Faculty

Permanent Faculty

Michelle Carter, PEN USA Literary Award in Drama (2012, 2003); Susan Glaspell Award (2010); Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination (2011), PEN West Award (2000); Kesselring Prize nomination (2006); Backstage West's Garland Award (2000); Kesselring Prize nomination (2006).  Ground Floor Residency, Berkeley Repertory Theater (2012); Donmar Theatre residency, London (2006).  Dreamspiel, a Ukulele Opera (libretto, lyrics) with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain: Arcola Theatre, London (2008).  Other plays produced and developed: Centenary Stage Company (NJ); Mark Taper Forum (LA); Asolo Repertory Theatre (FL); Clurman Theatre (NY); Abingdon Theatre (NY); Aurora Theatre (Berkeley, Global Age Project); Magic Theatre (SF).  Women's Playwriting Festival (NJ);  Unplugged Festival (FL); Summer Play Festival (NY);  Grimeborn Opera Festival (London);  New Work Festival (LA).  Commissions: Symmetry Theatre (SF); Mark Taper Forum (LA); Magic Theatre (SF); Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (London).  Dance Theater: AFTER ALL, Part I, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (Erika Chong Shuch, choreographer/director).  Play publications: Hillary And Soon-Yi Shop For Ties (Dramatic Publishing), Ted Kaczynski Killed People With Bombs (Dramatic Publishing).  Plays For Actresses II (Vintage).  Novel published by William Morrow and Penguin Books; short stories in Playgirl, Grand Street, New American Writing, 20 Under 30 (Scribners), The New Generation (Doubleday) and other magazines and anthologies.  NEA Grant in Literature; Sloan Foundation Grant; Gulf & Western Foundation Grant; residency, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.  Professor, Creative Writing, San Francisco State University.

Nona Caspers, San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant (2011), Glimmer Train Fiction Award (2010), National Endowment for the Arts Grant (2008).  Little Book of Days (2009) Top Ten Books Small Press Distribution (2009), Heavier than Air: Stories (University of Massachusettes Press 2006) winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction & Editor's Choice New York Times Book Review (2007).  Story publications in literary journals including, The Sun, Glimmer Train, Black Warrior Review, Ontario Review, Iowa Review, New American Writing, Cimarron Review, Arroyo, Green Mountain Review.  Fellowship for Writer in  Residence OSU MFA program (2007), Iowa Review Award in Fiction (2003).  National Grant and Literary Award in Fiction from Barbara Demming  Memorial Foundation (2000, 1989). Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award in Fiction (1995). Honorable Mention Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction (1994). Salt Hill National Literary Fiction Award (2001). Henfield Selection for Excellence in Fiction, SFSU, (1992). Pushcart Nomination (1990), LAMBDA nomination Voyages Out II (1990), author of The Blessed (Silverleaf Press, 1991); Voyages Out 2 with Julie Blackwomon (Seal Press, 1990).  Stories anthologized in HERS 2 & 3: Anthology of Brilliant New Fiction by Lesbian Writers (Faber and Faber), Bless Me Father: Stories of Catholic Childhood, Women on Women 2 (Plume). 

Maxine Chernoff is a professor and Chair of the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University.  She is the author of six books of fiction and thirteen books of poetry. Of Among the Names (Apogee Press, 2005), Cole Swenson said, “exploring complexities of “the gift,” Chernoff’s is an economy of the uncanny—each exchange is strikingly new.” Her recent books of poetry are Without (Shearsman, 2012), To Be Read in the Dark (Omnidawn, 2012) and A House in Summer (Argotist, 2012, online edition),  and The Turning (Apogee Press, 2008).  Her collection of stories, Signs of Devotion, was a New York Times Notable Book of 1993. Both her novel American Heaven (Coffee House Press, 1996)  and her book of short stories, Some of Her Friends That Year (Coffee House Press, 2002), were finalists for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.  With Paul Hoover, she translated The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, (Omnidawn Press, 2008), which received the 2009 Pen U.S.A. Translation Award. She has read her poetry and fiction  and taught workshops in Belgium, England, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Scotland, and China and in the Prague Summer Writing Program, and the SLS Writing Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia. She will be an International Visiting Scholar at the University of Exeter, England, in January of 2013.  She edits the long-running and award-winning journal New American Writing, an annual anthology in its 30th issue, which is partially funded by the College of Liberal & Creative Arts.  She has been a fiction reviewer for the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Among her other awards are five Illinois Arts Council Fellowships,  a Marin Arts Council Fellowship, a PEN Fiction Prize, the Carl Sandburg Award in Poetry, The Chicago Sun-Times Book Award, the Friends of American Writers Fiction Award, an Editors Award from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and a Foreword Book Award for her novel A Boy in Winter.  

