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New York State Summer Writers Institute

2026 Faculty 

Directors Robert Boyers and Adam Braver lead an extraordinary faculty of distinguished writers, among them winners of such major honors as the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. 

Hannah AssadiHannah Lillith Assadi, a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree, is the author of Sonora, which received the Rosenthal Family FoundationAward from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. Called a writer who is wise and poetic by Publishers Weekly, Assadis third novel, Paradiso 17, inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father, is forthcoming from Knopfin 2026. She teaches at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute.

 

Elizabeth Benedict  is the author of Almost, a novel described by Edmund White as a fast-paced, funny, and splendidly intelligent drama [with] a varied, unforgettable cast of characters. Her earlier books include Slow Dancing (a finalist for the National Book Award), The Beginners Book of Dreams, Safe Conduct, The Practice of Deceit and The Joy of Writing Sex (Read it because it will teach you everything you need to know about writing good fiction, suggests Peter Carey). Benedict has taught at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her latest book (2023) is Rewriting Illness.

Adam Braver is author of several historical novels including Divine Sarah, Mr. Lincolns Wars and Crows Over The Wheatfield. (Brilliant and inventive work, wrote a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. A novelist whose works are richly imagined, says the Washington Post.) Bravers most recent novels are NOV 22, 1963, which revolves around the assassination of John F. Kennedy; Misfit (Amazing...a book about identity, privacy and intimacy that both exposes and conceals its subject Marilyn Monroe, writes Ann Beattie), and Rejoice The Head Of Paul McCartney, which "brilliantly captures the fragmented intensity of late '60s California and the US in its idealism, exhilaration, violence and despair," says Claire Messud.
 
Joshua Cohenwon the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. Along with the Pulitzer, The Netanyahus is the winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2021 (The Wall Street Journal), 100 Notable Books of 2021 (The New York Times), Best Fiction Books of the Year, (Kirkus), 15 Best Books of 2021 (The A.V. Club), 24 Best Fiction Books of 2021 (The Times), Best Fiction Books of 2021 (The Telegraph), and 20 Best Books of the Year (The New Statesman). Cohen is also a contributor to the bilingual 2023 Hebrew-English anthology, Shelter, October 7thandAfter, edited by Oded Wolkstein and Maayan Eitan, a soul-searching exploration of the idea of refuge and safety in Jewish history and experience.
 
                                                                                     Vinson Cunningham
 is a staff writer and a theatre critic at The New Yorker. His essays,reviews, and profiles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. A former White House staffer, he now teaches in the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. In writing about Cunningham's debut novel, Great Expectations, Colum McCann describes it asbrilliantly written, piercingly smart, quietly subversive.
 

HempelAmy Hempel is the author of five collections of stories, most recently Sing To It. Her Collected Stories won The Ambassador Award for Best Fiction of the Year in 2006, and was one of the top five books of fiction in the NYTBR that year. Her stories have appeared in Harper's, Vanity Fair, the Harvard Review, The Yale Review, and many other publications, and have been included in the Best American Short Stories and other prize anthologies. She is a memberof The American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and United States Artists Foundation, and was awarded the REA Award and the PEN/Malamud Award. 

Susan Minotis the author of nine booksnovels, short stories and poetry, as well as screenplays (Stealing Beauty) and plays (On Island). Her most recent novel is Dont Be A Stranger (2024). Her first novel Monkeys won the Prix Femina tranger in France in 1987 and was published in a dozen countries. Evening, adapted to a film of the same name, was a finalist for the LA Book Award.  Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, among them TheNew Yorker, The ParisReview, The Atlantic, Esquire, Grand Street, The Kenyan Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, HG, 晨硃娶梯梗娶s, McSweeneys. She teaches in the graduate writing program at Stony Brook University. 
 

