Visiting Writers
About the program
Cornell students have many opportunities to collaborate with established writers. The Visiting Writer Series brings working writers to campus whose books are being read by current classes; the writer meets with the class and holds a workshop or public reading. Each year the Distinguished Visiting Writer Program brings an artist-teacher to Cornell to teach a creative writing course on a special topic; while on campus, the distinguished visitor also gives a public reading or lecture. In the early years, the Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow Program allowed us to host writers-in-residence who taught courses, actively wrote at the Van Etten-Lacey House, and helped build our fledgling program into the exemplary campus Center it is today. This page features some of the impressive writers with whom our students have worked.
Visiting Writer Series
Guests have included Sofia Samatar, Kathy Fish, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Ross Gay, Patrick Rosal, Steven Dunn, Bethany C. Morrow, MC Hyland, Tim Seibles, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Michael B. Kelly, Phillip B. Williams, Kemi Alabi, Kiki Petrosino, Katie Williams, Lily Hoang, Charles D'Ambrosio, Nicholas Ward, Kate Durbin, Raquel Salas Rivera, Carmen Maria Machado, Bennett Sims, dozens of international writers for the annual Global Voices event, and alums such as Jeanna Kadlec and Erin Casey. The series focuses on writers of color and LGBTQIA+ writers and has involved classes in the departments of English and Creative Writing; Modern Languages; Education; and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. In addition, Visiting Writer panels include professionals in the publishing, editing, and freelancing worlds.
Distinguished Visiting Writers and Courses
2022-2023: Media Writing and Hybrid Forms (ENG 381)
Lauren Abunassar, Block 5
In this contemporary moment, in this digital world — with the increasing accessibility of language, the increasing hybridity of language — is language more vulnerable or is it more alive? In this course, we will consider what it means to use new media writing and language as a form of resisting sterile spectatorship. Together we will develop annotated chapbooks, our own interactive zines, online scavenger hunts, installed audio visual essays, and more. Though we will cover acres of ground in both our own work and the work of others, we will stay anchored to the central question of what work each work is trying to do. How is the language alive, how is it making use of form to produce activity, change, conversation — and what is our role in this.
2021-2022: Intersectional Creative Writing with New Media (ENG 274)
Margaret Rhee, Block 7
Intersectional Creative Writing with New Media engages difference--such as race, gender, citizenship, sexuality, and identity--through audio, video, electronic literature, and new media creative writing. Students will learn about and write poetry, fiction, non-fiction through experimentation with digital platforms with a focus on race, gender, justice, and identity in the digital sphere. Students will also read "digitally informed" "traditional" texts such as Claudia Rankine's Citizen and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee to further explore ways creative writing, new media, and social justice intersect on the page. This course will include rigorous reading, writing, workshopping, labs, special guest speakers, and field trips to better facilitate digital learning and creative writing. Through constructionist learning--learning through creating--students will engage in creative writing and digital media making grounded in dialogues of intersectionality in our digital age.
2020-2021: Fieldwork: Poetry as Investigative Practice (ENG 382)
Miriam Bird Greenberg, Block 2
What is the “responsibility of the poet,” anyway? How can fieldwork inform and enrich creative writing? What less tangible ways of knowing can poetry offer our explorations in other fields? This class will attempt to unearth answers to these questions, while approaching poetry via direct engagement with the world beyond the classroom. At the same time, it will function as a broad survey of documentary poetics and an experiment with fieldwork-derived practice as we write about (or in, or around, or…) places, situations, others’ lives and our own. We’ll read books by poets like Charles Reznikoff, Philip Metres, Fatimah Ashgar, Nomi Stone, Brandon Som, M. NourbeSe Philip, and CD Wright. For the first few weeks we’ll experiment with approaches – writing poems that draw from informal interviews with friends and strangers, utilize primary source texts, or which are paired with photographs and ‘published’ as Instagram essays – while articulating a personal ethics to guide our own work as a journalist or anthropologist might. The course will conclude with an intensive fieldwork-driven final project of 5-15 pages, or its multimedia equivalent. Class sessions will include discussion and close reading with an eye toward craft choice and ethical underpinning, plenty of directed freewriting, and workshop. We’ll also go on fieldwork explorations, hang around the train yard, map desire lines on campus, and otherwise explore ways of being a practicing poet in the world. No experience with documentary poetics or fieldwork necessary; beginners welcome.
