MFA in Writing: Related Content
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.
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.
Craig Morgan Teicher is the Director of Special Projects for the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches poetry and nonfiction in the program. He is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey. He was a 2021 Guggenheim fellow. His latest book of poems is August, September, October.
Thomas Grattan is the author of the novels The Recent East and In Tongues. The Recent East was a New York Times editor’s choice, nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize. In Tongues was nominated for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.
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.
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.
Moriel Rothman-Zecher is the author of the novels Before All the World (FSG), which was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, and Sadness Is a White Bird (Atria Books), for which Rothman-Zecher received the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” Honor, and the poetry collection I Still Won't Have Known, which is forthcoming from BOA Editions. Photo by Laurence Kesterson.
Jennifer Chang's third book of poems, An Authentic Life, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She most recently taught in the MFA in the Summer 2025 term.
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. Martin most recently taught in the MFA in the Summer 2025 term.
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.
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.