禁漫天堂

Skip to Main Content
Skidmore College
New York State Summer Writers Institute

2025 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. 

  is the author of Almost, a novel described by Edmund White as 鈥渁 fast-paced, funny, and splendidly intelligent drama [with] a varied, unforgettable cast of characters.鈥 Her earlier books include Slow Dancing (a finalist for the National Book Award), The Beginner鈥檚 Book of Dreams, Safe Conduct, The Practice of Deceit and The Joy of Writing Sex (鈥淩ead it because it will teach you everything you need to know about writing good fiction,鈥欌 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. Lincoln鈥檚 Wars and Crows Over The Wheatfield. (鈥淏rilliant and inventive work,鈥 wrote a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. 鈥淎 novelist whose works are richly imagined,鈥 says the Washington Post.) Braver鈥檚 most recent novels are NOV 22, 1963, which revolves around the assassination of John F. Kennedy; Misfit (鈥淎mazing...a book about identity, privacy and intimacy that both exposes and conceals its subject 鈥 Marilyn Monroe,鈥 writes Ann Beattie), and Rejoice The Head Of Paul McCartney, which "brilliantly captures the fragmented intensity of late '60s California 鈥 and the US 鈥 in its idealism, exhilaration, violence and despair," says Claire Messud.
                                                                                     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 as鈥渂rilliantly written, piercingly smart, quietly subversive.鈥
 

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. 

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of seven novels and one short story collection. Her books have been selected as Favorite Books of the Year by The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek Magazine, Vogue and National Public Radio. Her novel Hester Among the Ruins, the story of the adulterous relationship between a Jewish-American biographer and a dashing German intellectual whose mother once had Nazisympathies. Publisher's Weekly called the novel, "complete and convincing." Kirshenbaum's works include the novels Counting Backwards, Rabbits For Food, Pure Poetry, A Disturbance in One Place, and On Mermaid Avenue.  She is a professor of Fiction in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University. Her 2019 novel Rabbits For Food was an NPR 鈥楩avorite Book of the Year鈥 and was described in The Boston Globe as a work of 鈥渁bsolute genius.鈥
 
Claire Messud teaches at Harvard and has been on the Summer Writers Institute faculty for almost twenty years. She is the recipient of several major awards, and is the author of seven novels, including The Emperor's Children (a 2006 New York Times best-seller: 鈥渕asterful, penetrating, splendid,鈥 wrote Meghan O鈥橰ourke in The New York Times Book Review, The Burning Girl (an LA Times Best Book of the Year), The Woman Upstairs (鈥淭he first truly feminist (in the best, least didactic sense) novel I have read in years鈥the book] Virginia Woolf hoped someone would write,鈥 said Daphne Merkin in Book Forum), and This Strange Eventful History (2024).
 
Susan Minotis the author of nine books鈥攏ovels, short stories and poetry, as well as screenplays (鈥淪tealing Beauty鈥) and plays (鈥淥n Island鈥). Her most recent novel is Don鈥檛 Be A Stranger (2024). Her first novel Monkeys won the Prix Femina 脡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, 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, McSweeney鈥檚. 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 鈥渙ur anthropologist of desolate landscapes,鈥 John Hawkes as 鈥渁 writer of meticulous originality.鈥 He received the Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award. His memoir is The Black Veil (鈥淢oody鈥檚 writing rants and raves and roars,鈥 writes a reviewer for The New York Times. 鈥淗e is an unrepressed quester after meaning,鈥 writes Robert Boyers). Moody鈥檚 latest novels are The Diviners (2005) and The Four Fingers of Death (2010), and his latest collection of short fiction is Right Livelihoods (2007). 鈥淥ne of our best writers,鈥 said a reviewer for the Washington Post. Moody鈥檚 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 鈥渢he personal essay.鈥 Lopate鈥檚 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. Lopate鈥檚 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. 鈥淗e is our Montaigne,鈥 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: 鈥淲illiams writes beautifully鈥onest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles.鈥 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 College鈥檚 Hannah Arendt Center.

cantfindit

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 鈥渢he most original debut in my experience of contemporary American poetry.鈥 With poems spoken in the invented voice of the late Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, the book, says Robert Pinsky, 鈥渘ot only surpasses the notion of a merely good first book鈥 but 鈥渟oars beyond the conventional expectations of 鈥榩ersona鈥 and dramatic monologue.鈥 鈥淭he creation of the voice in this book,鈥 wrote Frank Bidart, 鈥渟toic, passionate, resigned, insistent on truth鈥攊s a brilliant achievement.鈥 Boyers鈥 second book, Honey With Tobacco (2007), 鈥渉as a rare power,鈥 wrote George Steiner; 鈥渁 beautiful book,鈥 wrote Henri Cole. Peg Boyers is executive editor of the quarterly Salmagundi and teaches creative writing at Skidmore College. Her third book, entitled To Forget Venice, came out in October of 2014 and was hailed for its 鈥渄isarming flights of imagination鈥 and 鈥渋nspired ventriloquism.鈥 Her most recent book, The Album, was published by Dos Madres Press in the fall of 2021.

Henri Cole is the author of seven books of poems, including The Look of Things, The Marble Queen, The Visible Man and Middle Earth. (鈥淗enri Cole has become a master poet, with few peers,鈥 writes Harold Bloom. 鈥Middle Earth is [his] epiphany, his Whitmanesque sunrise鈥 [These] are the poems of our climate.鈥) Of his earlier books, Wayne Koestenbaum wrote in the New Yorker: 鈥渁 poet not content to remain in the realm of the merely lapidary, the self-consciously coloratura鈥e produces lines of natural and nonchalant brio鈥n stanzas as shapely as topiary鈥; he can write about the soul stumbling against quotidian impediments鈥 [approaching] a variety of subjects, from first love鈥 to family history.鈥 Cole has taught at the Summer Writers Institute since 2004. His most recent books are The Other Love, Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets, 1994-2022, and Blizzard. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

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 I鈥檓 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 Writer鈥檚 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.

 

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, "percision 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 鈥淕enius鈥 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. 鈥淎 poet of formal eloquence and rhetorical power,鈥 writes the reviewer for Publishers Weekly, 鈥渙f vision and engagement鈥.he descends into the maelstrom of American culture and emerges singing.鈥 鈥淗e is our Whitman,鈥 writes the reviewer for American Review. McGrath鈥檚 latest book XX: Poems For The 20th Century has been celebrated as a 鈥渢our de force鈥 and 鈥渁n improbable feat of the imagination.鈥

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: 鈥淲arren is an important poet, beyond the achievement of all but a handful of living American poets.鈥 And Charles Simic writes in The NY Review of Books: 鈥淗er work has become stronger and stronger 鈥. masterful and ambitious.鈥  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 books鈥攎ost 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 Delaney鈥檚 book Follow the Sun, Phillip Lopate writes, 鈥淗is control of the material is masterful.鈥

 

Mamta Chaudhry (Fiction) is the author of the novel Haunting Paris, described as 鈥渆legantly wrought鈥 by The New York Times Book Review and 鈥渁 heart-wrenching love letter to Paris" by Publishers Weekly. Russell Banks called Haunting Paris 鈥渁udaciously, 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.

 

 

Elisa Gonzalez  (Poetry), a recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer鈥檚 Award, has had work appear in the New YorkerNew York Times MagazineParis Review and elsewhere.  Of Gonzalez鈥檚 2023 debut poetry collection, Grand Tour, Louise Gl眉ck described poems that 鈥渕ake me feel as if poems have never before been written.鈥 

Robert Boyers

Robert Boyers, Director is editor of the influential quarterly magazine , professor of English at Skidmore College, 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 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚The 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鈥 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 鈥淎dam 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.鈥
 
 

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 禁漫天堂 Music. He teaches for the Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative and Department of English at Skidmore College.

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 O鈥機onnor 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-General鈥檚 Award
  • Giller Prize
  • Cannes Film Festival Awards (novels adapted into films)