Life After the MFA - Columbia University School of the Arts

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introduction
08
writing program overview
course of study 09
workshops 09
seminars and lecture courses 09
master classes 10
translation seminars 10
electives 10
thesis project 11
resources 11
readings and visiting lecturers 15
fellowships, awards and endowments 15
16
faculty
30
selected recent alumni accomplishments
credits 36
A small sample of books published
by Writing Program alumni.
In the first half of the twentieth
century, many writers served
their literary apprenticeships
in the “moveable feast” of the
cafés, salons and garrets of Paris.
Today, the literary feast can still
be found thriving at Columbia
University School of the Arts, in
the heart of the cultural capital
of the twenty-first century, New
York. The MFA Writing Program
is highly regarded for its rigorous
approach to literary instruction
and for a faculty of acclaimed
writers who are devoted and
dedicated teachers. The Program
Writing MFA candidate in seminar
at the School of the Arts.
does not foster any particular literary style; rather, it
encourages students to make the most of their own
artistic instincts and to realize as fully as possible,
beyond any perceived limitations, their potential as
writers. w At the core of the curriculum is the writing
workshop. The workshops are small (7 to 12 students).
Students receive substantial written response to their
work from their classmates and professors; they also
have regularly scheduled one-on-one conferences
with faculty. The second-year thesis workshops (6 to
9 students) are dedicated to shaping a student’s work
into book form. w Though it goes without saying that
what is most essential to a writer’s work occurs in the
solitary exchange between the writer and the page, it
is the writer’s awareness of the work of other writers,
our literary traditions, that best informs his or her work
in relationship to literature as a whole. The Writing
Program’s seminars, master classes and lectures are
designed to illuminate, clarify, augment and inspire
each student’s experience and practice as a writer.
While many MFA programs require as few as 36 credits
for the completion of the degree, Columbia requires a
minimum of 60 credits, in the belief that the rigorous
study of literature from a practitioner’s point of view is as
essential to one’s education as a writer as the attention
paid to one’s own work in workshop. w
Books by Writing Program alumni: Tara Brey Smith (‘03), Susan Minot (’83),
Tova Mirvis (’98), and Tracy K. Smith (’97)
All students must complete 60 points for
the MFA degree, including two 6-point
workshops, one 9-point thesis workshop,
and 21 points in seminars and lectures (3
points each) and/or master classes (1 to
1.5 points each). The rest of the student’s
program consists of electives, which may
include additional seminars, lecture courses,
internships or independent study. It is
required that students earn at least 6 credits
in courses outside the Program.
Students in workshops are required to
discuss one another’s submissions in class
and to provide written editorial comments
for each submission at the end of the class.
The workshop instructor provides written
commentary on all work submitted. The
thesis workshop focuses on the planning,
development and revision necessary for the
satisfactory completion of the final thesis
project. A thesis workshop is required during
the student’s second year in either the fall or
spring term.
Workshops
Seminars and Lecture Courses
Workshops meet once a week for three
hours. They are led by a member of the
faculty and designed to encourage indepth discussion of each student’s work.
In addition, students meet regularly with
their workshop instructors in individual
conferences.
Seminar and lecture courses meet once a
week for two hours and carry 3 points of
credit. All seminars and lectures consider
literature from the point of view of the writer
as opposed to that of the literary theorist
or scholar. These craft-oriented courses
examine literary strategies and technique:
Course of Study
Seminar assignment: from Homeland
by Sam Lipsyte (Faculty).
how the best writers throughout literary history have made
choices and approached their subjects.
recent guest lecturers
Charles Baxter
Frank Bidart
Sven Birkerts
Michael Chabon
John D’Agata
Lydia Davis
Jonathan Safran
Foer
Richard Ford
Jorie Graham
Kathryn Harrison
Jonathan Lethem
Daniel
Mendelsohn
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Master classes are short seminars comprising four to six
sessions taught by visiting writers and editors. Master classes
provide an opportunity to focus intensely on a particular aspect
of literary craft, and sometimes offer students a context in
which to experiment with writing outside their genre.
School of the Arts, or from other schools
and departments of Columbia University. It
is required that students earn a minimum
of 6 elective credits outside the program.
Registration in such courses usually requires
the permission of the instructor. In addition to
graduate-level electives, students may count
up to 6 credits in undergraduate courses at
the 3000 level toward their MFA.
Translation Seminars
Thesis Project
Students with an interest in the art of literary translation and
the complexities of language are encouraged to take classes
with the Writing Program’s Center for Literary Translation.
