Faculty and Visiting Faculty

KAREN BENDER
Visiting Writer, Spring 2022
Karen E. Bender is the author of two 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 and other stories, is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press. 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. She is fiction editor of the literary journal Scoundrel Time. Karen has taught creative writing at universities including Hollins University, the University of Iowa, Warren Wilson College, Chatham University, and Tunghai University, and is currently Core faculty at the MFA program at Alma College. Visit her at www.karenebender.com. 

CARLA CAGLIOTI
Executive Director, Southampton Arts,
Assistant Director, Creative Writing and Literature
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.

BILLY COLLINS
Poet
Billy Collins is the author of eleven collections of poetry, most recently a new and selected collection titled Aimless Love (Random House, 2013). Others titles include Horoscopes for the Dead, 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 his work appears regularly in The Best American Poetry. A Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Public Library "Literary Lion," he served as New York State Poet (2004-5) and United States Poet Laureate (2001-2003). He was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This fall, Random House is publishing his newest collection, The Rain in Portugal. 

GENEVIEVE SLY CRANE
Novelist
Genevieve Sly Crane is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts (B.A. English, 2010) and Stony Brook Southampton, (M.F.A. Creative Writing and Literature, 2013). Her first novel, Sorority, earned a Publisher's Weekly starred review. She is the recipient of the 2020 Whiting Award for fiction. Her 2017 story, "Endings, Bright and Ugly," was a finalist for the American Short(er) Fiction Prize. Her upcoming novel is due for publication through Simon and Schuster in January, 2023.

NEAL GABLER
Biographer, Essayist
Neal Gabler is the author of five 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,  Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, and, most recently, Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity and Power for the Yale Jewish Lives series. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Atlantic, 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.

MOLLY GAUDRY
Poet, Author
Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novels Desire: A Haunting and We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN/Osterweil. She holds master's degrees in fiction and poetry, and a PhD in experimental prose from the University of Utah. She is the founder of Lit Pub.

EMMA WALTON HAMILTON
Author, Editor
Emma Walton Hamilton is a best-selling children's author, editor, producer, and arts educator. She has co-authored over thirty 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. Walton Hamilton’s most recent project is as co-creator, writer and executive producer of Julie’s Greenroom, a children’s television program about the arts created for Netflix. 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. More information can be found at www.emmawaltonhamilton.com.

PAUL HARDING
Director, Creative Writing & Literature MFA Program; Novelist
Paul Harding is the author of the novel Tinkers, which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His second novel, Elon, was published by Random House in 2013. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN American Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. He was a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, MA, and has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Harvard University and Grinnell College.

AMY HEMPEL
Author
Amy Hempel is the author of four story collections, including Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. The New York Times named The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel one of the Ten Best Books of 2006. A 2017 inductee to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Hempel is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a Guggenheim Fellow; and the recipient of the Hobson Award, a USA Fellowship grant, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence from Centenary College. Hempel is a founding board member of the Deja Foundation, which offers direct assistance to dogs rescued from high-kill shelters in an effort to empower small rescue organizations to support sustainable adoptions.

KAYLIE JONES
Novelist, Memoirist
Kaylie Jones is a novelist, creative nonfiction writer, and editor. Her memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, was released by Harper Collins in 2009. Her third novel, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (Bantam, 1990), was adapted as a Merchant Ivory Film in 1998. Celeste Ascending was published by Harper Collins in 2000 and her novel Speak Now was released by Akashic Books in 2003. Her novels have been translated into many languages including French, Dutch, German, and Japanese. Kaylie taught fiction at The Writer’s Voice from 1988 to 1996, before helping to create Long Island University's MFA Program in Writing at Southampton campus, now the Stony Brook Southampton MFA Program in Creative Writing, where she still teaches. Currently, she chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. Many of the winners have gone on to publish to critical acclaim. Kaylie is also the proud editor of the Long Island Noir anthology, published by Akashic Books in spring 2012. In November 2011, Kaylie was given an award by the National Coalition Against Censorship for her work in bringing to print an unexpurgated, uncensored edition of her father’s classic novel, From Here to Eternity. Kaylie’s newest and probably most important endeavor is the launch of her imprint, Kaylie Jones Books, under the aegis of Akashic Books. In the last three years she has published seven titles, including award winners and two national best-sellers. Kaylie’s most recent novel, The Anger Meridian, was published by Akashic Books in June, 2015. She holds an MFA in Creative writing from Columbia University.

CHRISTINE KITANO
Poet

Christine Kitano is the author of two collections of poetry,Sky Country (BOA Editions, 2017), and Birds of Paradise (Lynx House Press, 2011). Sky Country won the Central New York Book Award and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. She co-edited the oral history collection Who You? Hawai'i Issei(University of Hawai'i / Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i Press, 2017) and They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women's Poetry (Blue Oak Press, 2022). She joined the faculty for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in 2018.

