Faculty are listed by genre, followed by an alphabetical list with more details. In the alphabetical list, click on an MFA faculty member's name for more information and live links to interviews, readings, reviews, and author websites. Click on the slide show to the right to view images of their books.
Poetry: Norma Cole, Michael Cross, D.A. Powell, Aaron Shurin, Laura Walker
Fiction: Catherine Brady, Stephen Beachy, Lewis Buzbee, Maximilian Schlaks DeLaure, Joshua Mohr, Nina Schuyler, K.M. Soehnlein, Susan Steinberg, David Vann
Nonfiction: David Booth, Lowell Cohn, Lisa Harper, Kate Moses, Cheryl Strayed, Jane Anne Staw, Ryan Van Meter
Tel:(415) 422-6066
beachy@usfca.edu
Faculty
Michener Award in fiction. Author of The Whistling
Song (1991), Distortion (2000), Some Phantom/No
Time Flat (2006), and boneyard (2011). Published in
High Risk 2, New York Times Magazine,
Bomb, and Best Gay American Fiction 1996.
Tel:(415) 422-5109
bradyc@usfca.edu
Academic Director, Professor
Former president, AWP. The Brenda Ueland Prose Prize and the
Zoetrope: All Story Short
Fiction Prize. Author of three short story collections: The End of the Class War (1999),
finalist for the 2000 Western States Book Award, Curled in the Bed of Love
(2003), winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short
Fiction, and The Mechanics of
Falling (2009), winner of the Northern California Book Award
for Fiction; a biography: Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of
Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA (2007); and a book on
the craft of short fiction, Story
Logic and the Craft of Fiction (2010). Published in Other Voices, The Missouri Review, The
Kenyon Review, and Best
American Short Stories 2004.
Tel:(415) 422-6066
buzbee@usfca.edu
Faculty
Author of novels Fliegelman's Desire
(1990), Steinbeck's
Ghost (2008) which was a Smithsonian Notable Book, the
Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
Children's Book of the Year, and the winner of the Beatty
Award from the California Library Association, and The Haunting of Charles Dickens
(2010), winner of the Northern California Book Award, an Edgar
Award nominee, and a Judy Lopez memorial Honor book; stories, After the Gold Rush (2006); and
nonfiction, The Yellow-Lighted
Bookshop (2006). Published in Harper's, Paris Review,
Gentleman's
Quarterly, The New York
Times Book Review, Black
Warrior Review, ZYZZYVA, and Best American Poetry 1995.
Tel:(415) 422-6066
cohn@usfca.edu
Faculty
Leverhulme Fellowship for study in England. San Francisco Bay
Area sports columnist of the year (1996, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007).
Sports columnist for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, a
New York Times regional newspaper, and the San
Francisco Chronicle (1979-1994). Author of Rough Magic:
Bill Walsh's Return to Stanford Football
(1994).
Tel:(415) 422-6066
colen@usfca.edu
Faculty
Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, Gertrude Stein
Awards, the Fund for Poetry, and an award from the Foundation for
Contemporary Arts. Author of Mars (1994),
Contrafact (1996), Moira (1996), Spinoza in
Her Youth (2002), Scout (2004), Do The
Monkey (2006), Collective Memory (2006), Natural
Light (2009), Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems
(2009), To Be At Music: Essays
and Talks (2010), and numerous translations from
French.
Tel:(415) 422-6066
harper@usfca.edu
Faculty
Author of A Double Life:
Discovering Motherhood (2011), winner of the 2010 River
Teeth Prize for Literary Nonfiction, and translated in Brazil,
Italy, and Taiwan. Coeditor of the nonfiction anthology The Dish: Making the Food that Makes
Your Family (forthcoming, 2012). Published in Babble, Emily Dickinson Journal,
Gastronomica, Glimmer Train, The Huffington Post, Literary Mama,
Lost, Offsprung, Poetry Foundation, San Francisco Chronicle,
SNReview, and the anthologies Educating Taste: Food, Drink, and
Connoisseur Culture, Literary Couplings and Mama, PhD.