With the permission of their concentration director, students
may present translated work as part of their MFA thesis.
At the end of their residency in the program,
students must submit a thesis consisting
of approximately 150 pages of prose or 35
poems composed since entering the program.
Submission of the thesis and attendance at a
thesis conference are required for the degree.
Master Classes
Electives
Electives may be selected from the Program’s seminars,
lectures or master classes, as well as from the curricula
of the Film, Theatre Arts and Visual Arts Programs of the
Erroll McDonald and Margo Jefferson (both Faculty)
at new student orientation in September 2009.
Resources
In addition to fellowships, the Writing
Program has a range of resources to help
Writing Program seminar, fall 2009.
students support themselves financially and
gain invaluable experience.
The Writing Program has longstanding
internship agreements with many of the city’s
foremost literary organizations, including
The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, The Paris
Review, the Poetry Society of America, the
Academy of American Poets, and PEN
American Center, which offer students
professional opportunities either for pay or
for course credit.
The Research Internship Program gives
selected students an opportunity to assist
distinguished authors on a significant workin-progress. Among the award-winning
authors who have taken part are Deirdre Bair,
Ron Chernow, Ted Conover, Stephen Dubner,
William Finnegan, Michelle Goldberg, Philip
Gourevitch, Honor Moore, Francine Prose,
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Stacy Schiff, Tim Weiner and Brenda Wineapple. Each week,
students do eight hours of research for their authors, and
authors provide two hours of one-on-one mentoring. The
internship, which is open to all MFA students in the Writing
Program, is an independent study with three hours of credit.
Students apply in the fall and complete their internships in the
spring semester.
The Writing Program also provides teacher training through its
“Writer as Teacher” seminars, and offers a variety of teaching
opportunities on and off campus with students of all ages and
levels, through the Columbia Artist/Teachers (CA/T) program.
All Writing Program MFA candidates are automatically members
of CA/T, and work with local schools, community organizations
and Columbia students to enhance their own understanding
of writing while gaining experience that will serve them in
obtaining—and excelling in—post-MFA teaching positions. Many
CA/T residencies carry a modest fellowship stipend.
The Undergraduate Creative Writing Program and the
Summer High School Program also offer students paid
teaching positions. In addition, each year under the auspices
of the English Department, Writing Program students may
apply to receive Teaching Assistantships that provide tuition
support and a generous stipend.
recent guest lecturers
Joyce Carol Oates
Marjorie Perloff
Francine Prose
Philip Roth
George Saunders
Zadie Smith
Judith Thurman
Helen Vendler
Lawrence
Weschler
Colson Whitehead
James Wood
C.D. Wright
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The Center for Literary Translation seeks to increase
awareness of the art of translation and how it enhances a
writer’s development and imagination. The CLT sponsors
readings, workshops, and conversations with distinguished
writer-translators from around the world. Students also
participate in events where they can share their own writing
and translations and discuss the relationship between the two.
During the 2009-2010 academic year, the CLT will launch a
pilot program for MFA students to elect a concurrent course
of study in translation. The curriculum will include workshops,
seminars, and master classes that explore the creative act of
literary translation and its connection to creative writing.
Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art was founded in 1977
and continues to be one of the few national literary journals
Celebration of the publication of Writing MFA candidates’ Anthology
of Work, May 2009, Columbia University Low Library.
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edited, designed and produced entirely
by students. Recent issues have included
new work by Lydia Millet, Diane Williams,
Elizabeth Wurtzel, David Shields, Gary Snyder
and Paul Muldoon, as well as interviews with
Susan Orlean and Michael Ondaatje.
Our Word is a student organization open
to any student in the Writing Program; its
mission is to promote cultural diversity by
presenting multicultural curricula, activities
and events, including opportunities to
study with eminent authors-in-residence.
Past guests and residents of the program
have included Hilton Als, Aracelis Girmay,
Malcolm Gladwell, Victor LaValle, Emily
Raboteau, Colson Whitehead and Ed Park.
Readings and Visiting Lecturers
The Creative Writing Lectures series
presents distinguished writer and critics
speaking on subjects that address specific
aspects of the craft of writing. A partial list
of recent guests includes: George Saunders,
Charles Baxter, Janet Malcolm, Francine
Prose, Philip Roth, Luc Sante, Marjorie Perloff,
Helen Vendler, Joyce Carol Oates, Daniel
Mendelsohn and Zadie Smith. Among others
scheduled to lecture 2009–10 are Lydia
Davis, Wayne Koestenbaum, Michael Chabon
and C.D. Wright.
