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
KATHLEEN ALCOTT
ERIKA ANDERSON
CATHERINE CHUNG
JULIA COOKE
A.N. DEVERS
JASON DIAMOND
JILL DI DONATO
NICK DYBEK
MICHELE FILGATE
ALEX GILVARRY
MATTHEW AARON GOODMAN
BENJAMIN HALE
MYUNG! JOH
AMELIA KAHANEY
MAURA KELLY
ARYN KYLE
CATHERINE LACEY
AYANA MATHIS
COURTNEY ELIZABETH MAUK
MADELINE MCDONNELL
JENNIFER MILLER
DINA NAYERI
HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL
KEIJA PARSSINEN
MOLLY ROSE QUINN
JILL ROSENBERG
GABRIEL ROTH
JULIE SARKISSIAN
ABBY SHER
LAURA SIMS
EMMA STRAUB
JUSTIN TAYLOR
TED THOMPSON
KAREN THOMPSON WALKER
CAELI WOLFSON WIDGER
ADAM WILSON
JENNY ZHANG

JULIA FIERRO founded The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in 2002, and it has since grown into a creative home for over 2000 writers. Julia's debut novel, Cutting Teeth, will be published by St. Martin's Press in the spring of 2014. Her work has appeared in Guernica Magazine, The Millions, Underwater NY, and is forthcoming in Poets & Writers and HTMLGiant, among other publications. She is a graduate of The Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and has taught literature and creative writing in the Honors Program at Hofstra University and at the University of Iowa.
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KATHLEEN ALCOTT'S first novel, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, was published by Other Press in September 2012. The book received praise in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Bookslut, and elsewhere. Her work appears or is forthcoming in publications including The Coffin Factory, American Short Fiction, Five Chapters, Slice, TheRumpus.Net, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Explosion Proof. A native of Northern California, she lives in Brooklyn, where she is at work on her second novel.
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ERIKA ANDERSON is an online editor for Electric Literature and Hunger Mountain and an editorial assistant with Guernica. She cohosts the Renegade Reading Series and live tweets for the Franklin Park Reading Series. She's also a copywriter and a consultant for the United Nations. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Brooklyn.
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CATHERINE CHUNG is the author of Forgotten Country. She is a Granta New Voice, and her work has appeared in Epoch Magazine, The Journal, and Quarterly West, among others. A fellow of The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, and Yaddo, she has taught creative writing at The University of Leipzig and Cornell University, where she received her MFA.
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JULIA COOKE has written personal essays about buying gourmet food on Havana’s black market and exploring Mexico City's raucous La Lagunilla flea market, travel stories on hunting down Croatia's best contemporary architecture and finding Mexico's most famous mud mask at the lagoon where Rambo was shot, profiles of artists and design personalities, and art, architecture, and film criticism. Her writing has appeared in such magazines and newspapers as Conde Nast Traveller, Guernica, the Village Voice, The Atlantic, and The Rumpus. A fellow of the Norman Mailer Writer's Colony, Julia also teaches at Columbia University, where she is a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at Columbia University.
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A.N. DEVERS' work has appeared in publications including Bust, Departures, The Southampton Review, Time Out, Tin House, and online publications Lapham's Quarterly, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Rumpus and Slate. Her Tin House essay, “On the Outskirts” received Notable Distinction in The Best American Essays 2011. She has edited fiction at A Public Space and Pen America: A Journal for Writers and Readers and is the editor and publisher of Writers' Houses, a website dedicated to exploring literary pilgrimage. She received her MFA in Fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars in June 2008.
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JASON DIAMONDis a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn. He is the founder of Vol. 1 Brooklyn, current Deputy Editor at Flavorpill.com, and former editor of Jewcy.com. His nonfiction has been published by The New York Times, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Tablet, The Awl, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and many other places.
