Amy Danzer
Director, Summer Writers' Conference
Staff
Contact: summerwriters@northwestern.edu
Nancy Gorman
Assistant Director, Summer Writers' Conference
2024 Conference Faculty
Paula Carter
Paula 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.
Kate Harding
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
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 and recipient of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Honor Award for Children's Nonfiction. Other nonfiction includes What Music! The 50-Year Friendship between Beethoven and Nannette Streicher, Who Built His Pianos (2023) and Fearless World Traveler, Adventures of Marianne North, Botanical Artist (Holiday House, 2021), which 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, and writing workshops throughout the Midwest.
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.
@fulmerford
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 educator adviser to Narrative 4, a global not-for-profit dedicated to fostering empathy through the exchange of stories, and teaches English at Highland Park High School in Illinois. He will teach an elective for the Northwestern University MA in Writing and MFA Prose and Poetry programs next spring.
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.
Christine Sneed
Christine Sneed is the faculty director of the MFA program in Northwestern's School of Professional Studies and teaches fiction-writing, a course on the publishing industry, and poetry for prose writers. She is the author of several books, most recently, The Virginity of Famous Men. In October, her novel Please Be Advised will be published, along with a short fiction anthology she edited, Love in the Time of Time's Up. Her short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Ploughshares, New England Review, The Southern Review, and many other publications. She has received AWP's Grace Paley Prize, Chicago Writers' Association Book of the Year Award, Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, Ploughshares Zacharis Award, among other honors, and has been a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.
Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra is 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.