Creative Writing Center

The Faculty

Among the notable writers who have taught courses open to nondegree students are:

2000-2001 Faculty

Glenda Adams
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Sydney, 1962; M.S., Columbia, 1965. Awards: CAPS fiction writing grant, Australian Council Literature Fiction Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Miles Franklin Literary Award, Age Fiction Book of the Year, Australian National Book Council Award for Fiction. Taught at Sarah Lawrence and Brooklyn College. Author of Lies and Stories, The Hottest Night of the Century (stories); Games of the Strong, Dancing on Coral, Longleg, The Tempest of Clemenza (novels). Contributor to Transatlantic Review, Ms., Mother Jones, The Village Voice, TriQuarterly, I Know Some Things (anthology).

Meena Alexander
Adjunct Associate Professor
Ph.D., Nottingham (England), 1973. Awards: National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Altrusa International Foundation. Taught at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Author of River and Bridge (poems), House of a Thousand Doors (poems and prose), The Storm (long poem), Fault Lines (nonfiction), Nampally Road (novel), and Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley. Contributor to Chelsea, IKON, Ironwood, New Letters, Massachusetts Review, River Styx, Making Waves: Writing by Asian American Women, Contemporary Indian Poetry, Grand Street, The New York Times Magazine, Love Poems by Women, Charlie Chan is Dead, Contemporary Asian American Fiction.

Thomas Beller
Adjunct Assistant Professor
M.F.A., Columbia University, 1992. Author of Seduction Theory (stories), The Sleep-Over Artist (novel). Founding editor of Open City Magazine. Editor of Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of Twenty Young Writers. Contributor to The New Yorker, Elle, The Cambodia Daily, New York magazine, and Best American Short Stories (anthology).

Jill Bialosky
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Ohio University, 1979; M.A., Johns Hopkins, 1980; M.F.A. Iowa Writers Workshop, 1983. Taught at The Poetry Society of America, Johns Hopkins, University of Iowa. Author of The End of Desire (poetry). Co-editor of Wanting a Child (anthology). Senior editor and vice president, W.W. Norton and Company. Contributor to The New Yorker, International Poetry Review, Antioch, Partisan Review, Pequod, Agni Review, Seneca Review, TriQuarterly, Redbook, The Nation, and The Paris Review.

John Bowers
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Tennessee. Awards: CAPS fiction writing grant; Basler Chair of Excellence, East Tennessee State University. Taught at State University of New York (Stony Brook). Author of The Colony, No More Reunions, Helene (fiction); Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier, The Golden Bowers, In the Land of Nyx: Night and Its Inhabitants (nonfiction); Remembrance of Things Present (play). Contributor to Harper’s, Playboy, The Village Voice, The New York Times, New York magazine, The Saturday Evening Post.

Marina Budhos
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Cornell, 1983; M.A., Brown, 1985. Awards: Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, Fulbright to India, Exceptional Merit Media Award, The Kenyon Review’s Emerging Writer Award. Author of House of Waiting, The Professor of Light (novels), Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers (nonfiction). Contributor to Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, Ms., The Nation, and Travel and Leisure.

Sophie Cabot-Black
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Marlboro College, 1980; M.F.A., Columbia, 1984. Awards: Poetry Society of America, Bunting Institute Fellowship (Radcliffe College), Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, MacDowell Colony Fellowship. Taught at Rutgers and The New School. Author of The Misunderstanding of Nature. Contributor to The Atlantic, Bomb, and American Poetry Review.

Loren Paul Caplin
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Taught at The New School and New York University. Screenplays include The Forbidden Zone, Lost Angels (original story), Battle in the Erogenous Zone. Plays include Sunday’s Child, Men in the Kitchen, Subject of Childhood. Musicals include City Muzik. Director of History of the World in 8 Minutes, selected for the 1988 New Films/New Directors Festival. Author of Banjo (poems). Contributor to The Paris Review, Rolling Stone. In preproduction to direct feature film Burning Blue.

Nicholas Christopher
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Harvard, 1973. Awards: Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Melville Cane Award (Poetry Society of America), Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, CAPS. Taught at New York University, Yale University, University of Wisconsin. Author of The Soloist, The Last Rites of Vincent Delgatto, Veronica, A Trip to the Stars (novels); Creation of the Night Sky, 5°, In the Year of the Comet, On Tour with Rita, A Short History of the Island of Butterflies, Desperate Characters, Atomic Field: Two Poems (poetry); Somewhere in the Night (nonfiction). Editor of Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets and Walk on the Wild Side: Urban Poetry Since 1975. Contributor to The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Grand Street, The New York Review of Books, The Nation.