Roy Conboy, playwright. Plays produced: Drive My Coche, Teatro Esperanza and San Francisco State University, 1999; Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, 2000; Suburban Canciones, Studio Theatre and Teatro Esperanza (S.F.), 1998; When El Cucui Walks, Seattle Group Theatre and Teatro Esperanza (S.F.), 1995; Camino Confusion/ Confusion Street, SFSU, l993; Dancing With the Missing, San Francisco, l992; El Canto Del Roble/The Song of the Oak, PCPA Theatrefest, Santa Maria CA, l991; Hot Tamale/Tamale Caliente, PCPA Theatrefest, Santa Maria CA, l991; No Mas Suenos/No More Dreams, PCPA Theatrefest, l990; Camino Confusion, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, l990; Buscando American/Seeking America, Multi-Cultural Playwrights Festival, Seattle Group Theatre, l988; Strictly a Formality, Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco, l987; Visitors to My Room, finalist in l979 Playwright's Open Circle Competition, Goucher College; and others.

Camille Dungy, Professor Camille T. Dungy is author of Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press: 2011), Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press: 2010), and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press: (2006). She is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press: 2009); co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea: 2009); and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press: 2006).  Her honors include the 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 California Book Award Silver Medal, two Northern California Book Awards, two NACCP Image Award nominations, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dungy's poems and essays have been published widely in anthologies and print and online journals.

Robert Glück, author of nine books of poetry and fiction, most recently Denny Smith, Clear Cut Press, 2003; as well as Jack the Modernist, High Risk Press, 1995; Margery Kempe, High Risk Press, 1994; Elements of a Coffee Service, Four Seasons Foundation, 1982; and Reader, Lapis Press, 1989. Poetry and fiction published in New Directions Anthology (1988), Best New Gay Fiction 1988 and 1996, Best American Erotica 1996, The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction, and other anthologies. Critical articals appeared in Poetics Journal, The London Times Literary Supplement, Artforum International, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction. He writes for Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors. Gluck was an Associate Editor at Lapis Press, Director of Small Press Traffic Literary Center, and Director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State. California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002, and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant in 2003. He prefaced Between Life and Death, a book of Frank Moore's paintings published by Twin Palms. He's the editor of Narrativity, a website on narrative theory. Named as one of the ten best postmodern fiction writers in North America by the Dictionary of Literary Biography, 1994.

Paul Hoover, thirteen poetry collections, including desolation : souvenir (Omnidawn, 2012), In Idiom and Earth (En el idioma y en la tierra, 2012), translated by María Baranda (Mexico:  Conaculta, 2012), Sonnet 56 (Les Figues, 2009), Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006), Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn, 2005), Winter (Mirror) (Flood Editions, 2002), Rehearsal in Black (Salt Publications, 2001), Totem and Shadow: New & Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1999), Viridian (University of Georgia Press, 1997), and The Novel:  A Poem (New Directions, 1991).  He has also published Fables of Representation: Essays (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and the novel Saigon, Illinois (Vintage Contemporaries, 1988), a chapter of which appeared in The New Yorker. Translations include Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (with Maxine Chernoff, Omnidawn, 2008) and, with Nguyen Do, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008) and Beyond the Court Gate:  Selected Poems of Nguyen Trai (Counterpath Press, 2010).  He is editor of the anthology Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994; 2nd Edition, 2013) and co-editor of the annual literary magazine New American Writing.  Frederick Bock Award for best poetry published in Poetry, 2010; PEN-USA Translation Award for Hölderlin volume, 2009; Jerome J. Shestack Prize for best poetry published in American Poetry Review, 2002; Carl Sandberg Award for poetry, 1987; General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers, 1984; NEA Fellowship in Poetry, 1980. Previously employed at Columbia College Chicago, where he founded a number of programs and Columbia Poetry Review, he has taught at SFSU since 2003.

Daniel J. Langton, author of Querencia, University of Missouri Press (Devins Award), 1975; The Inheritance, a play produced by the Julian Theatre, 1980; The Hogarth-Selkirk Letters, 1985; Life Forms, Cheltenham Press, 1995; Greatest Hits, 2000, The Sonnets, 2005, During Our Walks, 2012. Poems in Three Penny Review, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, The Nation, The American Scholar, The Iowa Review, and other magazines and journals. Winner of the Devins Award for Poetry, the Hart Crane Award, the London Prize, the Browning Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Award and the Roberts Prize.

