About Our Writing Workshops

Recent Instructors

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  Jami Attenberg

  Jami Attenberg

  Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships, and urban life for the New York Times magazine, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times (London), the Guardian, and others. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Bryan Tarnowski

  
  
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  Lily Andrews

  Lily Andrews

  Lily Andrews is a writer from Minnesota, but she lives in New York. She is studying to be a high school teacher and enjoys reading children’s literature. While she doesn’t know yet whether she will ever be a memoirist, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ghost City Review, Sonora Review, Ignatian magazine, and Rio Grande Review. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and runs a post-abortion healing workshop called Hear Me Roar.

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  Stefan Merrill Block

  Stefan Merrill Block

  Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting, was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, The Ovid Prize from the Romanian Writer’s Union, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers’ League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre, and The Center for Fiction. Stefan’s stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker Page-Turner, the Guardian, NPR’s Radiolab, GRANTA, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Stefan’s most recent novel, Oliver Loving, was released in 2018 by Macmillan/Flatiron Books, and is being developed for television by Participant Media. He lives in Brooklyn.

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  Charles Bock

  Charles Bock

  Charles Bock is the author of the memoir, I Will Do Better, as well as the novels Alice & Oliver and Beautiful Children, which was a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsweek, the Believer, Vice, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Writer’s Digest, and in numerous anthologies. He has received fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, UCross, and the Vermont Studio Center. Charles is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He teaches fiction at NYU, and has taught in the MFA program at Columbia University.

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  Conor Bracken

  Conor Bracken

  Conor Bracken is the author of The Enemy of My Enemy is Me (Diode Editions, 2021), as well as the translator of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center, 2019) and Jean D’Amérique’s No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His work has received support from the Community of Writers, Bread Loaf, the Frost Place, Inprint, Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and has appeared (or will soon) in places like BOMB, Image, jubilat, New England Review, the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Sixth Finch, and West Branch. He teaches writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

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  Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

  Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

  Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter. Named among the best books of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, and The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, Blue was honored with the 2023 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in the writing of non-fiction for children, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

  Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices, of which Kirkus Reviews said in a starred review: “This smart, generous collection is a true gift.” Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into darkness. You can keep up with Nana on Instagram at @nanaekuawriter, Twitter at @nanaekua, and Facebook at @nanaekuawriter.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Essie Brew Hammond; Clothing by EXIT 14

  
  
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  Deniz Çam

  Deniz Çam

  Born and raised in Istanbul, Deniz Çam is a New York-based creative. She was a producer at the Emmy-nominated show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, and a reporter at Forbes magazine. Her debut novel, Strangers & Revisions, is represented by United Talent Agency and revolves around a Turkish immigrant who reimagines what the American Dream means to her. Her romcom pilot, 60 Days, placed at the 2023 Austin Film Festival and was featured on Time Out New York as one of the best things to do in the city. Her work has appeared on Shondaland, Gay magazine, Bustle, and more. She also teaches comedy writing for screen and stage at the Second City Theater in Brooklyn. She is an alum of Brown University and Columbia Journalism School.

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  Joanna Cantor

  Joanna Cantor

  Joanna Cantor holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Colorado College. Her debut novel, Alternative Remedies for Loss, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for May 2018 and received coverage in Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Nylon, and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Departures, Fodor’s Travel, Greatist, and Willamette Week. Joanna was a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She previously taught fiction writing at Catapult and is also a yoga teacher. She lives in Brooklyn. You can keep up with Joanna on Instagram at @joannacantor and on Twitter at @jojannna.

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  Elysha Chang

  Elysha Chang

  Elysha Chang is a writer and educator based in Brooklyn. Before moving to New York, she taught Asian American Literature and Creative Writing at Villanova University, University of Pennsylvania and Blue Stoop Philadelphia. Her debut novel, A Quitter’s Paradise, is about American immigrant inheritance and was published in 2023. She holds a master of fine arts from Columbia University and has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman.

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  Caroline Christopoulos

  Caroline Christopoulos

  Caroline Christopoulos is a publicist with Gold Leaf Literary Services, a publicity firm that works exclusively with writers/authors. She also works part-time at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, NC, where she has been a bookseller for twenty-two years and buyer for eighteen. She worked on the steering committee of the Asheville Grown Business Alliance and continues to be on the programming committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. In addition to bringing authors and their works the attention they deserve, her focus includes strengthening community and promoting local business. She and her husband live in Asheville and New York City with their daughter and their dog, Tiny Cakes.

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  Bonnie Chau

  Bonnie Chau

  Bonnie Chau is a writer and translator from Southern California, and is the author of the short story collection All Roads Lead to Blood. She edits at 4Columns, the Evergreen Review, and Public Books; teaches creative writing and translation; and serves on the boards of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and Art Farm Nebraska.

