Doug Hesse

Doug Hesse is founding Executive Director of the Writing Program at the University of Denver and Professor of English.  Currently he serves as President of the National Council of Teachers of English.  He is author of over 65 essays and co-author of four books, including Creating Nonfiction, co-authored with the writer Becky Bradway (Bedford/St. Martin's) and the Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers.  He's presented over 130 readings, talks, and conference papers, more than 35 of them as keynote speaker. His scholarly interests are creative nonfiction, writing pedagogy, the organization of writing programs, and national literacy efforts. The DU Writing Program has received the prestigious CCCC Certificate of Excellence. The University of Denver has named him University Distinguished Scholar, and in 2015, the Monterey Young Rhetoricians Conference named him Rhetorician of the Year.  Hesse was founding coordinator of the Norman Mailer/NCTE National High School and College Writing Awards in Creative Nonfiction. A former Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), former President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, former editor of WPA: Writing Program Administration, and former chair the Executive Committee of the MLA Division on Teaching as a Profession, Hesse previously taught at Illinois State University.  At Illinois State, where he received the university's Outstanding Researcher Award and the Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award, he directed the Honors Program, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, the graduate program in English studies, and the writing program.  Hesse was happily educated in rural Iowa schools. His PhD is from The University of Iowa, where he wrote and wrote about nonfiction. He sings semi-professionally with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus and enjoys hiking and photography. He's married to a writer and has three grown children, two of them successful journalists, one of them a successful cellist.