The Writing Institute Staff & Faculty

Courtney Gillette is a writer and teacher whose essays and book reviews have appeared in BuzzFeed, Tin House, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Lambda Literary and Medium, among others. Before joining the Writing Institute, she worked behind the scenes at the NYU Summer Publishing Institute at the NYU SPS Center for Publishing and the National Book Foundation. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and an MS in Education from Mercy College. Courtney was named an Emerging Writer Fellow at Aspen Words Summer Words in 2017 and serves on the Aspen Words Creative Council.  An adjunct professor of creative writing at Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program, she lives in the Hudson Valley with one librarian and three cats.

email: cgillette@sarahlawrence.edu

Ava Robinson is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in Santa Fe Writers Project, Soundings East, Little Patuxent Review and elsewhere. She recently graduated with an MFA in Fiction from The New School and has a bachelor’s degree in History from Brooklyn College. Before coming to The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College she worked at Parsons Healthy Materials Lab, writing and hosting their National Endowment of the Humanities-funded podcast, Trace Material. She is currently hard-at-work on a darkly comedic romance novel, but can otherwise be found rescuing local stray cats with Brooklyn Animal Action.

email: arobinson@sarahlawrence.edu

MaKenzie Copp was born and raised in Maine, where she graduated summa cum laude from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine with a dual BA in English and Writing/Publication. She now lives in New York, where she is an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Her poem “Four Women” was nominated for Best of the Net in 2021, she was the recipient of the 2020 Edward J. Rielly Writing and Publishing Award, and several of her poems and photographs have been published in Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts and Letters. She is passionate about family, free verse poetry, and iced coffee.

Marcia Bradley, MFA, Sarah Lawrence College, writes fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Her novel, The Home for Wayward Girls, will debut from HarperCollins Publishers in April 2023. Marcia won a Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO Award for fiction and has been published numerous literary journals including Drunk Monkeys, Electica, The Writing Disorder, Two Hawks Quarterly, and Hippocampus Magazine. She received an honorable mention from Glimmer Train, and her memoir essay about her brother was published in The Capital Gazette. Marcia has received scholarships to Community of Writers in the High Sierra, Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College, and Ragdale outside of Chicago. Marcia also teaches creative writing for New York area high school students in programs sponsored by Sarah Lawrence College, the Yonkers School District, and the Greater New York Chapter of the Fulbright Association. Marcia’s roots are in Chicago; she lived in Los Angeles before her move to New York where she resides in the Bronx. See more at marciabradley.com

Veera Hiranandani is the award-winning author of several books for young people. Her most recent middle-grade novel, How to Find What You're Not Looking For, received the 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award, the 2022 Jane Addams Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 National Jewish Book Award. The Newbery Honor winning, The Night Diary, also received the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, the 2018 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature, and several other honors and state reading list awards. Her first novel for young readers, The Whole Story of Half a Girl, was named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book and was a South Asia Book Award Highly Commended selection. She's also the author of the chapter book series, Phoebe G. Green. She earned her MFA in fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she now teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College's Writing Institute and is working on her next novel. You can find Veera on Twitter @veerahira and Instagram @veerawrites. 

Steve Lewis is a former Mentor at SUNY-Empire State College, longtime member of the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute faculty, and chronic freelancer. His work has been published widely, from the notable to the beyond obscure, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, Ploughshares, Narratively, Spirituality & Health, Road Apple Review, The Rosicrucian Digest, and a biblically long list of parenting publications (7 kids, 16 grandkids). He is Senior Editor/Literary Ombudsman for the spoken word venue Read650.org. His recent book list includes Zen and the Art of Fatherhood, Fear and Loathing of Boca Raton, a chapbook of poems, If I Die Before You Wake, and the novels, Take This, Loving Violet, A Hard Rain, and The Lights Around the Shore. A shared collection of poems with his daughter Elizabeth Bayou-Grace, Fire in Paradise, will be published in Fall 2022 by Codhill Press.

