Overview
Solstice MFA Program faculty mentors are dedicated working writers with a passion for teaching. Learn a bit more about some of our faculty member’s creative process and approach to mentoring students here.
MFA Program Faculty
Venise Berry
Photo by Natalia Salzaar
Genres | Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Venise Berry is the author of three national bestselling novels: So Good, An African American Love Story; All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale—recipient of a 2001 Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association—and Colored Sugar Water. She also has a memoir, Driven: Reflections on Love, Career and the Pursuit of Happiness, and published a nonfiction book, Racialism and the Media: Black Jesus, Black Twitter, and the First Black American President in 2020. In 2003, she received the Creative Contribution to Literature Award from the Zora Neale Hurston Society, and in 2001, she was recognized with an Iowa Author Award from the Public Library Foundation in Des Moines. She has co-authored two nonfiction resource books with S. Torriano Berry, an associate professor in Film at Howard University: The Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema and The 50 Most Influential Black Films. Her book Mediated Messages and African-American Culture: Contemporary Issues, a co-edited nonfiction project, won the Meyers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1997. She is an associate professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and African American Studies at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Visit her website.
Published Works
So Good, An African American Love Story; All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale, Colored Sugar Water, Racialism and the Media: Black Jesus, Black Twitter, First Black American President
Spotlight Interview by Towana Wright
Visit her website.
Tara Betts
Photo by Glitter Guts
Genres | Poetry, Creative Nonfiction
Tara Betts is the author of . She teaches at DePaul University’s Peace Studies Program and serves as poetry editor for The Langston Hughes Review. Tara coedited The Beiging of America: Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, an edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler's memoir Adventures in Black & White, and Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. She is coediting Bop, Strut, and Dance, an anthology of Bop Poems with Afaa M. Weaver. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
Published Works
Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue
F. Douglas Brown
Genres | Poetry, Creative Nonfiction
F. Douglas Brown is the author of two poetry collections, ICON (Writ Large Press, 2018), and Zero to Three (University of Georgia, 2014), winner of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies such as the Academy of American Poets, PBS News Hour, The Langston Hughes Review, The Virginia Quarterly, and Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature. He is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow. Brown proudly sits on the advisory circle for the Lorca Latinx Poetry Prize and the boards for Beyond Baroque and Cultural Daily. Currently, he teaches at California Institute of Technology and Loyola High School of Los Angeles, where he serves as the Director of the Office of Equity and Inclusion. When not teaching, writing, or with his children (Isaiah, Olivia, and Simone), he is busy DJing in the greater Los Angeles area.
Published Works
ICON, Zero to Three
Gina Chung
Photo by S.M. Sukardi
Genre | Fiction
Gina Chung is author of the novel Sea Change, which was named a 2023 B&N Discover Pick and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book; it was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her short-story collection Green Frog—from Vintage in the U.S. and Picador in the U.K.—also garnered critical acclaim. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in One Story, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, and Gulf Coast, among others. Currently living in New York City, Gina is Korean American writer originally from New Jersey.
Ethan Gilsdorf
Genres | Creative Nonfiction, Poetry
Ethan Gilsdorf is a memoirist, essayist, critic, journalist, poet, teacher, performer, and the author of the award-winning memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. Hundreds of his personal essays, articles, reviews, cultural commentaries, profiles, opinion pieces, short stories, and poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, The Boston Globe, Wired, Salon, O: the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic, Brevity, Electric Literature, POETRY, Poets & Writers, among other publications. Twice his work has been named "Notable" by The Best American Essays. He teaches creative writing at GrubStreet in Boston, where he leads the 10-month long intensive Essay Incubator program, is the project manager of the Workplace Writing Program, and co-founded its Young Adult Writers Program. At Hampshire College, he studied filmmaking and creative writing, and he received an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Louisiana State University. A former editor for Frank magazine and New Delta Review, Ethan is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize. He has taught at LSU, Emerson College, and for LitArts RI, and he also leads writing workshops for nonprofit social justice organizations, teenagers, and children. He has been awarded writer's residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and Writing Downtown (Las Vegas), as well as grants from the Somerville Arts Council and Vermont Arts Council. A regular presenter, performer, and event moderator, he’s been featured on NPR, The Discovery Channel, PBS, CBC, BBC, and in the documentary Revenge of the Geeks. He also presented the TEDx talk "Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life).” Visit his website.
