Faculty
Peter Balakian, workshop instructor, poetry
Peter Balakian is the author of nine books of poems, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ozone Journal (2016). Other works are New York Trilogy (2025), No Sign (2022), Ziggurat (2010), and June-tree (2001). His prose includes Vise and Shadow (2015) and The Burning Tigris (2004), a New York Times Notable Book and national bestseller that won the Raphael Lemkin Prize. His memoir, Black Dog of Fate, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize and was a best book of the year for the New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly. He co-translated Armenian Golgotha (2009), a Washington Post book of the year. Balakian authored a book on Theodore Roethke and co-translated Siamanto’s works. He co-edited Graham House Review (1976-1996) and has received numerous awards, including a Presidential Medal from Armenia and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been translated into many languages. Balakian has been a founding faculty member and advisor for the º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ Writers Conference since 1995, leading workshops, readings, and talks. He was director of Creative Writing in the English Department (2002--22). He is a founding member of Writers For Democratic Action.
Kyle Bass, workshop instructor, playwriting/screenwriting
Kyle Bass is an accomplished playwright whose works include The Floydians (Keen Company, Off-Broadway), Toliver & Wakeman (Franklin Stage Company, º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University Theater), Tender Rain (Syracuse Stage), Salt City Blues (Syracuse Stage), Possessing Harriet (Syracuse Stage, Franklin Stage Company, East Lynne Theater Company, HartBeat Ensemble), and Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country (Syracuse Stage, HartBeat Ensemble). In collaboration with National Medal of Arts recipient Ping Chong, he co-authored Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo (Syracuse Stage, La MaMa). Kyle also co-authored the screenplay for the feature film Day of Days, starring Tom Skerritt, and served as screenwriter and executive producer for the short film Northeast. He is a three-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (in fiction, playwriting, and screenwriting) and is currently commissioned by Franklin Stage Company, Syracuse Stage, and the Washington National Opera. Kyle holds the position of Associate Professor of Theater at º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University, where he teaches playwriting, screenwriting, and contemporary dramatic literatures, and serves as Resident Playwright at Syracuse Stage. A descendant of individuals formerly enslaved in colonial New England and the American South, Kyle resides and writes in upstate New York, where his family has lived freely and owned land for 226 years.
Jennifer Brice, advisory committee chair, reader
Jennifer Brice is the author of three books, The Last Settlers, Unlearning to Fly, and Another North. Her essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Cimarron Review, The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, American Nature Writing, and The Dolphin Reader, among others. Born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, she now lives in upstate New York, where she is a professor in the English and Creative Writing department at º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University.
Alex Gilvarry, workshop instructor, fiction
Alex Gilvarry is the author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, winner of the Hornblower Award for First Fiction (from the New York Society Library), Best New Voice by Bookspan, and selected by the New York Times as an Editor’s Choice. He’s a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award-winner and has received fellowships from the Harry Ransom Center, the Normal Mailer Center, and has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Boston Globe, NPR’s All Things Considered, and many other publications. His second novel, Eastman Was Here, was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award. He has taught creative writing at Wesleyan University, Columbia University, Southern New Hampshire University, and as an associate professor at Monmouth University for ten years, where he served as director of the MFA program.
CJ Hauser, special guest
CJ Hauser (they/them) teaches creative writing and literature at º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University. Their first full-length work of nonfiction, The Crane Wife: a memoir-in-essays was recently released from Doubleday in the US and Viking in the UK. Their second novel, Family of Origin, was published by Doubleday in 2019, and their debut, The From-Aways, by William Morrow in 2014. Their work has also appeared in Tin House, Narrative Magazine, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, The Kenyon Review, The Guardian, Bon Appetit, Elle Magazine UK, Vogue UK, and The New York Times. They hold an MFA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from Florida State University.
