Life Above Water

While he is best known for his appearance on ABC-TV¿s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Doug Van Gundy has been writing poems since he was five years old and leading poetry and writing workshops for the past ten years. His poems are rooted in his West Virginia heritage while retaining a wide appeal, never veering into the provincial. Doug has presented papers at national conferences, taught composition to inmates and college freshmen, helped high school teachers integrate writing into their classrooms, led creative writing weekends for university students and worked with poets from ages 5 to 75. He also organized and hosted the now defunct Augusta Poets Gathering. His work has been published in numerous regional literary magazines and has won prizes in both the Eve of Saint Agnes and Lullwater Review competitions. His poems have been included in the anthologies xconnect: Writers of the Information Age, and Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry. Additionally, he has appeared on Grace Caveleri¿s The Poet and the Poem program on Pacifica radio. A portion of one of his poems has appeared in an ad for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Doug is a tireless teacher of and advocate for poetry. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in poetry from Goddard College in Vermont. In addition, Doug is a well-known musician and performs and teaches the traditional music of West Virginia on the fiddle and banjo throughout the eastern US and Canada. He is a member of the old-time string duo Born Old.Van Gundy, Doug is the author of 'Life Above Water ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781597094313 and ISBN 1597094315.