Mark Nowak is the author of Shut Up Shut Down and Coal Mountain Elementary. He is a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism from Split This Rock (2015), and a Lannan Literary Fellow (2015). A native of Buffalo, Nowak currently directs both the MFA Program at Manhattanville College and the Worker Writers School at PEN American Center.