Steven Huff
Photo by Betsy Gilbert
Genres | Fiction, Poetry
Steven Huff is the author of two collections of stories, A Pig in Paris and Blissful, and three collections of poems, most recently, A Fire in the Hill. His literary travelogue Resting among Us: Authors’ Gravesites in Upstate New York is forthcoming from Syracuse University Press. Steve’s poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, Kestrel, The Chatauqua Literary Review, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and other journals and anthologies. He is the editor of a collection of essays, Knowing Knott: Essays on an American Poet. Garrison Keillor has read his poetry on “The Writer’s Almanac” public radio program. His nonfiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review. A Pushcart Prize winner in fiction, he is the founding publisher and editor of Tiger Bark Press, which has published more than 30 collections of poetry, poetry in translation, and creative nonfiction. He lives in Rochester, NY. Visit his website.
Published Works
A Pig in Paris, Blissful, A Fire in the Hill, More Daring Escapes, The Water We Come From, Resting among Us: Authors’ Gravesites in Upstate New York
Jennifer Jean
Genre | Poetry
Jennifer Jean’s poetry collections include VOZ, Object Lesson, and The Fool. Her teaching resource book is Object Lesson: A Guide to Writing Poetry. Where Do You Live? أين تعيش؟, a bilingual collection of poem-responses she co-wrote and co-translated with award-winning Iraqi poet Dr. Hanaa Ahmed, is forthcoming from Arrowsmith Press in 2025. She’s a co-editor and co-translator of an anthology in development titled Other Paths for Shahrazad: Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women. Jennifer has received honors, residencies, and fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, DISQUIET/Dzanc Books, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Her Story Is collective, the Academy of American Poets, the Kolkata International Poetry Festival, and the Women’s Federation for World Peace. Her poetry and co-translations have appeared in POETRY, Rattle, The Common, Waxwing, On the Seawall, DMQ, Salamander, Terrain, and elsewhere. Jennifer edits poetry for Talking Writing and translations for Consequence Forum and is the program manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center’s online writing program. Visit her website.
Published Works
Voz, The Fool, Object Lesson, Where Do You Live? أين تعيش؟
Laura Williams McCaffrey
Photo by Magdalene McCaffrey
Genres | Fiction, Writing for Young People
Born and raised in Vermont, Laura Williams McCaffrey attended Barnard College of Columbia University, and then returned to Vermont to become a school librarian, answering to the names “Ms. Librarian,” “Library Lady,” and sometimes simply “Ms. Library.” A passionate advocate for the arts in education, she has taught writing and literature at Pacem School, an alternative school and homeschooling center, for fourteen years. Since fall of 2018, she also has taught at Champlain College in its Professional Writing division. For three years she was the Fiction Editor at YA Review Network, where she was honored to publish stories by established writers and teens. Laura’s speculative fiction short stories have been published in Solstice Literary Magazine, Soundings Review, Cicada, and YA Review Network. Her short story “Into the Vast,” published by YA Review Network, won SCBWI’s 2014 Magazine Merit Award for fiction. Her most recent novel, Marked (2016), is a young-adult dystopian fantasy as well as a mixed-format novel that includes comics story lines integrated into prose text. Laura is the author of two other young-adult speculative fiction novels: Water Shaper, selected for the 2007 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list, and Alia Waking, named an International Reading Association Notable Book. Alia Waking was also a nominee for the annual Teens’ Top Ten Books list and for Vermont’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. Laura is currently at work on a number of speculative fiction projects. Visit her website.
Published Works
Marked, Water Shaper, Alia Waking
Jennifer Murvin
Photo by Ethan Edwards
Genres | Comics & Graphic Narratives, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Jennifer Murvin is the author of the forthcoming chapbook She Says and story collection Real California Living. Her stories, essays, and graphic narratives have appeared in The Southampton Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, DIAGRAM, The Florida Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, CutBank, Indiana Review, Post Road, American Short Fiction, The Sun, Mid-American Review, The Cincinnati Review, Phoebe, and other journals. She was the winner of the 2015 American Short(er) Fiction Contest judged by Stuart Dybek and in 2017 was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Jen is an Assistant Professor of English at Missouri State University, where she teaches graphic narrative, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She serves as recurring faculty for the biannual River Pretty Writers Retreat in the Ozarks. Jen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and is the owner of Pagination Bookshop in Springfield, Missouri. Find more at her website.
