Kate Knapp Johnson

Director, Graduate Writing Program in Poetry

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. Columbia School of the Arts. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. NCPsyA, Westchester Institute. Special interests include Jungian studies and religion; author of When Orchids Were Flowers, This Perfect Life, and Wind Somewhere, and Shade, which received the Gradiva Award; most recently published in Ploughshares, The Salt Journal, Luna, and The Sun; recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts Award. SLC, 1987-

Brian Morton

Director, Graduate Program in Fiction; Michele Tolela Myers Chair in Writing

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. Author of the novels The Dylanist, Starting Out in the Evening, A Window Across the River, and Breakable You. SLC, 1998-

Vijay Seshadri

Director, Graduate Program in Creative Non-Fiction

BA, Oberlin College. MFA, Columbia University. Author of Wild Kingdom and The Long Meadow (poetry collections); former editor at The New Yorker; essayist and book reviewer in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, and various literary quarterlies; recipient of the James Laughlin Prize of the Aca-demy of American Poets, MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Long Poem Prize, New York Foundation for the Arts grant, National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship and area studies fellowships from Columbia University. SLC, 1998-

Gerry Albarelli

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MA, Brown University. Author of Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva (Glad Day Books, 2001), chronicling his experience as a non-Jew teaching English as a second language to Yiddish-speaking Hasidic boys at a yeshiva in Brooklyn; has published stories in numerous anthologies and reviews, including The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, Global City Review, The Breast, and Fairleigh Dickinson Review; on the faculty of Eugene Lang College; works for the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, where he has initiated numerous documentary projects; conducted hundreds of life history interviews with gay cops, retired vaudevillians and showgirls, ironworkers, immigrants, and, most recently, people affected by the events of September 11; most recently worked as an educator and project designer on Columbia University’s “Telling Lives Oral History Proj-ect,” which culminated in seven books, two documentary films, and a multimedia exhibit; served as editor of three of the books, producer of the documentaries, and as a curator of this exhibit. SLC, 2004-

Jo Ann Beard

BFA, MA, University of Iowa. Essayist and creative nonfiction writer; author of The Boys of My Youth, a collection of autobiographical essays, as well as essays/articles published in magazines, journals, and anthologies. Recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award. SLC, 2000-2005; 2007-

Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and Small Gods of Grief, which won the 2001 Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry. Her third poetry collection, A New Hunger, was selected as an ALA Notable Book in 2008. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her poems have appeared in The Washington Post, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, Harvard Review, and many other publications. She is the editor of four anthologies: Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars; Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles and Renegades; Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City; and Never Before: Poems About First Experiences. With her husband, poet Kurt Brown, she translated a selection of poems entitled The Plural of Happiness, by the Flemish poet, critic, and essayist Herman de Coninck. She also translates American poetry into French, and Flemish poetry into English. SLC, 2001-

Kurt Brown

B.A., University of Connecticut. M.A., University of Colorado. Special interests include jazz, cooking, and travel; author of Return of the Prodigals, More Things in Heaven and Earth, Fables from the Ark, and Future Ship; editor of a number of anthologies of poetry, including Verse & Universe: Poems About Science and Mathematics; recently published in Nightsun, Nimrod, Powhatan Review, New York Quarterly, and Harvard Review; Bruce McEver Visiting Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. SLC, 2005-

Melvin Jules Bukiet

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MFA, Columbia University. Author of Sandman’s Dust, Stories of an Imaginary Childhood, While the Messiah Tarries, After, Signs and Wonders, Strange Fire, and A Faker’s Dozen; editor of Neurotica, Nothing Makes You Free, and Scribblers on the Roof. Works have been translated into half a dozen languages and frequently anthologized; winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and other prizes; fiction and essays published in Antaeus, The Paris Review, The Harvard Review, The American Scholar, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other magazines and newspapers. SLC, 1993-

