Faculty
Randolph College > Academics > Graduate > MFA Creative Writing > Faculty
Our Faculty
Our faculty are accomplished writers and teachers who represent a broad spectrum of identity and culture.
- Kaveh Akbar Poetry
- Eloisa Amezcua Poetry
- Clare Beams Fiction, Nonfiction
- Andrés Cerpa Poetry
- Jos Charles Poetry
- Anthony Cody Poetry
- Lilly Dancyger Nonfiction, Fiction
- Jaquira Díaz Nonfiction, Fiction
- Reyna Grande Fiction, Nonfiction
- Jean Chen Ho Fiction, Nonfiction
- Mira Jacob Fiction, Nonfiction
- Paige Lewis Poetry
- Angel Nafis Poetry
- Diana Khoi Nguyen Poetry
- Julia Phillips Fiction, Nonfiction
- Joy Priest Poetry
- Maurice Carlos Ruffin Fiction, Nonfiction
- Anjali Sachdeva Fiction, Nonfiction
- Chet’la Sebree Poetry, Nonfiction
- Danez Smith Poetry
- John Vercher Fiction
- Phillip B. Williams Poetry
- Jane Wong Nonfiction, Poetry
- Gary Dop MFA Director
- Administrative Faculty
Select Recent and Upcoming Guest Artists
Jane Wong, Jonathan Escoffery, Crystal Hana Kim, Natalie Diaz, Gregory Pardlo, Alexander Chee, Hanif Abdurraqib, Marie-Helene Bertino, Tiana Clark, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Tyree Daye, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Eduardo C. Corral, Don Mee Choi, Danielle Evans, T Kira Madden, NourbeSe Philip, and more…
Kaveh Akbar
photo by B. A. Van Sise
Poetry Faculty (Not teaching in 2024)
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere.
He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016).
He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics 2022). In 2024, Knopf published Martyr!, Kaveh’s first novel. Martyr! was a New York Times Best Seller.
Concerning Pilgrim Bell:
“Working at and along the outer edges of language, Pilgrim Bell calls us to attention and to attend to that which poetry and prayer share, while simultaneously demanding that we tend to the political, the social, the erotic—all that is quotidian and human. . . .
Kaveh Akbar, ‘God’s incarnate spit in the mud,’ takes us down to the ground, to the prosaic, the dismissed and overlooked, the better to talk to the great Silence, bearer of many names including that of God.” — M. NourbeSe Philip
Concerning Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Portrait of an Alcoholic (Sibli)
“Truly brilliant.” — John Green
“Akbar has what every poet needs: the power to make, from emotions others have felt, memorable language nobody has assembled before.” — Stephanie Burt
“Kaveh Akbar has written one of the best books I’ve ever read.” — Patricia Smith
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, PBS NewsHour, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.
In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called “Poetry RX.”
Kaveh Akbar: www.kavehakbar.com
Eloisa Amezcua
photo by Chris Cheney
Poetry Faculty
Amezcua’s debut collection, From the Inside Quietly, was selected by Ada Limón as the inaugural winner of the Shelterbelt Poetry Prize (Shelterbelt Press, 2018).
Eloisa is the author of three chapbooks: On Not Screaming (Horse Less Press, 2016), Symptoms of Teething, winner of the 2016 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2017), & Mexicamericana (Porkbelly Press, 2017).
Her second collection of poems, Fighting Is Like a Wife, was published by Coffee House Press in 2022.
Concerning From the Inside Quietly (Shelterbelt Press):
“With a voice that’s barbed at times but also full of empathy and grace, this is a powerful debut that will continue to rattle and quake in the mind.” — Ada Limón
“Amezcua is a poet who means to see what can’t be said. This is a beautiful debut.” — Jericho Brown
Eloisa is from Arizona. She earned a BA in English from the University of San Diego, where she was the recipient of the Lindsey J. Cropper Award for Creative Writing in Poetry selected by Ilya Kaminsky. She holds an MFA from Emerson College in Boston, MA.
Eloisa has received fellowships & scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference.
Eloisa Amezcua: www.eloisaamezcua.com
Clare Beams
photo by Kristi Jan Hoover
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty
Clare Beams’s novel The Illness Lesson, published in February of 2020 by Doubleday, was named a New York Time Editors’ Choice, a best book of 2020 by Esquire, O Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly; it has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Her story collection, We Show What We Have Learned, was published by Lookout Books in 2016; it won the Bard Fiction Prize, was longlisted for the Story Prize, and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her new novel, The Garden, was published by Doubleday in 2024.
