Writing (MFA) Faculty
’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her debut collection of stories, Ghostroots (Norton, 2024), was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award in Fiction.
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.
Peter Cameron is the author of seven novels and three collections of stories. His short fiction and poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone, Grand Street, The New Republic, and The Yale Review. Photo by Orson Santos.
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.
Jennifer Chang's third book of poems, An Authentic Life, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Rachel Cohen is the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, which was published by FSG in 2020 to critical acclaim.
Garrard Conley is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Boy Erased and the novel All the World Beside, as well as the creator and co-producer of the podcast UnErased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America.
Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, A Seahorse Year, The Sky Below, Wonderland, and The Complicities; and the nonfiction books The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between and The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry.
The acclaimed poetry of Michael Dumanis weaves together memories of childhood, diaspora, and dislocation.
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.
Thomas Grattan is the author of the novels The Recent East and In Tongues, both published by MCD Books/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Samantha Hunt is the author of The Unwritten Book, essays about death and literature; The Seas about a girl who might be a mermaid; The Dark Dark, short fictions; Mr. Splitfoot, a ghost story; and The Invention of Everything Else about Nikola Tesla.
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions for You, as well as the novels The Great Believers (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal), The Borrower, and The Hundred-Year House, and the story collection Music for Wartime.
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.
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.
Dawn Lundy Martin, an American poet, essayist, and memoirist, is the author of five books of poems including Good Stock Strange Blood, winner of the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry.
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.
Emily Nemens is the author of the novels The Cactus League (2020) and the forthcoming Clutch. She spent a dozen years editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review, and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review.
Photo by James Emmerman.
Lance Richardson is the author of House of Nutter (2018) and True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, which will be published internationally in October 2025.
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.
Moriel Rothman-Zecher is the author of the novels Before All the World, which was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, and Sadness Is a White Bird, for which he received the National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' Honor, among other honors.
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.
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.
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.
Bianca Stone is a Vermont-based poet and scholar currently serving as Vermont’s poet laureate. Stone is the author of many books, including the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite, which received the 2022 Vermont Book Award; and The Near and Distant World, out from Tin House in January, 2026.
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, and his next book of poems will be published in 2026.
De'Shawn Charles Winslow is the author of Decent People, and In West Mills, which was a Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner.
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.