The Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship

Dawn Hathaway (historical fiction) is the recipient of the 2022 Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship. The judges have also recognized Wanda Noonan (novella) with an Honorable Mention.

Dawn Hathaway is new to calling herself a fiction writer, having transitioned from a career as a television producer. Most recently, she drafted a full-length novel, in addition to several related short stories, in Advanced Novel Writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. 

Hathaway’s fiction draws from her own experience of growing up in struggling logging towns in Washington State. Raised by a single mother, her family lived many years in poverty. At fourteen, enticed by the better job opportunities and public high schools, she moved to Alaska.  Using an early computer—a big-box-of-a-thing, with a single program matching students with colleges—she learned of Vassar.  There, she majored in Islamic studies, studying abroad at The American University in Cairo and traveling through Egypt, Syria and Turkey.

After receiving her undergraduate degree, she was offered a position with a small newspaper in the Hudson Valley.  Though she longed to pursue a career in writing, she turned the job down—unable to afford both her college loan payments and a car—a requirement of the job—on an entry level salary.  Instead, she moved to New York City, where she forged a career in film and television.  Working for independent documentary filmmakers, storytelling was her favorite part of the job.  Producing commercials, she convinced crews to stay after-hours to make non-profit videos; although these projects were decidedly unsexy, in comparison to working with celebrities, Dawn was passionate about telling the stories of ordinary people. 

In 2019, she took the leap, letting go of the commercial agency she’d built over two decades to concentrate on writing. Months later, when the film industry shut down, at the start of the pandemic, it provided a convenient cover story—explaining why she wasn’t working in television. Now, fully “out” about writing, she finds the isolation and lack of feedback challenging.  When the invitation to apply for the fellowship was announced, she couldn’t help but hope.

Dawn Hathaway is grateful to Kathryn Gurfein and delighted to be the recipient of the 2022 fellowship.

The Gurfein Writing Fellows receive a year of one-on-one mentoring with outstanding members of the Sarah Lawrence faculty.

Suzanne Gardinier
BA, University of Massachusetts-Amherst. MFA, Columbia University. Author of the long poem, The New World, winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award Series in poetry; A World That Will Hold All the People, essays on poetry and politics; Today: 101 Ghazals (2008); the long poem, Dialogue With the Archipelago (2009); and fiction published in The Kenyon Review, The American Voice, and The Paris Review. Recipient of The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence in the Essay and of grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. Sarah Lawrence, 1994–

David Hollander
BA, State University of New York-Purchase. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. Author of the novel L.I.E., a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award, his short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous print and online forums, including McSweeney’s, Post Road, The New York Times Magazine, Poets & Writers, The Collagist, Unsaid, The Black Warrior Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Swink. His work has been adapted for film and frequently anthologized, most notably in Best American Fantasy 2 and 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11. Sarah Lawrence, 2002–

Mary LaChapelle
BA, University of Minnesota. MFA, Vermont College. Author of House of Heroes and Other Stories; stories, essays and anthologies published by New River’s Press, Atlantic Monthly Press, Columbia Journal, Global City Review, Hungry Mind Review, North American Review, Newsday, The New York Times; recipient of the PEN/Nelson Algren, National Library Association, Loft McKnight and The Whiting Foundation awards; fellowships from the Hedgebrook, Katherine Anne Porter, Edward Albee, and Bush foundations. Sarah Lawrence, 1992–

Steve Lewis
Mentor at Empire State College and a longtime freelance writer whose publication credits include The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, The Christian Science Monitor, AARP, and a biblically long list of parenting magazines. (He has seven kids.) His recent books are Zen and the Art of Fatherhood, The ABCs of Real Family Values, The Complete Guide for the Anxious Groom, and Fear and Loathing of Boca Raton: A Hippie’s Guide to the Second Sixties. A collection of poems, A Month on a Barrier Island, is now available.

David Ryan
BA, University of Massachusetts. MFA, Bennington College. He is the author of the story collection Animals in Motion (Roundabout Press). Fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Esquire, Electric Literature, BOMB, Tin House, Fence, Several Mississippi Review Prize Issues, Encyclopedia (L-Z), Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Nerve, Salt Hill, Cimarron Review, Unsaid, failbetter, and others. Anthologies include Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton); Boston Noir 2: the Classics (Akashic); and The Mississippi Review: 30 Years. Essays, reviews, and interviews in The Paris Review, Tin House, BOMB, BookForum, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Fiction (Oxford University Press), and others. Recipient of a MacDowell fellowship and a Connecticut state arts grant. Founding editor of Post Road Magazine, where he currently edits the Fiction and Theatre sections. Sarah Lawrence, 2013–

Marian Thurm
BA, Vassar College; MA, creative writing, Brown University. Author of six novels and four short story collections, including the most recent, Today Is Not Your Day, a New York Times Editors' Choice. Her novel The Clairvoyant was a New York Times Notable Book. Her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Michigan Quarterly, the Southampton Review, and many other magazines, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories, and numerous other anthologies. Her books have been translated into Japanese, Swedish, Dutch, and German. In addition to teaching at the Writing Institute, she has taught creative writing at Yale and Barnard, and in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. Her seventh novel, The Good Life, was published in April 2016.

