Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Writing and Literature

ROBERT REEVES Professor, Director, MFA in Writing and Literature Robert Reeves is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, both published by Crown, as well as short fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Kirkus Review hailed Doubting Thomas as "a zesty, classy original," and Patricia Holt of the San Francisco Chronicle called Peeping Thomas "funny, disturbing, and brilliant." Reeves, director of the Southampton Writers Conference, has also taught writing at Harvard and Princeton.

ROGER ROSENBLATT Professor, Essayist, Novelist Roger Rosenblatt‘s essays for Time Magazine and the PBS NewsHour have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody and an Emmy. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and eleven books, including Children of War which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the national bestseller, Rules for Aging; and the novel, Lapham Rising, also a national bestseller. His second novel, Beet, was published in early 2008.

LOU ANN WALKER Professor, Editor-in-Chief, The Southampton Review Lou Ann Walker's book, A Loss for Words, a memoir, won a Christopher Award. Her other books include Hand, Heart & Mind. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Life, Allure, Parade, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times Book Review, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Writer, and The Hopewell Review. Formerly an editor at Esquire and New York Magazine, Walker has lectured on writing at Smith College and Yale University, and taught at Marymount Manhattan College, Southampton College, and Columbia University. The author of several screenplays, she is a member of the Writers Guild of America.

JULIE SHEEHAN Assistant Professor and Curator, “Writers Speak” Lecture Series Julie Sheehan won the Barnard Women Poets Prize for her second book Orient Point. Other honors include the Poets Out Loud Prizes for her first book, Thaw, the Poetry Society of American’s Robert H. Winner Prize and The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Connors Prize. Sheehan’s poems have appeared in Parnassus, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Kenyon Review and Yale Review, among many others. Her work has been anthologized, most recently in The Best America Poetry 2005 and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. She holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. from Columbia.

ALAN ALDA Screenwriter and Memoirist In the 11 years Alan Alda starred in the television series MASH, he was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards, winning five. He wrote (or co-wrote) 20 episodes and he was the first person to win Emmy Awards for acting, writing, and directing for the same series. In addition to his Emmys, Alda has won the Writer’s Guild Award twice and received the coveted Humanitas Award for writing the “Dreams” episode of MASH (from a story by Alda and James Jay Rubinfier). His first memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, was published by Random House in September 2005. His latest book is Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.

MELISSA BANK Novelist and Short Story Writer Melissa Bank is the author of The Wonder Spot (2005) and the best-selling The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (1999). She was the winner of the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and has published stories in The North American Review, Zoetrope, The Chicago Tribune, Ascent, and Other Voices. Her work has been heard on “Selected Shorts” on National Public Radio. Bank holds an MFA from Cornell University, and divides her time between New York City and Sag Harbor.

BILLY COLLINS Poet Among Billy Collins’ collections of poetry are: The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems; The Art of Drowning; Lightning; Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes; Sailing Around the Room; and Nine Horses. He also edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. His work has also appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The American Scholar. Collins is the recipient of many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Guggenheim. Collins was the United States Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003. He was the New York State Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006.

CHRISTOPHER DURANG Playwright Christopher Durang’s plays, The Nature and Purpose of the Universe, Titanic, A History of the American Film, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Beyond Therapy, and Baby With the Bathwater, among others, have appeared both on and off Broadway. His screenplays include Beyond Therapy, The Nun Who Shot Liberty Valence, and The Adventures of Lola and The House of Husbands (co-authored with Wendy Wasserstein). Durang has received numerous honors, including an Obie Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Tony nomination. A graduate of both Harvard and the Yale School of Drama, he now co-chairs the playwriting program at Juilliard.

JULES FEIFFER Cartoonist, Playwright and Screenwriter Jules Feiffer’s Pulitzer-winning and internationally syndicated cartoon ran for 42 years in the Village Voice. His sensibility permeates a wide range of creative work: from his Obie-winning play Little Murders, to his screenplay for Carnal Knowledge, to his Oscar-winning anti-military short subject animation Munro. Other works include the Tony nominee Knock Knock, and the Pulitzer nominee Grown-Ups, as well as his screenplays for Popeye and I Want to Go Home, best screenplay winner at the Venice Film Festival. Taking inspiration from his three daughters, he has reinvented himself as a children’s book author with the award-winning books, Bark George, I Lost My Bear, and The Man in the Ceiling.

