The Writers' Institute
Faculty

Faculty

Current Editors

Senior Editor, The New Yorker magazine

Leo Carey is a Senior Editor at The New Yorker magazine, where he has worked for fifteen years, starting out as an assistant. He was born in Oxford, England and studied English Literature at Oxford University. As an editor at The New Yorker, he has worked on a wide range of non-fiction: profiles, memoir, foreign news reporting, and writings on finance, architecture, books, music, and science. Away from the magazine, he has also edited various books, both fiction and non-fiction. His own writings have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Executive Editor, GQ

Christopher Cox is an editor at The New York Times Magazine and an editor-at-large at Orion. He was formerly the chief editor of Harper’s Magazine and executive editor of GQ, where he worked on stories that won the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN Literary Award for Journalism, and multiple National Magazine Awards. His book The Deadline Effect was published in 2021 by Avid Reader Press and has been translated into eight languages.

Editorial Director, New York Review Books

Edwin Frank surrounded by books, editor for Writers' Institute

Edwin Frank is the founder of the New York Review Books Classics series and the editorial director of New York Review Books. He is the author of Snake Train: Poems 1984-2013.

President of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Jonathan Galassi is the President of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1949. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, and Cambridge University, where he earned an M.A. in 1973. He has worked at Houghton Mifflin and Random House and, since 1986, at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Among the writers he has worked with are Alice McDermott, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, Marilynne Robinson, Denis Johnson, Lydia Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, and Michael Cunningham. Mr. Galassi has published three books of poems and has translated the work of the Italian poets Eugenio Montale, Giacomo Leopardi, and Primo Levi. His first novel, Muse, was published in 2016. His second, School Days, will appear in 2022.

Executive Travel Editor, Town & Country magazine

Klara Glowczewska is the executive travel editor of Town & Country magazine. Previously, from 2005 to 2014, she was editor in chief of Conde Nast Traveler. She started at the magazine at its 1987 inception as a senior editor, was subsequently its literary and then features editor, and from 1992 to 2005, its executive editor. She has also edited for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair; spent three years as an editor at The New York Review of Books, and prior to that worked for six years as a book editor at Random House. Glowczewska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Cairo, Egypt, and New Canaan, Connecticut. She received her B.A. magna cum laude from Yale, where she majored in English, and has translated several books from the Polish: the novel The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, by Andrzej Szczypiorski (Grove), and the last three books by the internationally acclaimed Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (all published by Alfred A. Knopf)—Imperium, on the Soviet Union; The Shadow of the Sun, on Africa; and Travels with Herodotus.

Editor

John Knight is an independent editor who works with publishers, agents, and authors across the country. He was an acquiring editor for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and has worked for New Directions, McSweeney’s, and n+1. He was a founder of the long-form journalism magazine Once, and has worked on bestselling and award-winning novels, essay collections, biographies, memoirs, translations, and nonfiction. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, and his own writing has appeared in The New York Times, Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine, Nautilus, Music + Literature, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Executive Editor, Simon & Schuster

Robert Messenger is an executive editor at Simon & Schuster. His first two decades in publishing were spent at newspapers and magazines. He started his career as a junior editor at the New Criterion. In 2002, he was one of the founding editors of the New York Sun, the first new broadsheet newspaper in the city in more than fifty years, and the architect of its highly regarded arts and sports sections. He helped revitalize the Atlantic with its move to Washington, D.C., in 2005. In 2010, he created the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday “Books” supplement and for seven years managed all the paper’s book reviewing. In 2017, he became executive editor of the Weekly Standard. He has written for periodicals from the Times Literary Supplement to the Yale Review on subjects as varied as the classic cocktail revival, the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and the achievement of Benjamin Britten. He has been a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes and other awards.

Executive Editor, Riverhead Books

Calvert Morgan is an executive editor at Riverhead Books. He has acquired and edited acclaimed and bestselling works of fiction and nonfiction by authors including Brandon Taylor (Real Life, Filthy Animals, The Late Americans), Akwaeke Emezi (The Death of Vivek Oji, Dear Senthuran), Lidia Yuknavitch (Thrust, The Book of Joan), Jess Walter (The Zero, Beautiful Ruins), Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist), Eula Biss (Having and Being Had), Eloghosa Osunde (Vagabonds!), Kristen Arnett (With Teeth), Kate Zambreno (Drifts, The Light Room), Hermione Hoby (Virtue), and Jerry Saltz (How to Be An Artist, Art Is Life). Previously with HarperCollins and St. Martin’s Press, he also serves on the board of the Center for Fiction, the only organization in the country devoted exclusively to fiction.

Editor in Chief, One Story

Patrick Ryan is the editor-in-chief of One Story. He’s the author of the short story collection The Dream Life of Astronauts (named of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-Dispatch, Electric Literature, LitHub, and Refinery 29, and long-listed for The Story Prize) and Send Me (a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize). He’s also the author of three novels for young adults. His fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Tin House, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from MacDowell and the National Endowment for the Arts and is the former associate editor of Granta. He lives in New York City.