Tina Chang

MFA, Columbia University. Poet; author of Half-Lit Houses and co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond.  Poems published in journals, including American Poet, Indiana Review, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, and Sonora Review, among others; recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, and The Van Lier Foundation, among others. Her new collection of poetry, Of Gods and Strangers, will be forthcoming in 2011. SLC, 2005-

Rachel Cohen

On leave spring semester

AB, Harvard University. Author of A Chance Meeting (Random House, 2004), a nonfiction book tracing a chain of thirty American writers and artists who knew or influenced or met one another over the period from the Civil War to the civil rights movement; winner of the 2003 PEN/Jerard Fund Award. Essays in The New Yorker, The Threepenny Review, McSweeney’s, DoubleTake, Parnassus, and Modern Painters and in 2003 Best American Essays and 2003 Pushcart Prize anthologies. Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony. SLC, 2003-

Thomas Sayers Ellis

MFA, Brown University. Poet; author of The Maverick Room; “The Good Junk” (from Take Three #1); two chapbooks, The Genuine Negro Hero and Song On; and the forthcoming Quotes Community: Notes for Black Writers. Co-founder of the Dark Room Collective and the recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers Award as well as fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Grand Street, Tin House, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Callaloo, and The Best American Poetry, 1997 and 2001. SLC, 2006-

Carolyn Ferrell

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MA, City College of New York. Author of the short story collection Don’t Erase Me, awarded the Art Seidenbaum Award of The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the John C. Zachiris Award given by Ploughshares, and the Quality Paperback Book Prize for First Fiction; stories anthologized in The Best American Short Stories of the Century; Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; The Blue Light Corner: Black Women Writing on Passion, Sex, and Romantic Love; and Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present; recipient of grants from the Fulbright Association, the German Academic Exchange (D.A.A.D.), the City University of New York MAGNET Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts (Literature fellow for 2004). SLC, 1996-

Suzanne Gardinier

BA, University of Massachusetts-Amherst. MFA, Columbia University. Author of the long poem, The New World, winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award Series in poetry; A World That Will Hold All the People, essays on poetry and politics; Today: 101 Ghazals (2008); the long poem, Dialogue with the Archipelago (2009); and fiction published in The Kenyon Review, The American Voice, and The Paris Review. Recipient of The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence in the Essay and of grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. SLC, 1994-

Myla Goldberg

BA, Oberlin College. Author of Bee Season (New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award), and Wickett’s Remedy. Teacher at Barnard, Brooklyn College, Columbia, NYU, as well as Sarah Lawrence. SLC, 2008-

Myra Goldberg

BA, University of California-Berkeley. MA, City University of New York. Author of Whistling and Rosalind: A Family Romance; stories published in journals including The Transatlantic Review, Ploughshares, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, The New England Review, and in the book anthologies Women in Literature, Powers of Desire, The World’s Greatest Love Stories, and elsewhere in the U.S. and France; nonfiction published in the Village Voice and elsewhere; recipient of Lebensberger Foundation grant. SLC, 1985-

Matthea Harvey

On leave fall semester

BA, Harvard College. MFA, University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Poet; author of Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000); Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004); Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007); and a children’s book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake (Soft Skull Press, 2007). Contributing editor for jubilat and BOMB. Has taught at Warren Wilson, the Pratt Institute, and the University of Houston. SLC, 2004-

Joshua Henkin

BA, Harvard College. MFA, University of Michigan. Author of the novel Swimming Across the Hudson; short stories in DoubleTake, Ploughshares, Southern Review, North American Review, Boulevard, and elsewhere; nonfiction in The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, and elsewhere; grants from PEN and the Michigan Council of the Arts. SLC, 2000-

Kathleen Hill

BA, Manhattanville College. MA, Columbia University. PhD, University of Wisconsin. Author of novel, Still Waters in Niger; finalist in French translation, Prix Femina. Recent fiction published in DoubleTake, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review; anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Pushcart. Recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts grant and National Endowment for the Arts Award. SLC, 1991-1994; 1997-