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  Sarah Cypher

  Sarah Cypher

  Sarah Cypher is a freelance book editor and author of The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine, April 2023). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction, and a BA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, and others, and she has been a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She grew up in a Lebanese Christian family near Pittsburgh and lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife. You can keep up with Sarah on Instagram at @sarahcypher and on Twitter at @threepenny.

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  Kavita Das

  Kavita Das

  Kavita Das came to writing ten years ago after working for social change and social justice for fifteen years. She writes about culture, race, gender, and their intersections. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in WIRED, CNN, Teen Vogue, Catapult, Fast Company, Tin House, Longreads, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Kenyon Review, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Electric Literature, Colorlines, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Kavita’s second book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues (Beacon Press, October 2022) is inspired by the Writing with Conscience class she created and teaches. Her first book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar, was published by Harper Collins India in 2019. In the real world, she lives in New York with her husband, toddler, and hound. And in the virtual world, she can be found on Twitter: @kavitamix and Instagram: @kavitadas and at kavitadas.com.

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  Jaime deBlanc

  Jaime deBlanc

  Jaime deBlanc holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. Her short fiction has been published in Catapult, Juked, and Post Road, and she has been the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Lighthouse Works Fellowship. Her novel After Image was released by Thomas & Mercer in 2024, and her next novel, The Silver Cord, is forthcoming in 2026. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she coaches fiction and memoir writers.

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  Lillian Fishman

  Lillian Fishman

  Lillian Fishman’s novel, Acts of Service, was one of The New Yorker‘s Best Books of 2022. Her fiction has appeared lately in The New Yorker and Granta. Throughout 2024 she published an advice column on love and sex, “Higher Gossip,” for the philosophical magazine The Point.

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  Omer Friedlander

  Omer Friedlander

  Omer Friedlander is the author of the short story collection The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award and a finalist for the Wingate Prize. The book was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize, chosen as an American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal Honor Book for outstanding achievement in Jewish Literature, and longlisted for the Story Prize. Omer has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He was a Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University. His collection has been translated into several languages, including Turkish, Dutch, Italian, and Slovak. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Fellowship and Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. He currently lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

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  Miciah Bay Gault

  Miciah Bay Gault

  Miciah Bay Gault is the author of the novel Goodnight Stranger (Park Row, 2019), which was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and selected for Poets & Writers’ First Fiction roundup.

  Miciah is a Breadloaf fellow and a Vermont Arts Council creation grant recipient. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, the Sun, Agni, the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, the New York Times ‘Modern Love’ column, and other places. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is coordinator of the Vermont Book Award.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Daryl Burtnett

  
  
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  Nicola Maye Goldberg

  Nicola Maye Goldberg

  Nicola Maye Goldberg is the author of Other Women and Nothing Can Hurt You. Her work has appeared in Vogue, New York Tyrant, Joyland, and elsewhere. She has taught at Catapult and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

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  David Gordon

  David Gordon

  David Gordon was born in New York City. He attended Sarah Lawrence College, holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature and an MFA in Writing, both from Columbia University. He is the author of seven published novels and a book of stories.His first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It also won three major literary awards in Japan—Kono Mystery ga Sugoi, Mystery ga Yomitai and Mystery Best 10—becoming the first novel ever to do so—and was made into a feature film. In addition to Japanese, his novels has been translated into Chinese, Korean, French, German, Turkish, Russian and Polish. His most recent book, The Pigeon, is number five in the Joe the Bouncer series. A new novel, a neo-noir called, Behind Sunset, is forthcoming from Mysterious Press, as well as a video game co-written with Hampton Fancher, (Bladerunner). His work has appeared in Harpers, Paris Review, the New York Times magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Fence, Brazenhead Review, Maggot Brain, LitHub, Electric Literature, and others.

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  Jakob Guanzon

  Jakob Guanzon

  Jakob Guanzon is the author of Abundance, which was longlisted for both the National Book Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021, and has been translated into multiple languages. His shorter works have appeared in BOMB, the New York Times, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, and has since taught as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. He lives in Harlem.

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  Varud Gupta

  Varud Gupta

  Varud Gupta is an award-winning author and visiting professor. He’s written the graphic novel Chhotu: A Tale of Love and Partition (Comic Con India “Best Writer”) and the travelogue Food of the Gods (Gourmand Cookbook nomination for “Peace”) released with Penguin with a sequel to the graphic novel set to release in 2026.  He received his bachelors in Finance from New York University and is currently an MFA in Creative Writing candidate at Columbia University where he received the Felipe P. De Alba fellowship and serves at the Director of the Columbia Artist / Teachers program. He has taught with Columbia University, Indian Institute of Art and Design, Center for Fiction, 826NYC, Catapult, and Gotham Writers.