Concerning The Illness Lesson (Doubleday, 2020):
“Beams’s first novel is a meticulously crafted suspense tale seething with feminist fury.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
“Astoundingly original, this impressive debut belongs on the shelf with your Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler collections.” — The New York Times Book Review (Editors Choice)
“Unusual and transporting…This is Alcott meets Shirley Jackson, with a splash of Margaret Atwood.” — The Washington Post
Her fiction appears in One Story, n+1, Ecotone, Conjunctions, The Common, the Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and has received special mention in The Pushcart Prize and twice in The Best American Short Stories.
She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, MacDowell, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and was a finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.
Clare Beams: www.clarebeams.com
Andrés Cerpa
photo by Alice Plati
Poetry Faculty
Andrés Cerpa is the author of The Vault (2021), a longlist selection for the 2021 National Book Award, and a 2021 Rumpus Poetry Book Club Selection. The Vault and Cerpa’s 2019 debut collection, Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy, are from Alice James Books.
Concerning The Vault (Alice James Books, 2021):
“In The Vault, his striking sophomore poetry collection, Andrés Cerpa is our Virgil, offering us a path through the dark realm of loss with fragments of unsent letters, indelible imagery, and exquisite language. … Cerpa has traveled a long way to return with this collection, and through his skillful writing, his unanswered missives offer their own reply.” —Mandana Chaffa, Ploughshares
“A teacher once told me that a poem should be like a spider web — if you touch any part, the rest of it will tremble. This whole book feels like that” –Elisa Gabbert, The New York Times
Concerning Bicycle in a Ransacked City (Alice James Books, 2019):
“Cerpa’s is a magnificent talent―a yawp made for this very moment, and a voice for the ages.” ―Brenda Shaughnessy
“The poetry of Andrés Cerpa gives startling dimension to the most profound experiences of human sadness; his words come from the ache of longing for what has been taken away or denied by loss and love. A remarkable and poignant debut that illuminates the dark rooms we all inhabit in our search for solace, beauty, or saving grace.” ―Rigoberto González
Cerpa is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Canto Mundo.
His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poem-A-Day, The Kenyon Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, Frontier Poetry, West Branch, Foundry Journal, Wildness, and elsewhere.
He holds degrees from the University of Delaware and Rutgers University, Newark, and now teaches at CUNY College of Staten Island.
Andrés Cerpa: www.andrescerpa.com
Jos Charles
Poetry Faculty
Jos Charles is author of the forthcoming collection a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, March 15, 2022), feeld, a Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series selected by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions), and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016).
Concerning a Year & other poems (Milkweed editions, 2022)
“Months / I move in you: so begins this brilliant lyric cycle, a daybook, a hymnbook, a book of whispers to the dead and the living, a book of lullabies, of songs, of spells. . . Here is a poet who is a cousin of Niedecker and Celan and Valentine, a maker of silences that speak, of grievances that lyric us…” — Ilya Kaminsky
Concerning Feeld (Milkweed
editions, 2018)
“Dazzling . . . In Charles’ hands, the language itself transitions, defamiliarized, and in its new spellings it opens to a poly-vocality where words contain hidden meanings. – Paris Review
“Jos Charles bends language, via willful spelling, to a place where it must be parsed slowly, struggled through, read not so much with the brain as the mouth. Language becomes a felt thing, a terrain to be crossed.” — Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate
Charles has poetry published with Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, PEN, Washington Square Review, Denver Quarterly, Action Yes, The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere.
From 2013-2018 she served as the founding-editor for THEM lit, a trans literary journal. Jos Charles has an MFA from the University of Arizona.
Jos Charles: www.joscharles.com
Anthony Cody
Poetry Faculty
Anthony Cody is the author of Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest, a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN America / Jean Stein Book Award, the California Book Award, the LA Times Book Award in Poetry, as well as longlisted for The Believer Magazine 2020 Editor’s Award in Poetry. Cody is a 2022 Whiting winner, 2021 American Book Award winner, a 2020 Poets & Writers debut poet and a 2020 Southwest Book Award winner.
Anthony’s latest collection is The Rendering (Omnidawn, 2023).
