Stony Brook University - MFA in Creative Writing & Literature People

Faculty and Visiting Writers

JULIE SHEEHAN Assistant Professor and Director, MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literature Julie Sheehan's three poetry collections are Bar Book: Poems & Otherwise (W.W. Norton), Orient Point (also from Norton) and Thaw (Fordham). Her honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award and NYFA Fellowship in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies.	Photo: Star Black
ROBERT REEVES Professor, Novelist, Assoc. Provost Southampton Arts Campus 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 Distinguished Professor of English and Writing, Essayist, Novelist Roger Rosenblatt's essays for Time magazine have won two George Polk awards, among others. His television essays for the NewsHour on PBS have won the Peabody and the Emmy. He is the author of six off-Broadway plays and 15 books, published in 13 languages. They include the New York Times bestsellers Kayak Morning, Unless It Moves the Human Heart, and Making Toast, a memoir of his family, which initially appeared as an essay in The New Yorker. Other books are the novels Beet and Lapham Rising, another bestseller, as were Rules for Aging and Children of War, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy book prize. His one-man show, Free Speech in America, was cited by the Times as one of the 10 best plays of 1991. In 2008, he was appointed Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook.

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.

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.

JON ROBIN BAITZ Playwright and Screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz is the author of a number of plays including The Substance of Fire, A Fair Country, Ten Unknowns, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Three Hotels, and The Paris Letter. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Drama Desk winner, Humanitas winner, a Guggenheim and an NEA Fellow. Mr Baitz created the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters and has written for The West Wing. He also adapted his play The Substance of Fire for the screen, as well as the screenplay for the Al Pacino movie, People I Know. He is a founding member of Naked Angels Theatre Company, and on the faculty of the New School's graduate drama division. Most recently, Mr. Baitz has had a tremendously successful run of his new play, Other Desert Cities, at Lincoln Center Theatre. It will transfer to Broadway in the fall of 2011.

ANNIE BAKER Playwright Annie Baker is an OBIE-award-winning playwright and teacher. Her full-length plays include Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, OBIE Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, OBIE Award for Best New American Play), and Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright). Her plays have also been produced regionally at South Coast Rep, the Guthrie, Victory Gardens, Artists Rep, Huntington Theater Company, Seattle Rep, Studio Theatre in DC, Hyde Park Theatre, Kansas City Rep, and the San Francisco Playhouse, and internationally in London, Melbourne, Sydney, and Buenos Aires. She has developed work at the Signature Theater, MCC, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep, the Orchard Project, the Ontological-Hysteric, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in Utah and Ucross, Wyoming. Annie is a member of New Dramatists, MCC’s Playwrights Coalition and EST, and she is an alumna of Youngblood, Ars Nova’s Play Group and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Recent honors include a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination, a Lilly Award, a Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, a MacDowell fellowship and a Master Artist Residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. A published anthology of her work, The Vermont Plays, will be published by TCG in September 2011, and her adaptation of Uncle Vanya will have its world premiere at Soho Rep in June 2012.

MELISSA BANK Novelist and Short Story Writer Melissa Bank is the author of the best-selling story collections The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot. She received the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction from the Chicago Tribune and holds an M.F.A. from Cornell University. Her work has been translated into 33 languages.

STAR BLACK Poet Star Black's sixth book of poems, Velleity's Shade, was released by Saturnalia Books late last year. She is the author of three books of sonnets – Waterworn, Balefire and Ghostwood, a collection of double sestinas – Double Time – and a book of collaged free verse, October for Idas. Her poems have been anthologized in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, 110 Stories: New York Writers After September 11, and The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1880 to The Present. Her collages have been exhibited at Poets House and The Center for Book Arts, and published in One of a Kind: UniqueArtists Books by Pierre Menard Gallery. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor.

ANDREW BOTSFORD Journalist, Editor Andrew Botsford is the former associate editor of The Southampton Press and The East Hampton Press weekly newspapers. An actor for 25 years with the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue, he has appeared in more than 30 productions. He also offers film commentary in the Finest in World Cinema summer series at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center.