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  Lucinda Halpern

  Lucinda Halpern

  Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent with nearly 20 years’ experience in both the publicity and agency sides of publishing. Before founding Lucinda Literary, she worked in the Publicity division of HarperCollins, where she assisted on the media campaign for Freakonomics among other New York Times bestsellers. She later took a management role in Sales and Marketing at Scholastic before becoming a marketing consultant for Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project) and others, and then launching her career as an agent. She has worked with such publishers as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette, and currently represents authors writing in the categories of business, health, lifestyle, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Casey Kirkella

  
  
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  Jimin Han

  Jimin Han

  Jimin Han is the author of The Apology, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick; named a best audiobook of the year by Booklist, a best book of the summer by the LA Times, Vanity Fair, Shondaland, Apple Books and more. She is also the author of A Small Revolution. Her third novel, Dreamt I Found You, is forthcoming in 2026. She teaches at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and community writing centers. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she grew up in Providence, Rhode Island; Dayton, Ohio; and Jamestown, New York. Her work has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.

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  Lauren Harr

  Lauren Harr

  Lauren Harr is a publicist with Gold Leaf Literary Services and has worked in the book world for twenty years—as a bookseller in Asheville, NC and Albuquerque, NM, an assistant at literary nonprofits in Santa Fe, an intern at Graywolf Press, and a marketing assistant and publicist at Coffee House Press. She spent eight years at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe where her passions were connecting readers and books and assisting the events program. She lives in Asheville with her husband and daughter and holds an MFA from Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing.

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  Molly Horan

  Molly Horan

  Molly Horan is the author of Epically Earnest and Thanks for Listening, both published by HarperCollins. She currently teaches at NYU and SVA, and has previously taught creative writing at Fordham. She has her MFA in creative writing from The New School and is currently pursuing her PhD in creative writing from Bath Spa University.

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  Debra Jo Immergut

  Debra Jo Immergut

  Debra Jo Immergut is the author of the novels You Again, named a New York Times Best of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Gotham Book Prize, and The Captives, a 2019 Edgar Award finalist and published in over a dozen countries. She has also published a collection of short fiction, Private Property. Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, the New York Times, PANK, Hobart, and elsewhere. A recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships, she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in western Massachusetts.

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  JP Infante

  JP Infante

  JP Infante is the author of On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue and Aquí y Allá: un retrato de la comunidad Dominicana en Washington Heights. He is the winner of PEN’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and Thirty West’s Chapbook contest. His writing has appeared in The Kweli Journal, The Poetry Project, Rigorous, A Gathering of the Tribes, and elsewhere. He has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Baldwin for the Arts, the NY State Writers Institute, and PEN America, and is an alumnus of The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship program. He holds an MFA from the New School.

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  Yahdon Israel

  Yahdon Israel

  Yahdon Israel, a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for the New Inquiry, LitHub, Poets & Writers, Vanity Fair, and the Atlantic. He teaches Creative Writing at the MFA Program at City College, previously served on the Board of the National Book Critics Circle, and founded the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club that meets every last Wednesday of the month.

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  Jason Adam Katzenstein

  Jason Adam Katzenstein

  Jason Adam Katzenstein is a cartoonist and comedy writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times and MAD magazine. He is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir Everything Is an Emergency.

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  Seth Kaufman

  Seth Kaufman

  Seth Kaufman is a ghostwriter and novelist. He is the author or co-author of five book proposals purchased by publishers, including autobiographies of basketball legend Rick Pitino, video game designer John Romero, and his own collection of music essays. He has collaborated on bestselling memoirs, biographies, current affairs, political and sports books. His work, under his byline or a clients’ byline, has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker online, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, and many other national publications. His satirical work, The King of Pain, was called “one of 2012’s most enjoyable novels” by the New York Times. And Bleacher Report scribe Mike Freeman called Eat My Schwartz, the autobiography Kaufman co-authored (and also wrote the proposal for), “easily, one of the most unique and well-done books about NFL life I’ve ever read.”

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  Hannah Kingsley-Ma

  Hannah Kingsley-Ma

  Hannah Kingsley-Ma is a writer and radio producer living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications like The Drift, The New York Times, The Believer, The New Republic, Joyland, ZYZZYVA, The Guardian and The Best American Short Stories 2025. She was the 2020-21 Axinn NYU Writer-in-Residence, and awarded honorable mention for the 2021 The Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship. She has taught creative writing at NYU, PEN America, and Catapult.

