Description:

We're proud to host Northwestern University's MA/MFA Program's Summer Graduate & Faculty Reading featuring Sarah Dickinson Coogan, Stuart Dybek, Betsy Finesilver Haberl, Carrie Muehle, Simone Muench, Caitlin Sellnow, and Megan Stielstra.

Sarah Dickinson Coogan is the English Department head at Infinity Math, Science and Technology High School in the Little Village Neighborhood in Chicago. She teaches 9th grade English and 12th grade AP Literature and Composition as well as coaches the varsity dance team and the JV soccer team. Sarah received her BA in Creative Writing, Literary Study and Education at Beloit College and recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University. She currently lives in Humboldt Park, Chicago with her husband, who also happens to be a high school teacher. When Sarah is not teaching, coaching athletics, or writing she enjoys traveling, playing soccer, growing tomatoes and basil on her porch, and drinking good wine at a table full of close friends.

Two new collections of fiction by Stuart Dybek, Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern, were published simultaneously by FSG in June 2014. His previous books of fiction are Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, and I Sailed with Magellan. He has also published two volumes of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets In Their Own Ink. His work is widely anthologized and appears in publications such as The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Tin House, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Dybek is the recipient of many literary awards including the PEN/Bernard Malamud Prize for “distinguished achievement in the short story”, a Lannan Award, the Academy Institute Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Harold Washington Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and four O’Henry Prizes. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and in Best American Fiction. In 2007, he was awarded both a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Rea Award for the Short Story. He is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University.

Betsy Finesilver Haberl is a freelance writer and editor. She is a graduate of Northwestern University's MA/MFA in Creative Writing and co-curator of the Sunday Salon Chicago literary reading series. She lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her family.

Carrie Muehle is a graduate of Northwestern University’s MFA program and the Managing Editor of TriQuarterly, Northwestern’s literary magazine. In 2015, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, and was recently chosen to participate in the juried workshops at the 2018 Aspen Summer Words Conference. She writes historical fiction and is currently completing her first novel.

Simone Muench is the author of six full-length poetry collections including Wolf Centos(Sarabande, 2014). Her recent, Suture, is a book of sonnets written with Dean Rader (Black Lawrence, 2017). She and Dean are also editing They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (BLP, 2018). She is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and the Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award, and is professor of English at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. Currently, she serves as faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review and as a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly.

Caitlin Sellnow was born and raised in Minnesota, but she currently lives in Evanston, Illinois. She has earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Northwestern University. By day she works in development, helping to raise money to end world hunger. By night she tells stories about city streets, the people who live there, and the communities they make. She also collects choral sheet music, potluck recipes and increasingly pathetic foster cats.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections, most recently The Wrong Way To Save Your Life which was named Best Nonfiction Book of 2017 by the Chicago Review of Books. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, Poets & Writers, Longreads, Tin House, Guernica, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Goodman Theatre, the Neo-Futurarium, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at The Green Mill. She is currently an artist in residence at Northwestern University.

The event is free and open to the public