Published Works
She Says, Real California Living
Josh Neufeld
Genres | Comics & Graphic Narrative
Josh Neufeld is a cartoonist known for his nonfiction narratives of political and social upheaval, told through the voices of witnesses. His works of comics journalism have been published by Al Jazeera America, The Boston Globe, Medium, Fusion, Cartoon Movement, and The Atavist, among others. As a comics artist, he has collaborated with such acclaimed writers as Brooke Gladstone, Harvey Pekar, and Nick Flynn. Josh is the writer/artist of the New York Times-bestselling nonfiction graphic novel A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge. In addition, he is the illustrator of the New York Times-bestselling graphic nonfiction book The Influencing Machine. He was awarded a 2004 Xeric Foundation grant for his first book A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia Central Europe). In 2014, Josh was an Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist, where he mentored eight Associate Artist cartoonists. In 2012, he was awarded the Knight-Wallace Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Michigan—the first long-form cartoonist ever admitted to the program. As part of the U.S. Department of State’s Speaker and Specialist program, Josh has traveled abroad as a “cultural ambassador,” giving presentations and conducting workshops in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. He has taught comics workshops at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has served as a thesis advisor for students at the Center for Cartoon Studies and Hunter College. His illustrations have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. His books have been translated into numerous languages. Josh lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, the writer Sari Wilson, and their daughter. Visit his website.
Published Works
A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge, A Few Perfect Hours, The Influencing Machine, Health Care Comics
Iain Haley Pollock
Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Genre | Poetry
Iain Haley Pollock lives in Mount Kisco, NY, and teaches English at Rye Country Day School. He is the author of two poetry collections, Ghost, Like a Place, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Spit Back a Boy, winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Individual poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Boston Review, Callaloo, and The New York Times Magazine. Iain received his undergraduate degree at Haverford College and his MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University, where he won the Joyce Carol Oates Award. He held a Cave Canem Fellowship from 2006-2009. He was the Solstice MFA Program’s first Cave Canem Partner Poet and joined the MFA faculty in summer 2012.
Published Works
Ghost, Like a Place, Spit Back a Boy, All the Possible Bodies
Adi Rule
Photo by Alba Lumos Photography
Genres | Writing for Young People, Fiction
Adi Rule writes young adult and middle grade novels, including Nell and the Netherbeast, Why Would I Lie?, Hearts of Ice, The Hidden Twin, and Strange Sweet Song, which won the 2016 New Hampshire Writers Project Literary Award for Outstanding Young Adult Book and the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) Houghton Mifflin/Clarion Prize. Adi earned her MFA at VCFA and has led workshops throughout New England for groups that include 826 Boston, the VCFA Young Writers Network, and the NH Writers Project. Her work has appeared in Hunger Mountain journal of the arts and NH Pulp Fiction anthologies. She also contributes essays and features to New Hampshire Magazine. Visit her website.
Published Works
Nell and the Netherbeast, Why Would I Lie?, Hearts of Ice, The Hidden Twin, Strange Sweet Song
Sandra Scofield
Genres | Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Sandra Scofield is the author of seven novels, including Beyond Deserving, a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. She has also written two books of creative nonfiction, including her memoir Occasions of Sin, and two craft books for writers, The Scene Book and The Last Draft: A Novelist’s Guide to Revision. Sandra also self-published This Is Not a Novel: Short Short Stories, a collection of stories she wrote and read during Solstice residencies. She has received awards from the NEA, Texas Institute of Letters, Narrative Magazine, and others. Her papers are housed in the Sowell Family Literary Collection at Texas Tech University. An experienced teacher (grades 2 through graduate school), Sandra holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Oregon. She served on faculty at Southern Oregon State College and was a visiting writer at several colleges, including Macalaster and Old Dominion University. Through the National Book Foundation, she was writer-in-residence on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA. She also has extensive experience as an educational planner. She has been on the faculty of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival since 1993. Sandra grew up in Texas; she now divides her time between Montana and Oregon. She is also a painter. Visit her website.
Published Works
Beyond Deserving, Occasions of Sin, The Scene Book and The Last Draft: A Novelist’s Guide to Revision, Mysteries of Love & Grief; Gringa; More than Allies; Walking Dunes; Opal on Dry Ground; Walking Dunes; A Chance to See Egypt; Plain Seeing; Swim: Stories of the 60s; This Is Not a Novel: Short, Short Stories; Little Ships
David Yoo
Photo by Jessica Jackson
Genres | Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Writing for Young People
David Yoo is the author of the novels Girls for Breakfast, which was named an NYPL Best Book for Teens and a Booksense Pick, and Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before, a Chicago Best of the Best selection, along with a middle-grade novel, The Detention Club. His first collection of essays, The Choke Artist, was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. He holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. David wrote a regular column in Koream Journal. He teaches at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop and resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website.