Jill Ciment
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, 1975; M.F.A., University of California, Irvine, 1981. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts. Taught at Rutgers University, Eugene Lang College, Parsons School of Design, Vassar College. Author of Small Claims (stories), Teeth of the Dog, The Law of Falling Bodies (novels), Half a Life (memoir). Contributor to The Mississippi Review, The California Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Unleashed (anthology).

Alfred Corn
Adjunct Professor
B.A., Emory, 1965; M.A., Columbia, 1967. Awards: Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright. Taught at City University of New York, Yale University, University of California (Los Angeles) and University of Cincinnati. Author of Notes from a Child of Paradise, The Various Light, A Call in the Midst of the Crowd, All Roads at Once, The West Door, Autobiographies, The Metamorphoses of Metaphor, Present (poems); The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody (textbook); Part of His Story (novel).

Austin Flint
Senior Lecturer in Writing
B.A., Harvard, 1954; M.A., Columbia, 1957. Associate Fellow, Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University (1998—present). Awards: Finnish Literature Society Translation Fellowship; drama translation grant, International Theatre Institute; the Finlandia Foundation’s Arts and Letters Award; Quarterly Review of Literature Award Series for translation of the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska. Fiction in small press publications. Plays include Just War, Prison Light, Charity Royall, The Flaming Spider, Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Compartments; translated plays: The Othello of Sand Alley, Mister Light, Anna Liisa. Participant in National Playwrights Conference at O’Neill Theater Center. Reviews and articles in The Scandinavian Review, Books from Finland, The New York Times, New York Newsday. Fiction and poetry translations in Poetry East, Translation, Ironwood, Invisible City, Stardancer, Chariton Review.

Tony Gerber
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Brown University, 1986; M.F.A., Columbia University, 1995. Award: New York State Council on the Arts for his feature film Side Streets (Merchant Ivory Productions), which premiered at the Venice and 1999 Sundance Film festivals. Short film Taste of Heaven was screened in competition at the 1997 Sundance and Rotterdam film festivals. Coauthor of the screenplay West Wind for HBO’s America’s Dream II. Commissioned films for theatre include the finale film used in the Broadway musical Rent, Mabou Mines’s Reel to Real (The Kitchen), and Mother (La Mama). Codirected the independent short QM (1999 Rotterdam Film Festival and South by Southwest). Has shot and produced for MTV, VH1, PBS, The Learning Channel, National Geographic, and HBO/Cinemax.

Lis Harris
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Bennington. Awards: Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Taught at Wesleyan University. Author of Holy Days: The World of the Hasidic Family, Rules of Engagement: Four American Marriages (nonfiction). Editor of the Village Voice Literary Supplement, 1973—1975. Staff writer for The New Yorker, 1970—1995.

Colin Harrison
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Haverford, 1982; M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers Workshop, 1986. Award: James Michener Fellowship. Taught at University of Iowa. Author of Bodies Electric, Break and Enter, Manhattan Nocturne, Afterburn (novels). Deputy editor, Harper’s. Editor, What’s Going on Here? The Harpers Magazine Book of Annotations. Contributor to The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Florida Times-Union, The Buffalo Courier-Express.

A. M. Homes
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Sarah Lawrence, 1985; M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers Workshop, 1988. Awards: Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, James Michener Fellowship, Henfield Award, Jugenaliterpreis (Germany). Taught at New York University. Author of Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, The Safety of Objects, Jack, Appendix A, The Call-In Hour (fiction). Contributor to Art Forum, Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times. Contributing editor, Vanity Fair, Mirabella, Blind Spot, Bomb.

Colette Inez
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Hunter College, 1961. Awards: Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Foundation for the Arts, Pushcart Prize, Kreymbourg and Reedy Awards (Poetry Society of America), CAPS, Great Lakes College Association First Book Award. Taught at Bucknell University, Ohio University, Denison University, State University of New York (Stony Brook), Hunter College, University of Tennessee (Knoxville), Kalamazoo College. Author of The Woman Who Loved Worms, Alive and Taking Names, Eight Minutes from the Sun, Family Life, Getting Under Way: New and Selected Poetry, Naming the Moons, For Reasons of Music, Clemency (poetry).

Raymond Kennedy
Adjunct Professor
B.A., Massachusetts, 1960. Taught at New York University. Author of The Bitterest Age; Ride a Cockhorse; Lulu Incognito; Flower of the Republic; Columbine; Goodnight, Jupiter; My Father’s Orchard (novels). Contributor to Esquire, Massachusetts Review.

Victor LaValle
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Cornell, 1995; M.F.A., Columbia University, 1998. Taught at the Bank Street School and the Bronx Council for the Arts. Author of slapboxing with jesus (stories). Contributor to Bomb, Code, Transition, Tin House.

