MFA in Writing Faculty

Photo of Eula Biss
Nonfiction

Eula Biss is the author of four books, most recently Having and Being Had. Her book On Immunity was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review. 

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Jai Chakrabarti
Fiction

Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World, and the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness.

email writing@bennington.edu
Image of Michael Dumanis
Director of Poetry at Bennington

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

email mdumanis@bennington.edu
Image of Monica Ferrell
Fiction/Poetry

Monica Ferrell is the author of three books of fiction and poetry, most recently the collection You Darling Thing (Four Way, 2018), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry.

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Carmen Giménez
Poetry

Carmen Giménez is Publisher and Director of Graywolf Press and author of six collections of poetry, including Be Recorder, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. 

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Saeed Jones
Nonfiction/Poetry

Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives and the poetry collections Prelude to Bruise and Alive at the End of the World. His poetry and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Oxford American, and GQ, among other publications.

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Dana Levin
Poetry

Dana Levin is the author of five books of poetry, including Now Do You Know Where You Are. She co-edited Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master. She has received honors from the NEA, PEN, the Library of Congress, as well as from the Whiting and Guggenheim Foundations.

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Randall Mann by Ryo Yamaguchi
Poetry

Randall is the author of six collections of poetry, including Deal: New and Selected Poems. He is also the author of a book of criticism, The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry.

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Sabrina Orah Mark by Sarah Baugh
Fiction/Nonfiction/Poetry

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections Tsim Tsum and The Babies, the story collection Wild Milk, and the essay collection Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales.

email writing@bennington.edu
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Nonfiction

Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of “Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye,” American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartland, and the forthcoming novel The Tree Doctor.

email writing@bennington.edu
Image of Stuart Nadler
Fiction

Stuart Nadler is the author of three novels and a short story collection. His new novel, Rooms for Vanishing, will be published early next year. 

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Obreht by Ilan Harel
Fiction

Téa Obreht is the author of the novels The Tiger’s Wife and Inland. She was the recipient of the Rona Jaffe fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors.

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Shawna Kay Rodenberg
Nonfiction

Shawna Kay Rodenberg is the author of the memoir Kin. She has been the recipient of a Jean Ritchie Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, and her essays have appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, and Elle

email writing@bennington.edu
Hugh Ryan
Nonfiction

Hugh (he/him) is a writer and curator. His first book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors' Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. His second book, The Women's House of Detention, explores the forgotten history of the maximum security prison that once dominated life in Greenwich Village.

email writing@bennington.edu
Katy Simpson Smith
Fiction

Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, and four novels, most recently The Weeds. She received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in New Orleans.

email writing@bennington.edu
Photo of Taymour Soomro by Jorge Monedero
Fiction

Taymour Soomro is the author of Other Names for Love and co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Color. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times and elsewhere. He has degrees from Cambridge University and Stanford Law School and a PhD in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. Photo by Jorge Monedero.

email writing@bennington.edu
Craig Morgan Teicher
Nonfiction/Poetry

Craig Morgan Teicher is the Director of Special Projects for the Writing Seminars and the author of four books of poetry, most recently Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey. He was a 2021 Guggenheim fellow.

email writing@bennington.edu
Image of Peter Trachtenberg
Nonfiction/Fiction

Peter Trachtenberg is the author of 7 Tattoos, The Book of Calamities, Another Insane Devotion, and the forthcoming The Last Artists in New York, as well of essays and short fiction published in The New Yorker, Harper's, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He's the recipient of Whiting and Guggenheim fellowships and the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction.

email writing@bennington.edu
call 802-440-4452
Image of Claire Vaye Watkins
Fiction
Claire Vaye Watkins was one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” and one of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists." She is the author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
email cvwatkins@bennington.edu
call 802-440-4452
Toya Wolfe
Fiction

Toya Wolfe earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. Last Summer on State Street is her debut novel.

email writing@bennington.edu
Mark Wunderlich
Executive Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars

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.

email mwunderlich@bennington.edu