JAMES MERRILL HOUSE BOARD MEMBERS
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PENNY DUCKHAM
JMH Co-Chair | Programs
Penny Duckham is the executive director of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s media fellowships program. Penny previously worked in the private office of the President of the EEC in Brussels, and the Harkness family’s Commonwealth Fund in New York City. She was educated in England and graduated with a first-class honors degree in modern history at Lady Margaret Hall, at Oxford University.
JOHN GROTON
JMH Co-Chair
John Groton held senior positions in trade book publishing for over 40 years at Simon & Schuster, Random House, Globe Pequot Press, National Book Network and, most recently, the Quarto Publishing Group. His expertise focused primarily on sales & distribution, managing multi-channel sales teams, as well as developing business with smaller publishing houses through third-party distribution relationships.
CYNTHIA ELLIOTT
Development | Capital Campaign
Cynthia Elliott retired as President and CEO of Symphony Space, a performing arts center in New York City. Through her career, Cynthia worked in the private sector -- in marketing and business development -- and the non-profit sector -- in program development and fundraising. She was chair of Packer Collegiate Institute’s $20 million capital campaign, and subsequently chair of their board of trustees.
DENISE EASTON
Chair of Finance
Denise Easton is the founder of the Awareful Systems Group, a multidisciplinary consulting firm dedicated to addressing the complex and diverse challenges facing organizations. Her career began in banking before pivoting to technology and complexity science. Denise has served on numerous boards, including the Delaware Contemporary Arts Institute and the 92Y Harkness Dance Center. She currently serves as President and Chairman of the Board for the Plexus Institute. Denise holds a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, and a Human Systems Dynamics Professional (HSDP) certification from the HSD Institute in Minnesota.
SIBBY LYNCH
Archives, Collections, & Exhibitions
Sibby Lynch is the longest tenured member of the James Merrill House board. She grew up in Stonington and was a friend of James Merrill’s. She was the president of the Stonington Village Improvement Association when the James Merrill House was gifted to the SVIA. Sibby had the vision to preserve the top floors of the building for a writer’s residency, and oversaw this effort aided by the dozens of people who believed in the idea and knew how to make it happen.
JENNY DIXON
Archives, Collections, & Exhibitions
Jenny Dixon was Director of four New York City cultural organizations: The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, The Bronx Museum for the Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Public Art Fund. In January of 2018, Jenny retired from the Directorship of the Noguchi Museum after a 15-year tenure, assuming the role of Director Emeritus.
MEG LYONS
Building
Meg Lyons is an architect in private practice in Stonington with over 30 years of experience. Her work includes residential, commercial, institutional, and planning projects. She holds an undergraduate degree in architectural history from Wesleyan University and a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Meg has served on the boards of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum and the Stonington Historical Society.
BILL FOWLER
Finance | Building
Bill Fowler is semi-retired from a group of companies he co-founded in real estate development, property management and construction in New York City. He has had a lifelong interest in poetry.
LAURA MATHEWS
Communications | Programs
Laura Mathews began her publishing career as fact-checker and staff editor at The Atlantic Monthly, eventually becoming a senior editor at Condé Nast, Penguin Putnam, Martha Stewart Living, and the Hearst Corporation. She is a resident of Manhattan and Westerly, Rhode Island.
DAVID SCHULZ
Communications
David Schulz has worked as an art director and graphic designer for clients such as the Department of Energy (PNNL), the Michael Chekhov Association, the Walla Walla Foundry, and a host of consumer magazines such as UsWeekly and ArtForum. He has also produced photography- and text-based artworks that are collected by institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Beinecke Library at Yale University. He has also taught photography and graphic design at Pratt Institute and Whitman College. He is presently teaching and developing the media arts program at the New London Arts Magnet Program.
JOANNA SCOTT
Program | Communications
Joanna Scott is the author of twelve works of fiction, and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her novel, The Manikin, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her new collection, Excuse Me While I Disappear, is forthcoming from Little, Brown. She was in residence at the James Merrill House in the spring of 2019.
WILLARD SPIEGELMAN
Program | Communications
Willard Spiegelman is the Hughes Professor of English (Emeritus) at SMU in Dallas. Between 1984 and 2016 he was the editor-in-chief of the Southwest Review. A longtime contributor to the arts pages of The Wall Street Journal, he is also the author of a dozen books of essays and literary criticism.
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PAST CHAIRS
Randy Bean
Kathryn Nason Burchenal
Lynn Callahan
Cynthia Elliott
Bill Middleton
Ruth Saunders
Sally Wood
STAFF
KIM HUGHES James Merrill House Director
Kim Hughes joined us as Director in September 2023. After working as a speech language pathologist for over a decade, Kim made the switch to the nonprofit world and is glad to be here. As a writer and content coordinator for local print magazine Mystic Neighbors, Kim enjoys forging connections with community-minded individuals and organizations in Stonington and the surrounding area, where she and her family have resided since 2003. Kim values the collaborative role the JMH plays with other organizations and looks forward to deepening those ties.
SUPPORTING PROFESSIONALS
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BERGIN O'MALLEY Programs & Outreach Consultant
Bergin O’Malley is an independent professional who works with the JMH's Writers-in-Residence Program by facilitating the writers’ residencies, readings, online interviews, and connection to the Stonington community. Bergin graduated from Columbia University and has over twenty years of experience working in non-profit, political, grassroots and business environments. Bergin spent summers in Stonington while she lived in Brussels, London, New York, Mexico and Miami, but has happily called Stonington her full-time home since 2012.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
RACHEL CARLEY
Rachel Carley is an architectural historian, independent historic preservation consultant and publishing professional. She is the author of seven books, including Cuba: Four Hundred Years of Architectural Heritage, The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture; and Litchfield: The Making of a New England Town,winner of the 2012 Historic New England Book Prize.