Tel:(415) 422-6066
jmohr@usfca.edu
Faculty
Author of the novels Some
Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine's Top 10
reads of 2009 and a SF
Chronicle best-seller, Termite Parade, an
Editors' Choice on The
New York Times Best Seller List, and Damascus (forthcoming, October
2011). Published in The New York
Times Book Review, 7x7, and the Bay Guardian.
Tel:(415) 422-6076
dapowell@usfca.edu
Associate Professor
D. A. Powell's books include Cocktails (2004) and Chronic (2009), both finalists
for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
Powell's awards include the Kingsley Tufts Prize, a
Pushcart Prize and the California Book Award. He has taught at
Columbia University, University of Iowa, and Harvard
University.
Tel:(415) 422-6066
schuyler@usfca.edu
Faculty
Author of The
Painting, named a Best Book by San Francisco Chronicle,
nominated for the Northern California Book Award, and translated
into Chinese, Portuguese, and Serbian, and Accidental Birds (forthcoming,
2012). Finalist for The
Ledge 2010 Fiction Awards for the short story "The Current";
winner of the Santa Clara
Review's Editor's Choice Prize for the
short story "Water Babies"; winner of the Big Ugly Review's Short
Short Contest for "Black Holes"; finalist in the 2009 Stanford
Fiction Contest. Short stories and poems published in The Battered Suitcase,Flash Quake, Fugue, The Meadowland Review, Santa Clara Review, Sojourn, Stanford
Magazine,Watchwordpress,
ZYZZYVA, and other journals. Reviews fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tel:(415) 422-5357
shurin@usfca.edu
Professor
California Arts Council Fellowships in poetry (1989, 2002),
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and San Francisco Arts
Commission grant in creative nonfiction (1995, 2005). Author of
eleven books of poetry and prose, including the poetry collections
A's Dream (1989),
Into Distances (1993),
The Paradise of Forms: Selected
Poems (1999), A
Door (2000), Involuntary
Lyrics (2005), Citizen (forthcoming, 2012) and
two collections of essays, Unbound: A Book of AIDS (1997),
and King of Shadows
(2008).
Tel:(415) 422-6066
soehnlein@usfca.edu
Faculty
Lambda Literary Award and a Henfield Prize. Author of the
novels The World of Normal Boys (2000), You Can Say
You Knew Me When (2005), and Robin and Ruby (2010).
Published in the nonfiction anthologies, Girls Who Like Boys
Who Like Boys and Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly
Times, and in The Village Voice, San Francisco
Magazine, and Out.
Tel:(415) 422-5106
ssteinberg@usfca.edu
Associate Professor
Susan Steinberg is the 2010 United States Artists Ziporyn
Fellow in Literature. She is the author of the short story
collections, Hydroplane
(2006) and The End of Free
Love (2003). Her third collection is forthcoming from
Graywolf. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney's, The Better of McSweeney's
Volume Two, Conjunctions, The Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, Boulevard, The Massachusetts Review, Quarterly West, Denver Quarterly, Columbia, and other literary
journals and magazines. She is the recipient of a 2011 Pushcart
Prize. She has held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, The
Vermont Studio Center, The Wurlitzer Foundation, the Blue Mountain
Center, Yaddo, and NYU.
Tel:(415) 422-4298
rwvanmeter@usfca.edu
Assistant Professor
Ryan Van Meter is the author of the essay collection, If You Knew Then What I Know Now
(2011). His work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, The Normal School Magazine,
Ninth Letter, and Fourth Genre, among others, and
has been selected for anthologies including Best American Essays 2009.
Tel:(415) 422-6066
mfaw@usfca.edu
Faculty
Fund for Poetry grant. Author of swarm lure (2004), rimertown/an atlas (2008), and
bird book (2011).
Published in Big Ugly
Review, Bird Dog,
Five Fingers Review, Fourteen Hills Review, Laundry Pen, Mem, Sentence, Switchback, THERMOS, VOLT, Xantippe, and
26.
