On his War Books podcast, MFA alum AJ Woodhams interviews Prof. Salar Abdoh about his novel Out of Mespootamia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8e-9mtMg5w You can check out out all the episodes of his podcast series at ajwoodhams.com/warbookspodcast
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In their article How to Be a Man in Iran, published in The Atlantic this month, CCNY Professor Salar Abdoh and Tehran-based journalist Vali Khalili describe how the return of morality police to city streets is a testing ground for women’s rights and everyone’s courage. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/08/morality-police-iran-women/674927/
Kay Bell, adjunct assistant professor in the Department of English and academic advisor in the Division of Humanities and the Arts at The City College of New York, is the 2023-2025 Bronx Poet Laureate. Read more…
The MFA Program in Creative Writing has some wonderful news. Professor Salar Abdoh’s new novel, A Nearby Country Called Love, has been selected by Buzz Books for its Great Reads Fall/Winter 2023. Buzz Books posts one chapter of the author’s book on google books Salar Abdoh was born in […]
Professors Valladares and Raboteau received awards at the CCNY faculty and staff award ceremony on May 16th 2023: — The President’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Service, Professor Michelle Valladares — The Provost’s Award for Pedagogical and Curricular Innovation, Professor Emily Raboteau
Presented by the CCNY MFA in Creative Writing and Rifkind Center moderated by Guest Professor David Groff THURSDAY APRIL 27, 5:00-6:00PM RIFKIND CENTER NAC 6/316 Anjali Singh started her career in publishing in 1996 as a literary scout. Formerly Editorial Director at Other Press, she has also worked as an editor […]
Tues. Apr. 25, 6:00 – 7:30 PM Archives as Muse: A Harlem Storytelling Project created by CCNY’s MFA Program in Creative Writing / Multimedia Event directed and conceived by Karin Coonrad
In December 2022, Michelle Valladares, director of the MFA and Aybike Ahmedi, a current MFA student, were interviewed on the CUNY TV program Urban U
CCNY Professor William Gibbons was interviewed by the BBC for their Sunday Feature program. Click the link above to learn more.
Presented by The CCNY MFA in Creative Writing and The CCNY Department of Philosophy Thursday, March 30, 2023 4:00 – 5:15 PM The CCNY MFA in Creative Writing and the Department of Philosophy presents Chloe Cooper Jones author of Easy Beauty Thursday, March 30, 4:00-5:15PM, Rifkind Center (NAC 6/316) […]
Featuring the editors of ‘Feminists Reclaim Mentorship’ and other panelists Nancy K. Miller, Tahneer Oksman, Melissa Coss Aquino, Michelle Yasmine Valladares, Sharifa Hampton, and Angela Veronica Wong
The CCNY MFA in Creative Writing Presents Chai & Chat with Chris Dombrowski Author of The River You Touch Tuesday, February 28, 5:00 – 6:30pm, Rifkind Center (NAC 6/316)
The CCNY MFA in Creative Writing Presents Chloe Cooper Jones Discussion with the Author of Easy Beauty in Partnership with the CCNY Department of Philosophy Thursday March 30, 4 – 5:15 PM Rifkind Center NAC 6/316 From Writer to Author with David Groff Creating a Roadmap to Publication […]
Join us on November 10 from 5:00 – 6:00PM in the Rifkind Center (NAC 6/316) for a free workshop with Yahdon Israel, senior editor at Simon & Schuster, on what the book proposal is, why it matters, and how to master the form. Yahdon Israel is an educator, entrepreneur, editor, […]
For the second semester, students from the City College of New York’s MFA and MA program participated in a weekend artists residency at the Stephen & Betsy Corman Harriman Outdoor Center. As it was in the first semester, the retreat was designed to both offer our students an escape from […]
Abdoh will be discussing his latest novel "Out of Mesopotamia" with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges.
Natera and her publisher Ballantine are also donating 50 copies of Natera's "Neruda on the Park" to CCNY students who attend the readinf
Salar Abdoh, novelist and professor in CCNY's MFA, offers a dispatch from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine.