Kristine Marx is an artist and writer. She has exhibited her work in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Tokyo. Her fiction has appeared in Peripheries and Variant. Her art criticism is published in MIT Press PAJ: Journal of Performance Art and Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art: Materiality. She is a recipient of grants from New York State Council of the Arts, the Goethe Institut, and the Experimental Television Center and was a resident artist at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Kolin Ryynänen Centre for Arts & Culture in Finland and Herrman & Wagner in Berlin. She has taught art theory and studio courses at Pratt Institute, Parsons, the Whitney Museum in New York, and at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She earned her MFA in visual art from Hunter College, a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and is working on her second master’s degree in Sarah Lawrence’s Graduate Writing Program.

Ines Rodrigues is a journalist and fiction writer, currently doing her MFA in creative writing at Columbia University, in New York. She published her first novel, "Days of Bossa Nova" in 2017 and she's now writing her second work of fiction. Ines has been an instructor at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College since 2016. She is the former editor of Scarsdale Living Magazine and also teaches at Bronxville Adult School. She is the curator of "The Scarsdale Salon" (Scarsdale, NY), a quarterly literary event in partnership with the Salon de Belleville (Paris, France).  Read more about Ines Rodrigues and enjoy her blog at https://www.inesrodriguesauthor.com/.

Barbara Solomon Josselsohn is a best-selling author of five novels: THE CRANBERRY INN, THE LILY GARDEN, THE BLUEBELL GIRLS, THE LILAC HOUSE and THE LAST DREAMER. Her articles and essays appear in a range of publications including New York Magazine, Parents Magazine, Consumers Digest, The New York Times, and Writer’s Digest. She currently teaches novel writing at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and is also a private book coach. In addition, she founded and serves as coordinator and instructor with the Scarsdale Library Writers Center. She is a member of Novelists Inc. and the Women's Fiction Writers Association, where she has held leadership positions. Barbara has a B.A. in English from Binghamton University, and an M.A. In English from the University of Connecticut, and studied novel writing at The Writing Institute and Manhattanville College. Visit her online at www.BarbaraJosselsohn.com, @Barbara_Josselsohn_Author (Instagram), @BarbaraJoss (Twitter) or Facebook.com/BarbaraSolomonJosselsohnAuthor.    

Crissy Van Meter is the author of the novel Creatures which was an NPR Best Book of 2020 and a Belletrist Book Club selection. She teaches creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the founder of the literary project Five Quarterly, and the managing editor for Nouvella Books. She serves on the board of directors for the literary non-profit Novelly. She lives in Los Angeles.

Will Cagle (he/him) is an author of fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism currently working on an MFA in Speculative Fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. He studied Creative Writing and Anthropology at Columbia University. He has been an amputee since the age of seven and is invested in the representation of disability across all spheres—especially within the familiar realms of the unreal and the fantastical.

Thien-Kim Lam writes stories about Vietnamese characters who smash stereotypes and find their happy endings. A recovering Type-Asian, she guzzles cà phê sữa đá, makes art, and bakes her feelings to stay sane. Thien-Kim is also the founder of Bawdy Bookworms, a subscription box that pairs sexy romances with erotic toys. She’s been featured on NPR, BBC America, and NBC. 

Her debut novel Happy Endings is now available and her forthcoming book will be released in 2022. Visit www.thienkimlam.com for more updates and recipes featured in her book (and life).

Rita M. Pérez-Padilla is a queer, intersex, mixed race Puerto Rican speculative fiction writer. In 2018, Rita graduated from Oberlin College with a major in Hispanic studies, focusing on Puerto Rican literature, and a minor in computer science. Rita has recently completed a Master’s thesis at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte on the use of the Klingon language in Spanish dubbed version of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and is now pursuing an MFA in writing in the speculative fiction track at Sarah Lawrence College. Rita is currently working on an espionage thriller/romance/space opera novel and two surreal horror short stories.

