Writing (MFA): Related Content
NPR's Selected Shorts aired a reading of Megan Mayhew Bergman's story "Hell Diving Women" from her collection Almost Famous Women. Anika Noni Rose (Dream Girls, Raisin in the Sun) read it.
Sarai Walker, a graduate of the MFA Program at Bennington College, spoke with Scott Simon about her novel Dietland.
MFA core faculty member Alexander Chee spoke with Alison Kinney of the LA Review of Books about his novel, Queen of the Night.
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (MFA) spoke with Vulture about the inspriation and process behind her debut novel, The Nest. The interview is titled: A First-Time Novelist’s 7-Figure Midlife Breakthrough.
Alexander Chee's latest novel, The Queen of the Night, is being greeted with enthusiastic praise on the heels of its February 2 release. Chee is a faculty member in the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College.
Bennington alumni play a starring role in The Millions’ list of Most Anticipated Books of 2016, which includes works by Hannah Tennant-Moore MFA ’10, Sara Majka MFA ’09, Cynthia Sweeney MFA ’13, and Charles Bock MFA ’97, as well as faculty member Alexander Chee.
Megan Mayhew Bergman MFA ’10, associate director of the MFA in Writing program, published an essay in The Wall Street Journal about her recent experience in northern Kenya as a guest researcher with the BOMA Project.
A poem by Nathalie Handal MFA ’02, Lady Liberty, is featured in posters for the Poetry in Motion® series offered by the MTA in New York City, which serves poetry to seven million commuters daily.
A new book by Sven Birkerts, director of the MFA in Writing Program at Bennington College, has been garnering attention in advance of its October 6 publication date.
A new book by Sven Birkerts, director of the MFA in Writing Program at Bennington College, is receiving warm attention. Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, published by Grey Wolf Press, which focuses on the effect of digital culture on our ability to engage with our world, and the fate of writing in such a context, has been reviewed in the Chronicle for Higher Education, New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review.
Megan Mayhew Bergman (MFAW '10) has been appointed associate director of the MFA in Writing Program at Bennington College. She is the author of two critically acclaimed works of short fiction (Birds of a Lesser Paradise and Almost Famous Women) and is at work on a novel that will be published by Scribner.
Caroline Zancan MFAW '14, author of Local Girls, links her debut novel to her time at Bennington in an interview with Melville House.
The New Yorker profiled the artist Elise Engler MFA ‘86 in their June 8 issue, highlighting the completion of her year-long project of drawing every one of Broadway’s two hundred and fifty-odd blocks in New York City.
MFA alumna Megan Mayhew Bergman's forthcoming collection of stories, Almost Famous Women, received a starred review from Kirkus, and is an Indie Next Pick for winter. Due out in January, Academy Award-winning actress Anjelica Huston called it "heartbreaking and lovely".
Visual arts faculty member Ann Pibal, MFA faculty member Major Jackson, and alumna Kiran Desai ’93 are among the 175 artists, scholars, and scientists—out of nearly 3,000 applicants—to receive 2013 Guggenheim Fellowships.
The stories that comprise MFA alumna Jamie Quatro '09's recently released debut collection, I Want to Show You More, according to noted literary critic James Wood in his New Yorker review, "are passionate, sensuous, savagely intense, and remarkable for their brave dualism."
Bennington Writing Seminars Writer-in-Residence Donald Hall, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, was one of 10 artists to be honored by President Obama this week with the 2010 National Medal of Arts.
Profiled in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, MFA faculty member Major Jackson discusses his life as a writer, his just-published collection of poetry, and shares a few thoughts on the Bennington Writing Seminars—which the magazine recently ranked among the best low-residency MFA programs in the world.
In less than three months since being published, Rebecca Chace's new novel Leaving Rock Harbor has been named an"Editor's Choice" by The New York Times Book Review, an "Indie Notable Book" by the American Booksellers Association, and a 2010 New England Book Award finalist.
Eugenia Kim MFA '01's recently published debut novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter, has been recommended by critics in The Washington Post, Vogue, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere.
Award-winning poet, playwright, and writer Nathalie Handal MFA '02 was named a finalist for the 2009 Gift of Freedom Award by A Room of Her Own, a foundation for female artists.
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.
Robert Wood Lynn is a poet from Virginia. His debut collection Mothman Apologia (2022 Yale University Press) was the winner of the 2021 Yale Younger Poets prize and the 2023 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work has been featured in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review, and other publications. He teaches poetry at Juilliard and cohosts the DGN Reading Series in Brooklyn, New York.
Mark Wunderlich is author of five books of poetry, and his poems, interviews, reviews, and translations have appeared in journals such as The New Yorker, Slate, The Paris Review, and Poetry, and in more than 30 anthologies. His new book, MATEY, is forthcoming from Graywolf.
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.
’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.
Joshua Wheeler is the author of the essay collection Acid West, which was named a best book of 2018 by Newsweek, The Paris Review, and O, The Oprah Magazine. He’s written for The New York Times, Alta, and Harper’s Magazine. His novel, The High Heaven, was published in 2025 by Graywolf Press. Originally from Alamogordo, New Mexico, Wheeler now lives in New Orleans and teaches at Louisiana State University.
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.
Derek Palacio is the author of the novella How to Shake the Other Man and the novel The Mortifications.
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.