MAGDALENE BRANDEIS Producer, Novelist Magdalene Brandeis is a producer, novelist, director of Manhattan Programming, and visiting assistant professor in Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA Program. She teaches writing and filmmaking, curates the Manhattan Writers Speak series with editor Daniel Menaker, and she created “Bob's Writing Shack,” the program's YouTube Channel. Formerly a development assistant at various studios, she has translated and adapted French films and produced television series for ABC, AMC, Bravo, and MTV. Her novel, Stone Fruit, has been excerpted in The East Hampton Star and TSR: The Southampton Review. Her memoir, A Reader of Signs, has been excerpted in TSR: The Southampton Review. She holds a BA from Antioch University Los Angeles, and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Stony Brook Southampton.

ANNETTE HANDLEY CHANDLER Producer, Author and Screenwriter Annette Handley Chandler is the Director of the Southampton Screenwriting Conference and teaches Screenwriting through the MFA Writing & Literature program. She has produced films for Paramount Pictures, Disney, PBS, ABC and CBS. Among them, the 2001 Emmy Award winning Ansel Adams: A Documentary directed by Ric Burns. A former literary agent and ABC programming executive in Los Angeles, Handley Chandler taught screenwriting at UCLA and Pepperdine University. Locally, she has written, directed and produced Plum TV's documentary on vintner/sculptor Walter Channing. She writes fiction and has been published in numerous publications including the East Hampton Star, The Southampton Press and HamptonStyle Magazine.

BILLY COLLINS Poet Billy Collins is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently Horoscopes for the Dead (Random House, 2011). Others titles include Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Nine Horses, Ballistics and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of three anthologies: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Everyday, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Bird Poems. His poems have been published in a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and The American Scholar, and he appears regularly in The Best American Poetry. A Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Public Library "Literary Lion," he is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College, City University of New York, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College. He served as New York State Poet (2004-5) and United States Poet Laureate (2001-2003). This fall will see the publication of a second new and selected collection titled Aimless Love.

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.

NEAL GABLER Biographer, Essayist Neal Gabler is the author of four books: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, and Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Vanity Fair, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek, and Vogue, and he has been the recipient of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Time magazine's nonfiction book of the year, USA Today's biography of the year, a National Book Critics Circle nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Public Policy Scholarship at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Shorenstein Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Patrick Henry Fellowship at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center. He has also served as the chief nonfiction judge of the National Book Awards.

ROBERT EMMETT GINNA Editor, Essayist Robert Emmett Ginna taught writing and film courses at Harvard 1987-2003. A former editor in chief of Little, Brown, assistant managing editor of LIFE, and an editor of three other national magazines, he has also been a writer/producer of theatrical feature films and network TV programs. His byline has appeared in more than a score of journals, and he is the author of The Irish Way: A walk through Ireland's past and present.

EMMA WALTON HAMILTON Author, Editor Emma Walton Hamilton is a best-selling children's author, editor, arts educator and arts and literacy advocate. She has co-authored over twenty children's books with her mother, Julie Andrews, seven of which have been on the New York Times best-seller list, including the #1 bestselling series The Very Fairy Princess. Emma’s own book for parents and caregivers, Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment, premiered as a #1 best-seller on Amazon.com in the literacy category and won a Parent’s Choice Gold Medal, silver medals from the Living Now and IPPY Book Awards, and Honorable Mention from ForeWord Magazine's Best Book of the Year. Emma is a faculty member and directs both the Southampton Children’s Literature Fellows program and YAWP (the Young Artists and Writers Project). She is married to actor/producer/director Stephen Hamilton. Her blog, Emmasaries: Raising the Next Generation of Readers and Writers, can be found at http://www.emmawaltonhamilton.com/blog

URSULA HEGI Novelist Ursula Hegi is the author of 12 books. Her Burgdorf Cycle encompasses 4 of her novels: Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm, The Vision of Emma Blau, and now Children and Fire. 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 has taught 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. A bi-cultural writer, Ursula didn’t plan to set nearly half of her work in Europe and the other half in the Americas—but that's how the pages have opened for her, reflecting what it is like to be an immigrant.

