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New York State Summer Writers Institute

2027 Faculty 

Directors Robert Boyers and Adam Braver lead an extraordinary faculty of distinguished writers, among them winners of such major honors as the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. 

Hannah Assadi, a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree, is the author of Sonora, which received the Rosenthal Family FoundationAward from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. Called a writer who is “wise and poetic� by Publishers Weekly, Assadi’s third novel, Paradiso 17, inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father, has been shortlisted for the National Book Award. She teaches at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute.

 

Elizabeth Benedict  is the author of Almost, a novel described by Edmund White as “a fast-paced, funny, and splendidly intelligent drama [with] a varied, unforgettable cast of characters.â€� Her earlier books include Slow Dancing (a finalist for the National Book Award), The Beginner’s Book of Dreams, Safe Conduct, The Practice of Deceit and The Joy of Writing Sex (“Read it because it will teach you everything you need to know about writing good fiction,’’ suggests Peter Carey). Benedict has taught at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her latest book (2023) is Rewriting Illness.

Adam Braver is author of several historical novels including Divine Sarah, Mr. Lincoln’s Wars and Crows Over The Wheatfield. (“Brilliant and inventive work,â€� wrote a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. “A novelist whose works are richly imagined,â€� says the Washington Post.) Braver’s most recent novels are NOV 22, 1963, which revolves around the assassination of John F. Kennedy; Misfit (“Amazing...a book about identity, privacy and intimacy that both exposes and conceals its subject – Marilyn Monroe,â€� writes Ann Beattie), and Rejoice The Head Of Paul McCartney, which "brilliantly captures the fragmented intensity of late '60s California — and the US — in its idealism, exhilaration, violence and despair," says Claire Messud.
                                                                                 
Tess Gunty's debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, was the recipient of the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction, making her the youngest recipient of the National Book Award for fiction since Philip Roth won in 1960. Translated into a dozen languages, The Rabbit Hutch was named a best book of the year by: The New York Times, People, The New Yorker, TIME, Oprah Daily, Chicago Tribune, NPR, and others. Tess completed her MFA at NYU, with Rick Moody serving as her thesis advisor during early drafts of The Rabbit Hutch. She is a Writer in Residence in the Creative Writing Program at NYU, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students. She lives between Brooklyn and upstate New York, where she is currently finishing her second novel.
 

HempelAmy Hempel is the author of five collections of stories, most recently Sing To It. Her Collected Stories won The Ambassador Award for Best Fiction of the Year in 2006, and was one of the top five books of fiction in the NYTBR that year. Her stories have appeared in Harper's, Vanity Fair, the Harvard Review, The Yale Review, and many other publications, and have been included in the Best American Short Stories and other prize anthologies. She is a memberof The American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and United States Artists Foundation, and was awarded the REA Award and the PEN/Malamud Award. 

 

Rick Moody is author of several novels including The Ice Storm, Purple America, and Garden State. He has also written two acclaimed volumes of short fiction, Demonology and The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven. Newsday describes him as “our anthropologist of desolate landscapes,â€� John Hawkes as “a writer of meticulous originality.â€� He received the Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award. His memoir is The Black Veil (“Moody’s writing rants and raves and roars,â€� writes a reviewer for The New York Times. “He is an unrepressed quester after meaning,â€� writes Robert Boyers). Moody’s latest novels are The Diviners (2005) and The Four Fingers of Death (2010), and his latest collection of short fiction is Right Livelihoods (2007). “One of our best writers,â€� said a reviewer for the Washington Post. Moody’s acclaimed recent novel is Hotels Of North America (2016).

