Faculty Bios

Max Regan, MFA

Max is a teacher, an internationally published poet and writer, and the founder of Hollowdeck Press, LLC. He has taught poetry, prose and creative writing to various groups for the past 15 years. Max has worked as a journalist for publications around the country, and has taught and lectured at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Rose Medical Center and Naropa University.

His work has been published in numerous literary journals, magazines and anthologies and has been translated into Czech, Spanish, French, German and Japanese. His newest anthology, Take, was released in July of 2005. Max has designed and taught creative writing classes for national and international arts conferences, as well as teaching annually across the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.

Max served for over a decade as the Director of the Naropa Summer Writing Program and he is the founder and faculty advisor of Naropa University's Study Abroad Semester in Prague.

Lisa Birman, MFA
Lisa is a poet, an internationally published writer and a native of Melbourne, Australia. She has been teaching writing for the past eight years in the United States, Australia and the Czech Republic. Lisa is co-editor of the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action, and has published several volumes of poetry, including O–A Conversation and deportation poems. Her work has appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter, 26, admit2, and sub-scribe.

Lisa is the Director of the Naropa University Summer Writing Program, a member of the Core Faculty for Naropa’s study abroad semester in Prague and a co-founder of Movie Star Press. Lisa also works as a freelance proofreader and book editor for works of poetry and prose.

Claudia Wyrick, MD, MFA
Claudia counts her passport as one of her favorite books. Traveler, poet, cook, crone, wife, mom and grandmother are just a few of her personas. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines such as Bombay Gin and Sliding Uteri and she has published a chapbook, Off the Edge. Claudia works in Denver, Colorado as a physician and is passionate about caring for those at the end of their lives.

She has traveled to Nepal to work in a health clinic, studied spiritual healing in Belize and sits on the board of International Midwife Assistance, a Boulder-based organization committed to raising the standard of maternal child healthcare in the developing world. Claudia received her MFA from Naropa University in Writing and Poetics in 2005.