Toni Mirosevich, author of Pink Harvest ( Mid-List Press, 2007), winner of the First Series in Creative Nonfiction Award and a 2007 Lambda Literary Award finalist; Queer Street (Custom Words, 2005), My Oblique Strategies (Thorngate Road, 2005) winner of the Frank O’Hara Award Chapbook Award, The Rooms We Make Our Own (Firebrand Books, 1996) and co-author of Trio: Toni Mirosevich, Charlotte Muse, Edward Smallfield (Specter Press, 1995). Pushcart nominations in poetry (2005, 2006, 2007), Astraea Foundation Emerging Lesbian Writer in Fiction Award, 1999. Fellowships with the MacDowell Colony (2004), Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2005), and Espy Literary Foundation (2004, 2007). Writings anthologized in Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, Best American Travel Writing, The Impossible Will Take A Little While, AutoBioDiversity, Revenge and Forgiveness, Against Certainty: Poets for Peace. Poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in Utne, Gastronomica, Five Fingers Review, Puerto del Sol, The Journal, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Zyzzyva and elsewhere. Served as Associate Director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives from 1996-1998.

Peter Orner, author of a story collection, Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) as well as two novels, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006) and Love and Shame Love (Little, Brown, 2011).  (Houghton Mifflin/​ Mariner, 2001) Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. The collection will be re-issued by Little, Brown in 2013 with a new forward by Marilynne Robinson.  The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a novel set in Namibia, won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.  Love and Shame and Love was a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book and is a Finalist for the California Book Award.  Orner’s fiction has been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, and Japanese. A new collection of stories Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge will be published by Little, Brown in Fall, 2013. Orner’s fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Granta, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, The Believer, The Southern Review, The Forward, The San Francisco Chronicle, Bomb, and Ploughshares. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and twice won a Pushcart Prize. Orner was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2006), as well as the two-year Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship (2007-2008). A film version of one of Orner’s stories, “The Raft” with a screenplay by Orner and the film’s director, Rob Jones, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner. Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney’s/​ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visiting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visiting Law Faculty, 2000). A native of Chicago, Orner is an associate professor at San Francisco State.

Chanan Tigay: Author of the forthcoming Unholy Scriptures: Fraud, Suicide, Scandal—and the Bible that Rocked the Holy City (Ecco/HarperCollins), and two long works of nonfiction, The Special Populations Unit: Arab Soldiers in Israel’s Army (McSweeney’s) and Nuclear Meltdown, released on the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan (Rodale Press). A shorter article culled from this work was recently shortlisted for the Folio: Eddies Award. Tigay was awarded the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s 2011-2012 Investigative Reporting Fellowship, where he worked on a documentary film about Israel’s opposition to the Iranian nuclear program for PBS “Frontline.” His journalism has appeared in publications including Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Jerusalem Post. Among other postings, he has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Jerusalem bureau of Agence France-Presse; the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the church abuse scandals for AFP’s New York bureau; the anthrax attacks and Ground Zero recovery work for United Press International; and the United Nations for The Jerusalem Report magazine. He has interviewed leading American politicians including Hillary Clinton and John McCain along with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres. Tigay has taught courses in Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program on novel writing, the “writing life,” creative non-fiction, magazine and feature writing; and was a writing instructor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He has received residency fellowships at Yaddo, the Blue Mountain Center and the Mesa Refuge. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and a BA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Philadelphia, Tigay is an assistant professor at San Francisco State.

Part-time Faculty

Dodie Bellamy, Matthew Clark Davison, Donna de la Perrière, Steve Dickison, Anne Galjour, Frances Phillips, Camille Roy, Brian Thorstenson, Barbara Tomash, Truong Tran

Current Visiting Faculty

Katie Crouch, Junse Kim, Domenic Stansberry

Past Visiting Faculty: May-lee Chai, Norma Cole, Dan Coshnear, Mary DeNardo, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Gevirtz, Elizabeth Gjelten, Alice La Plante, Jaime Robles, Paul Bailiff, Catherine Brady, Phyllis Burke, Lewis Buzbee, Thaisa Frank,  Jewelle Gomez, Michael Palmer, Ann Packer, Frances Phillips, Elizabeth Robinson, Karl Soehnlein, Terese Svoboda, Gail Tsukiyama, Marianne Villanueva, Laura Walker, Chet Wiener