The Nonfiction Dialogues, now in its fifth season,
is a student-initiated evening series in which
Professor Lis Harris interviews distinguished
nonfiction writers about their work and career.
Past guests have included Janet Malcolm,
Oliver Sacks, Calvin Trillin, Tobias Wolff, Ted
Conover, Jo Ann Beard, Philip Gourevitch
and Judith Thurman. The fall 2009 schedule
includes Ian Frazier and Anne Fadiman.
The Life After the MFA series brings to the
School of the Arts editors and publishers
from literary magazines and commercial and
independent publishing houses to discuss the
publishing world and offer hands-on advice; the
series culminates in an informal gathering with a
cross-section of New York’s top literary agents.
Writing students also curate two additional
reading series that showcase the work of their
peers, including Faculty Selects, in which recent
graduates and students working on their theses
read in New York’s popular KGB Reading Series.
For more information about the Writing Program,
please visit arts.columbia.edu/writing. w
Fellowships, Awards and Endowments
David Craig Austin Memorial Poetry Prize
Benjamin T. Burns Memorial Poetry Fellowship
Katherine Garrison Chapin Seminars in Poetry
Linda Corrente Poetry Fellowship
Felipe De Alba Fund for Writers
Philip Guston Endowed Writing Fellowship Fund
Stuart Harris Memorial Lectureship
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Henfield Foundation Scholarship Fund
Hudson Fellowship
Lini Mazumdar Fellowship
Jacob P. Waletzky Fellowship Awards
Claire Woolrich Memorial Fellowship Fund
TOMS Scholarship
Top: Lis Harris (Faculty) and Oliver Sacks (Professor of Neuroscience, Psychiatry and the Arts), Nonfiction
Dialogues series, March 2008. Bottom: Zadie Smith, Creative Writing Lecture Series, April 2008.
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Lecturer
Josh Bell’s first book is No Planets Strike
(University of Nebraska Press, 2005). He
received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’
Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing
Fellow and Paul Engle Postgraduate Fellow.
He was the Diane Middlebrook Fellow at the
University of Wisconsin’s Creative Writing
Institute in 2003–04, and in summer 2006
was a Walter Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee
Writer’s Conference. While at Columbia,
he is finishing his doctoral dissertation for
the University of Cincinnati, where he was
University Distinguished Graduate Fellow. His
work has been included in the Yale Younger
Poets Anthology.
creative nonfiction, sponsored by Bread Loaf
Writer’s Conference. She has had fellowships
to Ledig House International Writers
Residency and Bread Loaf. She teaches
literary nonfiction at the School of the Arts,
where she is the associate director of the
Undergraduate Creative Writing Program.
Boy was chosen by Ted Conover as winner of
the 2003 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize in
Professor and Head of Poetry Concentration
Lucie Brock-Broido received her BA
and her MA from Johns Hopkins University,
and her MFA from Columbia University.
Her books of poetry include Trouble in Mind,
recipient of the Massachusetts Book Award;
The Master Letters; and A Hunger. In 2008,
she edited and published Letters to a Stranger,
Poems by Thomas James with Graywolf Press.
Her awards and honors include the WitterBynner Prize for poetry from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the Harvard Phi
Beta Kappa Teaching Award, the Harvard-
Notable American Women by Ben Marcus (Faculty).
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Lecturer
Amy Benson’s book The Sparkling-Eyed
selected recent faculty accomplishments
Stacey D’Erasmo’s third novel, The Sky Below, was reviewed on
the cover of the New York Times Book Review; D’Erasmo was also
awarded a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Timothy Donnelly has published poetry in Harper’s, The Nation and
A Public Space, among other publications.
Danforth Award for Distinction in Teaching,
the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from
The American Poetry Review, two National
Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a
Guggenheim Fellowship.
Professor
Nicholas Christopher is the author
of five novels: The Soloist, Veronica, A Trip to
the Stars, Franklin Flyer, and The Bestiary; eight
books of poetry: On Tour with Rita, A Short
History of the Island of Butterflies, Desperate
Characters: A Novella in Verse, In the Year of
the Comet, 5° & Other Poems, The Creation
of the Night Sky, Atomic Field: Two Poems,
and Crossing the Equator: New & Selected
Poems, 1972–2004; and one nonfiction book:
Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir & the
American City. He has edited two anthologies
of contemporary American poetry, Under 35
and Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American
Poetry Since 1975. He is the recipient of
awards from the Guggenheim Foundation,
The National Endowment for the Arts, the
Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry
Society of America.
Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2007. It
won the New Hampshire Literary Award for
Outstanding Work of Fiction in 2007 and was
a finalist for the Pen-Hemingway Award and
the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award
for Best First Fiction. Curtis’ fiction and essays
have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s,
Esquire, Jane, Harper’s Bazaar, The Huffington
Post, McSweeney’s, n+1, and elsewhere. She
is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation
award and a Saltonstall Grant.
Assistant Professor
Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the
novels Tea, which was a New York Times
Notable Book of the Year; A Seahorse Year,
which was named a Best Book of the Year
by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday
and won both a Lambda Literary Award and
a Ferro-Grumley Award; and The Sky Below.
She is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim
Fellowship in fiction. Her essays, features and
reviews have appeared in the New York Times
Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the
Boston Review, and Ploughshares, among other
publications. She is currently working on her
fourth novel.
Lecturer
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Rebecca Curtis’s first book, Twenty Grand
Associate Professor
and Other Tales of Love & Money was a New
York Times Notable Book of 2007 and a San
Timothy Donnelly’s Twenty-seven
Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit was
Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit by Timothy
Donnelly (Faculty), and The Sky Below by Stacey D’Erasmo (Faculty).
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Squeeze. She was editor of The Village Voice
Literary Supplement from 1973 to 1975. A twotime Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace
Fellowship recipient, she was awarded grants
in 1998 from the J. M. Kaplan Fund and the
Fund for the City of New York, and in 1998
and 1999 from the Rockefeller Fund.
Brokers of Ideas & Power from FDR to LBJ and
Republic of Denial: Press, Politics and Public Life;
he was also editor of and contributor to Who
We Are: An Atlantic Chronicle of the United
States and Vietnam. His articles, essays and
book reviews have appeared in The Atlantic,
the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the
Chicago Tribune, and other publications.
Professor
published by Grove Press in 2003. He has been poetry editor
of Boston Review since 1995. His poems have appeared in
numerous magazines and journals, including American Letters
& Commentary, The Canary, Columbia Poetry Review (Chicago),
Conduit, Crowd, The Denver Quarterly, Fence, Harper’s, jubilat,
Lana Turner, The Literary Review, The Modern Review, The Nation,
The Paris Review, PEN America, Ploughshares, A Public Space,
TriQuartely, Volt, and many others. A book-length selection of
his work, Die neue Sicht der Dinge (luxbooks) was published in
Germany in 2008. His prose has appeared in American Poet,
Poetry Daily, Publisher’s Weekly, Verse, and elsewhere.
Associate Professor
Lis Harris was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1970
to 1995. In addition to innumerable articles, reviews and
commentaries, she is the author of Holy Days: The World of a
Hasidic Family, Rules of Engagement: Four American Marriages,
and Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings and the Corporate
selected recent faculty accomplishments
Richard Howard was nominated for the 2008 National Book Award
in poetry for his fourteenth collection of poetry, Without Saying.
Binnie Kirshenbaum’s eighth book, The Scenic Route, was named a
Time Magazine Best Book of the Season and was chosen for NPR’s
Critics List of the Five Best Books of Summer 2009.
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Without Saying by Richard Howard (Faculty).
Richard Howard is the author of 14
Professor
books of poetry, including Untitled Subjects,
Trappings, and Talking Cures, as well as the
critical study Alone with America and the
critical prefaces of the anthologies Preferences,
Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963–2003
and Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965–2003.
His most recent collection, Without Saying,
was a finalist for the 2008 National Book
Award in poetry. In 1983 he received the
American Book Award for his translation
of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal. In 1970 he
was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his third
book of poems, Untitled Subjects. In 1996 he
received a MacArthur Fellowship. He has
also received the PEN Translation Medal
and the French-American Prize and was
designated an Officier de L’Ordre National du
Mérite by the French government in 1982. A
member of the American Academy of Arts
and Letters since 1983, he has served as the
Poet Laureate of New York State (1994–1997)
and the President of PEN American Center
(1978–1980).
Margo Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize–winning
Professor
Michael Janeway has served as executive
editor of The Atlantic Monthly; managing
editor and editor-in-chief of the Boston Globe;
executive editor, trade division, at Houghton
Mifflin Co.; and dean at Medill School of
Journalism, Northwestern University. He is
the author of The Fall of the House of Roosevelt:
cultural critic. She has been a staff writer for the
New York Times and Newsweek; her reviews and
essays have appeared in New York magazine,
Grand Street, VOGUE, Harper’s and elsewhere.