Eleanor Henderson, workshop instructor, memoir
Eleanor Henderson's most recent book is the memoir Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage (Flatiron, 2021), which was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of 2021 by Vogue. She is also the author of two novels, The Twelve-Mile Straight (Ecco, 2017) and Ten Thousand Saints (Ecco, 2011), and co-editor of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers (FSG, 2014). Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including Salon, LitHub, Poets & Writers, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New York Times Book Review. A Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College and a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Fiction, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and two sons.
Jocelyn Johnson, workshop instructor, jumpstarter
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is the author of My Monticello, a fiction debut that was called "a masterly feat" by the New York Times, and recommended as #3 on Time Magazine's best fiction books of the year. My Monticello was winner of the Library of Virginia Fiction Award, the Weatherford Award, and others, as well as a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pen/Faulkner Fiction Award, and others. Her short story Control Negro was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, guest edited by Roxane Gay, and read live by LeVar Burton. Johnson has been a fellow at TinHouse, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her writing appears in Guernica, The Guardian, Joyland, Kweli Journal, and elsewhere. A veteran public school art teacher in Virginia for twenty years, Johnson now lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Alexandra Kleeman, workshop instructor, fiction
Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, as well as the short story collection Intimations and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine. Her work deals in issues related to climate catastrophe, embodiment, and late-capitalist realism. Her novel-in-progress, comprising five novellas set on different islands, traces the rise and fall of systems of monetization and exchange. The recipient of the Rome Prize Berlin Prize, and Bard Fiction Prize, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 2022. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others, and other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, VOGUE, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. She has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, MacDowell, Djerassi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Bergman Estate. A Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine, she writes essays and long-form profiles about cultural figures and lives in Ithaca and Colorado.
Molly McCully Brown, workshop instructor, nonfiction
Molly McCully Brown is the author of the essay collection Places I’ve Taken My Body (Persea Books, 2020) and the poetry collection The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded (Persea Books, 2017), winner of the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. With Susannah Nevison, she is also the co-author of the poetry collection In the Field Between Us (Persea Books, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Best American Essays, Tin House, The Yale Review, The New York Times and elsewhere. The recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, The Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, she lives and teaches in Laramie, WY and is the Editor in Chief of Image Journal.
Maya Popa, workshop instructor, poetry
Maya C. Popa is the author of If You Love That Lady, forthcoming from W.W. Norton and Picador in 2026. Her previous collections include Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W.W. Norton 2022; Picador 2023), named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of Poetry. American Faith (Sarabande 2019) was runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong and was awarded the North American Book Prize in 2020. She has received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Oxford Poetry Society among others. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, and previous degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College. Popa is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and is the founder of Conscious Writers Collective, where she oversees all literary programming.
Samantha Shea, agent, Georges Borchardt, Inc.
After graduating from º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University, Samantha Shea joined Georges Borchardt, Inc. in 2010 and was made a Vice President in 2016. Her list includes literary fiction, memoir/narrative nonfiction, journalism, popular culture, essays, cultural criticism, and history. Samantha’s authors are regularly named for numerous awards and honors, including the 5 Under 35 honor from the National Book Foundation, the Best of Young American Novelists honor from Granta Magazine, the Kirkus Prize, the Whiting Award, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, and others. Samantha is open to queries in the following genres: upmarket fiction, journalism, history, and cultural criticism.
Selected Authors: Lesley Nneka Arimah, Nona Aronowitz, Chelsea Bieker, Anna Bruno, Amy Butcher, Jane Delury, Camille Dungy, Lydia Fitzpatrick, Simon Han, Greg Jackson, Andrew Moore, Adam O’Fallon Price, Willa Richards, David Ridgen, Charlotte Shane, Shruti Swamy, Barrett Swanson, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, Elizabeth Wetmore, Jenny Zhang.