Published Works
Girls for Breakfast, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before, The Detention Club, The Choke Artist
Faculty-At-Large
Faculty-at-large may teach craft classes at biannual residencies, serve on the Admissions Committee, and mentor MFA students and post-grad students.
Kathleen Aguero
Kathleen Aguero has published five collections of poetry: Daughter Of; The Real Weather; Thirsty Day; Investigations, a collection of poems inspired by Nancy Drew; and After That. Her latest book, World Happiness Index, was published by Tiger Bark Press. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Poetry magazine, Massachusetts Review, and the Cincinnati Review. She is also co-editor of three collections of multicultural literature: A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare. Her creative nonfiction essay “Marriage Koan” appears in the anthology Why I’m Still Married. Recipient of a Massachusetts Fellowship in Poetry and a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kathi also was awarded a writing grant from the Elgin/Cox Trust. She has taught at the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, the NY State Young Writers’ Program at Skidmore, as well as in the Poets in the Schools Programs of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In 2004, she held the position of Visiting Research Associate at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. In addition to teaching in the Solstice MFA program, Kathi teaches for “Changing Lives Through Literature,” an alternative sentencing program based on the power of books to change lives through reading and group discussion. She is a consulting editor in poetry for The Kenyon Review. Visit her website.
Published Works
Daughter Of; The Real Weather; Thirsty Day; Investigations, World Happiness Index, A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare.
Spotlight Interview by Tiara Marchando
Josè Angel Araguz
Photo by Ani Schreiber
Genres | Poetry, Creative Nonfiction
José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and the author of seven chapbooks, as well as the collections Everything We, Think We Hear, Small Fires, Until We Are Level Again, An Empty Pot’s Darkness and, most recently, Rotura. His poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Prairie Schooner, New South, Poetry International, and The Bind. His memoir Ruin and Want is forthcoming from Sundress Publications. Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, he runs the poetry blog The Friday Influence and composes erasure poems on the Instagram account @poetryamano. A member of the Board of Governors for CavanKerry Press, he is also a faculty member in Lasell’s University Solstice Low-Residency MFA program. With an MFA from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, José is an Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston, where he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander Magazine. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
Published Works
Everything We Think We Hear, Small Fires, Until We Are Level Again, An Empty Pot’s Darkness, Rotura, Ruin and Want
Amy Hoffman
Photo by Sharona Jacobs
Genres | Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, SAWT
Amy Hoffman is a writer, community activist, and former editor-in-chief of Women’s Review of Books. Her novel Dot & Ralfie was published spring 2022 from the University of Wisconsin Press, which also published her novel The Off Season. She has also published three memoirs: Lies About My Family; An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News; and Hospital Time. Her books have been short-listed for the Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award. Amy’s essays, interviews, and fiction have been published in the Boston Review, the Ocean State Review, Prairie Schooner, the Gay and Lesbian Review, and the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and anthologized in The Politics of Care; In Search of Stonewall; and The Little Magazine in Contemporary America. A former development director for Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Women’s Lunch Place, a daytime shelter for homeless women, she has also been an editor at Gay Community News, South End Press, and the Unitarian Universalist World magazine. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has taught at UMass Amherst, and teaches at Emerson College. Visit her website.
Published Works
Dot & Ralfie, The Off Season, Lies About My Family; An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay
Randall Horton
Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Genres | Creative Nonfiction, Poetry
Poet, fiction writer, and creative nonfiction writer Randall Horton is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea González Poetry Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Randall’s most recent poetry collection is {#289-128}. His first poetry collection, Pitch Dark Anarchy, was selected by Beltway Poetry Quarterly as a Best Book of 2013. His essays have appeared in Black Renaissance Noire, the International Journal of Literary Nonfiction, and A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry Race. His book Hook: A Memoir was released from Augury Books in fall 2015. His second memoir, Dead Weight, is available from Northwestern University Press. With an MFA from Chicago State University and a Ph.D. from SUNY Albany, Randall is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New Haven.