Bernard Lefkowitz
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., City College of New York, 1959. Awards: Carnegie Corporation grant, Ford Foundation grant, Clark Foundation grant. Taught at Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism. Author of Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape Case and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb, Tough Change: Growing Up on Your Own in America, Breaktime, The Victims (winner of the Edgar award for the best nonfiction mystery of the year). Former assistant city editor for The New York Post. Contributor to Esquire, Newsweek, Psychology Today, New York magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post.

Eduardo Machado
Associate Professor
Awards: National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, Dramalogue Award, L.A. Weekly Award, the PEW Charitable Trust artist grant. Author of The Floating Island Plays (a collection of four plays), Exiles in New York (film); other plays include Once Removed, Stevie Wants to Play the Blues, Rosario and the Gypsies, Why to Refuse, Don Juan in N.Y.C., Related Retreats, Cuba and the Night. Plays have been produced at the Actors Theater of Louisville, The Long Wharf Theater, Mark Taper Forum, and The American Place Theater, among others.

Donna Masini
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Hunter College, 1985; M.A., New York University, 1988. Taught at Hunter College. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Barnard Women Poets’ Prize, New Letters Literary Award. Author of That Kind of Danger (poetry), About Yvonne (novel). Contributor to The Paris Review, Georgia Review, Boulevard, TriQuarterly, New Letters, Parnassus, Walk on the Wild Side, Things Shaped in Passing.

Martha McPhee
Adjunct Assistant Professor
M.F.A., Columbia, 1994. Award: National Endowment for the Arts. Author of Bright Angel Time (novel). Contributor to North Atlantic Review, Open City, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, House and Garden, The San Francisco Examiner, Vogue, From the Couch (anthology).

Robert Montgomery
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Dartmouth, 1968; M.F.A., Yale School of Drama, 1971. Awards: Most Promising Playwright, Drama Desk; Guggenheim; National Endowment for the Arts. Taught at Eugene O’Neill Theater, Fordham University, New York University. Plays produced include Subject to Fits, Electra, Oedipus at the Holy Place, Ezekiel, Genesis.

David Plante
Professor
B.A., Boston College; Senior Member, King’s College, Cambridge. Awards: American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Foundation, British Arts Council Bursary. Has taught at the Gorki Institute of Literature (Moscow), L’Universite du Quebec à Montreal, Adelphi University, King’s College, Tulsa University, the University of East Anglia. Author of The Ghost of Henry James, The Family (nominated for the National Book Award), The Woods, The Country, The Foreigner, The Native, The Accident, Annunciation, The Age of Terror (novels). Contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review.

Edward Pomerantz
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., City College; M.F.A., Yale School of Drama. Awards: Writers Guild, ABC-TV Playwright-in-Residence Grant, Ford Foundation, John Golden, CAPS, first prize–Samuel French National Playwriting Contest. Taught at Writers Guild of America, Tisch School of the Arts, Aspen Writers’ Workshop and Theater, Long Island University. Author of Bird of Paradise, Caught (screenplays); Face to Face, The Princess and the Cabbie, episodes of Law and Order (teleplays); Into It; Sweetheart, Virgin, and God; Do Me a Favor (novels); Quacks and Horners, The Garden, Only a Game (plays).

Phyllis Raphael
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Barnard, 1957. Award: PEN Syndicated Fiction. Taught at New York University, the New School University. Author of They Got What They Wanted (novel); Beating the Love Affair Rap and Other Tales (stories). Contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s, The Village Voice, Redbook, Newsday, McCalls, Columbia, Vogue, Lear’s, Boulevard, American Book Review, Mirabella, Creative Nonfiction, Seasons of Women (anthology).

Louise Rose
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Sarah Lawrence, 1965; M.A., Columbia, 1967. Awards: CAPS fiction writing grant, National Endowment for the Arts. Taught at St. Joseph’s College, Sarah Lawrence, Yeshiva. Author of The Launching of Barbara Fabrikant (novel). Contributor to Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, Commentary, Newsday.

Nora Sayre
Adjunct Professor
B.A., Radcliffe. Awards: Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts. Author of Previous Convictions: A Journey through the 1950’s (awarded the Modern Language Association Prize for Independent Scholars in 1996), Sixties Going on Seventies (finalist for the 1974 National Book Award), and Running Time: Films of the Cold War (nonfiction). Essays, articles, and reviews in The New York Times Book Review, New York Newsday, The Nation, and many others. Formerly film critic at The New York Times and New York correspondent for the New Statesman (London). Visiting author for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Dani Shapiro
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Sarah Lawrence, 1987; M.F.A., 1989. Taught at New York University and The New School. Author of Picturing the Wreck, Playing with Fire, Fugitive Blue (novels); Slow Motion (memoir). Contributor to Story, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, The Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary American Women.