Rick Moody is author of several novels including The Ice Storm, Purple America, and Garden State. He has also written two acclaimed volumes of short fiction, Demonology and The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven. Newsday describes him as our anthropologist of desolate landscapes, John Hawkes as a writer of meticulous originality. He received the Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award. His memoir is The Black Veil (Moodys writing rants and raves and roars, writes a reviewer for The New York Times. He is an unrepressed quester after meaning, writes Robert Boyers). Moodys latest novels are The Diviners (2005) and The Four Fingers of Death (2010), and his latest collection of short fiction is Right Livelihoods (2007). One of our best writers, said a reviewer for the Washington Post. Moodys acclaimed recent novel is Hotels Of North America (2016).

Phillip Lopate is a central figure in the revival of memoir writing and what has come to be called the personal essay. Lopates books include Portrait of My Body, Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan, Getting Personal: Selected Writings, and Notes On Sontag. Most recently he has published A Year and a Day: An Experiment in Essays, and My Affairwith Art House Cinema: Essays and Reviews. He edited the seminal anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, as well as the subsequent volumes The Golden Age of the American Essay, and The Contemporary American Essay. Lopates work has been included in many publications, such as The Best American Essays, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Paris Review. In recognition of his significant contribution to American literature, Lopate received the 2022 Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is our Montaigne, writes Robert Boyers.

Thomas Chatterton Williamsis one of the leading memoirists and cultural critics in the country, the author of Self-Portrait in Black & White (Norton, 2019) and Losing My Cool (Penguin-Random House, 2010). A contributing writer at The New York Times, where several of his feature articles have been published in the Sunday Times. He writes often for The Atlantic, Harper's and other magazines. In The New York Times Book Review Andrew Solomon writes of him: Williams writes beautifully多onest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles. In January of 2021 he delivered the Annual Martin Luther King Address, and in 2019 he won the Berlin Prize. Though he lives with his family in France, he is a non-resident Fellow at The American Enterprise Institute and has taught as a visiting professor at Bard Colleges Hannah Arendt Center.

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Peg Boyers is the author of three volumes of poems, all published by the University of Chicago Press. The first, Hard Bread (2002), was described by Richard Howard as the most original debut in my experience of contemporary American poetry. With poems spoken in the invented voice of the late Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, the book, says Robert Pinsky, not only surpasses the notion of a merely good first book but soars beyond the conventional expectations of persona and dramatic monologue. The creation of the voice in this book, wrote Frank Bidart, stoic, passionate, resigned, insistent on truthis a brilliant achievement. Boyers second book, Honey With Tobacco (2007), has a rare power, wrote George Steiner; a beautiful book, wrote Henri Cole. Peg Boyers is executive editor of the quarterly Salmagundi and teaches creative writing at 勛圖厙. Her third book, entitled To Forget Venice, came out in October of 2014 and was hailed for its disarming flights of imagination and inspired ventriloquism. Her most recent book, The Album, was published by Dos Madres Press in the fall of 2021.

Megan Fernandesis a writer living in New York City. Fernandes has published in The New Yorker, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, among others. Her third book of poetry, I Do Everything Im Told, published by Tin House, received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and was named a Best or Most-Anticipated Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, Vogue, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Vulture, Autostraddle, LitHub, among others. Fernandes is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College where she teaches courses on poetry, environmental writing, and critical theory. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Yaddo Foundation, the Hawthornden Foundation, etc. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.

 

Elisa Gonzalez, a recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, has had work appear in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Paris Review and elsewhere.  Of Gonzalezs 2023 debut poetry collection, Grand Tour, Louise Gl羹ck described poems that make me feel as if poems have never before been written. 

 

 

 

Ishion Hutchinson

was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and is author of the poetry collections School of Instructions: a Poem, House of Lords and Commons and Far District and the book of essays, Fugitive Tilts. Among his recognitions are the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Hutchinson is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University.

Sandra Lim is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Curious Thing. Her writing has appeared in a range of literary journals, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine. "In her hands," writes Ocean Vuong, "precision and audacity meld into a performance of quiet, implacable force." Sandra Lim is Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Massachusetts.

