All Sackett Street instructors are professional writers, teachers and editors, who have taught at major universities and have earned MFA degrees at the most prestigious graduate writing programs in the country. More importantly, they are the most dedicated writing instructors in New York City because teaching the craft of writing is their passion.

The Sacket Street Writers’ Workshop Faculty are:

JULIA FIERRO
NICK DYBEK
ALISON ESPACH
BENJAMIN HALE
MYUNG! JOH
NAOMI LEIMSIDER
AYANA MATHIS
MADELINE MCDONNELL
JEN NAILS
HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL
KEIJA PARSSINEN
JILL ROSENBERG
ABBY SHER
KATHRYN SYDNEY SIDNER
LAURA SIMS
EMMA STRAUB
TED THOMPSON
KAREN THOMPSON WALKER
CAELI WOLFSON WIDGER
ADAM WILSON
JENNY ZHANG

JULIA FIERRO, Workshop Director, is a graduate of The Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow and worked with Marilynne Robinson, Frank Conroy, Ethan Canin, Chris Offutt, Lan Samantha Chang and Francine Prose. She founded The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in 2002. She has taught Creative Writing in the Honors Program at Hofstra University and Fiction-Writing at the University of Iowa. Julia recently contributed to Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (Random House), edited by Bret Anthony Johnston.
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NICK DYBEK is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he was the recipient of a Hopwood Award for Short Fiction, and The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he won a Maytag Fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus Award. His novel, When Captain Flint Was Still A Good Man, will be published by Riverhead Books in April 2012.
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ALISON ESPACH is the author of the novel The Adults, which was a New York Times "Editor's Choice" in March, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. Her short fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Five Chapters, Del Sol Review, and Sentence. Her nonfiction has appeared in Glamour, The Daily Beast and other periodicals. Alison earned her MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, where she taught creative writing.
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BENJAMIN HALE received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2008. He is a recipient of a University of Iowa Provost’s Teaching-Writing Fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. His novel, THE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE, will be published by Twelve Books in February, 2011.
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MYUNG! JOH graduated with an A.B. in English from Harvard, where she studied creative writing with Brad Watson. In 2008, she received her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she studied as a Henry Hoyns Fellow with Chris Tilghman, Deborah Eisenberg, Ann Beattie, and John Casey, and taught undergraduate fiction workshops. She has had short stories published in Juked and Yisei magazines and was recently awarded a fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center.
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NAOMI LEIMSIDER is a graduate of Brooklyn College's MFA program, where she studied with Irini Spanidou and Joanna Torrey. Her stories have appeared in such publications as Quarterly West, The Adirondack Review, Summerset Review, and Blood Lotus Journal. She has taught fiction in Hartwick College's New American Writing Program and was the Featured Speaker at Utica College's Professor Harry F. and Mary Ruth Lunch Hour Reading Series. She is the co-founder of the Lambs to the Slaughter Reading Series and is a former co-editor of the Brooklyn Review. She teaches expository and creative writing at Hunter College.
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AYANA MATHIS received an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop where she studied with Marilynne Robinson, Paul Harding, Allan Gurganus and Lan Samantha Chang. She is the recipient of the Michener- Copernicus Fellowship and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship from the Workshop. She taught fiction and poetry to undergraduates and led a fiction workshop. Her debut novel The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, is forthcoming with Knopf in fall, 2012.
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MADELINE MCDONNELL is a graduate of Brown University, where she was a Rose Writing Fellow, and The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She has studied fiction and poetry with Elizabeth McCracken, James Hynes, Kevin Brockmeier, Ethan Canin, Ben Marcus, C.D. Wright, Meredith Steinbach, and Carole Maso, and she has taught at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Cornish College of the Arts, and The University of Iowa. She has also worked as an editor and lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Her tiny collection, There Is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out, was published by Rescue Press last year, and she has a story in the current issue of Harvard Review.
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JEN NAILS wrote her first middle grade novel, Next to Mexico (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), which was adapted from her solo play, Lylice, and was inspired by characters that she created during improv shows. She's performed all over the US and internationally, and has been seen on SNL, Conan O'Brien, and in dozens of national commercials. Jen received her MFA in Writing for Children from the New School in 2009. Jen's a contributing writer for Time Out New York Kids, and she currently teaches college English at Eastern International College in Jersey City and Creatve Writing for Kids at the Windsor Terrace Y in BK. In seventh grade, Jen won 5th place on vault, making her gymnastics team, the Merluzzi Flyers, semi-proud, and she won the award for "Strangest Stomping Rituals" at her Marching Band banquet in 10th grade. She is a former Sackett Street student and is thrilled to be a part of the organization's talented faculty.
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HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL teaches creative writing at Hunter College. The former co-director of one of New York’s most prominent reading series, The Speakeasy Reading Series, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been published in several literary journals, including Many Mountains Moving and The Truth About The Fact: An International Journal of Literary Non-Fiction. Her poetry chapbook, Memory Future, was recently selected by Carol Muske-Dukes as the winner of the University of Southern California Gold Line press award and will be published this summer. A freelance writer for various publications, including Time Out New York, she writes the monthly book column Across The Page for MTV’s AfterEllen.com.
