Awards and Honors, Faculty News

Bennington Writing Seminars Faculty Member Eula Biss Named a 2023 New America National Fellow

Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member Eula Biss has been selected as a 2023 New America National Fellow.

Eula Biss

Since 1999, the Fellows Program has been home to over 250 Fellows, supporting creative storytellers whose projects have produced 141 books, 13 films, and more than 25 longform reporting projects. After receiving more than 200 applications this year, the New America Fellows Program selected 15 immensely talented individuals for their Class of 2023.

New America supports changemakers—journalists, educators, filmmakers, and researchers working to shape the conversation on the critical issues of today. The Class of 2023 will pursue book, film, and multimedia projects on a wide range of subjects. 

"I'm thrilled to be joining the conversation at New America with this exciting group of fellows who are all working on compelling projects,” said Biss. “I know my work will benefit from this exposure to their ideas."

Eula Biss is the author of four books, the most recent being a critique of American homeownership titled 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, and her collection of essays, Notes from No Manʼs Land, won the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism in 2009. Biss teaches nonfiction writing for the Bennington Writing Seminars, and is a member of the Penny Collective, a communal workspace for writers. She recently edited a folio on the theme of ownership for the Yale Review. Biss is currently working on a collection of essays for Riverhead Books about the politics of land ownership in settings ranging from medieval England to contemporary South Africa. This book will explore how private property has shaped our lives and how we might reimagine property rights in the future.

About the Bennington Writing Seminars

Steeped in the Bennington College’s literary legacy, Bennington Writing Seminars is consistently named one of the top low-residency Masters of Fine Arts in Writing programs. Founded in 1994, the Seminars was one of the first low-residency graduate writing programs in the country. During this two-year, low-residency program, students commit as much to reading as to writing and conceive reading lists that strengthen and broaden their knowledge. Students perform critical literary analysis and craft bold new works of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry inspired by their discoveries. They finish with a polished thesis and a parting lecture. All this with the expert guidance of authors who, throughout individualized instruction, become familiar with and develop a stake in students’ work.