Key Officers and Employees

Mikhail Iossel, CEO and Director. Mikhail Iossel was born in Leningrad, USSR, where he worked as an electromagnetic engineer and belonged to a circle of underground ("samizdat") writers, and emigrated to the United States in 1986. After receiving an MA degree in English/Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire, he was awarded a Wallace Stegner fellowship in fiction at Stanford University. He subsequently taught creative writing, both on the undergraduate and graduate levels, at the University of Minnesota, New York University, the New School, St. Lawrence University, Union College and currently is on the faculty of the Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) writing program. Numerous publications in samizdat magazines in the former Soviet Union. Author of Every Hunter Wants to Know, a collection of stories (W.W. Norton) and co-editor (with Jeff Parker) of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive, 2004). a book of essays. Stories published in literary magazines in the US and abroad, translated in several foreign languages, anthologized in Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. Recipient of the NEA (1993) and the Guggenheim Foundation fellowships (1999). Founder (in 1998) and executive director of the Summer Literary Seminars, Inc., program--one of the world's largest international literary conferences (St. Petersburg, Russia; Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya).

Jeff Parker, Chief Operations Officer and Russia Program Director. Jeff Parker s fiction, nonfiction, and hypermedia have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Ploughshares, Tin House, Hobart, The Iowa Review, and other publications. His novel Ovenman will be published by Tin House Books in Summer 2007, and his cycle of stories The Back of the Line in collaboration with artist William Powhida will be released by DECODE Art Publishers in the Fall. For his work in hypermedia, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001. He co-edited the essay collection Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive, 2004) with Mikhail Iossel. He has a BA in Journalism from the University of Florida and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and he is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University, where he directs the interdisciplinary MA program. He sits on the Boards of Directors for 826michigan and SixBillion.org. He has worked with SLS since 1999 and is the Russia Program Director and Chief Operations Officer. He lives in Ypsilanti and Toronto.

Thomas Burke, Program Advisor. Mr. Burke grew up outside Chicago and writes fiction and nonfiction. He received a BA from Union College and an MFA from UMASS Amherst. He has lived in Asia and Europe, and spent time in South America, Central America, and Africa . He teaches writing and lives in New York City.

Mariya Gusev, Staff. 2007 will be her fifth year with SLS. Ms. Gusev is an editor for St. Petersburg Review, and formerly an editor for The Literary Review (2004-2006). She has received her BFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and has taught writing there. Her translation work includes poems by Dana Gioia and Nancy Willard for BibliObraz Literary Festival in Moscow, and street interviews with William T. Vollmann for the Russian chapters in Poor People (2007). Most recently her poetry can be found in In Posse Review. She lives and works in NYC.

John Goldbach, Program Assistant. John received his MA from Concordia University in Montreal, where he lives.

Mike Spry, Programs Coordinator. Mike Spry lives in Montreal where he is the Managing Editor of Matrix magazine. He is a graduate of the Concordia University Creative Writing program, and the author of Jack (Snare Books, 2008).

Co-Directors