Janine Annett is the author of I Am “Why Do I Need Venmo?” Years Old: Adventures in Aging. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New York Times, Real Simple, The Rumpus, The Wall Street Journal, and in the forthcoming anthology Embrace the Merciless Joy: The McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Guide to Rearing Small, Medium, and Large Children. She lives in the lower Hudson Valley with her husband, son, and dog.

Rachel Aydt is a part-time Assistant Professor of writing at the New School University. She's lived in New York for over 25 years, working for national magazines in staff positions; writing and editing; and teaching across many genres of writing (nonfiction, literature, journalism). In 2017, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in Creative Nonfiction. She's published essays and stories in The White Review, Post Road, Green Mountains Review, Broad Street Journal, HCE Review, and many other publications.    

Cindy Beer-Fouhy is a writing instructor, freelance writer and arts consultant who has taught in schools and community facilities for over 35 years. She was founder and director of the Literary Arts Department at the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts and curator of the award-winning Creative Arts Café poetry series for which she received The Michael and Helen Schaffer Foundation Honorable Award for Work in the Arts. Her poetry, essays, articles, and interviews have been published in Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough (Rutgers University Press), Westchester Arts Council’s Arts News, Roll Magazine and Westchester Family. Her poems have been winners of the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Greenburgh Poetry Competitions. Cindy has served as a judge for the National Jewish Book Awards and as a consultant for the Master of Arts in Writing program at Manhattanville College. On the advisory committee of the Hudson Valley Writers Center’s Slapering Hol Press and member of the National Writers Project, Cindy is a Teaching Artist through ArtsWestchester, BOCES, and Lifetime Arts’ Creative Aging.

Kathy Curto teaches at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and Montclair State University, as well as several nonprofit organizations and community centers in the NY metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood, published by Bordighera Press. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, in the essay collection, Listen to Your Mother:  What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now, and in Barrelhouse, Toho Journal, The Mom Egg Review, HerStry, La Voce di New York, Drift, Talking Writing, The Inquisitive Eater, Voices in Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo and Lumina, among others. She has been the recipient of the Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship and two fellowships at Montclair State University, both promoting engaged teaching and community writing projects. Kathy also serves on the faculty of the Joe Papaleo Writers’ Workshop in Cetara, Italy. Kathy and her family live in the Hudson Valley. Please visit her site: www.kathycurto.com.

Vanessa Friedman (she/her) is a queer dyke writer living in Portland, OR. She’s the community editor at Autostraddle and a teaching artist with 826NYC and Literary Arts. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and she is a Tin House Summer Workshop alum and a Hedgebrook Spring Retreat alum. Vanessa writes about friendship, home, loneliness, grief, sex, and the body; her work has been published in Autostraddle, Nylon, Catapult, Alma, Shape, among others, and her essay, “If I’m Lonely,” will be included in the as yet untitled anthology based on Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 classic, Sex and the Single Girl, forthcoming from Harper Perennial in Spring 2022. Vanessa is represented by Amanda Orozco at Transatlantic Agency and is currently at work on her first novel. You can find her online at vanessapamela.com.                        

Terri Linton is a mother, writer, and professor. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, and a Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers School of Law-Newark. She teaches writing and criminal justice at universities in New York and Connecticut. Terri writes about black girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood as well as disparities in the criminal justice system. She is a 2021 Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund nonfiction awardee. Her writing can be found in the anthology SoloMom Stories of Grit, Heart and Humor; Catapult; Ninth Letter; Mothermag; and other online sites.   

Janet is a creative non-fiction writer and teaching artist. After breast cancer and depression, she turned to writing where she discovered the transformative power of story and staged readings. She is finalizing her debut memoir. A graduate from Cornell University, Janet is completing her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College in creative non-fiction. She has taught writing workshops for cancer patients at Mount Sinai Hospital where is also an advisory board member.

