The Lois Wilson Mackey '45 Distinguished Professorship of Creative Writing was established in the late 1980s by Willard Mackey '47, in honor of his late wife. Lois and Bill (as we call Mr. Mackey) first dated on December 7, 1941, when both were Beloit College freshmen. As they were leaving a restaurant in downtown Beloit, they learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Some months later Bill was overseas in the United States Marines, while Lois finished her degree at Beloit. Bill finished his two years later, after the war. He had a brilliant career in advertising. Lois loved literature and was an enthusiastic reader of same. Her memory, and Bill's dedication to the value of creativity, led to the founding of the Lois Mackey Distinguished Writers Program.

Mackey writers teach an advanced creative writing class at Beloit; they also give a public reading of their work. Many Beloit students have sharpened their creative writing through the influence of "Mackeys," as the Mackey professors are called; and Mackey public readings are among the most anticipated and best attended events on campus.

In the spring of 1999 the Mackey Program celebrated its tenth anniversary with a ceremony in the Beloit College Poetry Garden. Three Mackey professors, and Bill Mackey himself, spoke at this splendid, crowded event. An anthology of original writing by the Mackey professors, called Why They Write, is currently in preparation. From Professor Tom McBride's introduction: "Bill Mackey survived the battles of Okinawa, married Lois and became an advertising executive. Like the Mackey writers and like Einstein, he believes that more important than knowledge is imagination, and in that spirit endowed the Mackey program."

 Raymond Carver, 1988
Raymond Carver (1938-1988), probably the most influential American writer of short fiction since 1975. Carver brought a new realism to the American short story. Some of his stories, such as "Cathedral" (nominated for a 1984 Pulitzer Prize) and "A Small, Good Thing" are now established classics.
Tess Gallagher, 1989-1990
Tess Gallagher, noted writer of both poetry and short fiction, and one of the few writers equally acclaimed in both genres. She is also the literary executor of Raymond Carver, her late husband.
William Stafford, 1990-1991
William Stafford (1914-1993), one of the best-loved poets in the United States. His poem, "Traveling through the Dark," received a 1962 National Book Award, and is anthologized internationally. He also served as a consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress.
Ursula K. LeGuin, 1991-1992
Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the most celebrated writers of speculative fiction (Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed) in the United States. She was nominated for a Pulitzer in 1997 for "Unlocking the Air and Other Stories."
Rick Bass, 1992-1993
Rick Bass, whose nature-writing fiction has been called, by the famous critic George Plimpton, one of "tomorrow's classics."

Carolyn Kizer, 1993-1994
Carolyn Kizer, noted American poet and also winner of a Pulitzer Prize (1985, for Yin) for her verse, at once lovely and thoughtful. Kizer is a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Peter Matthiessen, 1994-1995
Peter Matthiessen, one of the most prolific American writers since World War II, who has excelled in fiction, travel writing and reportage alike. He is co-founder of The Paris Review, and received a 1979 National Book Award for The Snow Leopard.
Edward Hoagland, 1995-1996
Edward Hoagland, called by John Updike "The best living American essayist."
Denise Levertov, 1996-1997
Denise Levertov (1923-1997), perhaps the most influential woman poet in the United States since the 1940s.
Amy Hempel, 1997-1998
Amy Hempel, one of the most prominent of the new American "minimalist" writers.

Li-Young Lee, 1998-1999
Li-Young Lee, highly acclaimed young Asian-American poet and winner of many awards for his riveting autobiographical verse.

Ron Carlson, 1999-2000
Ron Carlson, whose "Bigfoot" stories were recently anthologized in the prestigious Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and whose novel, Plan B for the Middle Class, was called one of the best books of 1992 by The New York Times. Another novel, The News of the Word, received the same honor in 1987.
Bei Dao, 2000-2001
Bei Dao, prominent Chinese dissident poet and potential Nobel Prize winner.

Patricia Hampl, 2001-2002
Patricia Hampl is Regents' Professor and McKnight Distinguished Professor at the University of Minnesota where she teaches in the MFA program of the Department of English. Patricia Hampl's books include A Romantic Education, her memoir about her Czech heritage, and Virgin Time, a memoir about her Catholic upbringing and an inquiry into contemplative life. She also has two collections of poetry, Woman before an Aquarium, and Resort and Other Poems.

Pam Houston, 2002-2003
Ms. Houston is the author of two collections of short stories. Cowboys Are My Weakness, was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages. Waltzing the Cat won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her stories have been selected for Best American Short Stories of the Century, The O. Henry Awards, and The Pushcart Prize. A collection of autobiographical essays, A Little More About Me, was published in the fall of 1999. In 2001 she completed a stage play called "Tracking the Pleiades". Houston has edited a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry called Women on Hunting, and she is at work on a novel called Sighthound. Houston is a licensed river guide and a horsewoman. She is an associate professor in the writing program at U.C. Davis, and she appears on CBS Sunday Morning from time to time doing literary essays on the wilderness. She lives in Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
Billy Collins, 2003-2004
Collins was appointed as the 2001-2003 Library of Congress Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Collins has published seven books of poetry: Sailing Alone Around the Room (2002), Picnic, Lightning (1998), The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist, Questions About Angels (1991), a National Poetry Series selection by Edward Hirsch, The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988), Video Poems (1980), and Pokerface (1977). Collins' poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks, and a variety of periodicals including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Harper's, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. He also is Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years. He is also a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College and served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.
 

William Least Heat-Moon, 2005-2006
Heat-Moon is a travel writer whose Blue Highways (1982) spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.  His following works, PrairyErth (1999), and River Horse (2002)  created a trilogy that established him as one of AmericaÆs preeminent travelogists.  His  ôdeep mapö approach  is an intensively topographical method of writing a sense of place which interlaces the travel documentary with autobiography, archeology, folklore, memory, natural history, reportage and interviews.
  Robert Stone, 2006-2007
Stone has been called one of the best of the post Viet Nam fiction writers. His dark humor has been compared to Vonnegut and his psychological complexity to Conrad.
He won the national Book award for Dog Soldiers (1974) and the PEN Faulkner  prize for A Flag for Sunrise (1981). Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties (2007) is an autobiographical account of his association with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.
  Richard Bausch, 2007-2008
Fiction writer Richard Bausch is the author of over seventeen novels and short story collections, beginning with Real Presence (1980) and including Someone to Watch Over Me (1999)  Hello to the Cannibals (2002) Wives and Lovers (2004) and Thanksgiving Night (2006). In 2004 he won the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story.