MFA in Writing: Related Content

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.

De’Shawn Charles Winslow is the author of Decent People, and In West Mills, which was a Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner. His third novel will be published in 2026.

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.

’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut collection of stories, Ghostroots, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her debut novel, One Leg on Earth, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in May 2026.

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.

Lance Richardson is the author of two internationally acclaimed books, True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen (2025), and House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row (2018). He is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including a year-long residency at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.