Faculty
Christine Sneed
Faculty Director
Christine Sneed is the author of three novels, most recently Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos and Paris, He Said, and three short story collections, Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, The Virginity of Famous Men, and Direct Sunlight. She is the editor of the short fiction anthology Love in the Time of Time's Up, and has received the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, twice, the Society of Midland Authors Award, Ploughshares' Zacharis Award, an O. Henry Prize, among other honors. She has also been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and her novel Little Known Facts was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice selection. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New England Review, The Southern Review, Boulevard, ZYZZYVA, Story, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, O Magazine, Electric Literature, and various other publications. Details about Sneed's writing can be found on her website and she posts on Substack at Bookish.
Paula Carter
Paula Carter Carter is the author of the flash memoir collection No Relation. Her award-winning essays have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, The Offing and elsewhere. She was an Administrative Staff Fellow at the Bread Loaf Environmental Conference in 2022 and 2023 and her work has been supported by Ragdale and the Shannaghe Artists Residency. She serves on the organizing committee for the Washington Island Literary Festival and holds an M.F.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Gioia Diliberto
Gioia Diliberto is the author of three novels, four biographies and a play. Her work, which centers on the lives of women, has been praised for combining rich storytelling with deep research to bring alive worlds as varied as Jazz Age Paris, nineteenth century Chicago, Belle Epoque Paris and disco era Manhattan. Gioia’s articles and reviews have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, and Vanity Fair. Her most recent novel, Coco at the Ritz, is inspired by the arrest and interrogation of Coco Chanel during World War II on charges of treason to France. In her eighth book, Firebrands, forthcoming in October, she returns to nonfiction with the story of four extraordinary women who warred over Prohibition.
Gina Frangello
Gina Frangello’s fifth book, the memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason (Counterpoint), has been selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and BookPage, and has been included on numerous “Best of 2021” lists including at Lithub, BookPage, and The Chicago Review of Books. Her sixth book, on Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, is forthcoming from IG Publishing’s “Bookmarked” series. Gina is also the author of four books of fiction, including A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting, which was included on several “Best of 2016” lists, including at Chicago Magazine’s and The Chicago Review of Books. Now a lead editor at Row House Publishing, she also brings more than two decades of experience as an editor, having founded both the independent press Other Voices Books and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. She has also served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus, the faculty editor for both TriQuarterly Online and The Coachella Review, and the Creative Nonfiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her column, “Not the Norm,” runs on the Psychology Today blog, and she runs Circe Consulting, a full-service company for writers, with the writer Emily Rapp Black.
Rebecca Morgan Frank
Rebecca Morgan Frank is the author of four collections of poems, including Oh You Robot Saints! (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2021), one of New York Public Library's Best Books of 2021, and Little Murders Everywhere (Salmon Poetry, 2012), a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems and stories have appeared in such places as The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Catapult, Joyland, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and her collaborations with composers have been exhibited and performed widely. She is the recipient of such honors as a Meier Achievement Award and the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. She received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati and her MFA from Emerson College, and her recent teaching positions include Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University, Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University, and Visiting Poet in the graduate program at UC Irvine. She is co-founder and editor of the online magazine Memorious and a reviewer for the Poetry Foundation's Harriet Books. She serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.
billy lombardo
billy lombardo (he/him/his) is a Nelson Algren Award winner and the founder of Polyphony Lit, an international literary magazine devoted to the development of young writers and editors. He is the author of three books of fiction: The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, The Man with Two Arms, and Morning Will Come. He is also the author of a book of poetry and prose, Meanwhile, Roxy Mourns. His most recent publication is the nonfiction book, The C.A.P.E. Crusade, Your Guide to a Great College Application Personal Essay. billy is also the founder of The Writing Pros/e, a writing and editing business. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College and lives in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood.
Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai is the author of this year's New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions for You, as well as the novels The Great Believers, The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize among other honors. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca teaches graduate fiction writing at Northwestern University, the Bennington Writing Seminars, and Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English; and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. She lives in Chicago and Vermont.
Juan Martinez
Juan Martinez is the author of the collection Best Worst American (2017) and the novel Extended Stay (2023). His work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including Ecotone, NIGHTMARE, The Morning Transport, Glimmer Train, Huizache, McSweeney's, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, Small Odysseys, National Public Radio's Selected Shorts, Norton's Sudden Fiction Latino and Flash Fiction America, and elsewhere. He is an associate professor at Northwestern University and lives near Chicago.
John McCarthy
John McCarthy is the author of Scared Violent Like Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which was selected by Victoria Chang as the winner of the Jake Adam York Prize. He is also the author of one previous poetry collection, Ghost County (Midwestern Gothic Press, 2016), which was named a Best Poetry Book of 2016 by The Chicago Review of Books. John’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Pleiades, Quarterly West, TriQuarterly, and in anthologies such as Best New Poets 2015. Additionally, he was the 2016 winner of The Pinch Literary Award in Poetry. In 2019, the Chicago Guild Literary Complex, in honor of their 30th anniversary, named John one of “30 Writers to Watch.” He holds a BA in Writing and Publishing from Benedictine University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He has received writing residencies from creative centers in Croatia, Ecuador, France, and Iceland. John serves as Managing Editor for RHINO magazine.
Read more at johnmccarthypoetry.com.