Pamela L. Laskin, director of The City College of New York’s 50-year-old Poetry Outreach Center, is the recipient of a 2022 Freedom Through Literacy Board Option Award for her work to enable children to unload their grief and to empower voices through poetry. The international award was established by the Pennsylvania-based Judith’s […]
Michael Montali, current CCNY MFA Candidate in fiction, entered the program already well established as a singer songwriter, and joining the MFA has not meant a surrender of his musical career. In fact, this August, his band Fantastic Cat performed on CBS Saturday Morning. Fantastic Cat is the product of […]
Nicole Treska (MFA Class of ’10) followed a winding road through life from Chicago to Hawaii, and Hawaii to New York, ultimately finding her way to CCNY’s MFA in Creative Writing. And following that, her path from student to memoirist under contract with Simon & Schuster, although less perilous, was […]
This fall, we’re excited to feature a full slate of in-depth readings and discussions with authors and journalists, and conversations on how to navigate the publishing industry and prepare to land your first book deal.
Harlem in the Woods: The CCNY Writers’ Nature Retreat at the Stephen & Betsy Corman Harriman Outdoor Center in Upstate New York “Harlem in the Woods was one of the most powerful experiences the school has offered––a retreat from city life that offers connection with nature, one another, and ourselves. […]
WRITERS ON IRAN FEAT. MIKHAL DEKEL Join Mikhal Dekel, Salar Abdoh and the CCNY MFA program to discuss Tehran Children, a historical memoir that the New York Times Book Review hailed as “Not simply another detail of the Holocaust but a matter of enduring existential, psychological and moral reflection.” MIKHAL […]
Join us this semester for conversation with the award-winning author Mikhal Dekel, and poet David Mills, along with workshops on how to successfully complete your MFA thesis, and sage wisdom from David Groff on how to transition from writer to author. WRITERS ON IRAN FEAT. MIKHAL DEKEL Join Mikhal Dekel, […]
The deadline to apply for the fall 2022 semester is fast approaching! Join Michelle Valladares, director of the CCNY MFA Program in Creative Writing, on Thursday, February 7, to answer any questions you might have about the program or the application process. Access the event via zoom using this link
Many of our MFA alumni have gone on to create literary journals. Here are three online journals: 433 433 is a journal of literature, art and commentary that began as a running collection of “moments of silence” from various places around the world, experienced in isolation, in the midst of […]
Join us for the latest in our new Spotlight reading series engaging authors, writers and the public in the most pressing conversations of our time, through the lens of literature and the arts. Spotlight: Writers on Iran In less than two years, four faculty have published books focusing on Iran from […]
Acted by graduates from the Department of Theatre and Speech MONDAY, DECEMBER 10th, 2019 from 6:30 – 8:30 PM COMPTON GOETHALS HALL – Third Floor, Studio 318
TYEHIMBA JESS Poetry reading with Pulitzer Prize winner and Author of OLIO Co-Sponsored with the Rifkind Center TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30 From 6:00 – 8:00PM at SHEPARD HALL 95
Epic In The Ancient Near East And The Bible Edward L. Greenstein – Editor And Translator Of The Book Of Job
HASANTHIKA SIRISENA Fiction reading with prize winning Author of THE OTHER ONE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24 6:30 – 8:00PM RIFKIND ROOM, NAC 6/316
Salar Abdoh’s forthcoming novel is A Nearby Country Called Love (Viking Penguin, Fall 2023). His last book, Out of Mesopotamia(Akashic, 2020), has been hailed as “One of a handful of great modern war novels,” and was a NYTimes Editors’ Choice, and also selected as a Best Book of the year across several platforms, including Publishers Weekly. He is also the author of Tehran At Twilight, Opium, and The Poet Game, and editor and translator of the celebrated crime collection, Tehran Noir.
Dalia Sofer is the author of the novels Man of My Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)—a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Notable Book of 2020, and The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco Press, 2007)—also selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her novels have been translated and published in 16 countries. A recipient of a Whiting Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Sami Rohr Choice Award, the Sirenland Fellowship, the Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship, and multiple residencies at Yaddo, Sofer has contributed essays and reviews to various publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The LA Review of Books, and The Believer.
Naima Coster is the author of 
Justine Calma is a journalist reporting on science and the environment for Vox Media’s The Verge. She previously covered environmental justice and health for 
Yahdon Israel is a writer, college professor and creator of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books cool. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, Brooklyn Magazine, LitHub, and Poets and Writers. He teaches at The New School and City College. He hosts the Literaryswag Book Club, a monthly book club that’s free and open to public and the host of LIT, a weekly web series about books and culture.
Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of the novel, 
Nicole Sealey is an award-winning Poet and Director of Cave Canem. Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole is the author of Ordinary Beast and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors include an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, a Daniel Varoujan Award and the Poetry International Prize. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming to Best American Poetry 2018, The New Yorker, The New York Times and elsewhere. Nicole holds an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is the executive director at Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.
Nelly A. Rosario is a Dominican-American author and creative writing instructor of Song of the Water Saints, winner of a PEN/Open Book Award. Her fiction and non-fiction works appear in various anthologies and journals. Rosario holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she has taught. She was formerly on faculty at Texas State University and a Visiting Scholar in the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program. Currently, Rosario is the 2017-18 Schumann Visiting Professor in Democratic Studies in the Latina/o Studies Program at Williams College and also serves as Assistant Director of Writing for the MIT Black History Project.
Cynthia Cruz is the author of five collections of poems: How the End Begins, Wunderkammer, The Glimmering Room, and Ruin. Her fifth collection of poems, Dregs, was published in September of 2018. The editor of an anthology of contemporary Latina poetry, Other Musics: New Latina Poetry (2019), Disquieting: Essays on Silence is her first collection of essays. Cruz is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder fellowship from Princeton University. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.
Marc Palmieri has taught dramatic writing in the MFA program at CCNY since 2010, and Modern and Postmodern Drama, Shakespeare, Dramatic Writing for the stage, TV and Film, Fiction and other courses for the Undergraduate English Department since 2006. He is a full-time core faculty member in the School of Liberal Arts at Mercy College. Credits include: Miramax Films’ Telling You (screenplay), stage plays include Levittown (NY Times Critic’s Pick), The Groundling, Carl The Second and Poor Fellas (all published by Dramatists Play Service). He has published twice in Fiction, and in numerous anthologies for Applause/Limelight Books and Smith & Kraus Inc. His collection of plays for middle schoolers, S(cool) Days, will be published by Brooklyn Publishers in 2020. Marc is a fully vested member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity. He received his B.A. from Wake Forest University and MA/MFA from the City College of New York.
Emily Raboteau is the author of a novel, The Professor’s Daughter (Henry Holt) and a work of creative nonfiction, Searching for Zion (Grove/Atlantic), named a best book of 2013 by The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, a finalist for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, grand prize winner of the New York Book Festival, and winner of a 2014 American Book Award. Her fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, Buzzfeed, Literary Hub, The Guardian, Guernica, VQR, The Believer, Salon, Orion and elsewhere. Honors include a Pushcart Prize, The Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony.
David Unger is writer and translator, he received Guatemala’s 2014 Miguel Angel Asturias National Literature Prize for lifetime achievement though he writes exclusively in English. His latest novel, The Mastermind, is appearing in seven languages including Spanish, Arabic, Turkish and Italian. Other published novels include The Price of Escape; Para Mi, Eres Divina; Ni chicha, ni limonada; and Life in the Damn Tropics. His short stories and essays have appeared in Guernica Magazine, Review and Playboy Mexico. As translator, he has published 14 titles including The Popol Vuh, Guatemala’s pre-Columbian creation myth and the work of Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala), Silvia Molina (Mexico), Nicanor Parra (Chile), Teresa Cárdenas (Cuba), Mario Benedetti (Uruguay), among others. He just received a NYSCA grant to retranslate Nobelist Miguel Angel Asturias’s first novel El Señor Presidente and teaches Translation in the MFA Program.
Laura Hinton is a poet, literary critic, and editor, as well as an educator. Her poetry books include Ubermutter’s Death Dance and Sisyphus My Love (To Record a Dream in a Bathtub), published by BlazeVox. Her critical books include The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy: Sadomasochistic Sentiments from Clarissa to Rescue 911 (SUNY Press), We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics (co-editor) and Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero: Voice, Vision, Politics and Performance in the U.S. Contemporary Women’s Poetics (editor). Her essays, poet interviews, and reviews have appeared in numerous books and journals including Contemporary Literature, Postmodern Culture, Textual Practice, Women’s Studies, Rain Taxi, Jacket2, Poetry Project Newsletter, and The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, among many others. She often works in hybrid media, and her poetry with photography and or/ video have been published in several journals including Yew, Madhatter Review, Feminist Studies, Bird Dog, How2, Poetry Seen and Red Fez. She has performed her poetry in venues from Maine to Tucson to New York City.