Christina Adams

Award-winning writer with a background in aerospace,  government and health. Christina Adams is the author of Camel Crazy: A Quest for Miracles in the Mysterious World of Camels & A Real Boy (Penguin) and authored a medical journal article on camel milk treatment for autism. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and her work has been featured by NPR, The Washington Post, OZY, The Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, the Public Library of Science, Open Democracy, RAVISHLY, Orange Coast Magazine, Web MD, Global Advances in Health and Medicine, Dubai One, Khaleej Times, Epocha, TATA SKY, The Rajasthan Patrika, The Writer, literary magazines and many more. She speaks internationally, including audiences in Germany, India, England, Pakistan, UAE, and the US. www.christinaadamsauthor.com

Rachel Cohen
Sarah Lawrence Writing Faculty. Author of a Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, published by Random House and chosen as one of the Los Angeles Times best books of the year and recipient of the 2003 PEN/Jerard Fund Award. Ms. Cohen has received numerous honors including a Fellowship at the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and Fellowships at The New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, the oldest artists' colony in the United States.

Barbara Gordon
Three-time Emmy Award-winning documentary film producer and writer. Barbara Gordon has worked as a writer for NBC's Today Show; a writer-producer for WCBS-TV's Eye on Documentary Series; and writer-producer for PBS's The Great American Dream Machine and Black Journal. She is the best-selling author of I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, Jennifer Fever, and Defects of the Heart.

Andrew Gross
Author of The New York Times best-selling thrillers, The Blue Zone and The Dark Tide, and co-author of six #1 bestsellers with James Patterson, including the Women's Murder Club series, Lifeguard, and Judge and Jury. Eye Wide Open, Mr. Gross's new thriller, published by William Morrow, is on shelves now.

Kody Gurfein
Vice President of The Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship at Sarah Lawrence College. Ms. Gurfein is the Global Head of Marketing at Exiger, a global tech-enabled risk and compliance firm, as well as Executive Director of The Integrity Forum. Kody co-founded/co-chairs Exiger WINs (Women’s Initiative Networks) to foster female leadership and raise awareness of the challenges specific to women in the workplace, and Exiger Cares, dedicated to raising funds and awareness for Alzheimer’s disease. She is also a founding member of the Young Patrons Steering Committee at the City Parks Foundation/SummerStage. With a BA in English Literature from Cornell University, Kody has studied graduate level courses at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and The Writers Studio New York.

Stephen Lang
Tony-nominated and Drama Desk, Helen Hayes, and Grace Award-winning actor and writer. Mr. Lang was recently nominated for a Saturn Award for best supporting actor for his role in James Cameron's Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time. Mr. Lang is also the co-artistic director of the Actors Studio in New York.

Mark Medoff
Playwright, screenwriter, and director of stage, film, and opera. Mr. Medoff received a Tony Award for Children of a Lesser God, for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award. He is the winner of London's Society of West End Theatres Award for best play and nominee for a Cable Ace Award for his HBO premiere movie, Apology. He has also received an OBIE Award for When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? Mr. Medoff was co-founder of the American Southwest Theatre Company and Head of the Department of Theatre Arts for nine years. He is currently Distinguished Lecturer in Playwriting at the University of Houston. He has also been named Senior Fellow in the Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University, where he taught for 27 years.

Brian Morton
BA, Sarah Lawrence College. Author of the novels The Dylanist, Starting Out in the Evening, A Window Across the River, Breakable You, and Florence Gordon. Recipient of the Guggenheim Award, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Fiction; finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Window Across the River was a Today Show book club choice, and Starting Out in the Evening was made into a motion picture that premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2007. Sarah Lawrence, 1998–

Jon Pessah

A founding editor of ESPN the Magazine who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for editing and writing an examination into the role of racism in Major League Baseball. A 45-year veteran of sports and business journalism in newspapers and magazines, Pessah was Assistant Managing Editor/Sports at Newsday and Sports Editor at the Hartford Courant. Pessah was Deputy Editor at ESPN Magazine, where he directed an award-winning investigation into the rise of steroids in baseball. His first book—The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers (Little, Brown & Company, 2015)—is a New York Times bestselling portrait of the powerbrokers who built the sport of baseball into a multi-billion-dollar business. Pessah’s next book, a biography of American icon Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees, is due out by Little, Brown & Company on April 14, 2020. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Forbes.

