Writing Alumni
('95SOA) -
Jonathan Ames is the author of eight books: I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man, What's Not to Love?, My Less Than Secret Life, Wake Up, Sir!, I Love You More Than You Know, The Alcoholi'c (a graphic novel) and The Double Life is Twice As Good. He is the creator of the HBO Original Series Bored to Death which starred Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis.
('98SOA) -
Mary Jo Bang is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Apology for Want (1997), which received the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize; Louise in Love (2001); The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (2001); Elegy (2007), which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award; andThe Bride of E (2009). She was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2003, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004. Bang was the poetry co-editor of the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005.
('97SOA) -
Tina Chang is the author of the poetry collections Half-Lit Houses (2004) and Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books, 2011) and co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008). Her poems have appeared in American Poet, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and The New York Times among others.
('99SOA) -
Kiran Desai’s first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998 and received the Betty Trask award the same year. Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, was released in 2006, and was awarded the Man Booker Prize, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. In 2007 the novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Kiryiama Pacific Rim Book Prize.
('94SOA) -
Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, TV and radio personality who lives in New York City. He is the co-author, with Steven D. Levitt, of Freakonomics (2005) and its sequel SuperFreakonomics (2009). He is also the author of Turbulent Souls (1998), Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper (2003), and a children’s book, The Boy With Two Belly Buttons (2007).
('06SOA) -
Rivka Galchen's first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances was published in 2008 and named as a finalist for the Mercantile Library's John Sargent Sr.
('92SOA) -
Philip Gourevitch has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1995 and a staff writer since 1997. From 2005 to 2010, he was editor of The Paris Review, succeeding the late George Plimpton. Gourevitch is the author of A Cold Case (2001), Standard Operating Procedure (with Erroll Morris, 2008) and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the George K.
('05SOA) -
Dinaw Mengestu’s debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Penguin Riverhead, 2007) has been translated into 12 languages. It was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2007, and received the 2007 Prix du Premier Meilleur Roman Etranger, 2007 Guardian First Book Award, and 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
('83SOA) -
Susan Minot’s debut, Monkeys, won the 1987 Prix Femina Étranger. In 1994 Minot collaborated on the screenplay for the feature Stealing Beauty with Bernardo Bertolucci, and wrote the screenplay for Evening, based on her 2007 novel of same name, with Michael Cunningham. Minot also published Lust & Other Stories in 1989, the novel Folly in 1993, and the novella Rapture, in 2002.
('75SOA) -
Sigrid Nunez has published six novels: A Feather on the Breath of God, Naked Sleeper, Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, For Rouenna, The Last of Her Kind and Salvation City. Her most recent book is Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including three Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian-American literature.
('07SOA) -
Beth Raymer is the author of Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling (Spiegel & Grau, 2010). The film adaptation of Lay the Favorite, starring Rebecca Hall, Bruce Willis, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, premiered at the 2012 Sundance festival and will have its theatrical release this fall. Raymer has written for The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine. She is currently working on a play and a coming-of-age novel, Sweetheart Deals, which will be published by Spiegel & Grau in 2013.
('06SOA) -
Karen Russell’s debut novel Swamplandia! published in 2011, has received wide critical acclaim. In 2012 it was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and a recipient of The New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. The New Yorker named Russell one of the “20 Under 40” fiction writers, and The New York Times heralded Swamplandia! as one of the 10 Best Books of 2011.
('97SOA) -
Tracy K. Smith is the author of three books of poetry: Life on Mars, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, recipient of the 2006 James Laughlin Award, and The Body's Question, which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith is also the recipient of a 2004 Rona Jaffe Award and a 2005 Whiting Award. She was the Literature protégé in 2009-2011 cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. From 1997 to 1999 Smith was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University.
('02SOA) -
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (2009), Wells Tower’s first book of short stories, was a finalist for The Story Prize and was selected by Michiko Kakutani as one of her ten best books of 2009. In 2010, Tower was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” fiction writers, and won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. Tower is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the 2002 Plimpton (Discovery) Prize from The Paris Review and a Henfield Foundation Award.
('09SOA) -
Adam Wilson is the author of the novel Flatscreen (Harper Perennial, 2012). His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Literary Review, Washington Square Review, The New York Tyrant, The Coffin Factory, Meridian and the anthology Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging. He is a founding member of the international online newspaper The Faster Times, and former culture editor for Blackbook.
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Columbia University School of the Arts offers MFA degrees in Film, Theatre Arts, Visual Arts, and Writing, an MA degree in Film Studies, a joint JD/MFA degree in Theatre Management & Producing, and a PhD degree in Theatre History, Literature, and Theory.
Columbia University School of the Arts offers MFA degrees in Film, Theatre Arts, Visual Arts, and Writing, an MA degree in Film Studies, a joint JD/MFA degree in Theatre Management & Producing, and a PhD degree in Theatre History, Literature, and Theory.