Amir Arian Ahmadi started his writing career in 2000 as a journalist in Iran. In Farsi, he has published two novels Cogwheels and Disappearance of Daniel, a collection of stories (Fragments of a Crime), and a book of nonfiction on the state of Iranian literature in the new millennium Graffiti on the Paper Wall. He also translated from English to Farsi novels by E.L Doctorow, Paul Auster, P.D. James, and Cormac McCarthy. He switched to writing in English in 2012, and has published short stories and essays in The New York Times, The Guardian, London Review of Books, Massachusetts Review, Asymptote, openDemocracy. He earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Queensland in Australia, and an MFA in creative writing from NYU. 
Mikhal Dekel is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the City College and the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Rifkind Center for Humanities and the Arts. She is the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation and the Lady Davis Foundation. She is the author of Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey (W. W. Norton 2019), Oedipus in Kishinev (Bialik Institute, 2014), and The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity and the Zionist Moment (Northwestern University Press, 2011). Her articles, translations and blogs have appeared in The Journal of Comparative Literature, English Literary History, Jewish Social Studies, Callaloo, Shofar, Guernica, and Cambridge Literary Review, among many others.
Lyn Di Iorio is working on a suspense novel, The Sound of Falling Darkness, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel-in-Progress award. Her short novel Outside the Bones (Arte Público Press) won the 2011 Foreword Review Indie Book of the Year Silver Award, was best debut novel on the Latinidad list, a top-five finalist for the 2012 John Gardner Fiction Award, a finalist for the International Latino Book Award, and on Book Riot’s 2016 list of the top 100 works of noir. Her recent short stories have appeared in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas and New Guard. She has won residencies and fellowships from The Millay Colony for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center and Ucross, and was a Patricia Harris Fellow at Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program.
Keith Gandal is Professor of English at the City College of New York, with a joint appointment in American Literature and Creative Writing. He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of five books: four scholarly monographs and a novel. His research has focused on two areas of American studies: literature and poverty, and literature and war. His scholarly books are The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane and the Spectacle of the Slum (Oxford University Press, 1997), Class Representation in Modern Fiction and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), The Gun and the Pen: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the Fiction of Mobilization (Oxford, 2008), and War Isn’t the Only Hell: A New Reading of World War I American Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). The novel, Cleveland Anonymous (North Atlantic Books, 2002), combines a variety of genres, including comedy and mystery. At City College, he has served as MFA director, MA director, deputy chairperson, and chair.
David Groff received his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. He also has an MA in English and Expository Writing from the University of Iowa. His two books are poetry are Clay (Trio House Press, 2013) and Theory of Devolution (University of Illinois Press, 2002). He has co-edited the anthologies Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013) and Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS (Alyson, 2010).
Pamela Laskin directs the Poetry Outreach Center at City College. Several of her children’s and poetry books have been published, most recently, RONIT AND JAMIL, a Palestinian/Israeli version of “Romeo and Juliet” in verse published by Harper Collins in 2017. BEA, a picture book, was a finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize for Children’s Fiction. She teaches children’s writing in the MFA program
Mark Jay Mirsky is the author of thirteen books, among them five novels and a book of stories and novellas, Thou Worm Jacob, Proceedings of the Rabble, Blue Hill Avenue, The Secret Table, The Red Adam, and Puddingstone. He has also published three critical studies, The Absent Shakespeare, Dante, Eros and Kabbalah. Blue Hill Avenue was listed by the Boston Globe in 2009 as “One of the Essential Books of New England.” His last book A Mother’s Steps is a search for his mother in dreams and photographic albums. The editor of the Diaries in English translation of Robert Musil (Basic Books) and co-editor of Rabbinic Fantasies (Yale University Press) and Volume 1 and 2 of The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1941 (Stanford University Press) he has been the editor of Fiction since its founding in 1972. Professor Mirsky has taught at Stanford University and Bar Ilan as well as serving first as director of the City College M.A., and then as chairperson of its English Department. He has published in numerous periodicals, the New York Times Sunday Book Review, the Washington Post, Partisan Review, and received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts Award.