Leslie Sharpe
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Wheaton College; M.A., Columbia University. Taught at Skidmore, New York University, City College of New York. Author of Editing Fact and Fiction: A Concise Guide to Book Editing. Editorial consultant. Former editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Contributor to New York Newsday, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, Psychology Today, Global City Review.

Matthew Sharpe
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Oberlin 1985; M.F.A., Columbia University 1993. Awards: The McGinnis Prize. Author of Nothing is Terrible (novel), Stories From the Tube (stories). Contributor to Harpers, Zoetrope, Southwest Review, Bomb, www.word.com, American Letters and Commentary, Details.

Mark Slouka
Assistant Professor
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., Columbia University. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts, 1995 Magazine Award for Fiction; Mellon Fellow (University of Virginia). Taught at Harvard, Penn State, University of California-San Diego. Author of Lost Lake (stories), War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-tech Assault on Reality (stories), contributor to Harper’s, Esquire, The Georgia Review, Story, and Epoch.

Susan Thames
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Empire State College, 1987; M.A., City College of New York, 1990. Award: PEN American Center Nelson Algren Competition for Works in Progress, Citation. Taught at St. Joseph’s College, Sarah Lawrence. Author of As Much As I Know (stories); I’ll Be Home Late Tonight (novel). Contributing editor, Global City Review. Coeditor, The Breast: An Anthology. Contributor to Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, New York Woman, The Village Voice.

Marian Thurm
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Vassar College, 1973; M.A., Brown University, 1975. Taught at Barnard College. Author of Walking Distance, Henry in Love, The Way We Live Now, The Clairvoyant (novels); Floating, These Things Happen (stories). Contributor to The New Yorker, Atlantic, Mademoiselle, Ms., Redbook, The Mississippi Review, The Boston Review, The Ontario Review, Best American Short Stories, Editor’s Choice (anthologies).

Lawrence Van Gelder
Adjunct Professor
B.A., Columbia, 1953; LL.B., J.D., 1955. Taught at Columbia University School of Journalism. The New York Times journalist and editor. Formerly with The Daily News, The World Journal Tribune, The New York World Telegram & Sun, The Daily Mirror. Author of The Man Who Sold Death, Deadly Doubles (fiction); Why the Kennedys Lost the Book Battle, Ike: A Soldier’s Crusade (nonfiction).

Kal Wagenheim
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Rutgers-Newark, 1956; M.A., State University of New York, 1974. Journalist, formerly with The New York Times. Contributor to The Nation, The New Republic. Founding editor of The San Juan Review, The Caribbean Review. Author of Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend, Clemente!, The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History (nonfiction). Translator of Manuel Zeno-Gandia’s The Pond, Ramon Ferreira’s The Gravedigger (fiction). Editor and partial translator of the fiction anthology Cuentos/Short Stories from Puerto Rico. His plays Bavarian Rage and We Beat Whitey Ford have been produced off-Broadway. Researcher and writer of documentary films for the U.S. Information Agency.

Dale Worsley
Adjunct Assistant Professor
M.F.A., Vermont College. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts (fiction, playwriting), CAPS, New York Foundation for the Arts, EDPRESS. Taught at Teachers & Writers Collaborative, New York University. Author of The Focus Changes of August Previco (novel), HOY (In His Memory) (novella), The Art of Science Writing (nonfiction); plays include Cold Harbor, Blue Devils, The Last Living Newspaper, Easy Daisy (radio play). Contributor to Teachers & Writers and other educational and literary journals and anthologies.

Mako Yoshikawa
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., Columbia, 1988; M.A., Oxford, 1991. Awards: Bunting. Author of One Hundred and One Ways (novel).

Alan Ziegler
Professor
B.A., Union, 1970; M.A., City College (New York), 1974. Awards: Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University, 1998; New York Foundation for the Arts; Word Beat Fiction Book Award; four PEN Syndicated Fiction awards; CAPS; NEA and NYSCA grants for Some literary magazine and Release Press. Taught at Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Poetry Society of America, Interlochen Arts Academy, Bronx Community College, and for Poets-in-the-Schools. Author of In the City of Mystery (short prose); The Green Grass of Flatbush (stories); So Much To Do (poems); The Writing Workshop: Volume I and Volume II (nonfiction). Has contributed poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Party Train: An Anthology of North American Prose Poetry, Ardis Anthology of New American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Village Voice, Carolina Quarterly, Sun, Creative Writing in America.

Return to Home Page