Faisal Mohyuddin
Faisal Mohyuddin’s debut full-length poetry collection, The Displaced Children of Displaced Children (Eyewear 2018), won the 2017 Sexton Prize for Poetry, was selected as a 2018 Summer Recommendation of the Poetry Book Society, and was named a “highly commended” book of 2018 by the Forward Arts Foundation. Also the author of the chapbook The Riddle of Longing (Backbone 2017), he is the recipient of the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner and a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award. He serves as an
Natalie Moore
Natalie Moore is WBEZ's South Side Reporter where she covers segregation and inequality.
Her enterprise reporting has tackled race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s work has been broadcast on the BBC, Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Natalie is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and a Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
Natalie writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her work has been published in Essence, Ebony, the Chicago Reporter, Bitch, In These Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. She is the 2017 recipient of Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award. In 2010, she received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award for reporting on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. In 2009, she was a fellow at Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, which allowed her to take a reporting trip to Libya. Natalie has won several journalism awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Other honors are from the Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Association of Black Journalists, Illinois Associated Press and Chicago Headline Club. The Chicago Reader named her best journalist in 2017.
Prior to joining WBEZ staff in 2007, Natalie was a city hall reporter for the Detroit News. She has also been an education reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a reporter for the Associated Press in Jerusalem.
Natalie has an M.S.J. in Newspaper Management from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Journalism from Howard University. She has taught at Columbia College and Medill. Natalie and her husband Rodney live in Hyde Park with their four daughters.
Simone Muench
Simone Muench is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship and the Meier Foundation for the Arts Award as well as residency fellowships to Yaddo, Artsmith, VCCA, and VSC. She is the author of seven full-length books including Wolf Centos and Orange Crush from Sarabande. She also co-edited They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence, 2018), and her recent collection, The Under Hum, co-written with Jackie K. White, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence in 2024.
She serves as a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review, and poetry editor for JackLeg Press, as well as being the creator of the Hungry Brain Sunday Reading Series. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago and directs the writing program at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies.
Naeem Murr
Naeem Murr is the author of three previous novels: The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book, The Genius of the Sea, and The Perfect Man, which was awarded The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His new novel, Every Exit Brings You Home, will be published by W.W. Norton in February 2026. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, among his awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University.
Lori Rader-Day
Lori Rader-Day is the author of the crime novels The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. Her books have won the Mary Higgins Clark Award, the Agatha Award, and three Anthony Awards, and have been nominated for several other crime fiction awards, including the Edgar Award from Mystery Writers of America. She is also a past recipient of the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Author Award.
Rader-Day is co-chair of the crime fiction readers’ conference Midwest Mystery Conference and a former national president of Sisters in Crime, a 4,500-member writers’ and readers’ association. Rader-Day has previously taught at Ball State University, Roosevelt University, Yale University, Midwest Writers Workshop, and StoryStudio Chicago, among others. She received an MA in creative nonfiction from Ball State University and an MFA in creative writing from Roosevelt University.
Ed Roberson
Ed Roberson is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; Just In: Word of Navigational Change: New and Selected Work; Atmosphere Conditions, a National Poetry Series winner; and his most recent, City Eclogue. Roberson received the 2008 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He has also received a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writer's Award.
Donna Seaman
Donna Seaman is Editor-in-Chief and Adult Books Editor for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is on the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum and an adjunct creative writing professor for Northwestern University. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists and River of Books: A Life in Reading.
Shauna Seliy
Shauna Seliy is the author of the novel When We Get There, published in the UK under the title The Trials and Tribulations of Lucas Lessar. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Jubilat, Other Voices, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Her MFA is from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
James Stewart III
James Stewart III is a Black writer and arts organizer from Chicago. His debut novel, Defiant Acts (Acre Books, 2025), has been named one of Chicago Magazine’s 2025 “Summer’s Required Reading" picks. He was also named to Newcity’s 2025 Lit 50 list, recognizing influential voices in Chicago’s literary culture. His writing has appeared in journals including Lampblack, The Forge, and Midwest Review. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the reading series and artist collective Exhibit B.
Stewart holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MA from North Central College, and lives with his wife and daughter at the end of DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstrais the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in Best American Essays, New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Believer, Longreads, Tin House, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Goodman Theatre, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She serves as the Senior Editor of Regional Titles at Northwestern University Press, where she acquires literary work that centers the Midwest in all its complexities.
Rachel Swearingen
Rachel Swearingen (she/her) is the author of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories. Her work has appeared in Electric Lit, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Berlin Writing Prize, the New American Press Fiction Prize, the Missouri Review Editors’ Prize in Fiction, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. Rachel has taught writing and literature at The School of the Art Institute, Cornell College, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.
Rachel Jamison Webster
Rachel Jamison Webster is the author of four books of poetry in addition to her debut book of nonfiction, Benjamin Banneker and Us, which was chosen as a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker and Editor's Pick by The New York Times. Publisher’s Weekly hailed the book as “a stunning meditation on race, identity, and achievement” and Booklist called it an “engrossing, multifaceted, profoundly thoughtful, and beautifully rendered inquiry that forms a clarifying lens on America’s ongoing struggles against racism and endemic injustice.” Rachel has taught at Northwestern for the last 17 years. She has been a Kaplan Fellow in the Humanities, an Op Ed Public Voices Fellow, a winner of the Culture-Light Award by the Sri Chinmoy Foundation, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Rachel’s essays, poems, and stories are frequently anthologized and published in outlets including Poetry, Tin House, and the Yale Review.
Michael Zapata
Michael Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction and the City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program Award. He is on the core faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.