2019-2020: Writing Young Adult Fiction: Free-Verse Illuminations of Tough Subjects (ENG 273)
Linda Oatman High, Block 7
In this course, students will explore popular Young Adult novels tackling tough subjects and written in free verse by authors such as Sonya Sones, Laurie Halse Anderson, Virginia Euwer Wolff, as well as (new) work by the Distinguished Visiting Writer. Starting with audio poetry and the training of listening skills, and building on writing exercises and prompts, students will develop their skills in writing from the heart and from memories of their lives. No experience in creative writing is required, as the process of exploring and digging deep into the writing cave will spark each student’s individual and unique innate creativity. Polishing and revising will be covered in class, along with techniques for instilling light and hope in dark stories. The goal of the course is that each student will have at least 20 pages of their own free-verse novel completed by the end of the block, with a significant section polished and revised. A “Keep Cornell Lit” free-verse reading celebration will be held at the end of the block.
2018-2019: Podcasts Matter: Sound Writing as the Intersection of Literature and Social Justice (ENG 274)
Kathleen Maris Paltrineri, Block 2
This course focuses on the art of writing for podcasts and audio, playing particular attention to how the medium of sound writing can be used to explore the intersection between literature and social justice. In the class, we will examine podcasts that feature long-form interviews with authors, activists, and thinkers, such as On Being, Longform, and Origins: The International Writing Program Podcast; podcasts that present and/or conduct close-readings of texts, such as PoemTalk or The New Yorker’s Fiction, Poetry, or Author’s Voice podcasts; and we will look at podcasts that take mixed-genre approaches, such as The Organist, or This American Life. Through these and other model podcasts, students will be exposed to the wide variety of possibilities available within the burgeoning podcast medium and find inspiration for writing their own. Students will learn to pitch story ideas, research topics, write and conduct interviews, develop narrative sequences, and other skills to bring their podcast ideas from ideation to publication. In addition to independent writing projects, students will also collaborate on group writing projects to further expand their podcast writing and production skills. No experience is necessary.
2018-2019: When is a Clone Not a Clone? Imitation and Experimentation in Speculative Literature (ENG 381)
Mylène Dressler, Block 6
The term “speculative fiction” encompasses and traverses many forms of imaginative literature, including but not limited to the futuristic, the alternative, the supernatural and the superhero. In this creative writing workshop, we’ll study novels in each of these subcategories of the “speculative,” both to draw inspiration from their worlds and models and to experiment with them ourselves, as we ask large questions about craft and genre. What does it mean to “copy,” to approach an artform through conscious imitation? How can we add to a field of writing already so rich in examples and experiments? The clones, ghostly twins, and shadowy doubles conjured by authors Kazuo Ishiguro, Shirley Jackson, and Swati Avasthi will help us expand our understanding of the boundary-bending that energizes so much speculative writing (and that makes it so exciting), as we workshop exercises, plotlines, and imaginative landscapes, and create our own alternate worlds, at once familiar and unfamiliar. This course is open to students who may have little to no creative writing experience; just bring your love of reading, writing, imagining, and a willingness to invent and play (with the help of some amazing writers).
2017-2018: The Lyric Essay: Hit Me with Music (ENG 382)
Kisha Schlegal, Block 3
The Lyric Essay is a radical form of creative nonfiction. Residing somewhere between an essay and a poem, it transforms prose into song—it hits with music. In this creative writing class, we’ll consider how music informs the lyric essay and how that musicality allows writers to more deeply engage difficult issues, such as environmental degradation and social injustice. We’ll ask: How might the music of the lyric essay allow us to remake or radicalize conventional modes of “nature writing,” or “activist" literature? More broadly, what is the impact of music on prose? On our writing? What does it mean to write with musicality? Students will read lyric essays by Amy Leach, Kathy Acker, Claudia Rankine, and more. These texts, along with music itself, and a set of writing exercises will influence and prompt creative work. Students will write three lyric essays and participate in workshops. Students will also attend a live music performance and compose a collaborative class “album” of their writing to be read at a public “performance” at the end of the semester. No previous knowledge of music or creative nonfiction is required for this course; this course is open to all levels of experience.
