Karen E. Bender
Karen E. Bender is the author of three story collections: Refund, a Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction, a shortlist selection for the
Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, a Longlist selection for the Story
Prize, and a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and The New Order, a Longlist selection for the Story prize. A new collection, The Words of Dr. L, was published in May 2025. She is also the author of two novels: Like Normal People, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection,
and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her fiction has appeared in magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review,
Guernica and others, and has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, Best American
Mystery Stories, and won three Pushcart prizes. She has won grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the Rona Jaffe foundation.Karen has taught creative writing
at universities including Hollins University, the University of Iowa, Warren Wilson
College, Chatham University, and Tunghai University, and currently teaches for the
MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook and the low residency MFA program at Alma College.
You can find her at http://www.karenebender.com.
Andrew Colarusso
Andrew E. Colarusso is author of several books of prose and poetry. Most recently,
Black Body Index (2024 Book Works UK), a hybrid essay collection, and Pettyg-d, his
second full collection of poetry (2026, Flood Editions). He is also the owner of Taylor
& Co. Books, an indie bookstore in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Alison Fairbrother
Alison Fairbrother is the author of the novel The Catch, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Amazon Editor’s Pick, and a People magazine “Best New Book.” She is an associate editor at Riverhead Books/Penguin Random
House, where she works with novelists Kristen Arnett, Aja Gabel, Anna Hogeland, R.
O. Kwon, and Jenny Xie, among others. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University
and was a BookEnds fellow during the program’s inaugural year.
Daisy Alpert Florin
Daisy Alpert Florin is the author of My Last Innocent Year (Holt, 2023),which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an Amazon Editors’
Pick, a Washington Post Staff Pick and an Indie Next pick. Daisy attended Dartmouth
College and received graduate degrees from Columbia University and Bank Street Graduate
School of Education. She was a recipient of the 2016 Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship
at Sarah Lawrence College and was a 2019–20 fellow in the BookEnds novel revision
fellowship where she worked with founding director Susan Scarf Merrell. A native New
Yorker, she lives in Connecticut with her family.
Stephanie Gangi
Stephanie Gangi is an award-winning poet, novelist, short story writer and essayist
living and writing in New York City. Her debut novel The Next was published by St. Martin’s Press, and Carry the Dog was published by Algonquin Books. Gangi’s work has appeared in Catapult, LitHub, Hippocrates Poetry Anthology, McSweeney’s, New Ohio Review, Oldster, Next Tribe, The Woolfer, Arts & Letters, Craft and more. Her third novel The Good Provider is in progress.
Molly Gaudry
Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and shortlisted for the
PEN/Osterweil. Desire: A Haunting, its sequel, and Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir, are further explorations of the same storyworld and characters. Molly holds master’s
degrees in fiction and poetry from the University of Cincinnati and George Mason University,
respectively, and a PhD in experimental prose from the University of Utah. An assistant
professor at Stony Brook University, she teaches nonfiction and poetry in the BFA and MFA programs. Summers, she teaches fiction at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.
Matthew Klam
Matthew Klam is the author of the novel, Who Is Rich?, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, nominated for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and Sam the Cat, winner of the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, and a finalist
for The Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, First Fiction. He's a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting
Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts. His writing has been featured in such
places as The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, The New York Times, Esquire, The O' Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction. He's currently a Visiting Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Stony Brook
University.
Susan Scarf Merrell
Susan Scarf Merrell co-founded the BookEnds Fellowship with Meg Wolitzer in 2016.
She was an Associate Professor on faculty with the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature
for many years, and is most recently the author of Shirley: A Novel, which became a major motion picture starring Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel is the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015), and the novels The Body Scout (Orbit, 2021) and Metallic Realms (Atria, 2025). His fiction appears in The Paris Review, Granta, F&SF, NOON, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His essays and criticism have been published by
The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian. He is the former editor-in-chief of the website Electric Literature and is the co-editor of the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated anthologies Tiny Crimes (Catapult, 2018) and Tiny Nightmares (Catapult, 2020). You can find him online at lincolnmichel.com and @thelincoln.
Dawnie Walton
Dawnie Walton is the author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, winner of the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Audie Award for
Fiction. Her debut novel was also longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction,
and was named one of the best books of 2021 by The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, and former U.S. President Barack Obama. She is an assistant professor of creative
writing at Stony Brook University, and the cofounder and editorial director of Ursa,
an audio production company celebrating short fiction from underrepresented voices.
Her second novel is forthcoming from Pamela Dorman/Viking in summer 2027. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, she lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Stephanie Wambugu
Stephanie Wambugu lives in New York City. She was born in Mombasa, Kenya and grew
up in New England. Her work appears in The Nation, Granta, frieze, Bookforum, and The Drift. Her debut novel Lonely Crowds was published by Little, Brown in 2025, and was named a notable book of the year
by the New York Times, a must read book of 2025 by Time, and was a B&N Discover Prize finalist.
Meg Wolitzer
A faculty member of the Creative Writing & Literature Program at The Lichtenstein
Center, Meg Wolitzer is program director (along with Susan Scarf Merrell) of BookEnds.
Her novels include The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among others. Wolitzer, who has also written books for young readers, was guest
editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017. She is host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.
A lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing at The Lichtenstein Center and co-director
of BookEnds, Alison Fairbrother is the author of the novel The Catch, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a People magazine “Best New Book.” She was an associate editor at Riverhead Books before coming
to Stony Brook, where she worked with New York Times bestselling and award winning authors. A graduate of Stony Brook’s MFA program, she
was a BookEnds fellow during the program’s inaugural year.
