Drake University

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist. He was born in Maryville, Tennessee, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines,... Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont. In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested positive for HIV, which drastically changed Doty's writing. Roberts's death in 1994 inspired Doty to write Atlantis. Heaven's Coast: A Memoir also deals with this subject. In 1995, he was the first American poet to win the £10,000 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, for his book My Alexandria. The book was also a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the 1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Doty also received a 1994 Whiting Writers' Award. He has written twelve books of poetry and three memoirs. Firebird told the story of his childhood in the American South and in Arizona. Dog Years was a memoir of the lives of two of his dogs who Doty had while dealing with the death of his partner and the devastation of 9-11.
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Michael Emerson is an American actor who is perhaps best known for his roles as Benjamin Linus on Lost and fictional serial killer William Hinks in... The Practice. In 2011 he began co-starring in the CBS series Person of Interest as Harold Finch. Emerson was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and grew up in the nearby town of Toledo, where he attended South Tama County High School. In 1976, after graduating from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he studied theater and art, he moved to New York City. Unable to find acting work, he took retail jobs and worked as a freelance illustrator. In 1986, he moved with his first wife to Jacksonville, Florida. There, from 1986 to 1993, he appeared in local productions at Theater Jacksonville and The Players by the Sea and worked as a director and teacher at Flagler College. Emerson considered forgoing a career in acting in favor of a more stable vocation in teaching. He decided to instead further his studies with a Master of Fine Arts that might also introduce him to theatre professionals and directors in his chosen trade.
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Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has... won a Golden Globe Award and three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor. Piven was born in Manhattan, New York, but grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. He was raised in a Jewish household. He graduated from Evanston Township High School, and attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, as a teenager. He played the part of "Bernardo" in West Side Story there. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents, Byrne Piven and Joyce Piven, both of whom were actors and drama teachers. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and is a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop .
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