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  Peter Kispert

  Peter Kispert

  Peter Kispert is the author of the story collection I Know You Know Who I Am (Penguin Books), named a best book of the year by Elle, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Electric Literature. His writing has recently appeared in Esquire, the New York Times Book Review, Sewanee Review, Story, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

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  Josh Krigman

  Josh Krigman

  Josh Krigman (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and facilitator in New York City. He has taught creative writing at Hunter College, the United Nations International School, 826NYC, The Writer’s Rock, and for National Geographic Expeditions. He has been awarded residencies from Vermont Studio Center, and his work has appeared in The Summerset Review, Akashic Books, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Through Little Nights, he hosts interdisciplinary events designed to make art-making more accessible to new audiences. He is also the co-founder and New York host of Club Motte, an international storytelling series that hosts live events in New York, Oakland, and Berlin.

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  Melissa Larsen

  Melissa Larsen

  Melissa Larsen is the USA Today bestselling author of The Lost House and Shutter. Melissa received her M.F.A. from Columbia University and her B.A. from New York University. When she isn’t traveling somewhere to research her next novel—and somehow hurting herself in the process—she lives in New York City and teaches creative writing.

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  Danielle Lazarin

  Danielle Lazarin

  Danielle Lazarin is the author of the short story collection Back Talk. Her fiction and essays can be found in the Southern Review, Colorado Review, Literary Hub, Glimmer Train, the Cut, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Glimmer Train Family Matters Award, the Millay Colony for the Arts, The Freya Project, and the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. She lives and teaches in her native New York, where she is at work on a novel and a story collection.

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  Cora Lewis

  Cora Lewis

  Cora Lewis is the author of the forthcoming novella Information Age, which will be published in July 2025 by Joyland Editions. Her short stories have appeared in the Yale Review, Joyland magazine, Epiphany, the Cleveland Review of Books, Reed magazine, the Cream City Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her BA from Yale University.

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  Alcy Leyva

  Alcy Leyva

  Alcy Leyva is the author of an award-winning Bronx-born multi-genre writer. His first Young Adult Fiction book the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life (Green Writers Press, 2024) won the Gold Indie Award in YA Fiction for Foreword Reviews and a Silver Nautilus YA 2024 Fiction Award. His short stories have appeared in two award-winning collections. His fiction, personal essays, poetry, and everything in between has been published in over fifteen different websites and magazines including the Millions and the Rumpus. His critical reviews have been featured in 2016’s Contemporary Literary Criticism (published by Laymen Poupard) and have been translated into both Italian and French. He currently resides in New York City and teaches English Literature at the United Nations International School.

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  Theresa Lin

  Theresa Lin

  Theresa Lin received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was awarded the De Alba Fellowship by Writing Program faculty for an excerpt of her novel manuscript. She is represented by Janklow and Nesbit and lectures at The Cooper Union. She has previously taught at Fordham, Rutgers, and Columbia and her writing has been featured in the LA Review of Books, Off Assignment, Racquet, Oh Reader, Storm Cellar, Truthout, Smart Set, and Random Sample Review, among others.

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  Bruna Dantas Lobato

  Bruna Dantas Lobato

  Bruna Dantas Lobato is a Brazilian writer and literary translator based in St. Louis. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space, the Common, and other publications, and has been recognized with fellowships from Yaddo, A Public Space, NYU, and Disquiet International. Her literary translations include Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries (Archipelago Books), Stênio Gardel’s The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press), and Giovana Madalosso’s Tokyo Suite (Europa Editions). Other translations from Lobato have appeared in Vogue, Bookforum, BOMB, the Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, the Brooklyn Rail, and the American Scholar, among others. You can keep up with Bruna on Twitter at @bdantaslobato and Instagram @bdantaslobato.

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  Melissa Lozada-Oliva

  Melissa Lozada-Oliva

  Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of peluda, Dreaming of You and Candelaria. Her work has been featured in the Poetry Project, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, Vogue, Vulture, and BBC Mundo. She received her MFA from New York University in 2020.

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  Jessie McCarty

  Jessie McCarty

  Jessie McCarty (they/them) is an interdisciplinary writer and cataloger specializing in Irish, Southern, and LBGTQ+ folklore through new media and poetry. They are the author of The Bovine Huff, a research chapbook on The Shreveport Yellow Fever Mound in Shreveport, Louisiana and Ireland/Eire’s Tain Bo Cuailnge. The Bovine Huff was awarded the 3rd Best Poetry Book of 2022 in the Chicago Reader. In August 2023, McCarty co-authored the poetry collection Our Fairy Diary with multi-media artist Sarah Haines. This artbook of letters, written between Chicago and Shreveport, functioned as a study in fairy rings as a limited edition of 50. As of September 2023, Our Fairy Diary is sold out.

