What to Read Next? New Books by Northwestern SPS Writing Faculty and Alum
January 27, 2023 -- Are you looking for your next read? Check out the latest books by Northwestern SPS creative writing faculty members Rachel Jamison Webster, Rebecca Makkai, Juan Martinez, and Ed Roberson. The four award-winning authors teach graduate level courses in the part-time Northwestern MFA in Prose and Poetry and MA in Writing programs. The list also includes a new book by Aleksandar Hemon, an MA in Literature alum.
2023 Books by Northwestern SPS creative writing faculty and an MA in Literature alum
Extended Stay, by Juan Martinez (January 17)
Haunting and visceral, Extended Stay uses the language of body horror and the gothic to comment on the complicated relationship between the Latinx undocumented experience and capitalism, the erasure of those living and working on the margins, the heavy toll exacted by memory, and the queasy permeability of boundaries that separate the waking world from the world of dreams. – The University of Arizona Press
The World and All That It Hold, by Aleksandar Hemon (January 24)
Award-winning author Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel The World and All That It Holds is a masterfully written epic tale of two soldiers from Sarajevo who fall in love during World War I: one Jewish, the other Muslim. The war upends their worlds and “like all refugees, they [keep] moving forward because they [have] nowhere else to go; being on the move [means] being alive.” Along the way, a daughter is born to them. – New City interview by Amy Danzer, Northwestern SPS assistant director of graduate programs
Aquarium Works, by Ed Roberson (January 30)
For several years in the late 1960s, [Roberson] was employed as a diver and tankman at the newly formed Pittsburgh AquaZoo (now the PPG Aquarium), where he fed, cared for, and in some cases trained the creatures described in this collection. Widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of ecopoetry of our time, Roberson’s focus never moves far from the destructive dominance of racial whiteness that has long and unnaturally dominated our shared world and wreaked ruination on it. – Small Press Distribution
I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai (February 21)
Award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph. – Penguin Random House
Benjamin Banneker and Us, by Rachel Jamison Webster (March 21)
These stories shed light on the legal construction of race and display the brilliance and resistance of early African Americans in the face of increasingly unjust laws, some of which are still in effect in the present day. – Macmillan Publishers
Opportunities to connect with Northwestern SPS part-time creative writing programs
- Explore Word Café, a blog featuring short essays on literary matters by students, alumni, and faculty of the graduate writing programs.
- Follow the Northwestern SPS creative writing programs on Twitter @nugradwriting to learn about literary events in Chicago.
Northwestern University School of Professional Studies offers many degree and certificate programs, with evening and online options available. To learn more about how Northwestern University's MA in Writing graduates to advance their careers, fill out the form below and we will be in touch with you soon.