MFA in Writing Faculty

Benjamin Anastas's recent work as a literary journalist appears in the Oxford American, Travel + Leisure, Bookforum, and other magazines. 

Doug Bauer’s novels, essays, journalism, and anthologies have won wide praise for their stylistic precision, clarity, and ability to capture the texture and grit of American life.

April Bernard is a poet, novelist, and essayist. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry and the Stover Memorial Prize.

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark, which won the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award. 

Among Susan Cheever’s many works are Drinking in America and American Bloomsbury, biographies of E.E. Cummings and Louisa May Alcott, a biographical memoir of her father, John Cheever, five novels, and essays in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and a weekly column in Newsday.

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.

David Gates was for many years a staff writer for Newsweek. He has won the Guggenheim fellowship, and his books have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

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!

Amy Hempel is the award-winning author of Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. She was awarded the Yaddo Artist Medal in 2018.

Chelsea Hodson is the author of the book of essays Tonight I'm Someone Else and the chapbook Pity the Animal.

Dinah Lenney is author of the memoir Bigger Than Life and The Object Parade. In that most recent book, says one critic, “Lenney draws upon her experiences as a working actor and mother, offering a reflective and candid look at the connection between sentiment and necessity.”

Alice Mattison is the author of many critically acclaimed works of fiction. The New York Times describes her prose as “so crisp that along with all the pleasures of fiction she manages to deliver the particular intellectual satisfactions of an essay or a documentary.”

Jill McCorkle is the author of 10 books—four story collections and six novels—five of which have been selected as New York Times Notable Books. She is the winner of the New England Book Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature.

Deirdre McNamer is the author of four novels: Rima in the Weeds, One Sweet Quarrel, My Russian, and Red Rover (Viking, 2007). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications.

Craig Morgan Teicher is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Trembling Answers, which won the 2017 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born to an American father and Japanese mother. Her memoir, “Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye,” was a finalist for the 2016 PEN Open Book Award. American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartland (Graywolf) explores Mockett’s experience across “the divide,” and is a tribute to the complicated and nuanced history of the United States and its people.

Stuart Nadler is the author, most recently, of The Inseparables, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, and was a finalist for the Mark Twain Prize for the American Voice. He is the recipient of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation, and has had his work translated into five languages.

Derek Palacio is the author of the novella How to Shake the Other Man and the novel The Mortifications. 

Gregor Pardlo is the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His collection, Digest, was also shortlisted for that year's NAACP Image Award and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

Lynne Schwartz is the author of 25 books, including novels, short-story collections, nonfiction, poetry, and translations, which have garnered her National Book Award and PEN Award nominations and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA.

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 the novels The Story of Land and Sea, Free Men, and The Everlasting, which the New York Times named among the Top 10 Historical Fiction of 2020.

Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of a memoir and six poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle award in poetry. She was awarded an American Book Award for her memoir Bring Down the Little Birds and the Juniper Prize for Poetry for her collection Goodbye, Flicker.

Clifford Thompson's most recent book is What it Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues. It was selected by TIME Magazine as "one of the most anticipated books" of 2019. 

Peter Trachtenberg is the author of 7 Tattoos, The Book of Calamities, and Another Insane Devotion. His essays, journalism, and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, A Public Space, Bidoun, and The New York Times’ travel magazine.

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, is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2021.

Blanchfield is the author of three books of poetry and prose, most recently Proxies. A collection of essays—part cultural close reading, part dicey autobiography—Proxies was awarded a 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction, and was named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir and the PEN USA Literary Award in Nonfiction.