Concerning Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020)
“Cody makes his reader face what has been forgotten and swept under the rug, pushing our understanding of history—and also, importantly, our understanding of how books might evolve—to reflect our modern, multimodal forms of communication.” –Ruben Quesada, Harvard Review
“History’s true story is littered with collusions, silences, and with bodies: the dark ecology Anthony Cody brilliantly prosecutes in his debut collection, Borderland Apocrypha.” ― Carmen Giménez-Smith
“… Anthony Cody delivers poetry back to the general sense of ritual and charm, a gnosis that takes its shape at the double edge of the words and the transmitting body. And because everything must change, the transit leads from here to the dead and back.” —Farid Matuk
A CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, California, Anthony has lineage in both the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl.
His poetry has appeared in The Academy of American Poets: Poem-A-Day, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Boiler, ctrl+v journal, among others. Anthony co-edited How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology.
He has taught ecopoetry at Fresno State, and serves as an associate poetry editor for Noemi Press and a poetry editor for Omnidawn.
Anthony Cody: anthonycody.com
Lilly Dancyger
Nonfiction/Fiction Faculty (2024-25)
Lilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space (2021), a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and the editor of Burn It Down (2019), a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women’s anger.
First Love, a collection of personal and critical essays on friendship, was released by The Dial Press in 2024.
Concerning Negative Space (Santa Fe Writer’s Project, 2021)
“A lovely and heartbreaking book.” –Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
“Dancyger crafts a striking composition out of found objects, a poignant portrait of the identities we construct out of grief.”–Oprah Daily
“This book is so many things: a daughter’s heartrending tribute, a love story riddled by addiction, a mystery whose solution lies at the intersection of art and memory. Together, they form a chorus that I could not turn away from, and didn’t wish to.” –Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me
Lilly’s writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more.
She lives in New York City, and teaches creative nonfiction at Columbia University School of the Arts and at the Randolph College MFA.
Lilly Dancyger: www.lillydancyger.com
Jaquira Díaz
photo by Maria Esquinca
Nonfiction/Fiction Faculty (residency faculty only)
Jaquira Díaz is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, a Summer/Fall 2019 Indies Introduce Selection, a Fall 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, a November 2019 Indie Next Pick, and a Library Reads October pick.
Her second book, I Am Deliberate: A Novel, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books.
Concerning Ordinary Girls: A Memoir (Algonquin Books, 2019):
“Jaquira Díaz writes about ordinary girls living extraordinary lives. And Díaz is no ordinary observer. She is a wondrous survivor, a woman who has claimed her own voice, a writer who writes for those who have no voice, for the black and brown girls ‘who never saw themselves in books.’ Jaquira Díaz writes about them with love. How extraordinary is that!” — Sandra Cisneros
“In her debut memoir, Jaquira Díaz mines her experiences growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami, grappling with traumas both personal and international, and over time converts them into something approaching hope and self-assurance. For years, Díaz has dazzled in shorter formats—stories, essays, etc.—and her entrée into longer lengths is very welcome.” — The Millions
“[A] compelling debut. A must-read memoir on vulnerability, courage, and everything in between from a standout writer.” — Library Journal, starred review
Jaquira Díaz’s work has been published in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Fader, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Best American Essays 2016, among other publications. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship to the Hambidge Center for the Arts, and more.
A former Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, and Consulting Editor at the Kenyon Review, she splits her time between Montréal and Miami Beach, with her partner, the writer Lars Horn.
Jaquira Díaz: www.jaquiradiaz.com
Reyna Grande
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty (2024-25)
Reyna Grande is the author of the bestselling memoirs, The Distance Between Us (Atria, 2012) and A Dream Called Home (Atria, 2018), where she writes about life before and after she arrived in the United States from Mexico as an undocumented child immigrant.
Her other works include the novels Across a Hundred Mountains, (Atria, 2006), Dancing with Butterflies (Washington Square Press, 2009), and most recently A Ballad of Love and Glory (Atria, 2022).
Concerning A Ballad of Love and Glory (Atria, 2022)
“An impeccably researched and deeply felt story about a historical moment most people know little about.” — The San Francisco Chronicle
“Inspired by real characters and events, this sweeping saga brings to light a lesser-known war with complex protagonists.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Reyna Grande has given us an epic and exquisitely wrought portrait of the Americas and Mexico’s battle for freedom. A Ballad of Love and Glory astonishes with its passion and historical precision. A simply mesmerizing and unforgettable novel.” — Patricia Engel, New York Times bestselling author of Infinite Country
Reyna has received an American Book Award, the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award, and the International Latino Book Award. She was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards.
