Faculty and Staff
Cornell faculty, rotating guest faculty, and a diverse slate of visiting writers, publishers, and agents who will attend residencies, guarantee you the opportunity to learn from a wide range of styles and creative approaches.
Our faculty are committed to the idea of literature as a social art. We are socially-conscious artists who believe in the possibility of art making the world a better place.
Core faculty
Glenn Freeman
Faculty Director
Glenn has published two collections of poems, “Keeping the Tigers Behind Us” (Elixir Press) and “Traveling Light” (Wordtech Communications), and a chapbook, “Fading Proofs” (Q Avenue Press). His work has been published in journals such as Poetry, The Cimarron Review, The Florida Review, and Zone 3. He has degrees from Goddard College, Vermont College, and the University of Florida and has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Iowa Arts Council.
Curtis Bauer
Core faculty
Curtis is the author of three poetry collections, most recently “American Selfie” (Barrow Street Press). He is also a translator of poetry and prose from the Spanish; his publications include the full-length poetry collections “Image of Absence,” by Jeannette L. Clariond (The Word Works Press), “From Behind What Landscape,” by Luis Muñoz (Vaso Roto Editions, 2015) and “Eros Is More,” by Juan Antonio González Iglesias (Alice James Books, 2014). He is the publisher and editor of Q Avenue Press Chapbooks and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Texas Tech University.
Steven Dunn
Core faculty
Steven is the author of two novels from Tarpaulin Sky Press: Potted Meat (2016) and water & power (2018), and the chapbook Our Migrations (Business Bear Press, 2018 & 2019). Potted Meat was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and shortlisted for Granta Magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists, and adapted to a short film by Foothills Productions. The Usual Route has played at L.A. International Film Festival, Houston International Film Festival, and others. He was born and raised in West Virginia.
Lily Hoang
Core faculty
Lily is the author of five books of prose, including “Changing” (recipient of a PEN Open Books Award) and “A Bestiary” (Cleveland State University). With Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she edited the anthology “The Force of What's Possible: Writers on Accessibility and the Avant-Garde.” In Summer 2017, she was a Mellon Scholar in Residence at Rhodes University in South Africa. She is editor of Jaded Ibis Press and executive editor of HTML Giant. She is an associate professor at UC San Diego where she teaches in the M.F.A. program.
Shena McAuliffe
Core faculty
Shena's debut novel, “The Good Echo” (Black Lawrence Press), won the Big Moose Prize and the Balcones Fiction Prize. Her essay collection, “Glass, Light, & Electricity” winner of the Permafrost Prize in Nonfiction, is forthcoming from Alaska University Press in spring 2020. Her stories and essays have been published in Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, True Story, and elsewhere. She holds degrees from the University of Utah and Washington University in St. Louis, and teaches literature and creative writing at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
Rachel Swearingen
Core faculty
Rachel Swearingen is the author of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, winner of the 2018 New American Press Fiction Prize (October 1, 2020). Her stories and essays have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. In 2019, she was named one of 30 Writers to Watch by the Guild Literary Complex. She is the recipient of the 2015 Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction, a 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a PhD from Western Michigan University. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
Guest faculty
Thisbe Nissen
Guest faculty for 2020-21
Thisbe is the author of three novels, “Our Lady of the Prairie” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), “Osprey Island” (Knopf), “The Good People of New York” (Knopf), and a story collection, “Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night” (University of Iowa Press, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award) and co-author with Erin Ergenbright of “The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook.” Her fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, Seventeen, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and anthologized in “The Iowa Award: The Best Stories 1991-2000” and “Best American Mystery Stories.” She has taught at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Brandeis University, The New School's Eugene Lang College and in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Pacific University. These days, she teaches undergrad, M.F.A., and Ph.D. students at Western Michigan University.
Jay Baron Nicorvo
Guest faculty for 2020-21
Jay's debut novel, “The Standard Grand” (St. Martin's Press), was picked for IndieBound's Indie Next List, Library Journal's Spring 2017 Debut Novels Great First Acts, and named a best book of the year by The Brooklyn Rail. He's published a poetry collection, “Deadbeat” (Four Way Books), and his nonfiction, twice named "Notable" in “Best American Essays,” can be found in Salon, The Baffler, The Iowa Review, and The Believer. Jay’s writing has been featured on NPR and PBS NewsHour. He's served as an editor at PEN America, the literary magazine of the PEN American Center, and at Ploughshares. He spent years as membership director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. He’s taught at Eckerd College, Emerson College, and Western Michigan University.