BIOGRAPHY

Valen (or just plain V)

Part 1

Benjamin was born in Oklahoma City and has lived in Minnesota, Indiana, England, Ohio, and Nebraska. He has a B.F.A. from the University of Evansville, an M.F.A. from The Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in poetry and creative nonfiction (double dissertation) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has received several awards for his writing, inluding the Louise VanSickle Fellowship, the Frederick A. Stuff Dissertation Fellowship, the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, and a grant from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund. As an instructor, Benjamin was nominated by a student for the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, sponsored by the Arts and Sciences Student Advisory Board at UNL.

Benjamin's poetry manuscript Afterimage--which is based on family photographs from the last two centuries--has been a finalist or semi finalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, the Cleveland State University Book Prize, and the Tupelo Press First Book Award. Morning Glory: A Story of Family and Culture in the Garden, is his hybrid memoir manuscript that unearths a family's hidden history of physical abuse through the author's childhood experiences gardening with his mother. By exploring garden design and history across cultures, as well as religious, philosphical, and environmental beliefs the world over, Morning Glory proposes that the answers to ending our violence toward each other may rest in ending our violence toward the planet, and vice versa.

Benjamin's poems and creative nonfiction have both been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, Diagram, Fugue, Hayden's Ferry Review, ISLE, Puerto del Sol, Sou'wester, Subtropics, and Verse Daily, as well as several anthologies including Red, White, and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America (University of Iowa Press). A poetry chapbook, Indelible Marks, is available from Pudding House (www.puddinghouse.com). Benjamin is currently a lecturer at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where he tends to his 2,000 square foot garden full of native midwestern plants. Check out the CV for much more detailed excitement.

Part 2

Two fish in a tank, one says to the other, "Know how to drive this thing?"

The difference between beer nuts and deer nuts: beer nuts are $1.29, deer nuts are under a buck.

What's the difference between a writer (or any artist) and a large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.

Why is the tomato red? Because it saw the salad dressing.

Olie and Sven are on their way back from a fishing trip in Canada where they caught only three fish. Olie comments to Sven, "Way I figure it, each fish cost us $400." Sven replies, "It's a good thing we didn't catch any more."

Olie and Sven are duck hunting. Olie asks, "Why aren't we getting any?" Sven replies, "Maybe we aren't throwing the dog high enough."

Olie is walking by Sven's house one Saturday afternoon and notices a sign out front that reads "Boat For Sale." Olie hollers to Sven, "Ey der Olie, ya' don't have a boat. All ya' got is a lawnmower and snowmobile." Sven replies, "Yep. Der boat for sale." (Insert Minnesota-ese as appropriate)

How do you circumcise a whale? Send down four skin divers.

What does a one-legged ballerina wear? A one-one.

A guy walks into an antiques store and asks, “What’s new?”

What’s the worst thing about elephant hunting? Carrying the decoys.

Never go to a doctor whose waiting room plants are dead.

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft? A flat miner.

-- from The Prairie Home Companion's annual joke show on National Public Radio

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