Writing (MFA): Related Content

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.

"Strange Days” by MFA in Writing Director Sven Birkerts and "Vision" by Tiffany Briere MFA '11 were included in The Best American Essays 2015. “The Siege at Whale Cay,” by Assistant Director Megan Mayhew Bergman MFA ’10, was included in The Best American Short Stories 2015.

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".

Katy Simpson Smith MFA ’13's new novel, The Story of Land and Sea, is “not only among the most assured debut novels in recent memory,” raved a Vogue magazine review, but also “heralds the birth of a major new talent.”

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." 

Critically acclaimed, award-winning authors and faculty of the Bennington College Writing Seminars will offer an evening reading series during the MFA program's winter residency beginning on Thursday, January 10, and ending on Friday, January 18.

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.

Bennington's low-residency MFA in writing program is among the top three in the world, according to Poets & Writers Magazine.

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.

A poem by Liam Rector, the late founding director of Bennington's MFA in Writing program, was featured today on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, a radio program aired daily on public broadcasting stations around the country.

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.

MFA faculty member Amy Hempel has been selected to receive the 22nd annual PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of short fiction. Given in honor of the late Bernard Malamud, who himself taught at Bennington from 1961 to 1984, the award includes participation in the 2009-10 PEN/Faulkner reading series at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a prize of $2,500.