Fiction

Our faculty brings diverse styles of writing together through workshops and lectures, and students are exposed to many different voices. Students may choose their mentors, and the program focuses on an individualized curriculum and instruction. To help our students with the publishing process, we invite editors, literary agents, and other publishing professionals to the residencies. Most of our students publish in literary magazines while still enrolled in the program, and many of our alumni have published books.

Our faculty are not only award-winning, acclaimed authors, but also skilled and devoted teachers.

“Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.”

—E.L. Doctorow

For More Information

René Steinke, Director
MFA in Creative Writing
Fairleigh Dickinson University
email: writingmfa@fdu.edu

Apply here

Fiction Faculty

David Grand

David Grand’s first novel, Louse (1998), was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. His second novel, The Disappearing Body (2002), is described by Salon.com as “A nifty update on the classic noir [which] plumbs an urban underworld of dames, dope rings, double-crossing heavies and poor saps set up to take a fall.” His third novel, Mount Terminus, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the winter of 2014. Grand’s writing has appeared in anthologies as well as The New York Times Magazine, Travel and Leisure, BlackBook, and elsewhere.

René Steinke

René Steinke is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow. Her most recent novel is Friendswood, which was shortlisted for the St. Francis Literary Prize, and was named one of National Public Radio’s “Great Reads.” She is also the author of The Fires and Holy Skirts, which was a 2005 finalist for the National Book Award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Salon, Redbook, TriQuarterly, Bookforum, and in various anthologies. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Literary Review, and now serves as Editor-at-Large. Steinke directs the low-residency MFA program.

Walter Cummins

Walter Cummins has published more than 100 stories in such magazines as Kansas Quarterly, New Letters, Other Voices, Crosscurrents, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Virginia Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Arabesques, and Confrontation. His story collections are titled Witness, Where We Live, Local Music, The End of the Circle, The Lost Ones, and Habitat: Stories of Bent Realism. Early in his career, two novels, A Stranger to the Deed and Into Temptation, came out as paperback originals. He also has published memoirs, essays, articles, and reviews. His nonfiction books include The Literary Explorer, co-written with Thomas E. Kennedy: a study of the impact of TV on life in the U.S., Programming Our Lives: Television and American Identity, co-written with George Gordon: and a photo history of the estate that became the College at Florham campus, Florham: The Lives of an American Estate, co-written with Carol Bere and Samuel Convissor. With Thomas E. Kennedy, he is co-publisher of Serving House Books.

Rebecca Chace

Rebecca Chace is the award-winning author of four books, Leaving Rock Harbor; Capture the Flag; Chautauqua Summer; June Sparrow and The Million Dollar Penny. She has written for the New York Times, the Huffington Post, The LA Review of Books, Guernica, Lit Hub, and other publications. Plays: Colette; The Awakening (adaptation of the novel by Kate Chopin). She adapted her novel, Capture the Flag, for screen and television with director Lisanne Skyler (Best Screenplay Short Film, 2010 Nantucket Film Festival). She has been awarded numerous artist residencies and fellowships including Civitella Ranieri, MacDowell, Yaddo, Dora Maar House, and others. She is an associate professor in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Rebecca teaches Creative Nonfiction and Fiction in the MFA program.

Idra Novey

Idra Novey is the author of the novel Those Who Knew, a finalist for the 2019 Clark Fiction Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her first novel Ways to Disappear received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian, selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series, The Next Country, a finalist for the 2008 Foreword Book of the Year Award, and Clarice: The Visitor, a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Magazine, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers Magazine, the PEN Translation Fund, and the Poetry Foundation. She has also translated the work of several prominent Brazilian writers, most recently Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H. A collection of her co-translations with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian was published with Penguin Press in 2020. She currently teaches fiction at Princeton University. Idra teaches Poetry, Fiction, and Literary Translation in the MFA program.

Minna Proctor

Minna Proctor is the Editor of The Literary Review and a translator and essayist. She has been working in publishing since 1995 and was the editor of Colors and the managing editor of Bomb. Her most recent book, Landslide, a collection of personal essays, is forthcoming on Catapult Press. Her book on the idea of religious calling in America, Do You Hear What I Hear?: Religious Calling, the Priesthood, and My Father was published in 2004. Her essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as Aperture, Bookforum, The LA Times Book Review, Guilt and Pleasure, The Nation, American Scholar, and The New York Times Book Review. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and Bogliasco in Italy. Proctor’s translation of Love in Vain, Selected Stories of Federigo Tozzi won the PEN Poggioli Prize in 1998. Her other translations include Bruno Arpaia’s novel, The Angel of History. Minna Proctor teaches Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Literary Translation in the MFA program.