 A recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, Dan Zevin's latest book and YouTube series is Very Modern Mantras: Daily Affirmations for Daily Aggravations. He’s also the author of Dan Gets a Minivan and The Day I Turned Uncool, which were both optioned by Adam Sandler. Dan has been an award-winning humor columnist for the New York Times, a comic commentator for NPR, and a contributor to print or digital editions of The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Rolling Stone, Salon, Real Simple, Parents, and The Wall Street Journal. He's taught in Sarah Lawrence's MFA program, and at NYU, Emerson, and Fordham. danzevin.com

Tyler Mills is a poet, essayist, and teacher. She is the author of City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize winner, University of Akron Press 2019), and Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award winner, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021, and the New England Poetry Club’s 2021 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize). She is also the author of an in-progress essay manuscript, The Bomb Cloud, winner of a 2021 Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC Literature Grant. Her poems have appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Bennington Review, Brevity, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. The recipient of residencies from Yaddo, Ragdale, and the Vermont Studio Center, and fellowships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Tyler Mills teaches for the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a founding editor of The Account and lives in Brooklyn. www.tylermills.com

Carla Carlson is the author of Love and Oranges, a poetry chapbook. Her poems have been published in various paper and online journals such as Thrush Poetry Journal, Thimble Magazine, Derailleur Press, Adelaide Magazine, Statorec.com, Columbia Review, The Mom Egg, and more. Her manuscript in progress, INVENTION OF CLAIRE has been a finalist for the Laureate Prize at Harbor Editions and a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize at The Word Works. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA in Poetry, and has been a member of the poetry faculty at the Writing Institute for three plus years.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Look Alive—a finalist for numerous prizes, including The National Poetry Series, and winner of the 2019 Cowles Poetry Book Prize from Southeast Missouri State University Press—along with seven chapbooks, most recently The Undead, winner of Sixth Finch Books' 2020 Chapbook Contest, and Shadow Box, winner of the 2019 Madhouse Press Editor's Prize. Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Five Points, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She also serves as editor-in-chief of the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQ+ literary journal Foglifter.    

Elaine Sexton's fourth collection of poetry is Drive (Grid Books, 2022). A long-time member of the faculty at the Writing Institute, she frequently teaches workshops & seminars in poetry, the chapbook, bookmaking, and text & image at various writing and art programs in the U.S. and abroad, including New York University, City College, Poets House, and Arts Workshop International. An editor and micro-publisher, she is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle. elainesexton.org​

Estha Weiner's  newest poetry  collection is:  at the last minute { Salmon Poetry, 2019}. She is also author of In the Weather of the World (Salmon Poetry), Transfiguration Begins at Home ( Tiger Bark Press), The Mistress Manuscript (Asheville Book Works), and co-editor/contributor to Blues  For Bill: A Tribute to William  Matthews ( University of Akron Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including The New Republic and Barrow Street. Winner of a Paterson Poetry Prize and Visiting Scholar at  Shakespeare Institute, Stratford, England, she is founding director of Sarah Lawrence NY Alumni Writers Nights, and serves on the Advisory Committee of Slapering  Hol Press, Hudson Valley Writers Center. She is a professor in the English Dept. of City College of NY, CUNY, and Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. 

Caitlin Alexander has been editing books for more than fifteen years. She spent much of that time at Random House, where she acquired and edited New York Times bestsellers in fiction and nonfiction. She continues to edit bestselling and award-winning books as an independent editor and can be found at editedbycaitlin.com.      

Ginger McKnight-Chavers is an author and attorney whose debut novel, In the Heart of Texas (She Writes Press), won the 2016 USA Best Book Award in the category of African American Fiction.  An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, Oak Cliff, appears in the Summer 2019 issue of Solstice as a finalist in their annual literary contest. A native Texan, McKnight-Chavers is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School.  She was a Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellow at Sarah Lawrence College and is an instructor in SLC’s Writing Institute. McKnight-Chavers was a contributor to Oil and Water: And Other Things That Don’t Mix, and her work appears in Essence, ShareBlue, The Huffington Post, and other publications.

Samantha Steiner is the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Program and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Her writing appears in the print anthology ​Best Microfiction 2021 and received Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions nominations. She is a Featured Fiction Writer by ​Lammergeier Magazine for “Pinky Monster,” a short story she wrote and illustrated. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Steiner_Reads.