Her book On Michael Jackson was published in
2006. She has also written and performed two
theatre pieces at The Cherry Lane Theatre and
The Culture Project in New York. She received a
2008 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Professor and Chair, and Acting Head of the
Fiction Concentration
Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of
two story collections, Married Life and History
on a Personal Note, and six novels: On Mermaid
Avenue, A Disturbance in One Place, Pure Poetry,
Hester Among The Ruins, An Almost Perfect
Moment and The Scenic Route. Her novels have
been chosen as Notable Books of the Year by
the Chicago Tribune; she is also the recipient of
two Critics Choice Awards and was selected
by Granta magazine as one of the Best Young
American Novelists. She has published short
fiction and essays in many magazines and
has been widely anthologized. Her books
have been translated into eight languages;
she has two novels under film option.
Assistant Professor
Sam Lipsyte’s novel Home Land was a New
York Times Notable Book for 2005 and winner
Next pages: Books by Writing faculty (left to right): Margo Jefferson, Rebecca Curtis, Lis Harris,
Lucie Brock-Broido, Binnie Kirshenbaum (Chair), Sam Lipsyte, Oliver Sacks.
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selected recent faculty accomplishments
Margo Jefferson and Sam Lipsyte were awarded 2008
Guggenheim Fellowships.
Orhan Pamuk received the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature; his
work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, deputy
editor of the New York Times Book Review and
editor in chief of Vanity Fair. He is the recipient
of a Great Teacher Award from the School of
the Arts Alumni Association and served as a
judge of The National Book Award, director
and president of The National Book Critics
Circle, and chair of the Writing Program.
Professor
Phillip Lopate is the author of three
of the Believer Book Award. He is also the author of
The Subject Steve and Venus Drive, named one of the 25 Best
Books of 2000 by the Village Voice Literary Supplement. His
books have been translated into several languages, including
French, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. His fiction
and nonfiction have appeared in The Quarterly, Noon, Tin
House, Open City, n+1, Slate, McSweeney’s, Esquire, GQ,
Bookforum, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington
Post, the Los Angeles Times, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise and
Playboy, among other places. He is a 2008 Guggenheim
Fellow. His novel The Ask will be published by Farrar, Straus
and Giroux in 2010.
Professor and Head of the Nonfiction Concentration
Richard Locke, a critic and essayist, is the author of 180
essays and reviews that have appeared in the New York Times
Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, The American Scholar, The
Threepenny Review, BookForum, Salmagundi, The Yale Review, The
Atlantic, The New Republic, and other publications. He has been
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Notes on Sontag by Phillip Lopate, My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk,
and Money & Morals in America by Patricia O’Toole (all Faculty).
essay collections: Bachelorhood, Against
Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body; two
novels: Confessions of Summer and The Rug
Merchant, and a pair of novellas, published
as Two Marriages. He also has published two
poetry collections: The Eyes Don’t Always
Want to Stay Open and The Daily Round, as
well as a memoir of his teaching experiences
titled Being With Children. He has edited the
following anthologies: The Art of the Personal
Essay, Writing New York, Journal of a Living
Experiment, American Movie Critics, and a
series collecting the best essays of the year,
The Anchor Essay Annual. Getting Personal:
Selected Writings was published by Basic
Books in 2003. He has been awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public
Library Center for Scholars and Writers
Fellowship, two National Endowment for the
Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for
the Arts grants.
Associate Professor
Ben Marcus is the author of three books of
fiction: Notable American Women, The Father
Costume, and The Age of Wire and String. His
stories, essays, and reviews have appeared
in numerous publications, including Harper’s,
The Paris Review, The Believer, the New York
Times, Salon, McSweeney’s, Time, Conjunctions,
Nerve, Black Clock, Grand Street, Cabinet,
Parkett, The Village Voice, Poetry, and BOMB.
He is the editor of The Anchor Book of New
American Short Stories, and for several years
acted as fiction editor for Fence. In 2008 he
received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award
from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters; he has also received, among other
honors, a Whiting Writers Award, a National
Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction
and three Pushcart Prizes. He is the recipient
of a 2009 grant for Innovative Literature from
the Creative Capital Foundation.