2017-2018: DIY Documentary Production: Essaying in Cinema (ENG 382)
Richard Wiebe, Block 7
How does the tension between making art and making history affection nonfiction filmmaking? Should documentary filmmakers think of themselves, in the words of Ken Burns, as "tribal storytellers"? What kind of historical consciousness is produced by the documentary film? By what strategies and techniques do such films claim to represent the real? In this interdisciplinary course we will explore such questions as student become documentary filmmakers themselves. More specifically, we will explore essayistic modes of documentary filmmaking such as the essay film, video essay, city symphony, and other hybrid “genres” where fact and fiction are intertwined and the viewer and maker interact in a time-based experience. Through a variety of exercises, students will acquire skills and confidence to complete a final documentary/essay project on a topic of their choosing. No experience is necessary.
2016-2017: Screenwriting: Creating Characters (ENG 382)
Brian Sloan, Block 3
Great films rely on great characters. In this screenwriting workshop, students will study and explore techniques for creating their own dynamic, character-driven films with special attention on using the tools of visual storytelling to create cinematic shorts with memorable characters. Using a series of writing exercises as well as in-class readings with actors, students will create and shape their characters from the ground up and then place them into narratives that help define and, most importantly, reveal who their characters are. Genre will be a secondary consideration as character takes center stage to create compelling scripts that are honest, emotional, and even personal. Students will not only write their own screenplays but they also will be expected provide thoughtful and constructive feedback on all other students’ work throughout the development process of the workshop’s scripts. Class participation, creative collaboration, and critical thinking about other students’ work is essential to success in this workshop. Students will create a 12-15 page screenplay that displays strong character development, with additional focus on act/scene structure and visual storytelling film language.
2016-2017: Live Literature: The Personal Is Political (ENG 383)
Kate Harding, Block 6
Sharing personal stories is a vital part of creating social change, but for creative writers, trying to send a message or teach a lesson can drain a story of its value as art and/or entertainment. The emerging nonfiction genre of “live lit”—short memoirs written for performance—is an excellent medium for exploring the personal and the political in creative work. How can we broach political subjects without coming across as excessively preachy or wonky? How can we draw broader social points out of our personal stories, without seeming “whiny” or narcissistic? What’s the difference between writing for the page and for a live audience? Through workshopping, class discussion, field trips, and performance practice, we’ll move toward balancing the persuasive power of a political speech with the delight of well-crafted essay.
2015-2016: Art, Comics, and Transformative Journalism (ENG 381)
Jacqueline Roche, Block 3
What is the role of the image in journalism? Why do photographs resonate differently from text? How can art tell a factual story? In this hands-on course, students will explore the burgeoning world of visual journalism, examining comic books, infographics, and even virtual reality landscapes as platforms for sharing information and encouraging empathy. As a capstone for the course, students will put observed methods into practice, ultimately creating transformative visual journalism projects of their own. The goal of this course is to explore how art combined with reporting can deepen public understanding of and engagement with complex topics. Readings will include critically acclaimed non-fiction graphic novels and comic books, plays, immersive infographics, and more. Students do not need to have a journalism or arts background to enroll but must be prepared to actively participate in a course that combines theory, analysis, and creative practice. You will make something new every day.
2015-2016: Reporting from the Margins (ENG 382)
Deborah Jian Lee, Block 7
Communities form around any number of factors: class, race, gender, sexuality, faith and politics, as well as shared narratives as broad as migration or homelessness and as specific as refugee girls escaping forced marriages or LGBTQ evangelicals clashing with church authorities. As a class we will explore various marginalized communities, learning to identify what makes each unique and how to capture their stories with nuance, respect and complexity. What sets these groups apart? What knits them together? What impact are they having on the rest of society? Students will engage these questions through readings, discussions, writing exercises, guest speakers and field trips. Most importantly, students will answer these questions and hone their journalistic skills in the real world. Students will employ the tools of immersion journalism to shed light on communities that exist on the margins of society. Each student will choose one community to focus on for the entire term; this is their “beat.” They will spend most of their time immersed in their beat, applying classroom lessons on the ground. They will learn how to find fresh stories, how to choose strong sources, how to conduct revealing interviews, how to ensure balance and accuracy in reporting, how to structure stories and how to write cinematically.