Reyna’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, CNN, The Washington Post, and Buzzfeed, among others. In March 2020, she was a guest on Oprah’s Book Club television special.
Reyna Grande: reynagrande.com
Jean Chen Ho
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty (2024)
Jean Chen Ho is the author of Fiona and Jane (Viking, 2022), one of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 and longlisted for the Story Prize. A Book of the Month and Belletrist Book Club selection, Fiona and Jane was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vulture, Vogue, Oprah Daily, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Electric Literature.
Concerning Fiona and Jane (Viking, 2022):
“Over the course of the book Fiona and Jane become real and electric and precious people. The stories move through intimate, cinematic scenes. . . . The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other’s story, wishing she were there. . . . [E]ven to those not from Los Angeles, Ho’s debut collection feels like a shared experience.” —Tammy Tarng, The New York Times Book Review
“Fiona And Jane captures the textures of female friendship and all the intensity, loyalty, and occasional torment of it.” —Ailsa Chang, NPR’s “All Things Considered”
“An engaging first book. . . . Secrets and betrayals resound through many of the stories. . . . There’s also an endearing sexual boldness in Fiona and Jane. These are Western women who grew up in the Nineties. . . . It’s a vibrant, sexually active world these friendships are acted out in. . . . Emotional accuracy lights up the work. . . . Ho’s writing evokes youthful folly, ever glorious and stupid, with a shadow of later awareness in the prose.”—Joan Silber, The New York Review of Books
Jean’s fiction, essays, and criticism appear in New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Los Angeles Times, Guernica, and other publications.
Ho is the 2023-24 Visiting Assistant Professor in fiction at Skidmore College. She held the 2022-23 Mary Routt Endowed Chair of Writing at Scripps College. She has a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is visiting faculty at Randolph MFA.
Jean Chen Ho: www.jean-chen-ho.com
Mira Jacob
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty
Mira is the author of the graphic memoir Good Talk: a Memoir in Conversations (One World/Random House), which was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Public Library, Chicago Tribune, and Publisher’s Weekly, and one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Time, and Esquire.
Mira’s novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing (Random House), was also widely recognized as a best book of the year, was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, longlisted for the Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and honored by the Asian Pacific American Library Association.
Concerning Good Talk:
“Mira Jacob just made me toss everything I thought was possible in a book-as-art-object into the garbage. Her new book changes everything.” –Kiese Laymon
“A beautiful and eye-opening account of what it means to mother a brown boy and what it means to live in this country post–9/11, as a person of color, as a woman, as an artist . . . In Jacob’s brilliant hands, we are gifted with a narrative that is sometimes hysterical, always honest, and ultimately healing.” –Jacqueline Woodson
Concerning The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing:
“Beautifully wrought, frequently funny, gently heartbreaking… Moving forward and back in time, Jacob balances comedy and romance with indelible sorrow, and she is remarkably adept at tonal shifts. When her plot springs surprises, she lets them happen just as they do in life: blindsidingly right in the middle of things” — The Boston Globe
Mira received her MFA from the New School and has written for television and publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica, Telegraph, Buzzfeed, and Bookanista. Mira is the founder of Pete’s Reading Series in New York City.
In addition to Randolph College, Mira teaches at the New School.
Mira Jacob: www.mirajacob.com
instagram.com/goodtalkthanks
Paige Lewis
Poetry Faculty (not teaching in 2024)
Paige Lewis is the recipient of the Editor’s Award in Poetry from The Florida Review as well as a Gregory Djanikian Scholarship from The Adroit Journal. Paige’s debut book of poems, Space Struck, is new from Sarabande Books in 2019.
Their poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Best New Poets 2017, and elsewhere.
Concerning Space Struck (Sarabande Books):
“I think a lot of people have been awaiting Paige Lewis’s full-length debut, Space Struck, and we are getting very close to a countdown at Mission Control. I love their imagination so much, the way they gather bits of this planet and its occurrences and make from it something utterly particular to their own enchanting perception. This book made me laugh the kind of laugh that means something new has tickled my thoughts.” –Heather Christle
“The brilliant, glow-in-the-dark poems are bursting with magic, risk, and oodles of wonder.” –Tiana Clark
Paige received their MFA and PhD from Florida State University. In addition to teaching for the Randolph College MFA, they currently teach creative writing at Purdue University.