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  David McLoghlin

  David McLoghlin

  David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and writer of memoir and personal essay. His books are Waiting For Saint Brendan and Other Poems and Santiago Sketches. His third book, Crash Centre, will be published in May 2024 by Salmon Poetry. Apart from a major bursary (grant) for memoir from Ireland’s Arts Council, and a personal essay published in the anthology Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America (Black Lawrence Press), he has published personal essays, short stories and memoir extracts in The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review and other journals. An essay on being mentored by poet Sharon Olds is forthcoming in This Glistening Verb (University of Michigan Press) as part of their “Under Discussion” series. He is currently at work on a book about his grandfather, the golf architect, Eddie Hackett, widely considered “the Father of Irish Golf Design.” In October 2023 he played one of his grandfather’s designs, Connemara Golf Links, and is writing an immersion piece for Golfer’s Journal in the USA. He has previously taught memoir for The Center for Fiction, and teaches creative writing in Ireland with The American College, Dublin, Poetry as Commemoration and Writers in Schools. While living in New York between 2010 and 2020 he was Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx, and an NYU Teaching Fellow at Coler Specialty Hospital; and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship Recipient (2023).

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  Leia Menlove

  Leia Menlove

  Leia Menlove’s writings have been published in Guernica, Fiction Magazine (CUNY), Narratively, the Harvard Review, the Evergreen Review, Catapult, Joyland, and others. She was a featured artist of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Series, “Conversations with Contemporary Artists,” discussing her fabulist erotic work, How to Train Your Virgin. HTYV was released by Badlands and ArtBook in 2015, and was covered in BOMB, T magazine, Vogue, MSNBC’s Chrystal Ball Show, Hyperallergic, Sluttist, and many other forums. She is editing her first novel and beginning work on her second.

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  Kate Milliken

  Kate Milliken

  Kate Milliken is the author of If I’d Known You Were Coming, winner of the 2013 John Simmons Award for Short Fiction, and the novel, Kept Animals, which was long listed for the 2020 First Novel Award. Her work has been supported by the Tin House Writers Workshop, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center among others. When not at work on her next book, Kate is a freelance editor and writing coach.

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  Ruth Mukwana

  Ruth Mukwana

  Ruth Mukwana is a fiction writer. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb, Solstice, and Consequence. Her short story, “Taboo” was a runner-up in the Black Warriors Review 2017 fiction contest. She’s the Co-Fiction Editor of Solstice Magazine. She is the Creator and Host of SAHA, Stories and Humanitarian Action, a Podcast that investigates whether fiction can raise awareness on the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises. Her works in progress are a collection of short stories and a novel that follows Queen, a middle-aged woman working for the UN, as she’s forced to confront a past, she wants to forget, and her quest for justice. Told through multiple points of view, the novel interrogates trauma and memory, and resilience and forgiveness. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), a 2022 Bennington Alumni Fellow and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow, and a former humanitarian worker with the United Nations. She lives in New York with her daughter.

  As a fiction writer with an MFA from Bennington College and a humanitarian worker whose work and writing deals with social justice issues, she is passionate about writing for social justice and has a deep familiarity with both the research and questions of craft. Therefore, she offers a wide perspective and comparative approach.

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  Emily Nemens

  Emily Nemens

  Emily Nemens is the author of the novel The Cactus League, and her fiction has appeared in BOMB, the Gettysburg Review, the Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Emily has spent a dozen years editing literary quarterlies, including leading the Paris Review, which won its first American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction under her tenure; she also served as co-editor of the Southern Review. She has taught creative writing at Appalachian State University, the University of Leipzig, Drew University, and in community-based workshops.

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  Alison Mills Newman

  Alison Mills Newman

  Alison Mills Newman is a former child star from the ’60s, a singer/songwriter and recording artist with Taj Mahal, and has opened for Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Weather Report with Joe Zavinul and Wayne Shorter, screenwriter, poet and award winning independent filmmaker and author of Maggie Three and the highly acclaimed Francisco.

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  Claire Oleson

  Claire Oleson

  Claire Oleson is a queer writer and 2020 Fiction Fellow at the Center for Fiction. She is an Assistant Editor at the Kenyon Review. Her work has been published by Joyland, the LA Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, and Brink, among other journals. She has written and taught creative writing workshops for the University of Pennsylvania and Cleaver Magazine. Her chapbook of short stories, “Things from the Creek Bed We Could Have Been” debuted May, 2020 from Newfound Press. She is represented by Eloy Bleifuss at Neon Literary.

