Poet and educator, Liam Rector, died on August 15, 2007. He was the founder and director of the Bennington Writing Seminars. His books of poems include The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago, 2006), American Prodigal (Story Line, 1994), and The Sorrow of Architecture (Dragon Gate, 1984). He co-edited with Tree Swenson On the Poetry of Frank Bidart: Fastening the Voice to the Page (University of Michigan, 2007), and edited The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall (Story Line, 1989). His essays and reviews appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Contemporary Poets, the Oxford Companion to Literature, and elsewhere. His awards included Guggenheim and NEA fellowships in poetry and the Friend to Writers Award from PEN/New England. He served as poetry editor of Harvard Magazine, and taught at Columbia University, The New School, George Mason University, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and elsewhere. Rector was the Executive Director of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), and he also administered literary programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. He worked as an advocate for freedom of speech and expression. He had an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MPA in administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.