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KEIJA PARSSINEN was born in al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and lived there for 12 years as a third-generation expatriate. She graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in English literature. From 2007-09, she attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While at Iowa, Keija received a Truman Capote fellowship and a Teaching and Writing fellowship, and upon graduation, she was awarded a Michener-Copernicus fellowship for her novel, Against the Kings of Salt, which will be published by HarperPerennial in 2012. Keija has taught fiction writing to undergraduates at Iowa and directs the Quarry Heights Writers' Workshop in Columbia, Missouri.
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JILL ROSENBERG earned a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Montana, where she studied under Kevin Canty and served as an editor of the literary magazine, Cutbank. She received fellowships to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she was in workshop with Mary Gaitskill and John Dufresne, as well as the Tin Writers Workshop at Reed College, where she worked with Aimee Bender. She won 1st prize in the 2005 River City Fiction Contest (judged by Antonya Nelson), and she has been published in the South Carolina Review, the Pinch, and the Brooklyn Review. When she lived in New York City, she co-founded and co-hosted the popular reading series, Lambs to the Slaughter, at KGB Bar. She has taught writing at Baruch College, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Brooklyn College and the University of Montana.
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ABBY SHER Abby Sher, Instructor of Fiction Writing and Memoir Writing, is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn. Her memoir, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl who Couldn’t Stop Praying was published by Scribner in October, 2009 and was named Best Nonfiction of 2009 by The Chicago Tribune, Moment Magazine and Elle. Her words have also appeared in Modern Love: Tales of Love and Obsession, Behind the Bedroom Door, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, Self, Jane, Elle, Elle UK, Marie Claire, HeeB, and Redbook.
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KATHRYN SYDNEY SIDNER began her career in New York City by directing both off and off-off Broadway prior to attending film school. After consulting on the novel, What's Eating Gilbert Grape? by Peter Hedges, she directed a staged version for Manhattan Class Company. Syd has written and directed three short films, including, The Rite, which won "Best Film" opening night, Columbia University Film Festival-and Gravity, which was selected by both Williamstown and Slamdance film festivals. Her first feature screenplay Adelaide was awarded a MacDowell Colony screenwriting residency in 2008. She is currently working on two more features, has written two spec pilots for television, and shadowed directors on both Studio 60 and 30 Rock. Most recently she spent 17 months consulting on Peter Hedges' next feature, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, which will be released by Disney. She has a BFA in Acting from Carnegie-Mellon and an MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia Film School, where she also taught screenwriting.
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LAURA SIMS Laura Sims, Instructor of Poetry, is the author of three books of poems: My god is this a man (forthcoming, Fence Books, 2013), Stranger (Fence Books, 2009), and Practice, Restraint, (winner of the 2005 Fence Books Alberta Prize). She is a co-editor of Instance Press, and has written book reviews and critical essays for New England Review, Rain Taxi, Boston Review, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction.
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EMMA STRAUB is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's MFA program, where she studied with Lorrie Moore. She then received a Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her debut short story collection, Other People We Married, was published in February, 2011, and her novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband.
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TED THOMPSON received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2009. His stories have been published in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and Best New American Voices, and his debut novel THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS will be published in 2012 by Little, Brown. He has received a Truman Capote Fellowship from Iowa, several scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and his work has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. He was one of the founding directors of 826NYC, and is the co-editor of Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things... an anthology of stories for children by contemporary fiction writers, which was published in 2005 by McSweeney's.
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KAREN THOMPSON WALKER is a graduate of the Columbia University MFA program and works as an editor of fiction and nonfiction at Simon & Schuster. Her first novel, The Age of Miracles, will be published by Random House in 2012 and will be translated into 22 languages. She lives in Brooklyn.
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CAELI WOLFSON WIDGER, Assistant Director, graduated from Wellesley College and received her MFA from the University of Montana's Creative Writing Program. She was selected as one of two Summer Teaching Fellows at the University of Montana where she taught creative writing and literature. She was awarded a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center in 2001 and has attended the Napa Valley and Yellow Bay Writer's Conferences. Caeli, a published poet, recently had a short story published in the Madison Review. Caeli has recently published work in The Madison Review and in Another Chicago Magazine, where she was a finalist in their 2008 Emerging New Writers contest.
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ADAM WILSON will have his first novel, Flatscreen, published in Winter 2012 by Harper Perennial. He is a graduate of Tufts University and The Columbia University Graduate Writing Program, and the Editor of the International online newspaper The Faster Times. His fiction, journalism, and criticism appear in many publications including The New York Times, Bookforum, The Paris Review Daily, The New York Observer, Washington Square Review, Meridian, Gigantic, Time Out New York, BlackBook, and the anthology Promised Lands: New Jewish Fiction on Longing and Belonging.
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JENNY ZHANG holds degrees from Stanford University, where she studied with Michael Ondaatje and Elizabeth Tallent, and The Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied with Marilynne Robinson, Sam Chang, Ethan Canin, and Jonathan Ames. At Iowa, she was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship and a Provost Fellowship. Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in Glimmertrain, The Iowa Review, The Guardian, Rookie, Jezebel, and Vice. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her first book of poetry, Dear Jenny, We are All Find will be published by Octopus Books in March of 2012.
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