KAYLIE JONES Novelist, Memoirist Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels, including A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, which was made into a Merchant – Ivory film in 1998. The novel Celeste Ascending was published by Harper Collins in 2001, and the memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me, was published to critical acclaim in 2009. She has been teaching creative writing for almost 25 years at The Writers Voice, SUNY Stony Brook –Southampton MFA Program, and the Wilkes University low-residency MFA Program, and is Chairman of the annual $10,000 James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

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 Guggenheim, 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 their 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, and teaches at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.	Photo: Marion Ettlinger

MITCHELL KRIEGMAN Filmmaker, Screenwriter A winner of the Director's Guild Award and four Emmy Awards for Directing and the Webby. Mitchell Kriegman began his diverse career as a fiction writer and independent filmmaker. He has written screenplays for Columbia, Rogue Universal, Disney and the Jim Henson Company. In the 1980s, he joined the team of "Saturday Night Live" as a writer and their first digital short filmmaker. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, the Kitchen Center, The London Institute of Contemporary Art, MOMA and others. He has received grants for his work from American Film Institute, NEA and the MacDowell Colony. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, the National Lampoon, New York Press, Army Man, Glamour and Harper's Bazaar. Kreigman is the creator of Nickelodeon’s "Clarissa Explains It All," was the executive head writer for "Ren and Stimpy," "Rugrats" and "Doug." He has written primetime sitcom pilots at CBS, FOX, ABC. Mitchell received his BA Bennington College.

PATRICIA MARX Fiction, Creative Nonfiction Patricia Marx is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former writer for Saturday Night Live. She is the author of twelve books, including the novels Starting From Happy and Him Her Him Again The End of Him, both of which were finalists for the Thurber Prize for Humor, and several collaborations with the cartoonist Roz Chast. Marx was the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon. She has taught screenwriting at Princeton University and can take a baked potato out of the oven with her bare hand.

MEGAN McANDREW Fiction Megan McAndrew is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Going Topless (Downtown Press, 2004) and Dreaming in French (Scribner, 2009). She lives in East Quogue and Brooklyn.

PATRICIA MCCORMICK Fiction Patricia McCormick, a two-time National Book Award finalist, is the author of five critically acclaimed novels – Never Fall Down, a novel based on the true story of an 11-year-old boy who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia by playing music; Purple Heart, a suspenseful psychological novel that explores the killing of a 10-year-old boy in Iraq; Sold, a deeply moving account of sexual trafficking; My Brother’s Keeper, a realistic view of teenage substance abuse; and Cut, an intimate portrait of one girl’s struggle with self-injury. Her books have earned many honors: Never Fall Down was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2012 and was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2012, and a Best Book of the Year by iTunes, The Huffington Post, School Library Journal and the Chicago Public Library. Sold was named by Publishers Weekly as one of Best 100 Books of the Year and was selected by the American Library Association as one of the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults in 2006. Cut was an ALA Best Book for Teenagers. McCormick was named a New York Foundation of the Arts fellow in 2004. She is also the winner of the 2009 German Peace Prize for Youth Literature. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and lives in Manhattan.

DANIEL MENAKER Fiction Writer and Editor Daniel Menaker was an editor at The New Yorker for twenty years and wrote frequently for the magazine. He went to Random House in 1995 as Senior Literary Editor and eventually became Editor-in-Chief there, working with such writers as Salman Rushdie, Colum McCann, Elizabeth Strout, and Nassim Taleb, and he now serves as a consultant for Barnes & Noble. He has published five books of his own, two of them New York Times Notable Books, and has twice won the O Henry Award for short fiction.	Photo: Star Black

SUSAN MERRELL Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist Susan Scarf Merrell is the author of the novel A Member of the Family and the nonfiction book The Accidental Bond: How Sibling Connections Influence Adult Relationships. Her short stories and essays have been published in the literary reviews Tin House, The Southampton Review, and The New Haven Review. She has also written on the subject of adoption for The Daily Beast, and on author Shirley Jackson's Vermont homes for Writershouses.com. Merrell's articles have appeared in Edible East End, Self, New Woman, Parents, Parenting, Child, Psychology Today and elsewhere. A graduate of Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, Merrell holds an MFA from The Bennington Writing Seminars.