URSULA HEGI Novelist Ursula Hegi was born and raised in postwar Germany, before emigrating to the United States as a teenager. She is the author of 11 books. Several of her novels, including Stones from the River and Floating in My Mother’s Palm, explore German and German American identity in the 20th century. Hegi’s work has been translated into many languages, and her awards include the Italian Grinzane Cavour, an NEA Fellowship, and a PEN/Faulkner Award. She is Professor Emeritus at Eastern Washington University, and she has taught as a visiting writer at Barnard College, the University of California at Irvine, and Bread Loaf. She has also served as a juror for the National Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle. Her latest book is The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done.

KAYLIE JONES Novelist Kaylie Jones, born in Paris, received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. She attended the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language Study in Moscow. Jones is the author of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, which is loosely based on her experiences growing up in an expatriate artistic home as the daughter of famed novelist James Jones. Included in her other publications are the novels Celeste Ascending and Speak Now. She currently teaches poetry and fiction in the New York City public schools, where she is a writer in residence. Jones lives with her husband and daughter in Manhattan.

MATTHEW KLAM Fiction Writer and Journalist Matthew Klam was named one of the 20 best young fiction writers in America by The New Yorker in 1999. He is a recipient of a PEN/Robert Bingham Award, an NEA grant, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and an O. Henry Award. His first book, Sam the Cat and Other Stories (Vintage), was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and Esquire, was chosen by Borders Books for its New Voices Series, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper’s, Nerve, and The New York Times Magazine, where he is a contributing writer. He has taught creative writing at the University of Michigan, American University, and Stockholm University in Sweden.

FRANK MCCOURT Memoirist Frank McCourt is the author of Angela's Ashes (1996), for which he received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, Salon Book Award, American Library Association Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award, and Boston Book Review's Anne Rea Jewell Nonfiction Prize, and American Booksellers Association Book of the Year. The book was adapted as a major motion picture in 1999. McCourt taught in the New York City public schools for 27 years, the last 17 of which were spent at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. His recent book, Teacher Man (2006) is the third in a trilogy that includes Angela's Ashes and 'Tis (1999).

MARSHA NORMAN Playwright Marsha Norman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Hull- Warriner, and Drama Desk Awards for ’Night Mother; a Tony Award and Drama Desk Awards for The Secret Garden; and the John Gassner Medallion, Newsday Oppenheimer award, and the American Theatre Critics Association Citation for Getting Out. Other plays include Third and Oak, The Laundromat, The Poolhall, The Holdup, Traveler in the Dark, Sarah and Abraham, Loving Daniel Boone, and Trudy Blue. She also wrote the book for The Color Purple, currently on Broadway. Published work includes Four Plays and a novel, The Fortune Teller. Television and film credits include Face of a Stranger, starring Gena Rowlands and Tyne Daly. Norman is cochair, with Christopher Durang, of the Playwriting Department of the Juilliard School, and vice president of the Dramatists Guild of America.

DAVID RAKOFF Essayist, Humorist David Rakoff is the author of the essay collections Fraud and Don’t Get Too Comfortable. He is a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s “This American Life,” Outside Magazine, and is writer-at-large for GQ. He has also written for The New York Observer, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, Slate, Seed Magazine, and Wired, among others.

MEG WOLITZER Novelist and Short Story Writer Meg Wolitzer is the author of six novels, including The Position, The Wife, Surrender, Dorothy, and This is Your Life (which was made into a motion picture, directed by Nora Ephron, and co-written by Ephron and her sister, Delia Ephron). Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize, and she is a frequent contributor of short plays and personal essays on WNYC’s The Next Big Thing.

CARLA CAGLIOTI Associate Director, MFA in Writing and Literature Carla Caglioti is the founding Associate Director of the Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Writing and Literature as well as a longtime associate of the Southampton Writers Conference. She is also an Assistant Dean at Stony Brook Southampton. Caglioti has a BA in English Literature and Writing, an MS in English Education, and is a doctoral candidate in English Literature. Her dissertation focuses on the rise of the field of creative writing in higher education. Her interests in writing and literature range from Old English riddles to the influence of technology on the writing process (from the quill to the computer).

ADRIENNE C. UNGER Administrative Coordinator, MFA in Writing and Literature Adrienne C. Unger received her BA in English/Creative Writing and Literature from Long Island University, Southampton, and her MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her work for arts and publishing organizations includes stints at the Associated Writing Programs, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre Foundation, and Crain Communications Inc. Formerly a freelance writer for various trade and specialty magazines, Unger was also an administrator for the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and the Stony Brook University Humanities Institute.