MFA in Writing: Related Content
Lucy Murrell, an MFA student in poetry, has been selected to be the fifteenth Residential Teaching Fellow at Bennington Writing Seminars.
Marian Bull, an MFA student in fiction, has been selected to be the fourteenth Residential Teaching Fellow at Bennington Writing Seminars.
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Anna Gazmarian (MFA, ’20, Nonfiction) began work on what would become her debut, Devout: A Memoir of Doubt (Simone & Schuster, 2024), while she was a nonfiction student in the Bennington Writing Seminars. The book chronicles her struggles with bipolar disorder as a member of the Evangelical community, where prayer was posited as the only solution to mental health distress. I talked to Anna on the heels of her book tour. Among other things, we discuss writing, publishing, and going to church at the gym.
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Jason Sebastian Russo is currently studying fiction and poetry in the Writing Seminars as a dual-genre MFA candidate. He’s also the residential teaching fellow for the Spring term. But before he came to Bennington, he had a long and flourishing career in indie rock—he was a member of the legendary Mercury Rev as well as a number of other bands, including Hopewell, Guiding Light, and Pete International Airport. As he begins his semester on campus, he and I talked about how he found his way from the stage to the page, the differences between songs and poems, and the power and importance of teaching.
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Ten amazing writers have recently joined the Writing Seminars faculty, and we’re thrilled to introduce them. We asked them to tell us about the last thing they wrote, among other things. Read their answers, as well as some brilliant first sentences from their books and essays.
Etan Kerr-Finell, a fourth term MFA student in poetry, has been selected to be the eleventh Residential Teaching Fellow at Bennington Writing Seminars.
Sarah Zoric, an MFA student in fiction, has been selected to be the tenth Residential Teaching Fellow at Bennington Writing Seminars.
In 2022, undergraduate and Bennington Writing Seminars alumni and faculty published over 50 books. Their writing spanned a wide range of genres from nonfiction essays, memoirs, and biographies, to novels, poetry, young adult literature, and short stories.
Whether you’re looking for the perfect gift for a loved one or for yourself this holiday season (you deserve a ‘lil treat), we’ve rounded up a handy list of new and classic books written by the Bennington community to delight even the pickiest of readers.
Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member Eula Biss has been selected as a 2023 New America National Fellow.
Bennington College is pleased to announce the following promotions and staffing at the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Kim Cooper, an MFA student in fiction, has been selected to be the ninth Residential Teaching Fellow at Bennington Writing Seminars.
Mark Wunderlich, Director of Bennington Writing Seminars, faculty member Craig Morgan Teicher, and past faculty Paul Yoon, Ephraim Asili, Kaitlyn Greenidge, and Alexander Chee are recipients of the prestigious 2021 Guggenheim Fellowships.
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. He is the 2024-2025 artist-in-residence in the Media, Health and Medicine program at Harvard Medical School. His next book, Home Out There, a memoir, is forthcoming from Washington Square Press.
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Carole Maso is revered by readers and fellow writers for her boundary-breaking novels, including The Art Lover, AVA, and most recently, Mother & Child. She joined the faculty of the Writing Seminars this past June and, on the first day of residency, gave a remarkable lecture that set the mood for the whole ten days. We talked about that lecture and the relationship between a writer’s life and her work.
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.
Thomas Grattan is the author of the novels The Recent East and In Tongues, both published by MCD Books/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bruna Dantas Lobato is a writer and translator. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translated Literature for The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel. Originally from Natal, Brazil, she lives in Iowa and teaches at Grinnell College. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is out now from Grove Atlantic.
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.
Jennifer Chang's third book of poems, An Authentic Life, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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.
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.
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.
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.