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  Matt Ortile

  Matt Ortile

  Matt Ortile is an editor and writer who has taught creative writing seminars for the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, Poets & Writers, Kundiman, PEN America, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He is the author of the essay collection The Groom Will Keep His Name, an editor for print and digital at Condé Nast Traveler, and was previously the executive editor of the literary magazine Catapult prior to its closure.

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  Pablo Ottonello

  Pablo Ottonello

  Pablo Ottonello (Buenos Aires, 1983) is a writer, screenwriter, and literary critic. He graduated from Torcuato Di Tella University and from Universidad del Cine, holds an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Luso- Brazilian Literature from the University of Chicago. He was awarded the Humanities Teaching Fellowship at the University of Chicago (2023-2025). Celebrated as a prolific figure in Argentinian literature, his published works include Quiero ser artista (2015), El verano de los peces muertos (2017), Veteranos de la Guerra del día (2018), El vello álmico (2019), La breve luz de nuestros días (2020), Satisfaction (2021), Match (2023) and Defensa de la compulsión (in print, 2025).

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  Zeynep Özakat

  Zeynep Özakat

  Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Gulf Coast Online. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.

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  Soraya Palmer

  Soraya Palmer

  Soraya Palmer is the author of The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts. She is a Flatbush-born-and-raised writer and licensed social worker who has done organizing and advocacy work on the issues of gender-based violence, criminalized survivors, gentrification, and police brutality. Soraya has been awarded a residency at Blue Mountain Center in Upstate NY and the Nawat Fes Residency in Fes, Morocco, and is a 2024 Fiction NYFA/NYSCA fellow. She teaches Fiction at the MFA program at CUNY City College and magical realism as a genre at The Center for Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat Nicholas.

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  Daniel Saldaña París

  Daniel Saldaña París

  Daniel Saldaña París is the author of three novels—Among Strange Victims, Ramifications, and The Dance and the Wildfire—and a collection of personal essays, Planes Flying Over a Monster. His work has been translated into several languages, and he has been included in Bogota39, a list of the Best Latin American Writers Under 40.

  The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Banff Center for the Arts, the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Art Omi, and MacDowell, he has been awarded the Eccles Center & Hay Festival Writers Award in the U.K., and his latest novel was a finalist for the Herralde Prize in Spain. He was a 2022-2023 fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and has contributed to publications such as the Guardian, BOMB, Guernica, Aperture, Music & Literature, LitHub, Publisher’s Weekly, and KCRW’s UnFictional, among many others. You can keep up with Daniel on Instagram at @dsparis.

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  Dawn Raffel

  Dawn Raffel

  Dawn Raffel is the author of six books, most recently Boundless as the Sky, a hybrid collection incorporating fiction, image, and early 20th Century history, amid the rise of both fascism and technology. The title novella, set at the 1933 Chicago World’s fair, is told through multiple perspectives, including “ordinary” people and sideshow performers whose voices have been lost to history books. Her previous book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, is historical narrative nonfiction based on deep archival research. Other books include a nationally bestselling memoir, The Secret Life of Objects, two story collections and a novel. She has taught creative writing at International Literary Seminars (previously Summer Literary Seminars) in Kenya, Russia, Lithuania, and Canada. You can keep up with Dawn by following her on Instagram at @dawnraffel, or on Twitter at @dawnraffel.

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  Bushra Rehman

  Bushra Rehman

  Bushra Rehman’s novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, a modern classic about being Muslim and queer was noted as a Best Book and Editor’s Choice by the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Ms. magazine among others. Rehman is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the poetry collection Marianna’s Beauty Salon and the novel Corona, chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. As a teaching artist, Rehman has led writing workshops for Poet’s House, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Urban Word NYC, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She created and facilitates the community-based workshop Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction.

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  Juliana Roth

  Juliana Roth

  Juliana Roth was selected as a VIDA Fellow with the Sundress Academy for the Arts for her fiction and is currently seeking a home for her novel and collection of short stories. Her writing appears in the Breakwater Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Irish Pages, and Entropy as well as being produced as independent films that she directs. Her web series, The University, was nominated by the International Academy of Web Television for Best Drama Writing. Currently, she teaches writing at NYU and writes the newsletter Drawing Animals featuring essays, interviews, doodles, and podcast episodes celebrating our interconnection with nonhuman animal life. She also holds a 200-hour yoga teacher certification and is a current Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction. She formerly lived out of a backpack in the La Sal Mountains and as a volunteer on an organic farm in Maine.