Associate Professor
Patricia O’Toole is the author of When
Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the
White House; Money & Morals in America: A
History and The Five of Hearts: An Intimate
Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends,
which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,
National Book Critics Circle Award, and the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize. As a journalist,
essayist and reviewer, she has contributed to
a wide range of publications including Time,
The American Scholar and Smithsonian. For
her magazine work on social and economic
issues she received a Front Page Award for
distinguished commentary, an Emma from
The National Women’s Political Caucus and
Radcliffe College, and an Excellence in Media
Award from GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation). She is a Fellow
of the Society of American Historians and
has served as a judge for the National Book
Awards, the PEN Award, and the Lukas Prize.
In 2004, she received a Presidential Award
for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia.
Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor of the Humanities
Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey’s most
prominent novelists. Titles (in English)
include The White Castle; The Black Book; The
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selected recent faculty accomplishments
Ben Marcus was awarded the American Academy of Arts and
Letters’ Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, given to a fiction writer
with progressive, original and experimental tendencies. He also
received a grant in innovative literature from Creative Capital.
New Life; My Name is Red; Snow; Istanbul:
Memories of a City; Other Colors: Essays and
a Story; and his newest book, The Museum
of Innocence, forthcoming (in translation
by Maureen Freely) in fall 2009. His work
has been translated into more than 40
languages, and he has received numerous
prestigious international prizes, including Le
Prix Méditerranée étranger, the Prix Medicis,
the Ricarda Huch Prize, and honorary
membership in the American Academy of
Arts and Letters. In 2006, he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Professor
David Plante is the author of the
novels The Ghost of Henry James, The Family
(nominated for the National Book Award),
The Woods, The Country, The Foreigner, The
Native, The Accident, Annunciation, and The
Age of Terror. His most recent novel is ABC.
He has written a memoir, American Ghosts,
and a nonfiction work, The Pure Lover, to be
published in fall 2009. His stories, profiles
and features in The New Yorker, the New York
Times, Esquire and Vogue. He is the recipient
of awards from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim
Foundation, and the British Arts Council
Bursary. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society
of Literature, England, and has recently
been elected to the New York Institute of
Humanistic Studies. He served as a judge for
the National Book Award in fiction, 2007.
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New Selected Poems by Mark Strand (Faculty).
Professor
Academic Director, Center for Literary Translation
Michael Scammell is the author of
Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, which won the Los
Angeles Times Book Prize and the English
PEN Nonfiction Prize for best biography of
the year in 1984. His authorized biography
of Arthur Koestler will be published by
Random House in fall 2009. He is the editor
of The Solzhenitsyn Files, Unofficial Art from
the Soviet Union, and Russia’s Other Writers,
and has translated many books from Russian
including Nabokov’s The Defense and The
Gift (in collaboration with the author); Crime
and Punishment by Dostoyevsky; Childhood,
Boyhood and Youth by Tolstoy; and memoirs
by Soviet dissidents Anatoly Marchenko and
Vladimir Bukovsky. He was the founder and
first editor (1972–1980) of the London-based
Human Rights journal Index on Censorship,
and chaired International PEN’s Writers in
Prison Committee from 1976 to 1986. He is
a vice president of International PEN and a
past president (1996–1999) of PEN American
Center. He has received fellowships and
awards from, among others, the Guggenheim
Foundation, the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation,
the Ford Foundation and the Arts Council of
Great Britain.
Professor of Neuroscience, Psychiatry and the Arts
Oliver sacks’ book Musicophilia: Tales of
Music and the Brain was published in October
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appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Esquire,
GQ, the New York Times Magazine, and
many other publications. His work has been
translated into twenty languages.
books of poetry, a book of stories, several
children’s books, several art books and
two volumes of translations. He has won a
number of fellowships including a Rockefeller,
a Guggenheim, an Ingram Merrill, and a
MacArthur. His prizes include the Bobbitt
Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize
(for Blizzard of One), the Wallace Stevens
Prize, the Premio Cetonaverde Poesia, the
Premio D’Annunzio, and the Premio Bonanni.
His books have been translated into Italian,
Spanish, German, Swedish, Dutch, Hebrew,
Japanese, Korean, Icelandic, Norwegian,
Russian, and Flemish. He was Poet Laureate
of the United States in 1990.
Donald Antrim
Elizabeth Benedict
Mark Bibbins
Monica de la Torre
Jonathan Dee
David Ebershoff
Paul Elie
Samantha Gillison
Eamon Grennan
John Haskell
Maureen Howard
Richard Nash
Ethan Nosowsky
Idra Novey
Stephen O’Connor
Julie Orringer
Ed Park
Alice Quinn
Dawn Raffel
Christine Schutt
Leslie Sharpe
Zadie Smith
Mark Strand has published a dozen
Assistant Professor
Gary Shteyngart is the author of the novels Absurdistan
and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. Absurdistan was chosen
as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times
Book Review and Time magazine, as well as a book of the year
by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco
Chronicle, and many other publications. The Russian Debutante’s
Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and
the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and was named
a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts
of the year by The Guardian (UK). His fiction and essays have
28
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart (Faculty) and The Swan
Song of Vaudeville by Alan Ziegler (Faculty).