Some additional past Distinguished Visiting Writers and Courses
- Mira Rosenthal, "Looking on Meaning Bare: The Art of Literary Translation"
- Sandra Beasley, "Stranger Than Fiction: Creative Writing about the Sciences"
- Pulitzer-Prize nominee Angie Estes, "Ekphrastic Writing"
- Michael Martone, "Writing the Rural"
- Children's writer Sarah Prineas, "The Protagonist Must Protag: a Development of Character and Action"
- National Book Critics Circle Award winner Ross Gay, "Writing About Violence"
Past Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellows
2012-2014: Mark Mayer
is now an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Memphis. His short story collection, Aerialists (Bloomsbury, 2019), won the Michener-Copernicus Prize. Of his time as a Fellow, he says: "My Dana time was critical in writing Aerialists. Stories I began or revised there ended up in Kenyon Review, Guernica, American Short Fiction, Best American Mystery Stories… Favorite memories include: starting SLAB with Janet Garcia, Sheldon Gaskell, VeAmber Miller, Hallie Koonz, and Nicole Koehnen; hosting late-night Write-Ins, Scary Story Slams, Good Cheese Night (cheese and love poems), a panel on genre with Carmen Maria Machado, Bennett Sims, and Eugene Fischer; a Global Voices reading with Alisa Ganieva and Federico Falco; the Poetry-For Reading Series and dance parties; and taking my classes on field trips to the Human Anatomy Lab and the Anechoic Chamber."
2014-2015: Shena McAuliffe
is now the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Assistant Professor of English at Union College. She has published a novel, The Good Echo (Black Lawrence Press, 2018); a collection of essays, Glass, Light, and Electricity (University of Alaska Press, 2020), which won the Permafrost Prize in Nonfiction; and a forthcoming short story collection, We are a Teeming Wilderness (Press 53, 2023). Her stories have been twice named as notable in the Best American Short Stories anthologies and once in the Best American Nonrequired Reading series. Favorite student memories of her Dana Fellowship include chalking literature all over campus and welcoming her back as a visiting writer after the publication of her first book.
2015-2017: Helen Rubinstein
now teaches at The New School and has an active practice as a writing coach. She is the author of the essay collection, Feels Like Trouble: Transgressive Takes on Teaching, Writing, & Publishing (University of New Orleans Press, 2023), and the chapbook, Because Sex Is a Story & Sex Is a Song (Economy Press, 2022). Her essays and fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere, and her opinions in The Chronicle of Higher Education, LA Review of Books, and Jewish Currents, where she is a contributing writer. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Marble House Project, Yaddo, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, among others. Some of her favorite memories as a Fellow: "the MLK Day teach-in, and the Sustained Dialogue group I participated in are experiences I think of often. Being there in that 2015-17 political moment just really stands out. Poetry for the Presidency and Poetry for Empathy are both memorable—and so was the Subtitulados reading, scary stories, open mics, and every moment with cookies in the VEL, reading with students in the gazebo during class, working on Open Field… Lots of orange carpet memories, including six-word stories and a translation workshop… and the smell of cider in the VEL is my predominant sense memory of the whole experience!!"
2017-2018: LaTanya McQueen
is now an Assistant Professor of English-Creative Writing and African American Studies at Coe College. She is also the CNF Editor for Gigantic Sequins, the Associate Editor for Story Magazine, and is on the board for Iowa City’s UNESCO City of Literature. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts (2022 Fellowship in Prose) and the Elizabeth George Foundation (2019 grant recipient). She is the author of two books—the essay collection, And It Begins Like This (Black Lawrence Press, 2017), and the novel, When the Reckoning Comes (Harper Perennial, 2021), a Goodreads Choice nominee and Bram Stoker Award nominee. Favorite student memories of her Fellowship year include hearing her read her work at Homecoming and planning a class prank in Introduction to Creative Writing.
2018-2019: Becca Klaver
is now Visiting Assistant Professor of English at St. Olaf College. She is the author of three collections of poetry—LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010), Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016), and Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2020)—as well as several chapbooks. Midwinter Constellation, a book that she edited and co-wrote with 31 other poets in homage to Bernadette Mayer during her time at Cornell, was published in 2022 by Black Lawrence. As an editor, she co-founded the feminist poetry press Switchback Books and created the pop-up journals Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants and Across the Social Distances. During her three years at Cornell, she completed a new book manuscript, Wrecking Ball. Her favorite memories include "coffee and cinnamon rolls at Freewrite Fridays, of course, plus being startled by Manny Quinne as the students moved him from room to room around the VEL. And one of my last acts was hauling Robert Dana's personal poetry library (maybe 6 boxes?) and delivering it to Lisa Roberts for the Iowa City Poetry lending library, now open at PS1!" She served as the inaugural Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts from 2019-2021.