Peter Orner is the author of three story collections, and three novels, most recently The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter. He also has published two collections of essays, including Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Reading to Live and Living to Read, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. “A major talent,� Dwight Garner writes in The New York Times. “He’s a writer’s writer. He’s been compared, with cause, to short-story eminences ranging from Alice Munro to Raymond Carver to Denis Johnson.� Orner is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Northeastern University School of Law, and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Joanna Scott won a Macarthur Genius Award in 1992 when she was 32, and has won many other awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, The Aga Khan Prize for fiction from The Paris Review, The Ambassador Book Award of the English-speaking Union (for her novel “Liberation� in 2006), and an American Academy of Arts & Sciences Award. She has been a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer and a theatre critic at The New Yorker. His essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. A former White House staffer, he now teaches in the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. In writing about Cunningham's debut novel, Great Expectations, Colum McCann describes it as “brilliantly written, piercingly smart, quietly subversive.â€�

 

 Laura Kipnisis a cultural critic/essayist and former video artist whose work focuses on sexual politics, aesthetics, shame, emotion, acting out, moral messiness, and various other crevices of the American psyche. Her seven books include Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis, and Against Love: A Polemic; her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Review of Books, New Republic, The Nation, The Guardian, Atlantic, The New Republic, ±á²¹°ù±è±ð°ù’s, Playboy, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere, and are included in The Best American Essays 2016 (ed. Jonathan Franzen) and 2023 (ed. Vivian Gornick), and in The Contemporary American Essay (ed. Phillip Lopate). She’s a professor emerita in the Dept. of Radio-TV-Film at Northwestern University, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Michigan Society of Fellows, the NEA and Yaddo. 

Tracy O'Neill is the author of the memoir Woman of Interest, which was selected for Electric Literature's Best Nonfiction of 2024, Crime Read's Best True Crime Memoirs of 2024, and Esquire's Best Memoirs of 2024. She has published two previous novels, The Hopeful and Quotients. In 2015, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her writing has appeared in magazines and journals such as Granta, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The NewYorker, Guernica, Bookforum, and The Guardian. She holds an MFA from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. She teaches at Vassar College.

 

 

Jerald Walker's collection How to Make a Slave and Other Essays was a Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Non-fiction, in which the judges noted how it "shows us something knotty, fraught, and unforgettable, not just about race and the commonplace, 'living while black,' but about living while human. Walker is furious and funny. He is talking to himself about his life and allows us to listen in.� Also the winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award inNonfiction, Walker is the author of two previous books of non-fiction.

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Peg Boyers is the author of three volumes of poems, all published by the University of Chicago Press. The first, Hard Bread (2002), was described by Richard Howard as “the most original debut in my experience of contemporary American poetry.â€� With poems spoken in the invented voice of the late Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, the book, says Robert Pinsky, “not only surpasses the notion of a merely good first bookâ€� but “soars beyond the conventional expectations of ‘persona’ and dramatic monologue.â€� “The creation of the voice in this book,â€� wrote Frank Bidart, “stoic, passionate, resigned, insistent on truth—is a brilliant achievement.â€� Boyers’ second book, Honey With Tobacco (2007), “has a rare power,â€� wrote George Steiner; “a beautiful book,â€� wrote Henri Cole. Peg Boyers is executive editor of the quarterly Salmagundi and teaches creative writing at ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ. Her third book, entitled To Forget Venice, came out in October of 2014 and was hailed for its “disarming flights of imaginationâ€� and “inspired ventriloquism.â€� Her most recent book, The Album, was published by Dos Madres Press in the fall of 2021.

Elisa Gonzalez, Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University MFA program, she has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Rolex Foundation, and U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Award. Her debut poetry collection, Grand Tour, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was named one of the best books of 2023 by The New Yorker. FSG will also bring out her novel, The Awakenings, and a nonfiction book, Strangers on Earth.

 

Sandra Lim is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Curious Thing. Her writing has appeared in a range of literary journals, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine. "In her hands," writes Ocean Vuong, "precision and audacity meld into a performance of quiet, implacable force." Sandra Lim is Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Massachusetts.

 

 

Campbell McGrath teaches creative writing at Florida International University and has taught at the Summer Writers Institute since 2007. The winner of a MacArthur “Geniusâ€� Award, he is the author of many books of poetry, including American Noise, Pax Atomica, Spring Comes To Chicago, Seven Notebooks, Florida Poems and Capitalism. “A poet of formal eloquence and rhetorical power,â€� writes the reviewer for Publishers Weekly, “of vision and engagement….he descends into the maelstrom of American culture and emerges singing.â€� “He is our Whitman,â€� writes the reviewer for American Review. McGrath’s latest book XX: Poems For The 20th Century has been celebrated as a “tour de forceâ€� and “an improbable feat of the imagination.â€�

Rosanna Warren has won the Lamont Poetry Prize, and has been honored with the Award of Merit in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of six books of poems, most recently, So Forth (Norton, 2020), as well as the biography, Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters. (Norton, 2020). Harold Bloom writes: “Warren is an important poet, beyond the achievement of all but a handful of living American poets.â€� And Charles Simic writes in The NY Review of Books: “Her work has become stronger and stronger …. masterful and ambitious.â€�  Rosanna Warren is Emeritus Professor at University of Chicago.