Published Works
Pitch Dark Anarchy, Hook: A Memoir, Dead Weight, {#289-128}
Nicole Terez Dutton
Genre | Poetry
Nicole Terez Dutton’s work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review, and Salt Hill Journal. In August 2020, she was named the David H. Lynn Editor at The Kenyon Review. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from the Frost Place, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her collection of poems, If One Of Us Should Fall, was selected as the winner of the 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She was the inaugural poet laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts.
Published Works
If One Of Us Should Fall
Writers-In-Residence
Writers-in-Residence, many who are former faculty, teach craft classes during the residencies on a rotating basis but do not mentor MFA students 1:1.
Terrance Hayes
Photo by Kathy Ryan
Genre | Poetry
Terrance Hayes’ most recent poetry collection is So to Speak. His previous one is American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the TS Eliot Prize, the Brooklyn Public Library’s Literary Prize for Fiction Poetry, the LA Times Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. In 2010, his book Lighthead won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Hurston-Wright Award. His first book, Muscular Music, won both a Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His second book, Hip Logic, was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for both The Los Angeles Times Book Award and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Wind In a Box, a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award finalist, was named one of the best books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. How to Be Drawn received the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and was long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry. Terrance’s other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a profile on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His poems have appeared in seven editions of the Best American Poetry anthology and two editions of the Pushcart Best of the Small Presses anthology. His craft book is Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry. His essay collection To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. He was also guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2014, the preeminent annual anthology of contemporary American poetry. He is a professor of English at New York University.
Published Works
American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, Lighthead, Muscular Music, Wind In a Box, Hip Logic, So to Speak, Watch Your Language
Lee Hope
Photo by Lou Jones
Genre | Fiction
Lee Hope is the author of the novel Horsefever, which made its mark on the Small Press Distribution Bestseller List when it was published in 2016 and went on to be a finalist for the Midwest Book Awards. Lee is also is editor-in-chief of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. Her fiction has received grants from both the Maine and the Pennsylvania Arts Commissions. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary journals, such as ;Witness, The North American Review, Epiphany, and Sou’wester. Her short story “What to Take In Case of Fire” received an honorable mention in American Fiction, Vol. 13 (winner of the 2015 Midwest Book Awards in the anthology category). Founder and former director of a low-residency MFA program in Maine, Lee also helped to found the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. She is currently president of the nonprofit Solstice Institute for Creative Writing and teaches for Changing Lives Through Literature, which brings literature to people on probation.
Published Works
Horsefever, What to Take In Case of Fire
Helen Elaine Lee
Genre | Fiction
Helen Elaine Lee is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Her first novel, The Serpent's Gift, was published by Atheneum and her second novel, Water Marked, was published by Scribner. Her short story “Blood Knot” appeared in the spring 2017 issue of Ploughshares, and her story “Lesser Crimes” appeared in the winter 2016 issue of Callaloo. Helen was on the board of PEN New England for 10 years, served on its Freedom to Write Committee, and volunteered with its Prison Creative Writing Program, which she helped to start. She wrote about the experience of leading creative writing workshops in prison in a New York Times Book Review essay, “Visible Men.” Her stories about people who are incarcerated have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, Hanging Loose, Best African American Fiction 2009 (Bantam Books), and Solstice Literary Magazine. Her novel Pomegranate will be published in April 2023. It is about a woman who is getting out of prison and striving to stay clean, repair her relationships with her kids, and choose life. Her journey to grapple with the past, own and tell her story, and reassemble the pieces of her life is one of healing and autonomy. Helen is Professor of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT. Visit her website.
