale. Sternberg received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Sternberg has been listed in the APA Monitor on Psychology as one of the top 100 psychologists of the 20th century and is listed by the ISI as one of its most highly cited authors (top ½%) in psychology and psychiatry. Sternberg is the author of about 1,200 journal articles, book chapters, and books and has received over $20 million in government and other grants and contracts for his research. The central focus of his research is on intelligence, creativity, and wisdom, and he also has studied love and close relationships as well as hate.

Kay Ryan became the 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2008. In April 2009, the Library of Congress announced that Ryan would serve a second 1-year term extending through May 2010. Ryan received both a bachelor's and master's degree from UCLA. She spent her professional career teaching English at College of Marin in Kentfield, California, and writing poems. Known as a bit of a loner, Ryan writes poems that are famously short, clever, and thoughtful, and her collections have earned numerous awards, including a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and several Pushcart Prizes. Her books include The Niagra River (2005), Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983), Strangely Marked Metal (1985), Elephant Rocks (1996), and Say Uncle (2000).

C. Shawn Green received a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. With his Ph.D. advisor Daphne Bavelier, he focused his research on documenting the effects of action video game experience on perception and cognition and more generally on factors that promote effective learning and brain plasticity. He is currently a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the University of Minnesota, working with Daniel Kersten and Paul Schrater.