Former Editor of The New York Times Book Review

Sam Tanenhaus is currently the U.S. Writer-at-Large for the British montly Prospect. He was named editor, Book Review of The New York Times in March 2004. Mr. Tanenhaus had previously worked for The Times from 1997 until 1999 as the assistant editor to the Op-Ed pages. He has also written for the Book Review and the Op-Ed page, as well as Arts & Ideas, the Week in Review and The Times Magazine. While at The Times, he was a contributing editor for Vanity Fair from May 1999 until March 2004, where he wrote feature articles on politics and culture. Other journals Mr. Tanenhaus has written articles for include The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, National Review, The New Criterion, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Fortune, The American Scholar, Partisan Review, Commentary, Correspondence, and Slate. Mr. Tanenhaus has also published “Whittaker Chambers: A Biography” (Random House, 1997; Modern Library paperback, 1998), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography in 1997, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1997 and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1998. He is currently writing a biography of William Buckley Jr. Mr. Tanenhaus has lectured and made appearances at the White House, various schools of journalism, including Columbia University, Harvard and Yale, institutions such as the Smithsonian, and various television and radio programs.

Institutions from which Mr. Tanenhaus has received grants and awards include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. He has also been an affiliated writer at the New York University School of Journalism from September 2002 until June 2003, a media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a juror on the Pulitzer Prize Committee on Biography in 2000, and has been a member of the Society of American Historians since 1999. Born on October 31, 1955, Mr. Tanenhaus received a B.A. in English from Grinnell College in 1977 and a M.A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1978. Mr. Tanenhaus is married and has one child. He lives in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Vice President and Senior Editor at W.W. Norton & Company

Matt Weiland is a Vice President and Senior Editor at W.W. Norton & Company, where he publishes a wide range of both fiction and nonfiction. Previously, he worked as an editor at Ecco, Granta Books, and The New Press, as well as at three literary magazines—The Paris Review, Granta, and The Baffler. He also managed a documentary radio unit at NPR. Weiland is the co-editor of three bestselling anthologies, including most recently State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, with Sean Wilsey. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. Originally from Minneapolis, he lives in Brooklyn.

Editors on our Faculty

Director of The Writers' Institute and Chair of The Graduate Center's doctoral program in Comparative Literature

André Aciman (photo credit: Sigrid Estrada)

André Aciman is the author of Out of Egypt: A Memoir and the collection of essays False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory. He has also co–authored and edited The Proust Project and Letters of Transit, and most recently has written two novels, Call Me By your Name and Eight White Nights. His forthcoming essays Alibis will be published in October 2011. Born in Alexandria, he lived in Italy and France. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at Princeton University and Bard College and is currently the chair of The Graduate Center's doctoral program in Comparative Literature. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship from The New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The New Republic.

Director, Harvard University Press

George Andreou is Director at Harvard University Press. He is a graduate of Harvard College and pursued graduate work in literature at Yale. Among the authors he has published as an editor at Knopf are V.S. Naipaul, James D. Watson, John Keegan, Adam Gopnik and Orhan Pamuk.

Senior Editor, The New Yorker magazine

Co-Founder and publisher, Europa Editions

Kent Carroll began his career at Grove Press in 1970 where he became editorial director. Among the authors he published are Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Gilbert Sorrentino and Marguerite Duras. He also acquired the novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Later he founded Carroll & Graf where he was the publisher and editorial director. Among the many fiction and non-fiction writers he edited and published there are Beryl Bainbridge, Anthony Burgess, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Alice Munro. He is currently the co-founder and publisher of Europa Editions where he has recently published Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Mr. Carroll’s articles have appeared in journals such as The Times Literary Supplement and The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Carroll is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a master degree from the University of Wisconsin (Madison).

Executive Editor at GQ

Contributing Writer, THe Atlantic

Rachel Donadio is a Paris-based writer and journalist, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a former Rome Bureau Chief and European Culture correspondent for The New York Times. She was previously a writer and editor at The New York Times Book Review. She regularly publishes textured feature stories and profiles at the intersection of culture and politics, as well as literary reportage and criticism. She has reported from more than two dozen countries and interviewed heads of state as well as major cultural figures, including four Nobel Laureates in literature. Her work appears in publications ranging from The New York Review of Books to Vogue.

Editor, Freeman's

John Freeman is the author and editor of ten books including Tales of Two Americas, Dictionary of the Undoing, The Park, How to Read a Novelist, and, with Tracy K Smith, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love. His anthology, Tales of Two Planets, about the climate crisis and inequality, has been taught in college programs around America. In 2021 he edited The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, showcasing fifty years of the form, from Toni Cade Bambara to Manuel Muñoz. His own work has been translated into twenty-four languages, and published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he now publishes Freeman's, a literary annual published around the world in English and several other languages. An executive editor at Knopf, he lives in New York and teaches creative writing at NYU.

