About Our Writing Workshops

Current Instructors

• 

  Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

  Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

  Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter. Named among the best books of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, and The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, Blue was honored with the 2023 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in the writing of non-fiction for children, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

  Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices, of which Kirkus Reviews said in a starred review: “This smart, generous collection is a true gift.” Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into darkness. You can keep up with Nana on Instagram at @nanaekuawriter, Twitter at @nanaekua, and Facebook at @nanaekuawriter.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Essie Brew Hammond; Clothing by EXIT 14

  
  
• 

  Joanna Cantor

  Joanna Cantor

  Joanna Cantor holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Colorado College. Her debut novel, Alternative Remedies for Loss, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for May 2018 and received coverage in Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Nylon, and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Departures, Fodor’s Travel, Greatist, and Willamette Week. Joanna was a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She previously taught fiction writing at Catapult and is also a yoga teacher. She lives in Brooklyn. You can keep up with Joanna on Instagram at @joannacantor and on Twitter at @jojannna.

• 

  Sarah Cypher

  Sarah Cypher

  Sarah Cypher is a freelance book editor and author of The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine, April 2023). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction, and a BA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, and others, and she has been a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She grew up in a Lebanese Christian family near Pittsburgh and lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife. You can keep up with Sarah on Instagram at @sarahcypher and on Twitter at @threepenny.

• 

  Bruna Dantas Lobato

  Bruna Dantas Lobato

  Bruna Dantas Lobato is a Brazilian writer and literary translator based in St. Louis. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space, the Common, and other publications, and has been recognized with fellowships from Yaddo, A Public Space, NYU, and Disquiet International. Her literary translations include Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries (Archipelago Books), Stênio Gardel’s The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press), and Giovana Madalosso’s Tokyo Suite (Europa Editions). Other translations from Lobato have appeared in Vogue, Bookforum, BOMB, the Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, the Brooklyn Rail, and the American Scholar, among others. You can keep up with Bruna on Twitter at @bdantaslobato and Instagram @bdantaslobato.

• 

  Kavita Das

  Kavita Das

  Kavita Das came to writing ten years ago after working for social change and social justice for fifteen years. She writes about culture, race, gender, and their intersections. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in WIRED, CNN, Teen Vogue, Catapult, Fast Company, Tin House, Longreads, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Kenyon Review, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Electric Literature, Colorlines, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Kavita’s second book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues (Beacon Press, October 2022) is inspired by the Writing with Conscience class she created and teaches. Her first book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar, was published by Harper Collins India in 2019. In the real world, she lives in New York with her husband, toddler, and hound. And in the virtual world, she can be found on Twitter: @kavitamix and Instagram: @kavitadas and at kavitadas.com.

• 

  Omer Friedlander

  Omer Friedlander

  Omer Friedlander was born in Jerusalem in 1994 and grew up in Tel-Aviv. He is the author of the short story collection The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award and a finalist for the Wingate Prize. The book was chosen as a Sophie Brody Medal Honor Book and longlisted for the Story Prize. Omer has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He was a Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University. His collection has been translated into several languages, including Turkish, Dutch, and Italian. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Fellowship and Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. He is currently teaching Creative Writing at the MFA program at Columbia University.

• 

  Miciah Bay Gault

  Miciah Bay Gault

  Miciah Bay Gault is the author of the novel Goodnight Stranger (Park Row, 2019), which was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and selected for Poets & Writers’ First Fiction roundup.

  Miciah is a Breadloaf fellow and a Vermont Arts Council creation grant recipient. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, the Sun, Agni, the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, the New York Times ‘Modern Love’ column, and other places. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is coordinator of the Vermont Book Award.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Daryl Burtnett

  
  
• 

  Ruth Mukwana

  Ruth Mukwana

  Ruth Mukwana is a fiction writer. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb, Solstice, and Consequence. Her short story, “Taboo” was a runner-up in the Black Warriors Review 2017 fiction contest. She’s the Co-Fiction Editor of Solstice Magazine. She is the Creator and Host of SAHA, Stories and Humanitarian Action, a Podcast that investigates whether fiction can raise awareness on the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises. Her works in progress are a collection of short stories and a novel that follows Queen, a middle-aged woman working for the UN, as she’s forced to confront a past, she wants to forget, and her quest for justice. Told through multiple points of view, the novel interrogates trauma and memory, and resilience and forgiveness. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), a 2022 Bennington Alumni Fellow and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow, and a former humanitarian worker with the United Nations. She lives in New York with her daughter.

  As a fiction writer with an MFA from Bennington College and a humanitarian worker whose work and writing deals with social justice issues, she is passionate about writing for social justice and has a deep familiarity with both the research and questions of craft. Therefore, she offers a wide perspective and comparative approach.

• 

  Dawn Raffel

  Dawn Raffel

  Dawn Raffel is the author of six books, most recently Boundless as the Sky, a hybrid collection incorporating fiction, image, and early 20th Century history, amid the rise of both fascism and technology. The title novella, set at the 1933 Chicago World’s fair, is told through multiple perspectives, including “ordinary” people and sideshow performers whose voices have been lost to history books. Her previous book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, is historical narrative nonfiction based on deep archival research. Other books include a nationally bestselling memoir, The Secret Life of Objects, two story collections and a novel. She has taught creative writing at International Literary Seminars (previously Summer Literary Seminars) in Kenya, Russia, Lithuania, and Canada. You can keep up with Dawn by following her on Instagram at @dawnraffel, or on Twitter at @dawnraffel.

