M.F.A. in Creative Writing Faculty

Faculty

Erik Brogger
Office: 108 Mason
Phone: (516) 463-5397
Email

Erik Brogger is a founding member of The Playwrights' Center, a national organization devoted to developing new dramatic work. He received a grant from the William Penn Foundation (through the Philadelphia Drama Guild) and won a Fringe First Award at Scotland's Edinburgh Festival. His plays, which have been produced off-Broadway and in major regional theaters throughout the country, include A Normal Life, Strangers' Ground, and The Paramount Review, which was recently adapted into the musical They Came From Way Out There.

Phillis Levin
Office: 107 Mason
Phone:(516) 463-6299
Email

Phillis Levin has published three books of poetry: Temples and Fields, winner of the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award; The Afterimage; and Mercury. Her next volume of poems, May Day, is forthcoming in Spring 2008. She is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. Her poems have been published in many anthologies, including Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, Poems of New York, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, and The Best American Poetry (1989 and 1998 editions). Professor Levin's honors include an Ingram Merrill Grant; a Fulbright Fellowship to Slovenia; The Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, which she spent living in Italy; a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship; and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is an Elector of the American Poets' Corner of The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York. She is a professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Hofstra University.

Julia Markus
Office: 110 Mason
Phone: (516) 463-6294
Email

Julia Markus received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award for her first novel, Uncle, which was followed by three well-received novels, American Rose, Friends Along the Way and A Change of Luck, as well as her critically acclaimed biographies, Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning and Across An Untried Sea: Discovering Lives Hidden in the Shadow of Convention and Time. She has won a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Her most recent book is J. Anthony Froude: The Last Undiscovered Great Victorian.

Martha McPhee
Office: 106 Mason
Phone: (516) 463-6744
Email

Martha McPhee is the author of the novels Bright Angel Time, Gorgeous Lies, and L'America. Her work has been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2002 she was nominated for a National Book Award. Her novels have been Best Books of The Year on The New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune lists. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Newark Star Ledger, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Self, Traveler, Travel & Leisure, among many others. She lives in New York City with her children and husband, the poet and writer Mark Svenvold.

Additional Undergraduate and Graduate Faculty

Fiction and Nonfiction

Patricia Horvath's work has appeared in such literary journals as Shenandoah, Cream City Review, and Puerto del Sol, and she is an editor at The Massachusetts Review.  She has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.  Her most recent project, a memoir, explores issues of disability and self-identity.

Bill McGee is a contributing editor to Consumer Reports and a travel columnist for USAToday.com.  His work has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, and many other publications.

Paul Zimmerman's plays include Pigs and Bugs, Reno, and The Founder.  He is the screenwriter for Tribe Picture's A Modern Affair.

Poetry

Janet Kaplan is the author of three volumes of poetry: The Groundnote, The Glazier's Country, and Dreamlife of a Philanthropist. Her work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, The Paris Review, and many other journals. She is the recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Godot Grant in poetry from Rattapallax Press, and a grant from the Vogelstein Foundation.

Robert Plath is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Ashtrays and Bulls, Whiskey and Clay, and Tapping Ashes in the Dark.

Connie Roberts's poetry has appeared in publications in the United States and Ireland, including The Complete Guide to Writing Poetry, The Recorder, and The PPA Literary Review. She was the recipient of the 2010 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and a 2011 Literature Bursary Award from the Irish Arts Council.

Playwriting

Richard Pioreck's plays include: Say It Ain't So, Joe; Nicolette and Aucassin (book and lyrics); This Is It!; How I Came To Be; and Grocery Encounters. Currently in development are Winesburg (book and lyrics), based on Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, as well as the screenplay for Green, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Paul Zimmerman (See Fiction and Nonfiction section.)