Daniel Gutstein

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Dan Gutstein, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1968, is an American writer who has published poetry, fiction shorts, fiction, drama, and memoir widely in literary magazines, and who has taught poetry and fiction writing, composition, and literature at George Washington University, University of Michigan, the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Md., and the Smithsonian Institution's Campus on the Mall program. Currently, he works at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he runs the Writing Studio and Learning Resource Center, which serves students who have disabilities^[1]. He has received grants and awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Md., Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the University of Michigan, where he earned an MFA in creative writing (poetry). In 1990, he graduated from the George Washington University with a B.A. in economics, and worked for the now-defunct accounting and consulting firm, Arthur Andersen & Co. He has held a number of other positions outside academia, serving an association of science museums as editor-in-chief, a major Washington, DC theatre as an educator, and a national news organization as Capitol Hill Reporter. He has also done farm work and taught taekwondo^[2].

Gutstein has studied with fiction writer, memoirist, and editor Faye Moskowitz, who he credits as being a mentor and a major early influence. He later studied with writers Thomas Lux, Richard Tillinghast, Alan Shapiro, and John Russell Brown, among others, and cites such writers from the Washington DC Poetry scene -- Mark Wallace, Rod Smith (poet), and Buck Downs -- as important later influences. Gutstein has cited the poet Paul Celan as being a major source of inspiration, and credits a number of American poets and fiction writers such as Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, Carolyn Forche, Lyn Hejinian, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, and James Baldwin, as favorites.