Paige curates the video series Ours Poetica, which “captures the intimate experience of holding a poem in your hand” as it’s read to you. The Ours Poetic YouTube channel distributes poetry to tens of thousands of readers and listeners each week.
Paige Lewis: paigelewispoetry.com
Angel Nafis
Poetry Faculty
Angel, an NEA fellow, a Cave Canem fellow, and a Ruth Lilly fellow is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics), which Elle named one of the 9 books to add to the Modern Brown Girl Literary Canon.
An internationally touring performer, Angel represented New York City at the Women of the World Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam.
Concerning BlackGirl Mansion:
“Angel Nafis’ poems swallow blood and witness truth at its deepest roots… you do not doubt the wisdom of her spirit and her craft in BlackGirl Mansion. The poems you will find here climb mountains! They share the glory and pains of survival against and within the narrative of family and womanhood. They fight for the love they are and know…hers is an original and astonishing voice.” — Rachel Eliza Griffiths
“There is nothing here to skip, forget, or misremember.” –Ashley C. Ford
Angel’s poems can be found in Poetry, Muzzle, Buzzfeed Reader, and The Rumpus.
She is half of the Odes For You Tour and The Other Black Girl Collective, an internationally touring Black Feminist poetry duo.
Angel is the founder and curator of the Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon.
Angel Nafis: www.angelnafis.com
Diana Khoi Nguyen
Poetry Faculty
Poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of the chaplet Unless (Belladonna*, 2019) and debut poetry collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing, 2018), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the L.A. Times Book Prize.
Diana also won the 92Y’s Discovery/Boston Review 2017 Poetry Contest and the Omnidawn Open Book Contest.
Her second collection of poems was published by Scribner in 2024.
Concerning Root Fractures…
“When I say that Diana Khoi Nguyen’s work is deeply moving and unsettling, I mean that her words move and unsettle ideas about diaspora, identity, and loss in startling and gorgeous ways. I can’t get enough of this devastation.” —Beth Nguyen, author of Owner of a Lonely Heart
“In Diana Khoi Nguyen’s beautiful and heartbreaking book, Root Fractures, the leaping imagistic declarative sentence becomes fractured and unreliable, as a way to parse and thread memories and feelings. Stacked to the sky, the declaratives become tenuous and subjunctive, leaning under the weight of family, history, and trauma from displacement and a brother’s suicide.” —Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World and OBIT
Praise for Diana Khoi Nguyen…
“There is nothing that is not music’ for this poet. Poetry is found in the gaps, silences, and ruptures of history.” —Terrance Hayes
Diana’s poetry and prose have appeared widely in magazines and journals such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, and PEN America. A Kundiman fellow and member of the Vietnamese diasporic artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s), Nguyen’s other honors include awards from the 92Y “Discovery” Poetry Contest, Key West Literary Seminars, and Academy of American Poets.
Currently, she teaches creative writing at Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Diana Khoi Nguyen: www.dianakhoinguyen.com
Julia Phillips
photo by Nina Subin
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty
A finalist for the National Book Award, Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novel Disappearing Earth, which is being published in fifteen countries and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and one of the The New York Times Ten Best Books of the 2019.
Her second novel, Bear, will be published in 2024.
Concerning her collection Disappearing Earth:
“A couple of days ago, I felt like I needed to read a book that would submerge me somewhere beautiful, severe, isolated, unknown to me. Then this novel, Disappearing Earth, set in far eastern Russia, in the world’s second largest city that’s inaccessible by land, came like magic.” –Jia Tolentino
“A superb debut…A nearly flawless novel.” — The New York Times
“Mesmerizing….The story reads as a page-turner without relying on any cheap narrative tricks to propel it forward, and the strength of Phillips’s writing—her careful attention to character and tone—will grip you right up until the final heart-stopping pages.” — Vanity Fair
Julia studied at Barnard College and Columbia University. She was a Fulbright Fellow and, Julia has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review.
She lives in Brooklyn.