 

 

Campbell McGrath teaches creative writing at Florida International University and has taught at the Summer Writers Institute since 2007. The winner of a MacArthur Genius Award, he is the author of many books of poetry, including American Noise, Pax Atomica, Spring Comes To Chicago, Seven Notebooks, Florida Poems and Capitalism. A poet of formal eloquence and rhetorical power, writes the reviewer for Publishers Weekly, of vision and engagement.he descends into the maelstrom of American culture and emerges singing. He is our Whitman, writes the reviewer for American Review. McGraths latest book XX: Poems For The 20th Century has been celebrated as a tour de force and an improbable feat of the imagination.

Rosanna Warren has won the Lamont Poetry Prize, and has been honored with the Award of Merit in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of six books of poems, most recently, So Forth (Norton, 2020), as well as the biography, Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters. (Norton, 2020). Harold Bloom writes: Warren is an important poet, beyond the achievement of all but a handful of living American poets. And Charles Simic writes in The NY Review of Books: Her work has become stronger and stronger . masterful and ambitious.  Rosanna Warren is Emeritus Professor at University of Chicago.

 

Edward J. Delaney

(Non-Fiction) is an award-winning author, journalist, filmmaker, and educator.  He was a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellow, winner of the 2005 PEN/Winship Award for Fiction, a National Magazine Award finalist, and a past recipient of an O. Henry Prize for short story writingIn addition to having published seven booksmost recently The Acrobat, his work has appeared regularly in The Atlantic and other magazines and journals, and has appeared in Best American Short Stories. Of Delaneys book Follow the Sun, Phillip Lopate writes, His control of the material is masterful.

 

Mamta Chaudhry (Fiction) is the author of the novel Haunting Paris, described as elegantly wrought by The New York Times Book Review and a heart-wrenching love letter to Paris" by Publishers Weekly. Russell Banks called Haunting Paris audaciously, imaginatively constructed, with a heartbreaking, profoundly adult love story at its center." She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Miami, where she has also taught literature and creative writing.

Robert Boyers

Robert Boyers, Director is editor of the influential quarterly magazine , professor of English at 勛圖厙, and director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute. He is the author of eleven books, including a volume of short stories called Excitable Women, Damaged Men. He writes often for such magazines as 晨硃娶梯梗娶sThe New RepublicThe NationYale Review, and Granta. His latest book is

 

 

 
, Director, has been teaching fiction in the  New York State Writers Institute since 2014. He is the author of seven novels, as well as the editor of the University of New Orleans Press Broken Silence book series, which documents first-hand accounts of political dissidents. His latest novel, Rejoice the Head of Paul McCartney, was published in 2022. Of the book, Rick Moody writes that Adam Braver writes about history and consciousness, and he balances these with gentle and pitch-perfect moral consciousness. The results are sophisticated, subtle, nuanced, and very moving.
 
 

Marc Woodworth

Marc Woodworth, Associate Director is Associate Editor of and author or editor of several books: Arcade (poetry), Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters in Their Own Words, Bee Thousand (in the 33 1/3 series), and How To Write 勛圖厙 Music. He teaches for the Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative and Department of English at 勛圖厙.

Faculty Awards Received

  • Pulitzer Prize
  • National Book Award
  • PEN/Faulkner Award
  • Pushcart Prize
  • Mac Arthur Genius Award
  • National Book Critics Circle Award
  • Lamont Poetry Prize
  • Poet-Laureate of the U.S.
  • L.A. Times Book Award
  • New York Arts Award
  • Martin Luther King Memorial Prize
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize
  • Lambda Literary Award in Poetry
  • Berlin Prize
  • Orange Prize
  • Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
  • Morton Dauwen Zabel Award (from American Academy of Arts & Letters)
  • Green Carnation Prize
  • Grolie Poetry Prize
  • PEN/Malamud Award
  • Flannery OConnor Award
  • Notable from Best American Short Stories
  • Addison Metcalf Award (from American Academy of Arts & Letters)
  • Brandeis Creative Arts Award
  • The Booker Prize for Fiction
  • The Irish Times International Prize for Fiction
  • Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
  • Prix Medicis
  • Governor-Generals Award
  • Giller Prize
  • Cannes Film Festival Awards (novels adapted into films)