Mark Nowak

Mark Nowak, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow and 2015 Lannan Fellow, is an award-winning poet, social critic, and labor activist, whose writings include The New York Times 'Editor’s Choice', Shut Up Shut Down (2004, afterword by Amiri Baraka), and the acclaimed book on coal mining disasters in the US and China, Coal Mountain Elementary (2009), that Howard Zinn called “a stunning educational tool.” Nowak is also the founding director of the Worker Writers School at the PEN American Center in NYC.