Julia Phillips: www.juliaphillipswrites.com/
twittercom/jkbphillips
Joy Priest
Poetry Faculty (2024)
Joy Priest (she/her) is a poet and scholar from Louisville, KY. She is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected by the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023).
Priest is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a 2019-2020 Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, the Imprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review.
Concerning Horsepower:
“Horsepower, Joy Priest’s debut collection, is a captivating display of might and elegance, a language of astonishing sinew through which the backdrop of place and a compelling life come into vivid focus. Undergirding these poems is a restless, resilient spirit: an urgent grappling with the desire to both remember and outrun the past, with history both personal and communal, and the complexities of American racism in its most intimate manifestation—familial love. I had, for / years, Priest writes, been taught to live that way. Black, unassuming, / zipped up in history. . . . Throughout this remarkable debut, Priest shows us what it means to clear the stall, break out of the traces, and run unbridled into life.” —Natasha Trethewey
“Through tragedy and triumph, Joy Priest’s poems thunder in the ears like a supercharged heartbeat. Her landscapes drawn technicolor, intense with paradox and heat, devotion is indistinguishable from rage. Horsepower seethes with so much intelligence and feeling that comparisons to Hurston are inevitable. Jean Toomer also comes quickly to mind, but Priest’s voice is one of a kind. Let these poems comfort you, if you dare, soft as the pillow that hides the gun.” —Gregory Pardlo
Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others, as well as in commissions for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Her essays have appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Poets & Writers, ESPN, and The Undefeated.
She is currently an Assistant Professor of African American / African Diaspora Poetry in the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA Writing Program, and is Visiting Faculty at Randolph MFA.
Joy Priest: www.joypriest.com
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of the historical novel, The American Daughters, published in 2024 by One World Random House.
Previously, Maurice authored The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021.The book was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and longlisted for the Story Prize.
His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize.
Concerning his collection We Cast a Shadow:
“An incisive and necessary work of brilliant satire.” –Roxane Gay
“Stunning and audacious . . . at once a pitch-black comedy, a chilling horror story and an endlessly perceptive novel about the possible future of race in America. . . . Ruffin proves to be a master . . . a fast-paced and intricately plotted book . . . The real draw of the novel is Ruffin’s gift at creating unforgettable characters. . . . He writes with a straight face, never in love with his own cleverness—there are echoes of Ralph Ellison’s intelligent, unshowy prose. . . . There’s no doubt that We Cast a Shadow, with its sobering look at race in America, can be difficult to read, but it’s more than worth it. . . . It’s a razor-sharp debut from an urgent new voice of fiction..” — NPR
A recipient of an Iowa Review Award in fiction, he has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, the Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas.
A native of New Orleans, he is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and a professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University and the Randolph MFA.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin:loweramericanson.com
twitter.com/mauriceruffin
Anjali Sachdeva
Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty
Anjali received the Chautaqua Prize for her collection of stories, All the Names They Used for God (Spiegel & Grau). It also won Book of the Year from the Writing Women’s podcast and was selected as one of the best books of the year by NPR, Book Riot, and Refindery 29.
Concerning her collection All the Names They Used for God:
All the Names They Used for God fuses science, myth, and imagination into a dark and gorgeous series of questions about our current predicaments. Sachdeva is a fascinating storyteller, willing to push her inventiveness as far as it will go, and I cannot wait to see what she writes next.” — Anthony Doerr
“…One page into it [Sachdeva’s story “Pleiades”] I thought, Man, this is a great writer. This is something different. This shows great command, wonderful pacing. The story — about septuplet sisters conceived via genetic manipulation — could have been told in a thousand terrible ways, but she’s managing to make it sing…I went home feeling electric about the possibility of the written word.” — Dave Eggers
“What an outstanding short story collection. I knew nothing about this book going in and was thrilled by each story. There is so much range here, and there is a nice fabulist edge to nearly all the stories. The writer wields so much confidence and control in her prose and my goodness, what imagination, what passion there is in this work. From one story to the next I felt like the writer knows everything about everything. One of the best collections I’ve ever read. Every single story is a stand out.” — Roxane Gay
Anjali’s writing, which has been awarded an NEA fellowship, has appeared in The American Scholar, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, Yale Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading.
Anjali worked for six years at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, where she was Director of Educational Programs.
She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Anjali Sachdeva: www.anjalisachdeva.com
Chet’la Sebree
Poetry/Nonfiction Faculty
Chet’la Sebree is the author of Field Study (FSG Originals, June 2021), winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.
