Fiction (MFAW): Related Content
Josh Weil is the author of the novel The Great Glass Sea (Grove, July 2014), a New York Times Editor’s Choice that was short-listed for The Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and a “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation.
Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This, Corpus Christi: Stories, and winner of a National Book Award for writers under 35, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and director of creative writing at Harvard University.
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.
Askold Melnyczuk’s first novel was a New York Times Notable, his second was an LA Times Best Books of the Year selection, and the most recent was chosen by the American Libraries Association’s Booklist as an Editor’s Choice.
Peter Cameron is the author of seven novels and three collections of stories. His short fiction and poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone, Grand Street, The New Republic, and The Yale Review. Photo by Orson Santos.
Torres’ first novel We the Animals, a national best seller, has been translated into fifteen languages and is currently being adapted into a feature film. The National Book Foundation named him one of its 5 Under 35.
Pastan’s most recent novel, Alena, was named an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review and is a finalist for the New England Society Book Award in fiction.
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.
The New York Times writes of her novel The News from Spain that “Wickersham’s gift is for capturing the habits of mind that lead even smart people to deceive themselves.” Her memoir, The Suicide Index, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
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.
Taymour Soomro is the author of the novel Other Names for Love and the co-editor of the essay collection Letters to a Writer of Color. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Photo by Jorge Monedero.
Lynne Schwartz is the author of 25 books, including novels, short-story collections, nonfiction, poetry, and translations, which have garnered her National Book Award and PEN Award nominations and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA.
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.
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.
Janet Maslin praised Kaitlyn's Greenidge's We Love You, Charlie Freeman as a "terrifically auspicious debut novel" in a New York Times review.
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.
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.