MFA in Writing: Related Content
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.
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.