President of Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Executive Travel Editor, Town & Country magazine

Executive Editor, Time Magazine

Radhika Jones is Executive Editor at Time Magazine and Time.com, where she also writes about books. She has worked as an editor at The Paris Review, Artforum and The Moscow Times, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum and Bomb magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and has written introductions to Great Expectations, David Copperfield and A Room with a View.

Editor

Opinion Columns Editor, Bloomberg

Jonathan I. Landman edits opinion columns for Bloomberg. He moved to Bloomberg in 2013 after a 26-year career at the New York Times, first as editor-at-large and then as managing editor of the opinion section before cutting back to half-time in 2019. His last of many jobs at the Times was culture editor; before that, he had been deputy managing editor responsible for initiating the transformation of the newsroom from its historical print mission to one focused on digital journalism. He previously served as assistant managing editor for enterprise, metropolitan editor, editor of the Week in Review, and deputy Washington editor, among other jobs. Mr. Landman received a B.A. degree, magna cum laude, in American history from Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., in 1974 and an M.S. degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1978. He was a trustee of Amherst College from 2003-2009.

Books Editor of The Wall Street Journal

Robert Messenger is the Books Editor of The Wall Street Journal. He was formerly a senior editor of The Weekly Standard and deputy managing editor of the Atlantic Monthly. In 2002, he helped to found The New York Sun newspaper, where he created and edited its Arts&Letters section and its sports pages. He has also worked at The New Criterion and various academic publishers. He writes regularly about books and culture.

Deputy senior Editor of The Wall Street Journal

Michael W. Miller is The Wall Street Journal's Senior Editor, Features, overseeing the Review, Exchange, Off Duty, and Mansion sections, WSJ Magazine, sports and crossword puzzles. He first worked for the Journal as a summer intern in the New York bureau in 1983 and the following year joined the paper's San Francisco bureau as a reporter covering technology. He returned to the New York bureau in August 1986 and continued to cover the technology industry. He became a senior special writer in September 1993 and covered health care and mental health. In December 1994, he was named a news editor for the media and marketing group, and in July 1997, he was named Marketplace editor. He became Page One editor in April 2000 and held that position for seven years.

Born in New York City, Mr. Miller graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in English. While at Harvard, he was the managing editor of the Harvard Crimson. Mr. Miller lives in Manhattan with his wife, Sarah Paul, a physician.

Writer-at-large, The New York Times Magazine

Nathaniel Rich is the author of the novels King Zeno, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The Mayor’s Tongue, and two works of nonfiction: Second Nature and Losing Earth, a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award, and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics. Rich was awarded the 2017 Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction and is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction. Rich is a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Editor in Chief, One Story

Staff Editor, The New York Times Book Review

Jennifer Schuessler — Writers' Institute

Jennifer Schuessler is staff editor at The New York Times Book Review. Before joining The Times in 2003, she was an editor at The New York Review of Books and The Boston Globe's Sunday Ideas section. A graduate of Harvard University, she has contributed articles on books and culture to a number of publications, including The Times Book Review, The New York Review, The American Scholar, and The Washington Post.

Staff Writer, The New York Times Book Review

Parul Sehgal is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She was previously a book critic at the New York Times, where she also worked as a senior editor and columnist. She has won awards from the New York Press Club and National Book Critics Circle for her criticism.

Senior Executive Editor of Bloomberg Opinion

David Shipley is senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He was deputy editorial page editor and Op-Ed page editor of the New York Times, and served in the Clinton administration as special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter. Shipley is co-author of SEND, a guide to email.

Former Editor of The New York Times Book Review

Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, One Story

Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction’s first novel prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is a national bestseller and has been optioned for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing.

Former Features Director, O, the Oprah Magazine

Patricia Towers has been the features director at O, the Oprah Magazine since 2002, and a member of The Corporation of Yaddo since 1995. Mrs. Towers began her editorial career at Time magazine, was a founding editor of Vanity Fair and of the weekly magazine Seven Days, which won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. She has held a number of highly regarded positions in book publishing and journalism, including Harcourt, Brace and Mirabella and Elle magazines. She also served as an editor at The New York Times Book Review. Throughout her career, she has championed writers, working with leading authors and nurturing newcomers. Mrs. Towers is a graduate of New York University.

Vice President and Senior Editor at W.W. Norton & Company

Executive Editor, The New Yorker

Dorothy Wickenden has been the executive editor of The New Yorker since January 1996. She is the author of The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights (2021) and the New York Times bestseller Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West (2011). She also edited The New Republic Reader: 80 Years of Opinion and Debate” (1994). Wickenden is the moderator of The New Yorker's weekly podcast “Politics and More.” The national affairs editor at Newsweek from 1993-1995, and previously the executive editor of The New Republic, she has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and The Wilson Quarterly. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1988-1989 and a MacDowell Fellow in 2018.