Literature Faculty

Benjamin Anastas has received support for his work as a novelist, literary journalist, and critic from the Lannan Foundation and the MacDowell Colony.


Franny Choi is a poet and essayist. Books include The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On and Soft Science, winner of the Elgin Award for Science Fiction Poetry.

Annabel Davis-Goff is a novelist, essayist, social justice advocate, and a driving force behind Bennington College’s Incarceration in America and Prison Education Initiatives.

The acclaimed poetry of Michael Dumanis weaves together memories of childhood, diaspora, and dislocation.

Anaïs Duplan '14 is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of upcoming book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), and a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020). He founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, a residency program for artists of color, at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One.

Marguerite Feitlowitz is the author of the internationally acclaimed A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture and four volumes of literary translation, many essays, fiction, and criticism.

Manuel Gonzales is the author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the John Gardner Prize for Fiction, and the novel The Regional Office is Under Attack!

In Camille Guthrie's fourth collection of poems, DIAMONDS, she writes about the trials and surprises of divorce, parenting, country life—and the difficulties and delights of being alone, looking at art, and falling in love.

Mark Wunderlich is author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, and his poems, interviews, reviews, and translations have appeared in journals such as Slate, The Paris Review, and Poetry, and in more than 30 anthologies. His most recent book, God Of Nothingness, was published by Graywolf in 2021.
Visiting Faculty

Bruna Dantas Lobato '15 is the author of the upcoming novel Blue Light Hours (Grove Atlantic, 2024) and translator of Stênio Gardel's The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press, 2023), shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature, among others.

Nicolette Polek '15 is the author of Bitter Water Opera (Graywolf Press, forthcoming April 2024) and Imaginary Museums (Soft Skull Press, 2020). She is a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and is currently based in New York.

Simonds is a poet and critic. She is the author of eight books of poetry and a novel. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine and elsewhere.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror.