MFA Faculty
Download MFA Faculty List
| Spalding MFA in Writing Faculty
Some faculty members teach in more than one area (see bios for details); not all faculty members teach each semester. |
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| Fiction Julie Brickman K.L. Cook Leslie Daniels Pete Duval Kirby Gann Rachel Harper Roy Hoffman Silas House Fenton Johnson Robin Lippincott Jody Lisberger Nancy McCabe Eleanor Morse Sena Jeter Naslund Elaine Neill Orr John Pipkin Neela Vaswani Crystal Wilkinson |
Poetry Debra Kang Dean Kathleen Driskell Shane McCrae Maureen Morehead Greg Pape Jeanie Thompson Play/Screenwriting David-Matthew Barnes Larry Brenner Gabriel Dean Helena Kriel Kira Obolensky Eric Schmiedl Charlie Schulman Sam Zalutsky |
Creative Nonfiction Dianne Aprile Charles Gaines Roy Hoffman Fenton Johnson Nancy McCabe Elaine Neill Orr Neela Vaswani Luke Wallin Rebecca Walker Writing for Children & Young Adults David-Matthew Barnes Susan Campbell Bartoletti Carolyn Crimi Edie Hemingway Robert Lehrman Lesléa Newman |
To see all faculty books, click here.
The faculty is carefully chosen by Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund from candidates nationwide who are known to be not only publishing writers, but also excellent teachers. The instructors create a supportive and honest environment for their students at the residency and during the at-home (independent study) portion of the semester. Faculty mentors help each student design an Independent Study Plan that meets that student at his or her level of ability and interest in order to promote maximum improvement and learning. Each study plan is individualized and created with the student’s writing goals in mind.
by faculty name presents a 2-minute faculty youtube reading. Dianne Aprile, MFA (creative nonfiction). Dianne Aprile is the author of four books of nonfiction: Making a Heart for God: A Week Inside a Catholic Monastery (2000); The Eye Is Not Enough: On Seeing and Remembering (2000) with printmaker Mary Lou Hess; The Abbey of Gethsemani: Place of Peace and Paradox (1998), and The Things We Don’t Forget: Views from Real Life (1994). She is editor of (and contributor to) The Book, a letter-press, hand-printed volume of fine-art photographs by Julius Friedman, with texts by 25 poets and writers, coming out this winter. She is also a contributor to This I Believe: Kentucky, published by Butler Books/NPR. Recently published books include A Landscape and Its Legacy: The Parklands of Floyds Fork (21st Century Parks, 2012) and a revised paperback edition of The Eye Is Not Enough: On Seeing and Remembering (2012). She is at work on a memoir, a portion of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work is included in an anthology of writing exercises, Now Write Nonfiction, published by Tarcher/Penguin (2010). In 2008, she was named the first writer in residence for Spalding’s BFA in Writing program. She is the recipient of three individual artist fellowships in nonfiction from the Kentucky Arts Council (most recently in 2008), and two writing grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and a Hedgebrook Writers Residency (2011) and a Washington State Artist Trust Writers Fellowship (2012). Her essays and book reviews have been published in literary journals, newspapers, magazines and on-line journals, and also appear in anthologies, including A Kentucky Christmas, Conversations with Kentucky Authors, and Savory Memories, all published by University Press of Kentucky. She has had poems recently published in The Louisville Review and Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. As a staff writer for The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, she won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ top award in 1996, and in 1989 shared a staff Pulitzer Prize for team coverage of the aftermath of a northern Kentucky school bus crash. Her collection of Courier-Journal columns, The Things We Don’t Forget, was adapted for stage and produced by the University of Louisville theater department. As a journalist, she earned more than a dozen first-place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists in the areas of criticism, magazine writing column-writing and feature writing. Her work was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition with Bob Edwards and in Southern Living, and has been part of two gallery shows combining text and visual art, “Silence as Sacred Text” and “The Marriage Project.” She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding Univeristy. She and her husband, who co-owned a jazz club in Louisville for five years, recently moved to Seattle, where she is the co-producer of A Moveable Salon, a new in-home reading series launched in summer 2012 in the Seattle area. (top)
David-Matthew Barnes, MFA (playwriting, screenwriting, writing for children and young adults). David-Matthew Barnes is the bestselling author of twelve novels and several collections of stage plays, poetry, short stories, and monologues. Two of his young adult novels have been recognized by the American Library Association for their diversity. He is the President of the Pindelion Entertainment Group, the creator and producer of the teen television series Bloom, the Artistic Director of The Dorothy Nickle Performing Arts Company, and the host of the weekly radio show People You Should Know. His first feature film, the coming-of-age drama Frozen Stars (starring Lana Parrilla of ABC’s Once Upon a Time), received worldwide distribution. He has written over forty stage plays that have been performed in three languages in eight countries. His literary work has been featured in over one hundred publications including The Best Stage Scenes, The Best Men’s Stage Monologues, The Best Women’s Stage Monologues, The Comstock Review, and The Southeast Review. His stage plays have been official selections for the Chicago Director’s Festival, the DC Queer Theatre Festival, FronteraFest, the Johannesburg One-Act Drama Festival, the Mid-America Dramatists Lab, the NYC 15-Minute Play Festival, the Rough Writers New Play Festival, and the Western Australia Drama Festival. His work has been performed on stages across the country including productions at the American Globe Theatre, the Boston Center for the Arts, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Hyde Park Theatre, and the Producer’s Club in New York City. Internationally his plays have been produced in Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. He was selected by Kent State University as the national winner of the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Award. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina and is currently working on a Master of Arts in Theatre Education at the University of Northern Colorado. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Horror Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Romance Writers of America, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. He has been a teacher for nearly a decade, instructing college courses in writing, literature, and the arts. (top)
Susan Campbell Bartoletti, PhD (writing for children and young adults). Newbery-Honor author Susan Campbell Bartoletti has published seventeen books ranging from picture books, novels, and nonfiction for young readers. Her latest nonfiction book is the YALSA honor-winning They Called Themselves the K.K.K: the Birth of an American Terrorist Group. (Houghton Mifflin 2010). For her body of nonfiction work, she was awarded the prestigious Washington Post-Children’s Book Guild award in 2009. Her work has received dozens of awards and honors, including the ALA Newbery Honor, ALA Robert F. Sibert Award for Nonfiction, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Nonfiction, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, Charlotte Zolotow honor, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction,ALA Notable Children’s Book, ALA Best Book for Young Adults, School Library Journal Best Book, and Booklist Editors’ Choice, among others. Despite writing about depressing subjects such as home-grown terrorism in They Called Themselves the K.K.K., the horror of the Third Reich in Hitler Youth and The Boy Who Dared (Scholastic 2005, 2008), famine in Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine (Houghton, 2001), and child labor in Kids on Strike! (Houghton 1999) and Growing Up in Coal Country (Houghton 1996), and the pain of arranged marriages in A Coal Miner’s Bride (Dear America, Scholastic 2000), she insists that she has a good sense of humor, no doubt a defense mechanism developed as a result of teaching eighth grade for eighteen years. Her latest novel is Down the Rabbit Hole: The Diary of Pringle Rose, 1871 (Scholastic 2013). She holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University (New York). She lives with her husband near Scranton, Pennsylvania. They have two grown children. Visit her website at www.scbartoletti.com. (top)
Larry Brenner, MFA (playwriting, screenwriting). Larry Brenner is a graduate of Spalding’s MFA program, and is currently earning his PhD in Educational Theatre at NYU. In Fall 2010, Larry’s screenplay, Bethlehem, was one of the winners in the Final Draft Big Break Screenplay Competition, which is now being produced by Joe Roth Productions. It subsequently placed on the 2011 Hollywood Black List, Hit List, and Blood List. He’s has also written Labyrinth for Walt Disney Pictures and Angelology for SONY/Columbia Pictures. Saving Throw Versus Love, was produced at part of the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival. It was then selected for the Fringe Encore Series, and is currently in contract with producers for an upcoming Off-Broadway run. Larry is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America and WGAEast. (top)
Julie Brickman, MFA, PhD (fiction). Julie Brickman is author of the novel What Birds Can Only Whisper and the story collection Two Deserts. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the North American Review, the Barcelona Review, Fireweed, The Louisville Review, the International Journal of Women’s Studies, Kinesis, Canadian Dimension, as well as other journals and the anthology States of Rage. When the San Diego Union-Tribune had a Books section, she published thirty-some reviews in it. Julie’s honors include grants from the Canada Council, a Pushcart prize nomination, a writer-in-residence position at the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and finalist status in the San Diego Book Awards. She has served as guest faculty editor of The Louisville Review in both fiction and creative nonfiction. Also a clinical psychologist, Brickman spent seventeen years in private practice before becoming a writer. Raised in New Jersey, she now lives in Laguna Beach, California. Visit her website at www.juliebrickman.com. (top)
K. L. Cook, MFA (fiction). K. L. Cook’s collection of linked stories, Last Call (Univ. of Nebraska Press 2004), won the inaugural Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. Stories from the collection were originally published in The Threepenny Review, Shenandoah, American Short Fiction, and Witness, among other journals and magazines. His novel, The Girl from Charnelle (William Morrow 2006, Harper Perennial 2007), won the 2007 Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction and was an Editor’s Choice selection by the Historical Novel Society and a Southwest Book of the Year, among other honors. His thematically linked cycle of stories, Love Songs for the Quarantined (Willow Springs Editions 2011), won the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Stories from this book originally appeared in Glimmer Train, One Story, Harvard Review, and The Louisville Review, as well as other journals and anthologies. Several of the pieces won individual awards, including the Western Writers of America Association Award for best short story set in the American West and selection for the 2012 Best American Mystery Stories and Best of the West 2011. Additional essays, articles, and stories have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Poets & Writers, Brevity, Glimmer Train Bulletin, Now Write: Fiction Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, Teachable Moments: Essays on Experiential Education, and When I Was a Loser. Other honors include the Grand Prize from the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Arts Series, an Arizona Commission on the Arts Fellowship, and residency fellowships to The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, and Ucross. He has taught as a distinguished professor at many colleges and universities and is currently a professor in the MFA Program for Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. Visit his website at www.klcook.com. (top)
Carolyn Crimi, MFA (writing for children and young adults). Carolyn Crimi received her MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College in 2000. She has published over thirteen books, including Don’t Need Friends (Random House, 1999), Boris and Bella (Harcourt, 2004), Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies (Candlewick, 2005), Where’s My Mummy? (Candlewick, 2008), Principal Fred Won’t Go To Bed (Marshall Cavendish, 2011), Dear Tabby (Harper, 2012), Rock and Roll Mole (Dial, 2011), and Pugs in a Bug (Dial, 2012). Carolyn was quite pleased to be awarded The 2012 Prairie State Award for her body of work. Her books have garnered over 30 state awards and award nominations, including The Kentucky Bluegrass Award, The Arkansas Diamond Primary Book Award and The Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award. Carolyn enjoys giving Author Talks to elementary schools all over the country. Her website, www.carolyncrimi.com, gives more details about her books and her background. Students, moms, teachers and librarians are also welcome to post letters about their pets on Carolyn’s blog, deartabbycat.blogspot.com. (top)
Leslie Daniels, MA, MFA (fiction) First novel, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, was published by Simon & Schuster/Touchstone in 2011, paperback in 2012, in translation in four languages, and was recently optioned for film. Prior to the book’s publication, Leslie worked in publishing for two decades, first as an assistant, then as a literary agent in New York. Throughout her tenure as a literary agent, Leslie nurtured the work and careers of many fine writers, working closely with writers to shape and edit their work. Leslie received a B.A. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, MA in psychology from the New School for Social Research, MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. Leslie has taught writing workshops at the University of Pennsylvania writing conference, Eastern Washington University MFA program, Franklin & Marshall College, and others. She was the 2011 Walton Award visiting writer at the University of Arkansas. She is on faculty at The Squaw Valley Writers Conference. Between 2005 and 2010, Leslie served as the fiction editor for Green Mountains Review. She is currently the artistic advisor to the Finger Lakes literary festival, Spring Writes. She has published stories or essays in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, The Florida Review, among others. Her one-act play was produced by The Shooting Gallery in New York City. She has been nominated for Best American Essays, four times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Associated Writing Programs. Leslie is at work on a novel. (And a play.) She lives in Ithaca, New York. Visit her website at www.lesliedaniels.com/ (top)
Debra Kang Dean, MFA (poetry). Debra Kang Dean has published three collections of poetry: Back to Back (North Carolina Writers’ Network, 1997), which won the Harperprints Poetry Chapbook Competition, judged by Ruth Stone; News of Home (BOA, 1998), which was co-winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton Award; and Precipitates (BOA, 2003), which was nominated for the William Carlos Williams Award. Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily, and have appeared in many journals and a number of anthologies, including The Best American Poetry (1999), The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (2000), Yobo: Korean American Writing in Hawai’i (2003), America! What’s My Name: The “Other” Poets Unfurl the Flag (2007), and Yellow as Tumeric, Fragrant as Cloves (2008). Visit her website at www.debrakangdean.com (top)
Gabriel Jason Dean, MFA (playwriting, screenwriting). Gabriel Jason Dean is a New York / Austin based theatre-maker who originally hails from Atlanta, Georgia. His plays have been produced or developed at New York Theatre Workshop, the Lark, New York Stage & Film, Oregon Shakespeare, the Kennedy Center, Davenport Theatrical, PlayPenn, Theatre Row, Hangar Theatre, ASSITEJ International, Red Orchid Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Dallas Children’s Theatre, People’s Light and Theatre, Dad’s Garage Theatre, Actor’s Express, Vortex Rep, Horizon Theatre, FronteraFest, Source Festival, the Cohen New Works Festival, Essential Theatre, and the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Gabriel is a current nominee for the Laurents/Hatcher Award for his play Javaaneh (in Bloom) which is optioned for Broadway by Davenport Theatrical. He is also a current nominee for the NETC Stavis Award for his play Terminus. Gabriel received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF 2012 Paula Vogel Prize, Theatre for Young Audiences Award and was Runner-Up for the Harold & Mimi Steinberg National Playwriting Award. In 2011, Gabriel received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF Ken Ludwig Prize for a body of work from an emerging writer and was Runner-Up for the New Dramatist’s Princess Grace Award. His script for children, The Transition f Doodle Pequeno, received the 2013 American Alliance for Theatre & Education Distinguished Play Award, the 2011 New England Theatre Conference Aurand Harris Award and was selected for the 2012 Kennedy Center New Visions / New Voices Conference and is currently being adapted into a picture book. Gabriel is the recipient of the 2010 Essential Theatre New Play Prize for Qualities of Starlight. A short play, Pigskin, won the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. Gabriel was voted “Favorite Local Playwright” in Creative Loafing–Atlanta and is the recipient of the James A. Michener Playwriting Fellowship, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs Playwriting Award, the Porter Fleming Prize for Fiction, the Sidney Lanier Prize for Poetry, and a winner of the Horizon Theatre Young Playwright’s Festival. Other plays have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Seven Devils Conference, The O’Neill Theatre Conference, Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, Interact’s 20/20 Commissions, Page 73 Fellowship, the Julliard Wallace Fellowship, Lark Play Development Center and Aurora Theatre Global Age Project. His scripts are published through Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing and Playscripts. Gabriel’s poetry, fiction and journalism has been published in Snake Nation Review, The Tower, Eclectica Magazine, The Melic Review, and Creative Loafing. He received the Porter Fleming Prize for Fiction and the Sidney Lanier Prize for Poetry. Gabriel is currently a CORE Writer at The Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis and the 2013-14 Fellow at the Dramatist’s Guild in New York. BA: Oglethorpe University. MFA: UT-Austin Michener Center for Writers. Visit his website at www.GabrielJasonDean.net (top)
Pete Duval, MA (fiction). Pete Duval’s story collection, Rear View (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize for Fiction, the Connecticut Book Award for fiction (nominees for which included Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America), and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. His work has appeared in a variety of national and international journals, most recently Alaska Quarterly Review, Meridian, Witness, and Appalachian Heritage. “Common Area,” a short story, won Grain Magazine‘s 2011 Short Grain fiction competition; his 248-word story “Still Life” was awarded first prize in Florida State University’s World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. A new story collection, “Strange Mercies,” was a finalist for The Hudson Prize for Fiction at Black Lawrence Press, and the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest. Twice honored with Connecticut Artist Grants and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Duval teaches writing and film studies at West Chester University. He edits and designs books for the newly re-emergent Story Line Press; and serves as technical editor for Mezzo Cammin, the online journal of formalist poetry by women. Duval holds master’s degrees in creative writing (Boston University), in literature (University of Illinois) and in film studies (New York University) and recently attended Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School in London as the sole writer (“The writer is always welcome here!”) among 68 filmmakers. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, the poet Kim Bridgford, and their son, Nick. (top)
Kathleen Driskell, MFA (poetry). Kathleen Driskell is Professor of Creative Writing at Spalding University and since 2003 has served as the Associate Program Director of the Spalding brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. Her latest publication is Peck and Pock: A Graphic Poem, a long poem presented in