Instructors for Writer's Studio

Randall is Professor/Chair Emeritus in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, was founding producer of the Story Week Festival of Writers and is a recipient of Columbia’s Teaching Excellence Award. His work appears in Writing in Education, TriQuarterly, Writer’s Digest, Brevity, and elsewhere. Two chapters from his novel-in-progress, All the World Before Them, have been nominated for Pushcart prizes.

Lauren is the author of three essay collections, including the New York Times Bestseller Daughters and Mothers, and a host of pieces in publications such as Chicago magazine. Her work has also been featured on NPR.

Kevin is a longtime journalist, magazine writer, and author of The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms, Defending the Damned, and The Wrong Man. 

Dina has published a memoir, Drawn from Water: an American Poet, an Ethiopian Family, an Israeli Story; a poetry collection, Apples of the Earth; as well as award-winning nonfiction pieces and poems. She is the recipient of the 2012 Graham School Excellence in Teaching Award for the Humanities, Arts, and Sciences.

Eileen is the author of the novel The Heroines, which has been translated into Finnish, Italian, Russian, and Korean. Her poetry and prose has appeared in many publications, including The Toast, Triquarterly, Folio, the Chicago Reader, Poetry East, and Diagram. Connect with her at eileenfavorite.com.

Stephanie has had work published in Michigan Quarterly Review, among other venues, and a “distinguished” story listed in Best American Short Stories. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MA in English from the University of Chicago.

Esther serves on the board of advisors of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Her publications include Chicken Soup by Heart (winner of the Sydney Taylor Award) and The Confe$$ion$ and $ecret$ of Howard J. Fingerhut.

Susan is an award-winning screenwriter whose work has screened internationally. She co-wrote feature film Realization, and has pitched to Hollywood executives. She holds an MFA in cinema art & science. Her play, Thundersnow, was produced in Chicago in 2015.

Jen, a freelance editor and writing coach, was formerly an editor for the New York Times Book Review, the national desk of the Times, and the Washington Post, and a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, at Harvard University. Connect with her at jenbmcdonald.com.

Stephanie co-founded Indigan Storyteller and helped launch the International Storytelling Festival in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her novel, The Lives of Things, was optioned by Totem Films. Her work appears in Feathered Flounder, Still Crazy, Persimmon Tree, Tues/Night, and Celebrating Animal Rescue.

Alice (MAT in English, University of Chicago) has extensive experience helping businesses, students, and individuals define and express themselves through the written word. She is a longtime writing instructor who leads multiple workshops on the North Shore. Her teaching style is personal, energetic, and innovative.

Dr. Dipika Mukherjee’s work, focusing on the politics of modern Asian societies, includes the novels Shambala Junction (which won the UK Virginia Prize for Fiction), and Ode to Broken Things (longlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize as Thunder Demons). She has been mentoring Southeast Asian writers for over two decades and has edited five anthologies of Southeast Asian fiction. She is Contributing Editor for Jaggery and frequently writes for World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review as well as for the media in Malaysia and India. She is core faculty at StoryStudio Chicago. More at dipikamukherjee.com

Ariana won the 2011 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry for her poetry collection Instructions for Preparing Your Skin, wrote the chapbook Our Blood Is Singing, and received a Helene Wurlitzer Fellowship and a Macdowell Colony residency. Her work appears in Painted Bride Quarterly, Southeast Review, and Cimarron Review, among other journals.

Cecilia has had her poetry and prose published in a variety of journals including Quarter After Eight, Fence, The Seneca Review, Triquarterly, and RHINO. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an Illinois Arts Council award and won the Esquire short fiction contest. She is also a CAAP grant recipient. In 2015, she was voted a writer to watch by The Guild Literary Society.

Ms. Pride is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. She received the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) award for her short story “Fried Buffalo.” Her novel inspired by Mama Hawk, the Chicago educator and social activist, is titled Where the River Ends, and she has several short story publications to her credit.

Sarah’s debut novel, Herself When She's Missing, was called “poetic and heartrending” by Booklist. She has written for publications and sites including Salon, The Chicago Sun Times, The Satirist, XO Jane, afterellen.com, Curve Magazine, and Pop Matters. Her fiction has appeared in literary magazines such as Third Coast, Underground Voices, and The Boiler. She was a 2011 recipient of Carve Magazine's Esoteric Fiction Award, and the 2015 first runner up for Midwestern Gothic's Lake Prize, as well as a finalist for Washington Square Review’s 2016 Flash Fiction Award. In addition, she was shortlisted for Zoetrope All Story’s 2016 Short Fiction Contest, receiving an honorable mention. Sarah holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. To learn more, visit https://www.sarahterezrosenblum.com.

Linda is associate director of the University Writing Program at the University of Chicago, where she teaches academic and professional writing and supervises and trains a staff of writing instructors in the humanities and professional schools.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: The Wrong Way To Save Your Life, Once I Was Cool, and Everyone Remain Calm. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Believer, Longreads, Tin House, Guernica, Catapult, Buzzfeed Reader, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, Radio National Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Goodman Theatre, and regularly with The Paper Machete live news magazine at The Green Mill.

Natalie was a recipient of a 2015 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award for her novel-in-progress Home Remedies. She co-authored A 52-Hertz Whale, a young adult novel recently released by Carolrhoda Lab (Lerner). Additionally, her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Santa Clara Review, Cicada magazine, and Sudden Flash Youth, a fiction anthology by Persea Books. Other honors include first prize for fiction in The Atlantic's Student Writing Contest and a Magazine Merit Award from The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She received a MFA from Rainier Writing Workshop. She lives in Glenview with her husband and two children.

Mr. Wasik is the author of seventeen books including The Debt-Free Degree and Keynes's Way to Wealth. He's a regular contributor to The New York Times, Forbes, CBS Moneywatch, AARP, Financial Planning, and has spoken all across North America. As a former columnist for Bloomberg and Reuters, his columns have appeared in newspapers on five continents. He's also been a guest on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, PBS, and radio stations from Australia to Israel.

Tracy is senior associate director of the University Writing Program at the University of Chicago, where she teaches academic and professional writing and supervises and trains a staff of writing instructors in the humanities and professional schools. Weiner received the 2009 Graham School Excellence in Teaching Award.

Ms. Wisenberg is the author of two prose collections, The Sweetheart Is In, and Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, & Other Obsessions, and the nonfiction chronicle The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. She was a feature writer for the Miami Herald and has published prose and poetry in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tikkun, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and many other places. Her nonfiction has appeared in Lilith, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, the Pinch,Crab Orchard Review and Colorado Review, Common Review and The Progressive. Her fiction (excerpts from her novel manuscript, In the House of the World) can be found in Prairie Schooner, Seattle Review and a few other literary magazines. She has been the literary editor of TriQuarterly, and the creative nonfiction editor of Another Chicago Magazine. She's received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the National Endowment for the Humanities.