 

Edward J. Delaney

(Fiction or Non-Fiction) is an award-winning author, journalist, filmmaker, and educator.  He was a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellow, winner of the 2005 PEN/Winship Award for Fiction, a National Magazine Award finalist, and a past recipient of an O. Henry Prize for short story writing. In addition to having published seven books—most recently The Acrobat, his work has appeared regularly in The Atlantic and other magazines and journals, and has appeared in Best American Short Stories. Of Delaney’s book Follow the Sun, Phillip Lopate writes, “His control of the material is masterful.â€�

 

Thomas Grattan (Fiction) is the author of the novels The RecentEast and In Tongues, as well as the upcoming Regional Theater, all published by MCD Books/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Recent East was a New York Times editor’s choice, nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize. In Tongues was named a best book of 2024 by The New Yorker, Glamour, and then, nominated for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. His writing has appeared in several publications including One Story, Slice, and The New York Times Book Review. He teaches at Bennington College’s MFA program and lives in Upstate New York. 

 

Catherine Pond (Poetry) is the author of Fieldglass, winner of the Crab Orchard First Book Prize and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, VQR, Oxford Poetry, Salmagundi and in anthologies including Best New Poets and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is the 2025 recipient of APR’s Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize. Pond holds a PhD in Creative writing from USC and an MFA from Columbia University. Formerly Assistant Director of The New York State Summer Writers Institute, she has taught creative writing at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and at USC. Currently she lives in San Francisco.

Robert Boyers

Robert Boyers, Director, is editor of the influential quarterly magazine , professor of English at ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ, and founding director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute. He is the author of eleven books, including a volume of short stories called Excitable Women, Damaged Men. He writes often for such magazines as ±á²¹°ù±è±ð°ù’s, The New Republic, The Nation, Yale Review, and Granta. His latest book is

 

 

 

 

, Director, has been teaching fiction in the New York State Summer Writers Institute since 2014. He is the author of seven novels, as well as the editor of the University of New Orleans Press’ Broken Silence book series, which documents first-hand accounts of political dissidents. His latest novel, Rejoice the Head of Paul McCartney, was published in 2022. Of the book, Rick Moody writes that “Adam Braver writes about history and consciousness, and he balances these with gentle and pitch-perfect moral consciousness. The results are sophisticated, subtle, nuanced, and very moving.â€�
 
 
 
 

Marc Woodworth

Marc Woodworth, Associate Director is Associate Editor of and author or editor of several books: Arcade (poetry), Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters in Their Own Words, Bee Thousand (in the 33 1/3 series), and How To Write ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ Music. He teaches for the Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative and Department of English at ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ.

Faculty Awards Received

  • Pulitzer Prize
  • National Book Award
  • PEN/Faulkner Award
  • Pushcart Prize
  • MacArthur Fellowship Award
  • National Book Critics Circle Award
  • Lamont Poetry Prize
  • Poet Laureate of the U.S.
  • L.A. Times Book Award
  • New York Arts Award
  • Martin Luther King Memorial Prize
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize
  • Lambda Literary Award in Poetry
  • Berlin Prize
  • Orange Prize
  • Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
  • Morton Dauwen Zabel Award (from American Academy of Arts & Letters)
  • Green Carnation Prize
  • Grolie Poetry Prize
  • PEN/Malamud Award
  • Flannery O’Connor Award
  • Notable from Best American Short Stories
  • Addison Metcalf Award (from American Academy of Arts & Letters)
  • Brandeis Creative Arts Award
  • The Booker Prize for Fiction
  • The Irish Times International Prize for Fiction
  • Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
  • Prix Medicis
  • Governor-General’s Award
  • Giller Prize
  • Cannes Film Festival Awards (novels adapted into films)