• 

  Juliana Roth

  Juliana Roth

  Juliana Roth was selected as a VIDA Fellow with the Sundress Academy for the Arts for her fiction and is currently seeking a home for her novel and collection of short stories. Her writing appears in the Breakwater Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Irish Pages, and Entropy as well as being produced as independent films that she directs. Her web series, The University, was nominated by the International Academy of Web Television for Best Drama Writing. Currently, she teaches writing at NYU and writes the newsletter Drawing Animals featuring essays, interviews, doodles, and podcast episodes celebrating our interconnection with nonhuman animal life. She also holds a 200-hour yoga teacher certification and is a current Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction. She formerly lived out of a backpack in the La Sal Mountains and as a volunteer on an organic farm in Maine.

• 

  Daniel Saldaña París

  Daniel Saldaña París

  Daniel Saldaña París is the author of three novels—Among Strange Victims, Ramifications, and The Dance and the Wildfire—and a collection of personal essays, Planes Flying Over a Monster. His work has been translated into several languages, and he has been included in Bogota39, a list of the Best Latin American Writers Under 40.

  The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Banff Center for the Arts, the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Art Omi, and MacDowell, he has been awarded the Eccles Center & Hay Festival Writers Award in the U.K., and his latest novel was a finalist for the Herralde Prize in Spain. He was a 2022-2023 fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and has contributed to publications such as the Guardian, BOMB, Guernica, Aperture, Music & Literature, LitHub, Publisher’s Weekly, and KCRW’s UnFictional, among many others. You can keep up with Daniel on Instagram at @dsparis.

• 

  Amy Silverberg

  Amy Silverberg

  Amy Silverberg is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, the Paris Review, Granta, TriQuarterly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her debut novel First Time, Long Time is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing/Hachette. She also writes television, most recently The Movie Show on the SYFY Channel. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from The University of Southern California, where she currently teaches.

• 

  Eraldo Souza dos Santos

  Eraldo Souza dos Santos

  A 2022 LARB Publishing Fellow, Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a Brazilian writer currently based between Paris and São Paulo. His first novel, to be published in 2024, is an autobiography of his illiterate mother and a meditation on the lived experience of Blackness and enslavement in modern Brazil. At the age of seven, his mother was sold into slavery by her white foster sister. It was 1968—eighty years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil and four years into the anti-communist coup d’état, during the month in which the military overruled the Constitution by decree. By weaving in extensive archival research and interviews, the novel narrates their journey to Minas Gerais—where she was born—and Bahia—the Blackest state in Brazil, where she was enslaved on a farm for three years—to investigate why the family that enslaved her has never been brought to justice. It also narrates his grandmother’s journey to search for her missing daughter. In March 2023, he offered a masterclass based on his novel at the prestigious UEA Creative Writing Course. You can keep up with Eraldo on Twitter at @esdsantos.

• 

  Sofia Warren

  Sofia Warren

  Sofia Warren is a cartoonist and writer based in Brooklyn. Her first book, Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator, was named one of the top graphic novels of 2022 by Forbes, and was a 2023 Finalist for the Pop Culture Classroom Excellence in Graphic Literature award. Sofia has been a contributing cartoonist at the New Yorker since 2017, and her work has also been published in MoMA Magazine, Catapult, Narrative Magazine, and the books Send Help! and Notes from the Bathroom Line. She is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University. You can keep up with Sofia on Instagram at @sofiawarrenart.

• 

  Eleanor Whitney

  Eleanor Whitney

  Eleanor Whitney is a writer, editor, and content marketer. She is the author of Riot Woman, a collection of feminist essays examining the impact of the Riot Grrrl movement, and Quit Your Day Job, a business guide and an accompanying workbook for creative people. Microcosm will publish her fourth book, Spread the Word: Promote Your Book, Find Your Readers, and Build a Literary Community in the fall of 2023.

  Throughout her career, Eleanor has worked to build communities, education programs, and marketing content strategies at museums, art organizations, and tech startups, including the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens College, a Master’s in Public Administration from Baruch College, and BA in cultural studies from Eugene Lang College. She has taught writing at both Queens College and Eugene Lang College and in community workshops around the country. Hailing from Maine, she divides her time between Brooklyn and the Mojave desert. You can keep up with Eleanor on Instagram at @killerfemme and on Twitter at @killerfemme.

• 

  Courtney Zoffness

  Courtney Zoffness

  Courtney Zoffness is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays Spilt Milk, named a best debut of 2021 by BookPage and Refinery29 and a “must-read” by Publishers Weekly. She won the Sunday Times Short Story Award and received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and MacDowell. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, the New York Times, Guernica, the Believer, and other venues. She’s an Associate Professor of English at Drew University, where she directs the creative writing program. You can keep up with Courtney on Instagram at @czoffness, and Twitter at @czoffrun.