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  Christina Santi

  Christina Santi

  Christina Santi is a writer from the Bronx, New York who explores culture, identity, and memory through storytelling. Her work blends journalistic insight with lyrical precision to amplify underrepresented voices, and has been featured in EBONY, WayMaker Journal, and Demeter Press. With a background in both editorial and communications strategy, Christina brings a nuanced, accessible approach to writing that bridges the personal and the political.

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  Buku Sarkar

  Buku Sarkar

  Buku Sarkar is a fiction writer and photographer based in New York. Her first book has just been published in 2023, a collection of short stories titled Not Quite A Disaster After All. She has written for various magazines including NYRB, ZYZZYVA, NYTimes, Sewanee Review, Threepenny Review, and received the best short story of the year award from Sewannee Review. Her photography, has been shown at ICP, Art Basel Miami to name a few.

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  Alanna Schubach

  Alanna Schubach

  Alanna Schubach is the author of The Nobodies (Blackstone, 2022). Her short fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, the Sewanee Review, the Massachusetts Review, Electric Literature, and more. She was an Emerging Writer Fellow with The Center for Fiction and a Fellow in Fiction with the New York Foundation for the Arts. She earned an M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

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  Amy Silverberg

  Amy Silverberg

  Amy Silverberg is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, the Paris Review, Granta, the Los Angeles Review of Books, TriQuarterly, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel First Time, Long Time is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in 2025. She holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from USC, where she currently teaches.

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  Javier Sinay

  Javier Sinay

  Javier Sinay is a writer and journalist. His books include Camino al Este, Cuba Stone (in collaboration), Los crimes de Moisés Ville (published by Restless Books as The Murders of Moises Ville in 2022), and Sangre joven, which won the Premio Rodolfo Walsh de la Semana Negra de Gijón, España. In 2015 he won the Premio de la Fundación Gabo/FNPI for his chronicle “Fast. Furious. Dead.,” published in Rolling Stone. His work has appeared in the newspapers La Nación and Clarín, in Buenos Aires, and on the website RED/ACCIÓN. He was also a South America correspondent for El Universal (Mexico) and the editor of Rolling Stone (Argentina). He has collaborated with Gatopardo (Mexico), Label Negra (Peru), Letras Libres (Mexico) and Reportagen (Switzerland). He lives in Buenos Aires.

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  Eraldo Souza dos Santos

  Eraldo Souza dos Santos

  A 2022 LARB Publishing Fellow, Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a Brazilian writer currently based between Paris and São Paulo. His first novel, to be published in 2024, is an autobiography of his illiterate mother and a meditation on the lived experience of Blackness and enslavement in modern Brazil. At the age of seven, his mother was sold into slavery by her white foster sister. It was 1968—eighty years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil and four years into the anti-communist coup d’état, during the month in which the military overruled the Constitution by decree. By weaving in extensive archival research and interviews, the novel narrates their journey to Minas Gerais—where she was born—and Bahia—the Blackest state in Brazil, where she was enslaved on a farm for three years—to investigate why the family that enslaved her has never been brought to justice. It also narrates his grandmother’s journey to search for her missing daughter. In March 2023, he offered a masterclass based on his novel at the prestigious UEA Creative Writing Course. You can keep up with Eraldo on Twitter at @esdsantos.

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  Mathangi Subramanian

  Mathangi Subramanian

  Mathangi Subramanian is a neurodiverse South Asian American novelist and essayist. Her middle grade book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book award, and her novel A People’s History of Heaven was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner prize and The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her picture book A Butterfly Smile was inducted into the Nobel Museum by economics laureate Dr. Esther Duflo. She is a guest artist at Denver School of the arts and affiliate faculty at the Regis Mile High MFA program. She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College.

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  Jenna Tang

  Jenna Tang

  Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese writer and translator who translates between Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, and English. She is a board member and chair of the Equity Advocates Committee at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Her translations and essays are published in McSweeney’s, Latin American Literature Today, World Literature Today, Catapult, AAWW, Words Without Borders, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her book in translation, Lin Yi-Han’s novel, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (HarperVia), will be out in May 2024.

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  August Thompson

  August Thompson

  August Thompson is from the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, and has lived in Los Angeles, NYC, Berlin, and Madrid. His debut novel, Anyone’s Ghost, was longlisted for The Center For Fiction First Novel Prize and named a best book of the year by Amazon, Debutiful, Vogue and Elle. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times magazine, and beyond.

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  Hannah Tinti

  Hannah Tinti

  Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is a national bestseller and is in development for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, a 2020 Whiting Prize, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Honorah Tinti

  
  
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  Ricky Tucker

  Ricky Tucker

  Ricky Tucker is a passionate writer, editor, art critic, and educator whose work uplifts and amplifies the voices and narratives of myriad communities. He is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestselling book And the Category Is… Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community, and been featured in the Paris Review, Vogue, Time, New York magazine, among others. Tucker teaches creative writing at The New School and Pratt Institute. Tucker is currently working on the 331/3 book on Mary J. Blige’s What’s the 411, and his second essay collection, But They Did That On Television: Queer Dispatches from the Late 20th Century.

