MA in Writing Faculty
Explore Word Cafe, featuring short essays on literary matters by students, alumni, and faculty of the graduate writing programs of Northwestern University School of Professional Studies!
Christine Sneed
Faculty Director
Contact Information
christine.sneed@northwestern.edu
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, which will be published in June 2023. 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 been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her novel Little Known Facts was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice selection, and her stories and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New England Review, The Southern Review, Boulevard, Hong Kong Review, Story, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, O Magazine, Electric Literature, and various other publications. www.christinesneed.com is her author website.
Paula Carter
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Paula Carter is the author of the flash essay collection No Relation. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Salon, TriQuarterly, and Prairie Schooner. She is a company member with the storytelling series 2nd Story and holds an MFA from Indiana University.
Gioia Diliberto
Contact Information
gioia.diliberto@northwestern.edu
Gioia Diliberto is the author of three novels, four biographies and a play. Her books, which center on the lives of women, have been translated into several languages, and she has been a judge for several prominent literary contests, including the National Book Award. Gioia’s work has been praised for combining rich storytelling with deep research to bring alive worlds as varied as Jazz Age Paris and nineteenth century Chicago, Belle Epoque Paris and disco era Manhattan. As a journalist, Gioia has contributed to many publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, and Vanity Fair.
Charles Finch
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charles.finch@northwestern.edu
Charles Finch is the USA Today-bestselling author of the Charles Lenox mysteries, including the most recent, The Vanishing Man (February 2019). His first work of literary fiction, The Last Enchantments, is also available from St. Martin's Press. Finch received the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation, for excellence in reviewing, from the National Book Critics Circle. His reviews and essays regularly appear in the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Gina Frangello
Contact Information
gina.frangello@northwestern.edu
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. Gina can be found at www.ginafrangello.org.
Rebecca Morgan Frank
Contact Information
rebecca.frank@northwestern.edu
@poetmorgan
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.
Kate Harding
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Kate Harding (she/her/hers) is the author of Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and the forthcoming Victim Complex: On Snowflakes, Witch Hunts, and the Cult of Personal Responsibility. She's taught creative writing at StoryStudio Chicago, The Loft Literary Center, and Cornell College, where she was Distinguished Visiting Writer in 2017. With Samhita Mukhopadhyay, she edited the anthology Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America and hosted the podcast “Feminasty.” She holds a PhD in nonfiction from Bath Spa University and an MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Chicago and also manages events at Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston.
Laurie Lawlor
Contact Information
laurie.lawlor@northwestern.edu
Laurie Lawlor is the author of 43 works of award-winning fiction and nonfiction for children and young adults. Environmental advocacy inspired 2023 nonfiction Restoring Prairie, Woods, and Pond How a Small Trail Can Make a Big Difference (Holiday House), highlighted with Kirkus starred review. Fearless World Traveler, Adventures of Marianne North, Botanical Artist (Holiday House, 2021) received the Society of Midland Authors Honor Award for Nonfiction and was named Junior Guild Gold Standard Selection. Super Women: Six Scientists Who Changed the World (Holiday House), middle grade nonfiction, profiles remarkable pioneers in fields ranging from astronomy and mathematics to cartography and biochemistry. Published in 2017, Super Women received a Booklist starred review and was named 2018 Outstanding Science Trade Book by Children’s Book Council (CBC) and NSTA. Big Tree Down! (Holiday House), a lively picture book released in spring 2018, celebrates cooperation during a community emergency. Lawlor was awarded the 2012 John Burroughs Riverby Award for Excellence in Nature Writing for Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World, featured on the ALA Amelia Bloomer Award List. She has taught creative writing at Northwestern University, Columbia College of Chicago, and writing workshops throughout the Midwest.
billy lombardo
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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
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Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the LA Times Book Prize; and it was one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2018. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of UNR at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. Her new novel, I Have Some Questions for You, is forthcoming in 2023.
Juan Martinez
Contact Information
juan.martinez@northwestern.edu
@fulmerford
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.
Faisal Mohyuddin
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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 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 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
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Naeem Murr is the author of three novels, The Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a New York Times Notable Book, The Genius of the Sea, and most recently The Perfect Man, which won The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His work has been translated into numerous languages. His other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a PEN Beyond Margins Award. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Missouri and Western Michigan University, among others, and received a distinguished teaching award from Northwestern University School of Professional Studies in 2019.
Lori Rader-Day
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@LoriRaderDay
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 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
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Donna Seaman is the Editor for Adult Books at Booklist; a member of the Content Leadership Team and National Advisory Council for the American Writers Museum, and a recipient of the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Seaman has written for the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications, and contributed biocritical essays to the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and American Writers. Seaman has been a writer-in-residence for Columbia College Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. She created the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness; her 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.
Shauna Seliy
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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.
Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, winner of the 2017 Nonfiction Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Review of Books. 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 teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor-at-large with Northwestern University Press.
Rachel Jamison Webster
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@racheljamisonwebster
Rachel is the author of Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, (Henry Holt 2023), as well as four books of poetry and cross-genre writing: Mary is a River which was a finalist for the 2014 National Poetry Series; September, The Endless Unbegun; and The Sea Came Up & Drowned, which includes erasure poetry and Rachel’s visual art. Rachel’s poems and essays often appear in anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Tin House, and The Yale Review. Rachel is Professor of Creative Writing in the English Department of Northwestern University. She has received a Weinberg College Alumni Teaching Award for her Creative Writing instruction, a Hewlett Fellowship for her design and implementation of diversities and social inequities curriculum, and an American Association of University Women Award. Rachel has been a Fellow in the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities; an Op-Ed Public Voices Fellow; and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.
Michael Zapata
Contact Information
michael.zapata@northwestern.edu
@michael_zapata01
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.