She is also the author of Mistress, selected by Cathy Park Hong as the winner of the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize and nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Poetry (2020).
She is currently working on her debut essay collection about her relationship to home, heritage, and belonging through domestic and international travel; it’s forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2025.
Concerning Field Study:
“Layered, complex, and infinitely compelling, Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a daring exploration of the self and our interactions with others—a meditation on desire, race, loss and survival.”—Natasha Trethewey
“Woven from the rough threads of race, legacy, and love, Field Study is a groundbreaking book that vibrates with truth and lyrical beauty. A profound poetic talent, Chet’la Sebree has created a brilliant book that both haunts and heals.” — Ada Limón
For her work, Chet’la has received fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, Hedgebrook, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, MacDowell, the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, the Stadler Center for Poetry, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo.
In 2018, she was named the co-recipient of Yaddo’s National Endowment for the Arts Residency for Collaborative Teams for her collaboration with poet and essayist Shayla Lawson.
Chet’la’s poetry and prose have appeared in publications including Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Guernica, and Poetry International.
She is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University.
Chet’la Sebree: www.chetlasebree.com
Danez Smith
Poetry Faculty
Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer.
Danez is the author of Homie (Graywolf Press, 2020), Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.
Concerning Homie (Greywolf Press, 2020)
“The radiance of Homie arrives like a shock, like found money, like a flower fighting through concrete. . . . This is a book full of the turbulence of thought and desire, piloted by a writer who never loses their way.” – The New York Times
“[Homie] offers the opportunity to witness ‘the miracle of other people’s lives’ and will challenge you to consider how and why that miracle is dismissed in countless daily acts of racial aggression.” ― Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“[Homie] is a collection that confirms Smith’s great talent.” ― BuzzFeed
Concerning Don’t Call us Dead (Greywolf Press, 2017)
“Exceptional. . . . There is pain here but there is so much joy, so much fierce resistance to anything that dares to temper the stories being told here.”―Roxane Gay, Vulture
They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Danez’s work has been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Danez has been featured as part of Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 list and is the winner of a Pushcart Prize.
Danez Smith: www.danezsmithpoet.com
John Vercher
photo by Karen Maria
Fiction Faculty
John Vercher is the author of Three-Fifths, named one of the best books of 2019 by the Chicago Tribune. Three-Fifths was named a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and earned an Edgar Award nomination for best first novel.
His second novel, After the Lights Go Out, releases in June 2022 from Soho Press.
John’s next novel, Devil is Fine, was published in 2024 at Celadon Books.
Concerning After the Lights Go Out (Soho Press, 2022)
“Vercher strides back in the ring with the explosive story of a troubled Philadelphia MMA fighter whose career has stalled . . . expertly captures the brashness and discipline of combat sports as well as the harsh realities of the fighting life, delivering all of it in a swiftly paced triumph complete with a surprising one-two punch of a conclusion. This is simply brilliant.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Written in deft and visceral prose—Vercher’s trademark—After the Lights Go Out is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I loved every moment of it, even the ones that broke my heart.”—Lauren Wilkinson, author of American Spy
Concerning Three-Fifths (Polis/Agora Books, 2019)
“… Vercher builds strong, multifaceted characters with bold strokes and using the tools of noir to present what is finally a full-blown tragedy. This powerful exploration of race and identity pairs well with Steph Cha’s superb Your House Will Pay (2019).” —Bill Ott, Booklist (STARRED Review)
“Vercher’s debut novel is a blunt-edged thriller… A sad, swift tale bearing rueful observations about color and class as urgent now as 24 years ago.”—Kirkus
John’s writing appears on NPR, Cognoscenti, and WBUR Boston. His non-fiction work appears in Entropy Magazine, CrimeReads, and Booklist.
He holds a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program.
John Vercher: www.johnvercherauthor.com
Phillip B. Williams
photo by Beowulf Sheehan
Poetry Faculty
Phillip is the recipient of the Whiting Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship.
Phillip has also been a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, INDIES Book of the Year, Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award, and the Eric Hoffer Book Award.
His first book of poems, Thief in the Interior (2016) was published by Alice James Books, and his newest collection is Mutiny (Penguin, 2021).
Phillip’s debut novel, Ours, was published by Viking in 2024.