Originally from Los Angeles, CA, Christine is of Japanese and Korean ancestry. Her father, Harry Kitano, was incarcerated at Topaz Concentration Camp during WWII, then helped to found the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA where he taught for nearly forty years. Her mother immigrated from Korea as a teenager. Christine's poetry and scholarship explore these familial legacies.

Dr. Kitano holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She serves on the advisory board for the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies and is an active member of the U.S.-Japan Council. She has been invited to speak and read her work at venues across the country.

MATTHEW KLAM
Fiction Writer and Journalist
Matthew Klam is the author of Sam The Cat, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book. The recipient of an O. Henry Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Whiting Writer’s Award, he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. A novel is forthcoming from Random House in the spring of 2017.

ROBERT LOPEZ
Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River —named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. A new novel-in-stories, A Better Class Of People, will be published by Dzanc Books in March, 2022. Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere, his first nonfiction book, will be published by Two Dollar Radio in September, 2022. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction – Latino.  He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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 many books, including the novels Starting From Happy and Him Her Him AgainThe End of Him, both of which were finalists for the Thurber Prize for Humor, and several collaborations with the cartoonist Roz Chast. Their first children's book, Now Everybody Really Hates Me, was the recipient of the first and only Friedrich Medal, an award named after Marx's air conditioner. Her latest book is Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties. 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.

PATRICIA McCORMICK
Young Adult Fiction
Patricia McCormick is a two-time finalist for the National Book Award. She is the author of several young adult novels, including Never Fall Down, the true story of a boy who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and SOLD, an account of sexual trafficking based on her research in the brothels of Calcutta. She is also the co-author of the young readers’ edition of I am Malala, the story of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Stone Coast Review and will be featured on The Moth.

She splits her time between North Haven and New York where she volunteers with Literacy for Incarcerated Youth.

CHRISTIAN McLEAN
Co-Director, Southampton Writers Conference
Christian McLean's fiction has been published in The Rumpus, Scores Anthology,  and The Southampton Review. His poetry has been featured in a collaborative work at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Museum (Dundee, Scotland).

SUSAN SCARF MERRELL
Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
Susan Scarf Merrell is Co-Director of the Southampton Writers Conference and a professor in the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook Southampton. She is the author of the non-fiction work, The Accidental Bond: How Sibling Connections Influence Adult Relationships, the novel A Member of the Family, and, most recently, SHIRLEY: A Novel, which was selected as one of the top fifty novels of the year by The Washington Post and has been optioned by HBO.

SUSAN MINOT
Novelist, Short Story Writer
Susan Minot studied writing and painting at Brown University and received an MFA in writing from Columbia University. After she published short stories in Grand Street and The New Yorker. the legendary publisher Seymour Lawrence brought out her next three books: Monkeys, a collection of linked short stories which won the Prix Femina Etranger in France in l987; Lust & Other Stories, another collection, and Folly, a novel. She collaborated with the director Bernardo Bertolucci on the screenplay of Stealing Beauty. Her fourth book, Evening, was made into a major motion picture in 2007. It was followed by the novels Rapture in 2002 and Thirty Girls in 2014.

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.

JULIE SHEEHAN
Associate Professor, Poet,
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.

FREDERIC TUTEN
Fiction
Frederic Tuten grew up in the Bronx and later lived in South America and Paris, writing about Brazilian Cinema Novo and teaching at University of Paris 8.  Among his novels are The Green Hour, Tintin in the New World, and The Adventures of Mao on the Long March.  He has written extensively about art, literature and film; acted in an Alain Resnais movie; taught with Paul Bowles in Morocco; cowrote the cult classic Possession; and, along the way, earned a PhD in literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  His most recent book, Self Portraits: Fictions, is a collection of interrelated short stories. He has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes.

LOU ANN WALKER
Director, TSR Publishing; Professor
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.

DAWNIE WALTON
Visiting Writer
Dawnie Walton is a writer, editor, and author of the novel The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and named one of the best books of 2021 by The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, and former U.S. President Barack Obama, among others. Her work explores identity, place, and the influence of pop culture. Formerly an editor at Essence and Entertainment Weekly, she has received fellowships in fiction from MacDowell and Tin House, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2018). Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Bon Appetit, NPR, Lithub, and Black Ballad. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

DE'SHAWN WINSLOW
Visiting Writer
De'Shawn Charles Winslow was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His first novel, In West Mills, received the 2019 Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, an American Book Award and a Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction. His second novel, Decent People (a small town murder mystery) will be published in early 2023.

MEG WOLITZER
Novelist and Short Story Writer
Meg Wolitzer is a novelist whose recent work includes The Interestings, named a best book of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Time, and The Chicago Tribune, and named a notable book by The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post. Among her other books are The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, The Position, and The Wife, as well as the YA novel Belzhar. Wolitzer’s short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. A member of the MFA faculty at Stony Brook Southampton, she has also taught creative writing at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Skidmore College, and the 92nd Street Y. In 2013, along with singer-songwriter Suzzy Roche, Meg Wolitzer was a guest artist at the Princeton Atelier at Princeton University.