Cathy Park Hong

BA, Oberlin College. MFA, University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Poet; author of Translating Mo’um (Hanging Loose Press, 2002) and Dance Dance Revolution (W. W. Norton, 2007), which was chosen for the Barnard New Women’s Poets Series; recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Fulbright grant for South Korea; work has been published in Pushcart Prize anthology and New Asian American Anthology, The Next Generation, among others; essays and articles published in the Village Voice, Guardian, Salon, and Christian Science Monitor. SLC, 2006-

Suzanne R. Hoover

BA, Sarah Lawrence College, MA and PhD, Columbia University. National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Humanist grant, 1972-73. Author of numerous scholarly articles, reviews and essays. Member of the Sarah Lawrence literature faculty from 1977-2000, taught courses in literary craft for many years, for both poets and fiction writers. Since 2005 has taught advanced fiction writing workshops at the Westport Writers Workshop in CT. SLC, 2008-

Marie Howe

BS, University of Windsor. MFA, Columbia University. Poet; author of The Good Thief, selected by Margaret Atwood for the National Poetry Series; editor, with Michael Klein, of In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic; author of What the Living Do; recipient of the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poet Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Mary Ingram Bunting fellowship from Radcliffe College, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artist Foundation, and the Guggenheim. SLC, 1993-

Mary LaChapelle

Faculty Web site

BA, University of Minnesota. MFA, Vermont College. Author of House of Heroes and Other Stories; stories published in Nimrod, Northern Lit Review, Redbook, and First; anthologized in the U.S., Japan, and England; recipient of awards from PEN/Nelson Algren, Whiting, Katherine Anne Porter, and of a Bush Foundation fellowship. SLC, 1992-

Thomas Lux

BA, Emerson College. University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Author of The Glassblower’s Breath, Sunday, Half Promised Land, Like a Wide Anvil from the Moon the Light, Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy, The Drowned River and Split Horizon; recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and the Kingsly Tufts Poetry Award. SLC, 1975-

Jeffrey McDaniel

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MFA, George Mason University. Poet. Author of four books of poetry: The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), Alibi School, The Forgiveness Parade, and The Splinter Factory. Poems published in many anthologies, including Best American Poetry, New (American) Poets, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Washington, D.C., Commission for the Arts. SLC, 2001-

Ernesto Mestre

BA, Tulane University. Author of three novels, The Lazarus Rumba, The Second Death of Única Aveyano, and the forthcoming Sacrificio. Also translated three novels from Spanish and is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. SLC, 1999-

Mary Morris

BA, Tufts College. MPhil, Columbia University. Novelist, short-story writer, and writer of travel literature. Author of the novels Crossroads, The Waiting Room, The Night Sky, House Arrest, Acts of God, and Revenge; the short-story collections Vanishing Animals and Other Stories, The Bus of Dreams, and The Lifeguard Stories; the travel memoirs Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone and Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Rail; an anthology of the travel literature of women, Maiden Voyages and Angels and Aliens: A Journey West, and The River Queen. A book about the Mississippi River is forthcoming (Henry Holt and Company). Recent work in Antaeus, Boulevard, and Epoch; recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Creative Artists Public Service Awards. SLC, 1994-

Dennis Nurkse

BA, Harvard. Author of eight books of poetry, including Burnt Island (forthcoming), The Fall, The Rules of Paradise, Leaving Xaia, and Voices over Water; poems have appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly; the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, and two awards from Poetry. SLC, 2004-

Stephen O'Connor

BA, Columbia University. MA, University of California-Berkeley. Author of Rescue, short fiction and poetry; Will My Name Be Shouted Out?, memoir and social analysis; Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed, history. Fiction and poetry have appeared in the New Yorker, Conjunctions, TriQuarterly, The Missouri Review, The Quarterly, Partisan Review, The Massachusetts Review, Fiction International, and elsewhere. Essays and journalism have been published in The New York Times, DoubleTake, The Nation, AGNI, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and New Labor Forum, among others. Recipient of the Cornell Woolrich Fellowship in Creative Writing from Columbia University; the Visiting Fellowship for Historical Research by Artists and Writers from the American Antiquarian Society; and the DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. SLC, 1997; 2002-