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JILL DI DONATO holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she's also taught writing. Currently, she's a Professor of Liberal Studies at The Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) and teaches writing at Barnard College and in private salons throughout New York City. She is a regular sex columnist for the Women's Section of The Huffington Post and the editorial director of Unruly Heir's media channel, Enjoy Good Days. She has contributed to several publications including iVillage, Glamour Magazine.com, Refinery29, and FUSE. She makes television appearances as an expert on women's issues, relationships, sex, and gender roles. Her appearances include: The Katie Show, CNN Headline News with Christi Paul, On Call with Dr. Drew, Huff Post Live, BIOGRAPHY Channel's Aftermath with William Shatner, and CUNY TV. Beautiful Garbage (Spring 2013, She Writes Press) is her debut novel, which explores female friendship, the downtown 1980s art world, sex, and the life of an artist. She wrote and co-produced a short film based on her novel and is at work on a collection of essays based on her sex column.
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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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MICHELE FILGATE is a writer, indie bookseller/events coordinator at Community Bookstore, and critic. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Rumpus, Salon, Time Out New York, The Daily Beast, O,The Oprah Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Capital New York, The Star Tribune, Bookslut, The Quarterly Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.
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ALEX GILVARRY is the author of the novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, a New York Times Book Review "Editor's Choice" selection, published by Viking in 2012. His novel was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and named Best Novel 2012 by the Improper Bostonian. He has written for Vogue, The Paris Review Daily, and his essays have been broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered. Alex has been a Norman Mailer Fellow and holds an MFA from Hunter College where he was the recipient of a Hertog fellowship. Previously an editor at Picador, he is the founder and editor of the website Tottenville Review, a book review collaborative.
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MATTHEW AARON GOODMAN received a BA from Brandeis University. His debut novel, Hold Love Strong, was chosen by Barnes and Noble as a Discover Great New Writers Book, by USA Today as a New Voices Pick, and nominated for an American Library Association Alex Award. He teaches Multicultural American Literature at Hunter College. His fiction, poetry and nonfiction has been published by Canteen Magazine, Pen America, Bomb Magazine among other publications. Matthew lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
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BENJAMIN HALE is the author of the novel The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve, 2011). He is the recipient of the Bard Fiction Prize, a Michener-Copernicus Award, and was nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. He has taught at the University of Iowa, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bard College, and guest lectured at Rutgers University, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Connecticut. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared, among other places, in Conjunctions, Harper’s, The New York Times, Dissent, The L Magazine, This Recording, and The Millions.
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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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AMELIA KAHANEY is the author of The Brokenhearted, the first book in a young adult novel series to be published by Harper Collins in 2013. Her short stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, One Story, Crazyhorse, and other publications. She earned her MFA from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Michael Cunningham. She has taught writing at Brooklyn College and the New School. Amelia lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
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MAURA KELLY Maura Kelly's book Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not-So-Great Gatsbys and Love in the Time of Internet Personals — a hybrid of personal essay and literary criticism — was recommended by the New York Times Book Review, USA Today, Elle, O, Publishers Weekly, Salon, the Daily News, and other publications. Her personal essays, nominated three times for Pushcart Prizes, have appeared in spots like the New York Times, Poets & Writers, Nerve, the Washington Post, New York Press, the New York Observer, Poets & Writers, Salon, Marie Claire, Glamour, the Daily Beast, Killing the Buddha, and Penthouse, and in three literary anthologies. She has also written for the Guardian, the Daily, The Believer, Rolling Stone, Slate, the Boston Globe, Parade, Barnes and Noble Review, and other outlets. She received an MFA in fiction from George Mason and a BA in psychology from Dartmouth.
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ARYN KYLE is the author of the novel The God of Animals (Scribner, 2007) and the short story collection Boys and Girls Like You and Me (Scribner, 2010). Her short fiction has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a National Magazine Award in Fiction, and her work has been translated in eighteen languages. Her third book, a novel called Hinterland is forthcoming from Riverhead.
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CATHERINE LACEY'S debut novel, Nobody Is Ever Missing, is forthcoming from FSG. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly, The Believer, Harper Perennial's 40 Stories Anthology, Diagram and others. She was a 2012 NYFA Fellow for fiction writing and is a founder of 3B Brooklyn, a worker-owned & operated bed and breakfast.
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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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COURTNEY ELIZABETH MAUK is author of the novel Spark (Engine Books, 2012). She is a graduate of Oberlin College's creative writing program and has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Literary Review, PANK, Wigleaf, andFiveChapters, among others, and has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. She is an assistant editor at Barrelhouse Magazine and has taught at The New School and Juilliard.
