Yale Writers' Workshop Faculty Bios

Christina Chiu is the winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty, a Kirkus Best of 2020 pick. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints.  Troublemaker was a nominee for a BOMC Stephen Crane First Fiction Award, and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu has published in Tin House, The New Guard, Electric Literature, and NextTribe. She has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, and elsewhere. Chiu is a literary curator and hosts of the Pen Parentis Literary Salon and Let’s Talk Books. She is a founding member of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She received her MFA from Columbia University. She is a shoe designer.June 5 at 3:30 pm

Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Her novels have been translated into eighteen languages. Schroder was a New York Times Notable Book, and was shortlisted for UK’s The Folio Prize in 2014. Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. Amity is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship, fellowships at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies, and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Yale. June 9 at 730 pm

Mark Gottlieb is a prominent literary agent working at book publishing’s leading literary agency Trident Media Group in New York City. He has ranked highly among literary agents across the industry for overall number of deals. While at Trident Media Group, Mark Gottlieb has represented New York Times bestselling authors as well as award-winning authors. He has optioned and sold numerous books for film and TV adaptation. June 10 at 2 pm

Ainissa Ramirez, Ph.D., is an award-winning scientist and science communicator, who is the author of The Alchemy of Us. A graduate of Brown University, she earned her doctorate in materials science and engineering from Stanford. She began her career as a scientist at Bell Labs and held faculty positions at MIT and Yale. She has written for Time, The Atlantic, and Scientific American, and has explained science headlines on CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS. June 6th at 2 pm

신 선 영 辛善英 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born poet and multi-genre artist based in Minneapolis. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Wet Hex (2022) and has edited three anthologies of essays: What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food & Family (2021); A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota; and (is the co-editor of) Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. She is also the author/co-author of two illustrated books for children including Where We Come From (2022). June 6 at 3:30 pm

Rubén Degollado’s stories have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Image and recently anthologized in Living Beyond Borders, and Nepantla Familias. His debut novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters best YA Book for 2020. WWNorton will publish his collection of short stories, The Family Izquierdo, in 2022. June 13 at 7 pm

Keith Lesmeister is the author of the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. He is a founding editor of EastOver Press and Cutleaf. His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Gettysburg Review, New Stories from the Midwest, North American Review, Redivider, SLICE, and many others. His nonfiction has appeared in The Good Men Project, River Teeth, Sycamore Review,Tin House Open Bar, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Iowa’s Driftless region. June 16th at 2 pm

Author of five books, Before and After the Book Deal and the memoir, The Year of the Horses.  A nominee for the Joyce Carol Oates prize and the host of the monthly Beyond Fiction conversation series at Edith Wharton’s The Mount, Courtney’s essays and articles on creativity have been widely published in outlets like The New York Times and Interview Magazine, and her short story This is Not Your Fault was recently turned into an Audible Original. Courtney is also the founder of the learning collaborative, The Cabins. June 16 at 12:30 pm and July 15 at 11 am