DEBORAH GARRISON
Deborah Garrison is the author of A Working Girl Can’t Win: and Other Poems. For fifteen years, she worked on the editorial staff of The New Yorker and is now the poetry editor at Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. She earned a BA at Brown University and an MA in literature at New York University. She lives with her husband and three children in Montclair, New Jersey.
MARGARET GIBSON
Margaret Gibson is the reigning poet laureate for the State of Connecticut. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including Not Hearing the Wood Thrush; Broken Cup, a finalist for the 2016 Poets' Prize; The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Long Walks in the Afternoon, a Lamont Poetry Selection. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Connecticut.
DANIEL HALL
Daniel Hall is Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College, and author of three books of poetry, Hermit with Landscape, Strange Relation, and Under Sleep. The former was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets; the latter was a National Poetry Series. He has received awards and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whiting Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
LANGDON HAMMER, PH.D
Langdon Hammer is author of James Merrill: Life and Art, a critically acclaimed biography, published by Knopf in April 2015, and co-editor with Stephen Yenser of the forthcoming The Selected Letters of James Merrill. He received his BA and Ph.D. from Yale and joined the English Department faculty in 1987. His works include Hart Crane and Allen Tate: Janus-Faced Modernism, and he has edited the following publications for the Library of America: The Collected Poems of May Swenson (2013) and Hart Crane: Complete Poetry and Selected Letters (2006). As a former Guggenheim fellow, he has written about poetry for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Book Review, and the American Scholar, where he is the poetry editor.
DAVID LEEMING, PH.D.
David Leeming is author of the acclaimed biography James Baldwin: A Biography. Leeming served as both an on-camera witness and a scholar/advisor for Karen Thorsen’s award-winning film for PBS/American Masters, James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket. He received his BA in English from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. He is emeritus professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut. His books include Creation Myths of the World, Medusa: In the Mirror of Time, and a revised edition of The World of Myth (Oxford, 2014).
CHIP KIDD
Chip Kidd is a world-renowned graphic designer, known for his book covers. His most notable book cover design was for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel. USA Today has called him "the closest thing to a rock star" in graphic design, while author James Ellroy called him “the world's greatest book-jacket designer. He was the husband of the late J.D. (Sandy) McClatchy, James Merrill’s literary co-executor and founding James Merrill House advisor.
ROBIN MAGOWAN, PH.D.
Robin Magowan is a philanthropist and nephew of James Merrill. He received a B.A. from Harvard, M.A. from Columbia, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale. During the 1960s he taught at the University of Washington and the University of California at Berkeley. He is author of ten books of poetry and two collections of travel writing, And Other Voyages and Fabled Cities of Central Asia: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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PAUL MERRILL
Paul Merrill is a philanthropist and nephew of James Merrill. He is an Alternative Dispute Resolution Professional, and co-trainer at NVC (Non-Violent Communication) Boston. His NVC studies began in 2002 and he is a 2005 graduate of Bay NVC’s Leadership Program. Prior to moving back to Boston, he was a founding board member and co-trainer at Brooklyn NVC. In 2012, he co-facilitated Mediate Your Life’s East Coast immersion program at Essex MA.
LORRIE MOORE
Lorrie Moore is the Gertrude Conaway Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is author of three novels and four collections of stories as well as the editor of several anthologies. Moore has received honors for her work, among them the Irish Times International Prize for Literature, a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize and for the PEN/Faulkner. Her most recent collection, BARK, was shortlisted for The Story Prize, The Frank O'Connor Prize, and The Gregor Von Rezzori Prize. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005.
CARL PHILLIPS
Carl Phillips is an American poet and judge for the Yale Younger Poet Award. Phillips is Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, where Merrill’s papers reside. He was named the recipient of the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, given in memory of James Merrill. A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, his other honors include the Lambda Literary Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Award, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Academy of American Poets, for which he served as Chancellor from 2006-2012.
IVY POCHODA
Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and These Women. Wonder Valley won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and was a finalist Los Angeles Times Book Prize and Le Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine, as well as being chosen as an NPR and Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Visitation Street won the Prix Page America in France and was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, Amazon Best Book of 2013. Her books have been translated into five languages. She teaches creative writing at the Studio 526 Skid Row.
KATE RUSHIN
Kate Rushin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University and has taught at MIT and Wesleyan. She is the author of The Black Back-Ups and has received fellowships from The Cave Canem Foundation and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her work can be found in Callaloo and Norton’s New Worlds of Literature. She has received commissions from The International Festival of Arts and Ideas and The Hartford Public Library and serves on the Poetry Advisory Committee of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival at the Hill-Stead Museum.
BRUCE SNIDER
Poet Bruce Snider grew up in rural Indiana and attended Indiana University as an undergraduate. He earned an MFA in poetry and playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a James A. Michener Fellow. Snider’s collections, which draw on his midwestern upbringing, include The Year We Studied Women,winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and Paradise, Indiana, recipient of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize. He held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University and was a Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at George Washington University.
STEPHEN YENSER
Stephen Yenser is James Merrill’s literary co-executor, and a distinguished editor, critic, professor, and poet. He is the author of the poetry collections Stone Fruit, Blue Guide, and The Fire in All Things. A winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, he has also received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in Poetry and the Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry from the Paris Review. Yenser and the poet J.D. McClatchy co-edited James Merrill’s Collected Poems, Collected Novels and Plays of James Merrill, and The Changing Light at Sandover. Yenser is the author of several books of criticism, including Circle to Circle: The Poetry of Robert Lowell and The Consuming Myth: The Work of James Merrill,as well as the essay collection A Boundless Field: American Poetry at Large. He is co-editor with Langdon Hammer of The Selected Letters of James Merrill. He is an emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