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MADELINE MCDONNELL is the author of a small story collection, There Is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out (Rescue Press, 2010), and a novella, Penny, n.(Rescue Press, 2013). Her short fiction has recently appeared in Harvard Review, Kenyon Review Online, and CutBank, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a graduate of Brown University, and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow.
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JENNIFER MILLER is author of The Year of the Gadfly (Harcourt, 2012) and Inheriting The Holy Land (Ballantine, 2005). Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Allure, Salon.com, Fast Company, The Millions and the Daily Beast. She has taught writing at Columbia and WritopiaLab.
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DINA NAYERI'S debut novel, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, was released in 2013 by Riverhead Books (Penguin), translated to 13 foreign languages, and selected as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book. Her work is published or scheduled for publication in over 20 countries and has appeared in Granta New Voices, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Salon, Glamour, and elsewhere. She holds an MBA and a Master of Education, both from Harvard, and a BA from Princeton. She also has an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and Teaching Writing Fellow. Dina lives in New York where she continues to write about Iran and Iranians around the world.
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HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL is the Assistant Director of the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and teaches creative writing at CUNY Hunter College. An excerpt from her novel When The Lights Go On Again will be published as a chapbook by Wallflower Press in April 2013. Her poetry chapbook, Memory Future, won the University of Southern California's 2011 Gold Line Press Award, chosen by judge Carol Muske-Dukes. Her work was shortlisted for the 2011 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Award and has appeared in numerous literary journals. She is a freelance writer for publications such as Time Out New York, Parents Magazine and Salon.com, and is a regular book columnist at 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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MOLLY ROSE QUINN Molly Rose Quinn earned her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in Comparative Literature from Occidental College. At Sarah Lawrence, she was the Editor-in-Chief of LUMINA. Her poetry has appeared in The Fiddleback and her essays and interviews can be found at FreerangeNonfiction.com. She has worked with kids and teens as a tutor, coach, teacher, camp counselor, and has been a babysitter for over a decade.
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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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GABRIEL ROTH holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University. For several years he worked as a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His first novel, The Unknowns, will be published in summer 2013 by LIttle, Brown (US) and Picador (UK).
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JULIE SARKISSIAN was born in Los Angeles and raised in Orange County, California. She is a graduate of Princeton University where she won the Francis Lemoyne Page Prize for writing and studied with Joyce Carol Oates, Chang-Rae Lee and Edmund White. She received a MFA in fiction from The New School. Her first novel, Dear Lucy, will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2013. She lives in Brooklyn Heights and manages a Tribeca Restaurant.
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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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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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JUSTIN TAYLOR is the author of the novel The Gospel of Anarchy and the story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, Bookforum, Tin House, The New York Times Book Review,and Oxford American. He co-edits The Agriculture Reader, a limited-edition arts annual, and has taught fiction and literature at Columbia University, N.Y.U., Sarah Lawrence College, and the Pratt Institute. He lives in Brooklyn.
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TED THOMPSON received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. 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 March 2014 by Little, Brown. He has received a Truman Capote Fellowship from Iowa, several scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and his work has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes.
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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 is the author of the novel Flatscreen (Harper Perennial, 2012), which was both an Indie Next Pick and an Amazon Best Book of the Month. His writing appears in many publications including The Paris Review, Bookforum, The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Literary Review, and Time Out New York. He is the 2012 recipient of the Terry Southern Prize, which recognizes “wit, panache, and sprezzatura in work published by The Paris Review,” and his short story, “What’s Important Is Feeling,” was recently chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2102. He teaches creative writing at The Sackett Street Writer's Workshop and at NYU, and lives in Brooklyn.
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JENNY ZHANG holds degrees from Stanford University and The Iowa Writers' Workshop. At Iowa, she was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship and a Provost Fellowship. She is the author of the poetry collection, Dear Jenny, We Are All Find (Octopus Books, 2012.) Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in Rookie, Glimmertrain, The Iowa Review, The Guardian, Jezebel, Diagram, The Walrus, and Vice. Her poetry has appeared in PEN Poetry series, HTMLGIANT, Coconut, andOctopus magazine. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
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