Published Works
The Serpent’s Gift, Water Marked, Pomegranate
Dzvinia Orlowsky
Photo by Sharona Jacobs
Genre | Poetry
Pushcart Prize poet, translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books, Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of six poetry collections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, including her most recent, Bad Harvest, a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry. She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Grant, a Sheila Motton Book Award, and a co-recipient of a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted as part of the Carnegie Mellon University Press Classic Contemporary Series. Dzvinia’s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Agni, Antioch Review, Field, Guernica, International Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Los Angeles Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Massachusetts Review, A Map of Hope: An International Literary Anthology, From Three Worlds, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. Jeff Friedman’s and her co-translation of Memorials by Polish poet Mieczyslaw Jastrun was published by Dialogos (2014). Her poem sequence “The (Dis)enchanted Desna” was a winner of the 2019 New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen Prize, selected by Robert Pinsky. More recently, her co-translations with Ali Kinsella from the Ukrainian of Natalka Bilotserkivets’ selected poems, Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow (Lost Horse Press, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize, the 2022 Derek Walcott Prize in Poetry, the 2022 National Translation Award and winner of the 2020-2021 American Association for Ukrainian Studies Translation Prize awarded in 2022. Ali and her co-translations from the Ukrainian of Halyna Kruk’s poetry, Lost in Living, for which Ali and Dzvinia received a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Translations grant, was published by Lost Horse Press in 2024. Her newest poetry collection, Those Absences Now Closest, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press in fall 2024, and Ali and her co-translation from the Ukrainian of Oleksander Dovzhenko’s novella, The Enchanted Desna, is forthcoming from Lost Horse Press in 2025. Dzvinia is a contributing poetry editor to AGNI and Solstice Literary Magazine and founder of Night Riffs: A Solstice Magazine Reading & Music Series. She is a Writer-in-Residence at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Published Works
Those Absences Now Closest; Bad Harvest; Silvertone; Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones; Except for One Obscene Brushstroke; Edge of House; A Handful of Bees; Memorials: Poems by Mieczyslaw Jastrun; Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow: Poems by Natalka Bilotserkivets; Lost in Living: Poems by Halyna Kruk
Renèe Watson
Photo courtesy of the author
Renée Watson is a New York Times bestselling author, educator, and community activist. Her young adult novel Piecing Me Together received a Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Honor. Her children’s picture books and novels for teens have received several awards and international recognition. She has given readings and lectures at many renown places including the United Nations, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Embassy in Japan and New Zealand. Her poetry and fiction centers around the experiences of Black girls and women, and explores themes of home, identity, and the intersections of race, class, and gender.
Her books include the young adult novels Love is a Revolution, Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, and Watch Us Rise, co-written with Ellen Hagan. Her middle-grade novels include the Ryan Hart series (Ways to Make Sunshine, Ways to Grow Love, Ways to Share Joy), Some Places More Than Others, Betty Before X, co-authored with Ilyasah Shabazz, and What Momma Left Me. Her picture book Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills received several honors including an NAACP Image Award nomination in children’s literature. Her other picture books include Maya's Song and The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, co-authored with Nikole Hannah-Jones. She is also the author of She Persisted: Oprah Winfrey.
One of Renée’s passions is using the arts to help youth cope with trauma and discuss social issues. Her picture book A Place Where Hurricanes Happen is based on poetry workshops she facilitated with children in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Renée was a writer in residence for over twenty years teaching creative writing and theater in public schools and community centers throughout the nation. She founded I, Too Arts Collective, a nonprofit that was housed in the home of Langston Hughes from 2016-2019. Watson is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets’ Education Advisory Council. She is also a writer-in-residence at The Solstice Low-Residency Creative Writing Program of Lasell University.
Published Works
Piecing Me Together; Love is a Revolution; This Side of Home; Watch Us Rise, co-written with Ellen Hagan; Ryan Hart series (Ways to Make Sunshine, Ways to Grow Love, Ways to Share Joy); Some Places More Than Others; Betty Before X, co-authored with Ilyasah Shabazz; What Momma Left Me; Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills; She Persisted: Oprah Winfrey; A Place Where Hurricanes Happen; The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, co-authored with Nikole Hannah-Jones; Maya's Song; Black Girl You Are Atlas; Summer is Here; Skin & Bones
Consulting Writers
Jacqueline Woodson
Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation
Genre | Writing for Young People