Nelly Reifler
BA, Hampshire College; MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. Author of the short story collection See Through. Her fiction has appeared in magazines and journals including Bomb, Post Road, McSweeney's, Nerve, and Black Book, as well as in anthologies including 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11; Lost Tribe: New Jewish Fiction from the Edge, and Found Magazine's Requiem for a Paper Bag. She was the recipient of a Henfield Prize in 1995, a UAS Explorations Prize in 1997, and a Rotunda Gallery Emerging Curator grant for her work with fiction and art in 2001. Ms. Reifler has worked as a columnist for Nextbook.org, 2006 – 2009; co-director of Pratt Institute's Friday Forum, 2005 – present; and is the founder and president of Dainty Rubbish record company.

Lynda Sturner
Lynda’s plays have been produced in New York. Tokyo, Provincetown, and Valdez, Alaska. Her short play, Look What You Made Me Do was published in Rowing to America, an anthology of new short plays by women from The Woman’s Project. The Death of Huey Newton was published by Broadway Play Publishing. The Victim Art Show was named one of the top theater works of the year by the Cape Cod Times. Lynda appeared on Broadway in Oliver and off-Broadway in The Effects of Gamma Rays on the Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. She was the Artistic Director of the Provincetown Repertory Theatre and Playwright’s Forum in NYC a member of the Actor’s Studio Playwright’s Unit and the Woman’s Project. Lynda was co-president of The League of Professional Theatre Women in New York and writes for TheatreMania.com and NiteLifeExchange.com. She is currently developing a new play, A Talented Woman with co-writer Jim Dalglish.

Marian Thurm
BA, Vassar College; MA, Creative Writing, Brown University. Author of six novels and four short story collections, including the most recent, Today Is Not Your Day, a New York Times Editors' Choice. Her novel The Clairvoyant was a New York Times Notable Book. Her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Michigan Quarterly, the Southampton Review, and many other magazines, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories, and numerous other anthologies. Her books have been translated into Japanese, Swedish, Dutch, and German. In addition to teaching at the Writing Institute, she has taught creative writing at Yale and Barnard, and in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. Her seventh novel, The Good Life, was published in April 2016.

• Rebecca Adams, Honorable Mention, 2018
• Dorothee Ahrens, 2013
• Bianca Rose Ambrosia, Honorable Mention, 2016
• Melanie Anagnos, 2012
• Jennifer Armocida, Honorable Mention, 2010
• Christine Barbero, 2013
• Robbie Oxnard Bent, 2011
• Ellen Bregman, Honorable Mention, 2015
• Lisa Cader, 2017
• Gemma Clarke, Honorable Mention, 2018
• Mary Grace Colangelo, 2020
• Kathryn Curto, 2006
• Mia de Bethune, 2012
• Tiffany Dugan, 2019
• Angela Derecas Taylor, Honorable Mention, 2019
• Rosemary Farrell, 2009
• Daisy Isadora Florin, 2016
• Lea Geller, 2019
• Lorraine Gengo, 2021
• Kathy M. Gevlin, Honorable Mention, 2016
• John Gredler, 2014
• Claire Hansen, Honorable Mention, 2014
• Jean Huff, Honorable Mention, 2020
• Angie Hunt, 2006
• Sydney Jarrard, 2017
• Rachel Khanna, Honorable Mention, 2017
• Susan Kleinman, 2010
• Amy Lynn Lewis, 2018
• Ginger McKnight-Chavers, 2008
• Lori McLaughlin, 2020
• Jacquelyn Mercurio, Honorable Mention, 2012
• Sheila Miller, 2016
• Anne Miyamoto, 2010
• Gregory Murtha, 2009
• Sarah Newbold, 2007
• Wanda Noonan, Honorable Mention, 2022
• Cari Pattison, 2015
• Helen Rafferty, 2008
• Linda Rhodes, Honorable Mention, 2021
• Erin Robinson-Lis, 2015
• Sarah Rubin, 2018
• Stacey Rubin, Honorable Mention, 2020
• Shami Shanoy, Honorable Mention, 2017
• Lisa Smith, Honorable Mention, 2013
• Julia Sonenshein, Honorable Mention, 2019
• Catherin Wald, Honorable Mention, 2011
• Peter J. Wade, 2011
• Suzanne Weiss, 2014
• Erica Youngren, 2007