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.

HELEN SIMONSON Fiction Helen Simonson is an Englishwoman who spent her early years in a tiny village in East Sussex. She has been a US resident for over twenty years and lives in New York with her American husband and her two sons. A graduate of the London School of Economics and former travel advertising executive, she recently completed her MFA at Stony Brook Southampton. Her short stories and essays have been published in The Southampton Review, the North Atlantic Review, the East Hampton Star, and Proteus, and broadcast on WLIU radio. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is her first novel, and has been published in 20 countries and translated into 18 languages. Helen has been awarded the 2010/11 Waverton Good Read Award, the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance and an honorable mention for the 2011 Pen Hemingway award. She is at work on a second novel to be published by Random House.

TERESE SVOBODA Fiction, Poetry A dazzling master of craft with a body of work that includes five books of poetry, six novels, a memoir, a book of translation and over a hundred published short stories, Terese Svoboda's subject is human suffering. Called "disturbing, edgy and provocative" by Book Magazine, her work is often the surreal poetry of a nightmare yet is written with such wit, verve and passion that she can address the direst subjects. "Terese Svoboda has such range—of subject, of emotion (from whimsical play to chillingly dead serious), that these poems take you on a wild ride, fast and dangerous, but always in control. This is a goddamn terrific book!", writes Thomas Lux about Weapons Grade (2009). Her most recent publications are two novels, Pirate Talk or Mermelade (2010), and Bohemian Girl (2011).

JOHN WESTERMANN Crime Fiction Writer Ex-cop John Westermann has published five novels, three short stories and also works as a freelance sportswriter. He has been the Director of the Stony Brook $1000 Short Fiction prize since 2004. His novel Exit Woundswas a hit film in 2001 from Warner Brothers/Silver Pictures.

MICHELLE WHITTAKER Poet Michelle Whittaker is a poet and pianist. Her research interest includes eco-poetics, creative non-fiction, and early-to-late 20th century American and British poetry. Her poems have recently appeared and are forthcoming in The Southampton Review, Xanadu, Drunken Boat and Long Island Quarterly. She has received the 2009 Jody Donohue Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize honorable mention, and a Cave Canem fellowship.

MEG WOLITZER Novelist and Short Story Writer Meg Wolitzer is a novelist whose works include The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position and The Wife. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Wolitzer has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, Columbia University, Skidmore College, the University of Houston, Boston University and Barnard College. In the fall she will be a visiting artist at Princeton University's Atelier program.

CARLA CAGLIOTI Executive Director, Southampton Arts Carla Caglioti is the Executive Director of Southampton Graduate Arts and founding Associate Director of the Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Writing and Literature. She is also an Assistant Dean at Stony Brook Southampton. Caglioti has a Bachelor's in English Literature and Writing, a Master's in English Education, and a doctorate in English Literature. Her dissertation focused on the rise of the field of creative writing in higher education. Her work has appeared in The Scrub Oak Review, Proteus, Letters from Ninevah and The Southampton Review.

CHRISTIAN MCLEAN Conference Coordinator Christian McLean is the Conference Coordinator for Stony Brook Southampton's MFA Program and the founding Director of the Florence Writers Conference. His fiction has been published in Scores Anthology and The Southampton Review. His poetry has been featured in a collaborative work at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Museum (Dundee, Scotland). 2006 saw the publication of his first children's book Duckhampton. Christian holds a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.	Photo: Star Black

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 also worked for the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the Stony Brook University Humanities Institute. Her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, Oberon and Alehouse.

Photo: Star Black

Photo: Marion Ettlinger

Photo: Star Black

Photo: Star Black