Concerning Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books):
“To experience [Phillip B. Williams’] poetry is to encounter a lucid, unmitigated humanity, a voice for whom language is inadequate, yet necessarily grasped, shaped, and consumed. His devout and excruciating attention to the line and its indispensable music fuses his implacable understanding of words with their own shadows.” –Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Boston Review
“Not just more of the artfully skill-less, conceptual talk of a poem, this is what you’ve been waiting for: some poetry. Not just skill as possession, as a commodity, but skill to accomplish the expressive event, a deeply felt poetic argument. For example, Williams’ line is no arbitrary unit of type, but an effective musically syntactic accomplishment of line. Poetry!” –Ed Roberson
Phillip B. Williams’ poems appear in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, The Southern Review, The Paris-American, Blackbird, Missouri Review, and elsewhere.
Phillip is also the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc.) and Burn (YesYes Books), and he served as a creative writing fellow in Poetry at Emory University.
Phillip is a Cave Canem graduate and the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry.
Williams was born in Chicago and earned his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Phillip B. Williams: www.phillipbwilliams.com
Jane Wong
photo by Helene Christensen
Non-Fiction/Poetry Faculty
Jane Wong is the author of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Books, 2021), which was Longlisted for the 2022 Pen/Voelcker Award in Poetry and Overpour from Action Books (2016). Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House in 2023.
Concerning Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023):
“I love the tenderness and ferocity of her prose, unsentimental and wrenching, that refuses easy triumph in its immigrant story and isn’t afraid of uncovering both beauty and brutality.” —Sally Wen Mao, author of Oculus
Concerning How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021)
“Wong (Overpour) explores loss, grief, migration, colonization, and alienation in her searching and resilient second collection. … Wong’s powerful poems draw the reader’s attention and insist the audience not look away.” —Publishers Weekly
“Jane Wong delivers a spellbinding knockout of a book. You will hunger for all the beautiful ways we can break bread together and with our ghosts. You will hunger for families both blood and chosen. These treasured poems are a most memorable exploration into what threads us together and what might break us. I promise you will nod your head yes, yes, YES—even when the speaker inquires at the end, ‘…are you hungry, awake, astonished enough?’” —Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Jane Wong’s writing can be found in places such as The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, The Best American Poetry 2015, POETRY, McSweeney’s, Ecotone, The Common, and more. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, and others.
An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University, she grew up on the New Jersey shore and currently lives in Seattle, Washington.
Jane Wong: janewongwriter.com
Gary Dop
photo by Jill Nance Waugh
MFA Director
Gary is the recipient the Great Plains Emerging Writer Prize, a Pushcart Special Mention, and the Gillie A. Larew Distinguished Teaching Award.
Gary’s most recent new media play is Deemocracy: An American Absurdity (Rain Taxi, 2020) and his collection of poetry is Father, Child, Water, (2015), a bestselling collection with Red Hen Press.
Concerning Father, Child, Water:
“The poems in Father, Child, Water by Gary Dop are funny, wicked, and poignant. Dop’s poetic gaze is wide-ranging and piercing. The poems about his father engage with the violence embedded in American masculinity and the character-driven poems are empathic and quirky. A highly enjoyable and memorable book.” — Poetry Magazine
“Dop’s first collection, Father, Child, Water establishes him as a poet, like Billy Collins, whose work seems to effortlessly share the space of authentic humor and seriousness.” — North American Review
Gary Dop’s poetry, stories, and essays appear in the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, New Letters, Washington Post, AGNI, and elsewhere.
Gary received his MFA from the University of Nebraska. His essays, plays, and scripts have have been performed on radio, screen, and stage venues throughout the country.
Gary Dop: www.garydop.com
Advisory Board
- Stephanie Burt
Harvard University Professor, Poet, & Critic - Eduardo C. Corral
Yale Younger Poet & N. C. State MFA Faculty - Erika Meitner
Virginia Tech MFA Director & Poet - Gregory Pardlo
Pulitzer Prize Winner & Rutgers MFA Faculty - Julie Schumacher
Thurber Prize Winner & U. of Minnesota MFA Faculty - Jeff Shotts
Executive Editor at Graywolf Press
Administrative Faculty
Administrative Faculty
- Gary Dop
MFA Director - Christopher Gaumer
MFA Assistant Director - Laura-Gray Street
Revolute Editor
