Conference Speakers and Directors

Javier Avila

Javier Avila

Javier Ávila is professor of English as well as a poet, novelist, and public speaker. Javier writes in both English and Spanish, and his work has earned him numerous awards, including his most recent honor as the recipient of the Cultural Arts Award given by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. In 2015, he was named Pennsylvania’s Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation. This award inspired Javier to take his classroom to the masses, using the power of poetry and storytelling to deliver a powerful message about unity and inclusion—and so, The Trouble with My Name was born. Trouble has been performed across the country since 2016, and its popularity inspired Javier to write two additional shows, The Perfect Latino and Standing Up, further cementing his reputation as a powerful voice of the American Latino experience.


Craig Atwood

Craig Atwood

Dr. Craig Atwood is the Charles D. Couch Professor of Moravian Theology and Director of the Center for Moravian Studies at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He previously taught at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and at Salem College, both in North Carolina. Craig has over 50 academic publications, including The Theology of the Czech Brethren from Hus to Comenius and Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem. He also edited three editions of the Handbook of Denominations in the United States. He is editor of the series Pietist, Moravian, and Anabaptist Studies published by Penn State University Press and is on the editorial board of Journal of Moravian History. Craig received his PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1995, his MDiv from Moravian Seminary, and his BA from UNC-Chapel 


Kelly Denton-Borhaug

Kelly Denton-Borhaug

Kelly Denton-Borhaug, PhD., is a professor at Moravian University in Global Religions and Peace and Justice Studies.  Not long after 9/11/2001, she began researching and writing about the role religion plays in the direct, structural and cultural violence of war and militarization of the United States and wider world.  Her attention turned to military moral injury about eight years ago, resulting in her most recent book, And Then Your Soul is Gone: Moral Injury and U.S. War-culture. She also has been collaborating with the Moral Injury Program based in the Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in recent years, and together with Chaplain Chris Antal, teaches a course, "Moral Injury: A Public Health Crisis" at Moravian University that is co-led by veteran graduates of the same program. 


Catherine Williams

Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams 

Catherine E. Williams is Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pa. Based on ethnographic work in her country of origin she has authored the chapter, “Trinidad & Tobago Preaching: The Gospel According to Calypso,” in the edited volume The Future Shape of Christian Proclamation: What the Global South Can Teach Us About Preaching (Cascade Books, 2020). Her research interests lie in the synergistic relationship between preaching and music. She claims this partnership as a homiletical method in her article, “Sermon and Song: A Musically Integrative Homiletic”, published in the Yale Journal of Music and Religion, Dec. 2021. Catherine is currently under contract with Cascade Books for her monograph, Preaching and Music: Powerful Partners in Proclamation. A classically trained pianist and vocalist, Catherine earned her Bachelor of Music degree in Church Music at Westminster Choir College, her Master of Divinity at Palmer Theological Seminary, and her Doctor of Philosophy in Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary. 


Joon Beom

Professor Joon-Beom Chu

Dr. Chu’s primary research interests and areas of expertise include law school socialization, criminal prosecutors and defendants, jury trials, and legal language. By adopting a holistic approach to the study of criminal legal processes grounded in local dynamics of poverty, segregation, and disenfranchisement, Dr. Chu’s research highlights the ways that legal actors mediate the embodied, symbolic, and material production and experiences of violence and suffering—setting the parameters of what counts as violence and who deserves protection from suffering.

 

 


Joyce Hinnefeld

Joyce Hinnefeld 

Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of two short story collections, Tell Me Everything and The Beauty of Their Youth, and two novels, In Hovering Flight and Stranger Here Below, along with other stories and essays. She is an Emerita Professor of English at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA, and the founder of the Moravian Writers’ Conference. She now works as a Program Facilitator for Shining Light, an organization that provides reentry-focused programming for incarcerated people throughout the U.S.

 

 

 


Mark Harris

Mark Harris

Mark Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and the author of the signature book on green burial, Grave Matters. A recipient of the Leadership Award from the Green Burial Council, an international nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable burial practices, he helped start the Lehigh Valley’s only natural cemetery, Green Meadow. Mark is an adjunct professor of writing at Moravian University and the faculty advisor to the student-run newspaper, The Comenian.

 

 

 


No River Twice

No River Twice

No River Twice is a group of published poets who offer poetry readings in which the audience and poets actively interact to decide the direction of the performance, co-creating a reading that is never the same twice. NRT's mission is to connect audiences to poetry readings in meaningful and playful ways that surprise, move, and delight and to promote an important communal experience. 

The poets reading at this event will include Grant Clauser, Joanne Leva, Lynn Levin and the following:

Chad Frame is the author of Little Black Book (2022, Finishing Line Press), Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program, a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, PA, Poetry Editor of Ovunque Siamo, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival and Retreat. 

Liz Gray, appearing as Liz Chang, has published four books of poetry. Her most recent collection is entitled Museum of Things from Finishing Line Press (2023). 

Hayden Saunier is the author of A Cartography of Home and four other collections of poetry. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and the Pablo Neruda Prize. She is the founder/director of No River Twice. 


Kate Brandes

Kate Brandes

Conference Co-Director

Kate Brandes is a writer who's also worked as a geologist and environmental scientist for more than twenty years. She's published one novel, The Promise of Pierson Orchard (2017). Her second novel, Stone Creek, will be out in 2024. Kate writes about rural places and small-town dynamics with underlying environmental themes. She teaches geology and writing at Moravian University.

 

 


Liz Gray

Liz Gray

Conference Co-Director

Photograph by Adrianne Mathiowetz

Liz Chang was 2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate in Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Exit 7, Rock & Sling, Origins Journal, Breakwater Review and Stoneboat Literary Journal, among others. Her fourth collection, a chapbook called Museum of Things, from Finishing Line Press was published in early 2023. Her creative nonfiction recently appeared in Oyster River Pages, and her flash fiction has been published internationally. Chang’s translation of Claude de Burine’s work is anthologized in Paris in Our View from l’Association des Amis de Shakespeare & Company. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Moravian University (as Liz Gray).

 


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