In 2022, Jacqueline Woodson received The Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to an author of children’s books, to recognize lifelong achievement. She is the author of a number of books for children and young adults, including the 2014 National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming, Each Kindness, Beneath a Meth Moon; Peace, Locomotion; the Newbery Honor books After Tupac D Foster, Show Way, and Feathers; Miracle’s Boys, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (made into a six-part television miniseries, directed by, among others, Spike Lee); Hush, a Finalist for the National Book Award and the American Library Association (ALA) “Best Book For Young Adults”; Locomotion, also a National Book Award finalist, a Horn Book Award Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book; and If You Come Softly, named a Best Book for Young Adults by the ALA. Her picture book The Other Side has won many awards, including the Texas Blue Bonnet Award and a Child Magazine Best Book Award; it was also named an ALA Notable Book. Her recent titles include Red at the Bone, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me. She also adapted Locomotion as a play, and the stage version premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in October 2010. Jacqueline has received several additional honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, an Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement, two Jane Addams Peace Awards, three Lambda Literary Awards, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, a Granta Best Writer Under Forty Award, Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 1994, and a number of ALA Best Book Awards. She also served as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for the Library of Congress from 2018 to 2019. A former drama therapist for runaways and homeless children in New York City, Jacqueline has taught fiction at the Vermont College MFA in Creative Writing Program; The City College, City University of New York; Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program; the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp; and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Published Works
Brown Girl Dreaming; Each Kindness; Beneath a Meth Moon; Locomotion; Peace, Locomotion; After Tupac and D Foster; Show Way; Feathers; Miracle’s Boys; Hush; If You Come Softly; Behind You; The Other Side; The Day You Begin; Harbor Me; This is the Rope; Pecan Pie Baby; Coming in Home Soon; We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past; Sweet, Sweet Memory; Our Gracie Aunt; Visting Day; Between Madison & Palmetto; Maizon at Blue Hill; Last Summer with Maizon; From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun; I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This; Lena; The House You Pass on the Way; The Dear One; Before the Ever After; Another Brooklyn; Red at the Bone
Dennis Lehane
Photo by Gaby Gerster
Genre | Fiction
Founding consulting writer Dennis Lehane grew up in Boston. Since his first novel, A Drink Before the War, won the Shamus Award, he has published numerous novels that have been translated into more than 30 languages and become international bestsellers: Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; Moonlight Mile; Live by Night; and World Gone By. His most recent work is a stand-alone novel, Since We Fell. Four of his novels – Live by Night, Mystic River, Gone, Baby, Gone, and Shutter Island – have been adapted into films. A fifth, The Drop, was adapted by Lehane himself into a film starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini in his final role. Lehane was a staff writer on the acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, and also worked as a writer-producer on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Netflix‘s Bloodline, DirecTV’s Mr. Mercedes, and HBO’s The Outsider. Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a counselor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. Lehane and his family live in California.
Published Works
A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; Moonlight Mile; Live by Night; World Gone By, The Drop; Since We Fell; Small Mercies
Director and Staff
Meg Kearney - Founding Director
(pronounced “car-nee”)
Photo by Gabriel Parker
Genres | Poetry, Writing for Young People
Meg Kearney is Founding Director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, which launched in 2006 at Pine Manor College and was adopted by nearby Lasell University in December 2021. For eleven years prior to founding Solstice, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University.
In spring 2021, The Word Works Press published Meg’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry, which made Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list April through September 2021 and earned a Pushcart Prize nomination. Meg is also author of The Ice Storm, a heroic crown (Green Linen Press Chapbook Series, 2020) currently in its third printing. Her collection of poems Home By Now (Four Way Books) was winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. Meg is also author of An Unkindness of Ravens (BOA Editions Ltd., 2001) and a trilogy of verse novels for teens: The Secret of Me (2005); The Girl in the Mirror (2012); and When You Never Said Goodbye (2017), all from Persea Books. Meg’s picture book Trouper (Scholastic, 2013) is illustrated by E.B. Lewis and won many accolades, including the 2015 Kentucky Bluegrass Award and the Missouri Association of School Librarians’ Show Me Readers Award. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey chose Meg’s poem “Grackle” for the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology. Meg’s poetry has also been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in myriad anthologies and literary journals.
Meg can be reached at mekearney@lasell.edu. Visit her website for more information about her work.
Published Works
All Morning the Crows, The Ice Storm, Home By Now, An Unkindness of Ravens, The Secret of Me, The Girl in the Mirror, When You Never Said Goodbye, Trouper
Quintin Collins - Assistant Director
Photo courtesy of the author
Genre | Poetry
Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, editor, and assistant director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. His work appears in many print and online publications, such as Sidereal Magazine, Superstition Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Solstice Literary Magazine, and others. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet's Billow, Quintin's publishing accolades include multiple Best of the Net Nominations, and he was a finalist for the 2020 Redivider Beacon Street Prize.
Quintin's first full-length collection of poems, The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, which was a finalist for the 2020 Alice James Award and the 2021 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, is available from Cherry Castle Publishing. His second collection of poems, Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal's 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Honor Book for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s 2023 Best Poetry Literary Award, is available from Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books.
Quintin can be reached at qcollins@lasell.edu. Visit his website for more information about his work.
Published Works
The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, Claim Tickets for Stolen People