Alan Ziegler’s honors include grants and
awards from the New York Foundation for
the Arts, the Word Beat Fiction Book Award,
four PEN Syndicated Fiction awards, a CAPS
(Creative Artists in Public Service) fellowship,
and National Endowment for the Arts and
New York State Council on the Arts grants
for Some literary magazine and Release Press,
which he co-edited. His books include The
Swan Song of Vaudeville: Tales and Takes; The
Green Grass of Flatbush (stories); So Much To
Do (poems); The Writing Workshop, Volumes
I and II; and The Writing Workshop Note Book.
His work has appeared in publications such
as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House,
Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Village
Voice, Carolina Quarterly, Sun, and Creative
Writing in America. He is a recipient of
Columbia University’s Presidential Award for
Outstanding Teaching, and from 2001 to 2006
he was chair of the Writing Program. w
Professor
2007 to critical acclaim. Sacks has published numerous articles
and books, including Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His
Wife for a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars. He is the recipient
of many science and writing awards, including an Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, and
the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. He is a
member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a
fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary
fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford. He was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the
2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Professor
Marie Howe
Joan Houlihan
Major Jackson
Shelley Jackson
Heidi Julavits
Paul La Farge
Nick Laird
Victor LaValle
Jonathan Lethem
Sarah Manguso
Errol McDonald
Lorin Stein
Darcey Steinke
Benjamin Taylor
William Wadsworth
Marjorie Welish
Brenda Wineapple
James Wood
Matvei Yankelevich
29
Mary Jo Bang (Poetry ‘98) won the
2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in
poetry for Elegy, her book of 64 poems that
chronicles the year following the death of her
son. It was selected as one of the New York
Times 100 Notable Books of 2008.
Kiran Desai (Fiction ’99) received the
University Medal for Excellence at the
Columbia University commencement
ceremony in 2009. Desai won the Man
Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss in
2006.
and a Slate Best Book of the Year. Galchen
was a finalist for the New York Public
Library’s 2009 Young Lions Fiction Award
and the 2008 Mercantile Library Center for
Fiction’s John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize.
She received a 2009–10 New York Public
Library Cullman Center Fellowship, during
which time she will work on her next novel,
The Nature of Theater in Oklahoma. Galchen
teaches creative writing in the Columbia
University School of the Arts 2009 Summer
Program.
Olivia Gentile (Nonfiction ’03) published
Rivka Galchen, M.D. (Fiction ’06) had
her book Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel
published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in
June 2008. The book was selected as one
of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of
2008, a Salon.com Top Ten Book of the Year,
her first book Life List: A Woman’s Quest for
the World’s Most Amazing Birds in March
2009. The book was praised by Pulitzer
Prize–winning author Jared Diamond and
writer Susan Orlean, among others, and was
reviewed in numerous publications.
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen (Fiction ’06),
and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Fiction ’99).
31
Tania James (Fiction ’06) published her debut novel, Atlas
of Unknowns, in April 2009. The novel received rave reviews
from the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and a
number of other publications.
Rachel Kushner’s (Fiction ’01) debut novel, Telex from
Cuba, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2008 and
was selected as one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books
of 2008. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Fence, Bomb,
The Believer, Grand Street, the New York Times, and Artforum.
Reif Larsen (Fiction ’08) published his debut novel, The Selected
Works of T. S. Spivet, in May, at the age of 29. Ten major publishers
bid on the manuscript, which ultimately sold to Penguin for close
to $1 million, a remarkable sum for a first-time author.
Victor LaValle’s (Writing ’98) second novel Big Machine
was published in August 2009. LaValle is also the author of
Slapboxing With Jesus, a book of stories, and another novel,
The Ecstatic. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award,
a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, and the key to
Southeast Queens.
32
Left: Telex From Cuba by Rachel Kushner (Fiction ’01). Right: The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet
by Reif Larsen (Fiction ’08), and Big Machine by Victor LaValle (Fiction ’98).
33
Kelly McMasters’ (Nonfiction ’05) book
Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic
Town was selected as one of “10 Addictively
True Stories” by Oprah’s Book Club in July
2009. The book has been featured in the New
York Times, Newsday, the Washington Post, Los
Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Metropolis,
Ms. magazine, The Onion’s AV Club, and The
Brooklyn Rail, among other publications, as
well as on The Brian Lehrer Show and The
Bonnie Grice Show.
writing in the Columbia University School of
the Arts 2009 Summer Program.
Miguel Syjuco (Fiction ’04) won the 2008
Man Asian Literary Prize, a $10,000 award
for an unpublished Asian novel in English, for
his debut novel Ilustrado. The novel also won
Grand Prize in the English Novel Division at
last year’s Palanca Awards, the Philippines’
most prestigious literary prizes.
Wells Tower’s (Fiction ’02) debut book of
Dinaw Mengestu’s (Fiction ’05) debut
novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
(Penguin, 2007) has been translated into
12 languages. It was named a New York
Times Notable Book of the Year in 2007
and received the Prix du Premier Meilleur
Roman Étranger, also in 2007. Mengestu
also received a 2007 Lannan Literary
Fellowship and was named one of the
National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35,”
a group of young fiction writers recognized
as being “among the best of a new generation
of writers.” He won the Los Angeles Times
Book Prize in 2008.
Karen Russell’s (Fiction ’06) collection
of stories, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by
Wolves, was named a Best Book of 2006
by the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco
Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times; in 2007
Russell was included in Granta’s list of Best
of Young American Novelists. Her stories
have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta,
Conjunctions, Zoetrope, and Best American
Short Stories 2007 and 2008. She received a
2009–10 New York Public Library Cullman
Center Fellowship, during which time she will
begin work on her novel Shibboleth (working
title), set in a mythical town during the
Dust Bowl drought. Russell teaches creative
34
stories, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
praised on the cover of the New York Times
Book Review by Edmund White in March
2009; it was also reviewed in the Los Angeles
Times Book Review, the New York Times, Vanity
Fair, and Bookforum, among many additional
publications. Tower will join the faculty of the
Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at
Columbia University this fall.
Josh Weil’s (Fiction ’04) first book,
The New Valley, was published by Grove
in June 2009 and was praised in the New
York Times Book Review, in which it was also
selected as an Editor’s Choice. Since earning
his MFA from the Writing Program, he has
received a Fulbright Grant, fellowships and
scholarships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee
Writers’ conferences, a fellowship to the
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the
Dana Award in Portfolio magazine. As the
2009–10 Tickner Writing Fellow, he will be
the writer-in-residence at Gilman School in
Baltimore.
Miranda Weiss (Nonfiction ’07) published
her first book, a memoir of her life in Alaska,
Tide, Feather, Snow (Harper, 2009) in April. The
book was praised by writers Edward Hoagland
and Anthony Doerr, among others. w
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Fiction ’02), The Body’s Question
by Tracy K. Smith (Poetry ’97), and Tide, Feather, Snow by Miranda Weiss (Nonfiction ’07).
35
The 2009-2010 Viewbook is a publication of
Columbia University School of the Arts
305 Dodge Hall, MC 1808
2960 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
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Writing
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© 2009 All rights reserved. This book may not be
reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Section
107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publishers.
Design
Kstudio/Christiaan Kuypers, Edrea Lita
www.kstudionyc.com
Printing
Printed by TanaSeybert on recycled paper credit TK
Admissions, financial aid information, and applications
available at arts.columbia.edu
Photo credits
p.2: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.4: Photo by Eileen Barroso;
p.7: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.9: Photo by Tsubasa Berg;
p.10: Photo by Michael Dames;
p.11: Photo by Eileen Barroso;
p.13: Photo by John Smock;
p.14: Photo by David Wentworth; Photo by Michael Dames;
p.16: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
36
p.18: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.20: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.22-23: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.24: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.26: Courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group;
p.28: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.30: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.32: Photo by Chalkie Davies;
p.33: Photo by Chalkie Davies.
37
“Whatever I was learning in the classroom,
which was inestimable, it was greatly enhanced
by what I was learning from my fellow students.
All of us had been drawn to Columbia University
School of the Arts because it promised the kind
of learning that one hopes for, from teachers
who are exceptionally talented and enormously
successful in their fields. We got that, but we
also got each other. It’s impossible to tease
apart the combination of those two aspects.
Those students, and my teachers, would go on
to form the core of the community of writers
that has sustained me.”
– Mary Jo Bang
mfa poetry ‘98, books include elegy and the bride of e. winner,
national book critic’s circle award