Writers'
Workshop
For more than 20 years, Williston’s Writers’ Workshop Series has brought celebrated authors to campus to teach, share insights on the writing process, and inspire the next generation of writers. We’ve hosted screen writers, poets, editors, novelists, journalists, and memoirists, including multiple winners of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. For students in the Writers’ Workshop class, the trimester involves the study of a visiting author, culminating in a master class and community-wide reading. Read an article about the 20th anniversary of the Writers’ Workshop.
2019-20 Writers' Workshop Presenters
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Debra Immergut
October 14: Debra Immergut is the author of The Captives, a finalist for a 2019 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, published by Ecco/HarperCollins and in over a dozen other countries. Her next novel, You Again, is forthcoming from Ecco in 2020. She is a MacDowell and Michener fellow and has an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She has published literary work in American Short Fiction and Narrative, and journalism in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, New York magazine, among other places. She lives in western Massachusetts, where she teaches writing in a variety of settings, including libraries and prisons.
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Jim Shepard
October 28: Jim Shepard has written seven novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Jewish Literature, the PEN/New England Award for Fiction, and the Clark Fiction Prize, and five story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner. Seven of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and two for Pushcart Prizes. He’s also won the Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction and the ALEX Award from the American Library Association. He teaches at Williams College.
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Manuel Gonzales
November 5: Manuel Gonzales is the author of the novel The Regional Office is Under Attack! and the acclaimed story collection The Miniature Wife, winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. A graduate of the Columbia University Creative Writing Program, he teaches writing at the University of Kentucky and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He has published fiction and nonfiction in Open City, Fence, One Story, Esquire, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and The Believer. Gonzales lives in Kentucky with his wife and two children.
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April Bernard
February 17: April Bernard grew up in New England, where she was educated at Harvard University. Upon receiving her bachelor’s degree, she moved to New York City to work in publishing, eventually serving as senior editor of Vanity Fair. Bernard left publishing in order to pursue a Ph.D. in English literature from Yale University. Her first book, Blackbird Bye Bye (Random House, 1989), earned the 1989 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Other books of poetry include Brawl & Jag (W. W. Norton, 2016), Romanticism (W. W. Norton, 2009), Swan Electric (2002), and Psalms (1995). She is the author of a novel, Pirate Jenny (W. W. Norton, 1990). Bernard is the recipient of many honors, including a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship. She has taught at Amherst College and Baruch College, and she now teaches at Skidmore College and in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at Bennington College. She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.
A Selection of Past Presenters
Colum McCann
Irish-born journalist and novelist Colum McCann discussed his National-Book-Award-winning novel Let the Great World Spin with classes, and made the case for reading’s being a gateway to empathy.
Anita Shreve
The late best-selling author of The Pilot’s Wife and The Weight of Water—a parent of two Williston graduates—Anita Shreve spoke to students about her stories that describe “life intensely felt.”
Jennifer duBois
Award-winning writer Jennifer duBois ’02 has twice led workshops at Williston, first with her acclaimed debut novel A Partial History of Lost Causes, and then for its follow-up, the “psychologically astute” Cartwheel.
Nic Stone
New York Times best-selling author Nic Stone discussed her debut novel Dear Martin, whose protagonist opens a literary dialogue with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her second novel is Odd One Out.
Mo Willems
Mo Willems P’19 told his Williston audience that he writes “incomprehensible books for illiterates,” which was his way of saying that the pigeon and other iconic characters he’s invented are co-created by his readers.
Richard Russo
Richard Russo’s Pulitzer-Prizing-winning novel Empire Falls is “grounded,” says New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott, “in the New England bedrock of class-bound fatalism.”
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Past Visiting Writers by Year
2018
Dr. Roger Reeves
Naomi Jackson
Jen Acker
Karen Shepard2017
Madeleine Blais P’00, ’04
Timothy Donnelly
Colum McCann
Nic Stone2016
Steve Bloom
Keri Smith
Laura Tillman
Andy Ward2015
Ian Cheney
John Katzenbach P’00, ’04
David Maraniss
Debra Monroe2014
George Colt
Jennifer duBois
Anne Fadiman
Joan Wickersham2013
Elinor Lipman P’00
Rebecca Makkai
Patricia McCormick
Mary Jo Salter2012
Christopher Benfey
Jennifer duBois ’02
Anita Shreve
Mo Willems2011
Lynne Barrett
Andre Dubus III
Nikky Finney
Alison Pace1998-2010
Anita Shreve
Anthony Giardin
Arthur Golden
Augusten Burroughs
Bill Littlefield
Bret Lott
Cammie McGovern
Cathleen Schine
Chic Eglee
Chris Bohjalian
Curtis Sittenfeld
Daniel Jones
David Huddle
David Stern
Deborah Monroe
Elinor Lipman
Elizabeth Alexander
Frederick Reiken
Gregory Maguire
Helen Fremont
James Tate
Jill McCorkle
Joan Wickersham
Jodi Picoult
John Edgar Weideman
John Katzenbach
John Marks
Jonathan Harr
Joseph Ellis
Joseph Nocera
Kevin Sweeney
Kurt Brown
Laure-Anne Bosselaire
Les Standiford
Madeleine Blais
Mameve Medwed
Martín Espada
Mary Jo Salter
Meg Wolitzer
Nora Raleigh Baskin
Pam Houston
Peter Smith
Philip Caputo
Richard Russo
Robert Meeropol
Roland Merullo
Seabastian Stuart
Stacy Schiff
Sue Miller
Susan Snively
Suzanne Strempek Shea
Thomas French
Tom Perrotta
Tracy Kidder
Wally Lamb
Wyn Cooper
