MFA in Writing: Related Content
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. She is on leave for the current term.
Paul Lisicky is the author of seven books including Song So Wild and Blue, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, The Narrow Door, and Unbuilt Projects.
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.
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. She most recently taught in the MFA in the Summer 2025 term.
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.
Emily Nemens is the author of the novels Clutch (Tin House/Zando, 2026), and The Cactus League (FSG, 2020), both of which were NYT Book Review Editor's Choice selections. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, Story, Zyzzyva, n+1, and elsewhere. Nemens spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading the Paris Review, and serving as coeditor of the Southern Review.
Photo by James Emmerman.
Devon Walker-Figueroa is originally from Kings Valley, Oregon. She is the author of Lazarus Species (Milkweed Editions, 2025), a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize in Poetry, and Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021), a National Poetry Series winner.
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. She most recently taught in the MFA in the Summer 2025 term.
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.
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.
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.
Garrard Conley is the author of the memoir Boy Erased (Riverhead/Penguin, 2016), a New York Times bestseller adapted into a major motion picture, and the novel All the World Beside (Riverhead/Penguin, 2024).
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. She is on leave for the current term.
’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.
Lance Richardson is the author of two internationally acclaimed books, True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen (2025), which was a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row (2018), which is being adapted for television by a major studio. He is the recipient of several other awards and fellowships, including a year-long residency at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
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. She most recently taught in the MFA in the Summer 2025 term.
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.