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  María Alejandra Barrios Vélez

  María Alejandra Barrios Vélez

  María Alejandra Barrios Vélez is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She was the 2020 SmokeLong Flash Fiction Fellow, and her stories have been published in Shenandoah Literary, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, El Malpensante, Fractured Lit, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Offing, and more. Her work has been supported by organizations such as Vermont Studio Center, Kweli, Caldera Arts, and the New Orleans Writers’ Residency.

  Her debut novel, The Waves Take You Home, will be published March 19, 2024.

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  Sofia Warren

  Sofia Warren

  Sofia Warren has been a contributing cartoonist at the New Yorker since 2017. Her work has appeared in MoMA magazine, Catapult, L’Uomo Vogue, Narrative magazine, and the anthologies Send Help!, Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists, and Notes from the Bathroom Line. Her debut book, Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator, won the 2024 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence, was a finalist for the 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature award by Pop Culture Classroom, and was named one of the best graphic novels of 2022 by Forbes and Comic Book Herald. Sofia was born in Rhode Island and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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  Eleanor Whitney

  Eleanor Whitney

  Eleanor Whitney is a writer, editor, and content marketer. She is the author of Riot Woman, a collection of feminist essays examining the impact of the Riot Grrrl movement, and Quit Your Day Job, a business guide and an accompanying workbook for creative people. Microcosm will publish her fourth book, Spread the Word: Promote Your Book, Find Your Readers, and Build a Literary Community in the fall of 2023.

  Throughout her career, Eleanor has worked to build communities, education programs, and marketing content strategies at museums, art organizations, and tech startups, including the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens College, a Master’s in Public Administration from Baruch College, and BA in cultural studies from Eugene Lang College. She has taught writing at both Queens College and Eugene Lang College and in community workshops around the country. Hailing from Maine, she divides her time between Brooklyn and the Mojave desert. You can keep up with Eleanor on Instagram at @killerfemme and on Twitter at @killerfemme.

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  Joe Wilkins

  Joe Wilkins

  Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University. His debut novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, was praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award and has subsequently been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and German editions. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four collections of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award. His latest novel, The Entire Sky, is now out from Little, Brown.

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  Alissa Wilkinson

  Alissa Wilkinson

  Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at the New York Times. Her book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through the life and work of Joan Didion, is forthcoming from Liveright in early 2025. She’s been writing criticism since 2005, and her work has appeared in Vox, the New York Times Book Review, Vulture, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Review of Books, RogerEbert.com, Books & Culture, and many more. Her previous book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking and Living from Revolutionary Women, was published by Broadleaf in 2022. She earn an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from Seattle Pacific University and an M.A. in humanities and social thought from New York University.

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  Kyle Lucia Wu

  Kyle Lucia Wu

  Kyle Lucia Wu is the author of the novel Win Me Something (Tin House Books 2021), an NPR Best Book of the Year. She is the co-author, with Cathy Linh Che, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books 2023). A former Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellow, Kyle is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and a Part-Time Lecturer at The New School.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Sylvie Rosokoff

  
  
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  James Yeh

  James Yeh

  James Yeh’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly, the Guardian, the Believer, the Drift, NOON, and Tin House, and cited as notable in The Best American Essays 2022 and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011. He was named an emerging writers fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2011, a writer-in-residence at the Hub City Writers Project in 2014, and a fellow at MacDowell in 2011 and 2024. A former editor at McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Believer, and VICE, he has edited stories anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2024, the 2024 O. Henry Prize Winners, and The Best American Travel Writing 2022. He currently teaches writing at Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn.

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  Diane Zinna

  Diane Zinna

  Diane Zinna is the author of the novel The All-Night Sun (Random House, 2020) and Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss, a craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories, forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2024. She has led a free grief writing class called Grief Writing Sundays since the start of the pandemic.

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  Courtney Zoffness

  Courtney Zoffness

  Courtney Zoffness is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays Spilt Milk, named a best debut of 2021 by BookPage and Refinery29 and a “must-read” by Publishers Weekly. She won the Sunday Times Short Story Award and received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and MacDowell. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, the New York Times, Guernica, the Believer, and other venues. She’s an Associate Professor of English at Drew University, where she directs the creative writing program. You can keep up with Courtney on Instagram at @czoffness, and Twitter at @czoffrun.