Vermont Studio Center Welcomes Nicholas Delbanco to the Board of Trustees
The Trustees and Directors of the Vermont Studio Center are honored to welcome Nicholas Delbanco, award-winning author of more than twenty-five books of fiction and nonfiction, to the VSC Board of Trustees, effective September 2011. Delbanco’s distinguished career has been characterized by multivalent engagement with the literature, art, and music worlds in North America and Europe, and the board plans to tap this experience for initiatives including the Development Committee and the International Program.
Currently, the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, Director of the Hopwood Awards, and Chair of the Hopwood Committee, Delbanco has been a University of Michigan faculty member since 1985 and was the Director of the MFA Program there for nearly twenty years. During his tenure at the University of Michigan, he has been instrumental in positioning the Program in Creative Writing as one of the country’s most important. Previously, he served on the faculties of Bennington, Skidmore, Trinity, and Williams colleges, and he was the co-founder, with the late John Gardner, of the Bennington Writing Workshops and the founder of the Bennington low-residency MFA Program in Writing.
Delbanco has served as judge for, among others, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and he was Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards. His own awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. His most recent novels include Sherbrookes, The Count of Concord, and Spring and Fall, and his most recent works of non-fiction include Lastingness: The Art of Old Age, The Countess of Stanlein Restored, and The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life. As editor he has compiled the work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud. With VSC visiting writer, Alan Cheuse, Delbanco co-edited a three-volume introduction to literature for McGraw-Hill entitled Literature: Craft and Voice.
Born in London, England at the height of the German blitz, Delbanco immigrated to the US with his family when he was a small child and was later educated at Harvard and Columbia universities. Though now firmly anchored in the United States, he continues to draw inspiration and sustenance from two continents and many cultures and, in turn, to inspire and sustain a diverse collection of readers and generations of writers. Delbanco was a Visiting Writer at VSC this year during the July session, and the Vermont Studio Center looks forward to profiting from Delbanco’s mix of vision, experience, and generous spirit during his tenure on the Board of Trustees.