Amber Smith, workshop instructor, young adult fiction
Amber Smith is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of several novels for young adults, including the international bestsellers The Way I Used to Be and The Way I Am Now, as well as the critically-acclaimed and award-winning novels, The Last to Let Go and Something Like Gravity. Forthcoming in 2025 is FADE INTO YOU, co-written with her wife, Sam Gellar. Along with her middle-grade debut, Code Name: Serendipity, Amber also contributed to the award-winning YA anthology, Our Stories, Our Voices. An advocate for increased awareness of mental health, gendered violence, and LGBTQIA+ equality, she writes in the hope that her books can help to foster change and spark dialogue. She lives in Ithaca, NY, with her wife and their ever-growing family of rescued dogs and cats.
Anne Valente, workshop instructor, fiction
Anne Valente is the author of two novels, Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2016) and The Desert Sky Before Us (William Morrow/HarperCollins,2019), as well as the short story collection, By Light We Knew Our Names, which won the 2014 Dzanc Prize. Her short stories appear in American Short Fiction, One Story, The Kenyon Review, and The Chicago Tribune, and her essays appear in The Believer, Guernica, Literary Hub, and The Washington Post. Her work has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Women’s International Study Center and has been honored in Best Small Fictions, Best American Essays 2022, and Best American Non-Required Reading 2011. She lives in upstate New York, where she is an associate professor and director of creative writing at Hamilton College.
Jack Wang, workshop instructor, fiction
Jack Wang is the author of the novel The Riveter, named one of the best books of 2025 by The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, and CBC Books, and the story collection We Two Alone, longlisted for Canada Reads 2022 and winner of the 2021 Central New York Book Award in Fiction and the 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award from the Writers' Union of Canada for best debut collection in English. His fiction has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Journey Prize. He has received fellowships and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Arizona and a PhD in English/creative writing from Florida State University. For the past twenty years, he has been a professor of writing at Ithaca College.
Olakunle Ologunro
Olakunle Ologunro is a writer from Lagos, Nigeria. He received his MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His writing has been awarded an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Juniper Summer Workshop Scholarship, and nominated for a Pushcart prize. His work has also received support from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Vermont Studio Center, and Aspen Words, where he was named a 2025 Emerging Writer Fellow in Fiction. His stories appear in New England Review, Story Magazine, Lolwe, the Queer Africa anthology, the Feel Good anthology, and elsewhere.
Ziyuan Tang
Ziyuan Tang is a poet, educator, and literary translator from Beijing. A recipient of the Hurley Prize in Poetry, she earned her MFA in Poetry from Boston University, where she was awarded the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salmagundi, Oxford Poetry, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere, and has been recognized in competitions including the Portrait Prize. She has been supported by the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the John Scott Douglas Scholarship for Poetry.
Conference Staff
Kanitha Heng Snow ‘09, conference director
Kanitha Heng Snow has spent the last fifteen years building community partnerships, programs, and strategic communications, with a key focus on under-invested in communities. Her social impact experience includes her work at Energize Colorado, Colorado Universities Innovation Council (CUIC), and Project X-ITE at the University of Denver. She also runs a marketing and communications consultancy focused on supporting BIPOC and women-owned businesses. Kanitha serves as Board Chair at The Village Institute and board director at Colorado Asian Culture and Education Network (CACEN). She received her BA in English Literature and Sociology/Anthropology from º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University and her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University. She is currently working on her memoir, I Am My Mother’s Mother: A Story Of Birth, Death, and Reincarnation. Kanitha’s debut documentary, Kamnop, is slated for production in October 2025.
Amelia Bunce, assistant director
Amelia Bunce previously served as º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University's Center for Women's Studies Programming Coordinator, where she revived the Center’s literary arts magazine, Allegorical Athena, launched a weekly newsletter, and organized feminist lectures. Amelia holds a master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh in medieval history, where she wrote a dissertation using fifteenth century French literature to uncover women’s attitudes toward marriage and domestic violence.
Maxwell Walker ‘26, intern
Maxwell Walker is a senior at º¬Ð߲ݴ«Ã½ University with a major in English and Creative Writing and a minor in Geology. He is from Denver, Colorado, and writes creative nonfiction about music, science, and history. This is his second year working with the Writers Conference.