The Yale Young Writers Workshop faculty consists of experienced and accomplished writers who are dedicated to mentoring young, emerging voices. The faculty members bring diverse backgrounds and expertise in various genres, providing a dynamic learning environment. Through personalized feedback and guidance, they help students refine their writing skills and explore their creative potential. Each faculty member is committed to fostering a supportive atmosphere for young writers to grow and develop their craft.
Kristin Bair writes funny, ferocious stories and essays about women negotiating the complexities of family, ambition, and identity. She is the author of four novels, including Clementine Crane Prefers Not To and Agatha Arch Is Afraid of Everything (dubbed a Best New Book by People magazine). A devotee of rage and coffee, she teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University and is a fiction editor at Pangyrus literary magazine.
Jotham Burrello is the director of the Yale Writers’ Workshop. His novel Spindle City was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, and he is a proud winner of The New Yorker caption contest. He teaches writing at Central Connecticut State University, directs the CT Lit Fest, and is the former publisher of the award-winning Elephant Rock Books.
Sarah Darer Littman writes middle-grade and young adult literature for thinking human beings. Her YA novels explore the intersection between teens and technology, and her middle grade novels explore friendships, family and fart euphemisms. Sarah teaches in the MFA program at Western CT State University. As a columnist she’s written for Hearst CT, CTNewsJunkie.com, School Library Journal, The African-American Policy Forum, Huffington Post, and CNN.com.
Lara Ehrlich is the author of the novel Bind Me Tighter Still and the story collection Animal Wife, winner of Red Hen Press’s Fiction Award, and her work has appeared in various literary journals. Lara is the host of Writer Mother Monster, a conversation series for writer-mothers, and the founder and director of Thought Fox Writers Den, a creative writing center. She is a Visiting Professor of English and Writer in Residence at Connecticut College.
Summer Tate has been writing and performing poetry for over 30 years. Her poetry has been widely published, and she was the poetry editor for Woodhall Press. She teaches English in Hartford, CT, and has been an adjunct professor. Summer holds a BA from Bay Path University, an MA from UCONN, and an MFA from Fairfield University. She is a PhD researcher in American and African American Literature at Howard University.
Jacqueline Feldman is a writer from Connecticut and the author of two books in which a narrative arises out of fieldwork-like procedures. On Your Feet (dispersed holdings, 2024) is built around experiments in translating a single story while Precarious Lease (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2025) grew out of years of reporting in occupied buildings in the Paris region. A graduate of Yale and the EHESS-Paris, she until recently taught first-year writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Pam writes for magazines as an essayist and cultural critic. She has written for many publications, including The Atlantic, LitHub, The New York Times Magazine, and American Theatre. She was a book critic for O the Oprah Magazine, a theatre critic for Time Out New York, and one of the original bloggers for the Huffington Post. She teaches non-fiction writing in the English department at Yale and is the Pauli Murray Residential College Writing Tutor.
Emily Skillings is the author of the poetry collections Fort Not and Tantrums in Air. The Times named Tantrums in Air one of the Best Poetry Books of 2025. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Harper’s, Granta, The Yale Review, and the New York Review of Books. She’s received residencies and fellowships from the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Skillings currently teaches creative writing at NYU and Columbia.
Anne Thalheimer is an artist and educator whose work in visual culture, autobio comix, and independent publishing spans three decades. Her work (both academic and graphic) has appeared in numerous collections, including the MLA’s Teaching The Graphic Novel; she is a long-term reviewer for Xerography Debt and a former contributor to both Fleen and PopMatters. Mostly she likes drawing monsters, cats, and cute food. Anne holds a PhD in English from the University of Delaware.
Lecture Date: Thursday, June 26, 2025 @ 11:15 am
Hi! My name’s Taylor Onyinanya and I'm a 2023 Yale Young Writers’ Workshop Alum! I love creative writing, particularly fiction/flash fiction, and I'm so grateful to be a co-founder of The Literary Palette, a literary magazine started by my fellow YYWW alumni. I'm also passionate about raising awareness for adolescents’ mental health and hope through my stories and blog posts I can spread creativity and positive messages to my readers and fellow writers.
Lecture Date: Friday, June 6, 2025 @ 2:00 pm
A native Parisian, she got her start in NYC publishing by joining The Joy Harris Literary Agency in 1999. She is primarily interested in character-driven fiction, memoirs, and YA. Authors with whom she has worked include New York Times bestsellers, as well as winners of the Lambda Literary Award, the Ribalow Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Awards among others.
Lecture Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2025 @ 2:00 pm
Antoinette Brim-Bell (Antoinette Brim), Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three poetry collections: These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, Brim-Bell is a Professor of English at CT State Community College, Capital.
Lecture Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2025 @ 2:00 pm
Jake Halpern is a journalist, bestselling author, and the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. His nonfiction book on debt collectors, Bad Paper, was excerpted for the Times Magazine. His acclaimed book on refugees, Welcome to the New World, expanded his Pulitzer-winning series in the Times; was a New York Times best book of the year. Jake’s debut work of fiction, Dormia, has been hailed by the American Library Association's Booklist as a worthy heir to the Harry Potter series.