Kevin Pilkington

Writing Coordinator

BA, St. John’s University. MA, Georgetown University. Teaches a graduate workshop at Manhattanville College; author of five collections: Spare Change was the La Jolla Poets Press National Book Award winner and his chapbook won the Ledge Poetry Prize; his collection entitled Ready to Eat the Sky was published by River City Publishing as part of its new poetry series selected by Andrew Hudgins and was a finalist for the 2005 Independent Publishers Books Award; new chapbook entitled St. Andrew’s Head was published by Camber Press. Poetry has appeared in many anthologies including Birthday Poems: A Celebration, Western Wind, and Contemporary Poetry of New England. Nominated for four Pushcarts. Poems and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Poetry, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Boston Review, Yankee, Hayden’s Ferry, Columbia, Greensboro Review, The Louisville Review, Gulf Coast, Valparaiso Review. SLC, 1991-

Victoria Redel

BA, Dartmouth College. MFA, Columbia University. Author of two books of poetry and three books of fiction. Latest novel, The Border of Truth (Counterpoint, 2007), weaves the situation of refugees and a daughter’s awakening to the history and secrets of her father’s survival and loss. Loverboy (Graywolf, 2001/ Harcourt, 2002) was awarded the 2001 S. Mariella Gable Novel Award and the 2002 Forward Silver Literary Fiction Prize and was chosen in 2001 as a Los Angeles Times Best Book. Loverboy was adapted for a feature film directed by Kevin Bacon. Most recent collection of poems, Swoon (University of Chicago Press, 2003), was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award. SLC, 1996-

Nelly Reifler

BA, Hampshire College. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. Author of short story collection See Through; fiction in magazines and journals including Bomb, Post Road, McSweeney’s, Nerve, and Black Book, as well as in the anthologies 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11 and Lost Tribe: New Jewish Fiction from the Edge. Recipient of a Henfield Prize in 1995, a UAS Explorations Prize in 1997, and a Rotunda Gallery Emerging Curator grant for work with fiction and art in 2001. Columnist for Nextbook.org, 2006-present; codirector of Pratt Institute’s Friday Forum, 2005-present; founder and president, Dainty Rubbish record company. SLC, 2002-

Martha Rhodes

Author of three poetry collections: Mother Quiet, Perfect Disappearance (winner of the 2000 Green Rose Prize, New Issues Press), and At the Gate. Poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, AGNI, Fence, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and other journals. Anthologized in The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press) and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (University Press of New England), among others. Teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Founding editor and director of Four Way Books, an independent literary press in New York City. SLC, 2005-

Lucy Rosenthal

BA, University of Michigan. MS, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. MFA, Yale School of Drama. Fiction writer, critic, editor, playwright; author of the novel The Ticket Out and editor of anthologies Great American Love Stories, World Treasury of Love Stories, and The Eloquent Short Story: Varieties of Narration; reviews and articles published in the Washing-ton Post, Chicago Tribune Book World, Ms., Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review; plays produced at Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater Center, Waterford, Conn.; recipient, Pulitzer Fellowship in Critical Writing; served on Book-of-the-Month Club’s Editorial Board of judges and as the Club’s senior editorial adviser. SLC, 1988-

Joan Silber

BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MA, New York University. Author of two story collections, Ideas of Heaven (finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize) and In My Other Life, and four novels, The Size of the World, Lucky Us, In the City, and Household Words; winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award; short stories anthologized in The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, The Story Behind the Story, The O. Henry Prize Stories (2007 and 2003), and two Pushcart Prize collections. Recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and grants from National Endowment for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts. SLC, 1985-

Alice Truax

BA, Vassar College. MA, Middlebury College. Editor at The New Yorker, 1992-2002. Book editor, 2001-present. Book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Vogue, The New York Review of Books. Edited books include Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Mostly True by Molly O’Neill, Aftermath by Joel Meyerowitz, Send by William Schwalbe and David Shipley. SLC, 2004-