Profile

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the debut essay collection Tomboyland, which was named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, and Electric Literature and received a 2021 award for outstanding literary achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Bitch, Ms. Magazine, Lit Hub, Brooklyn Rail, and Prairie Schooner, among others; received a notable selection in Best American Essays; and will appear in the anthology Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Update Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic for a New Era, forthcoming from Harper Perennial in May 2022.

The former senior editor of Poets & Writers Magazine, she has taught creative writing at Denison University, Kenyon College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Catapult in New York City. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. melissafaliveno.com »

Education

MFA | Sarah Lawrence

BA | University of Wisconsin

Tarfia Faizullah

Faculty, MFA in Writing [Poetry], Visiting Poet, Summer 2016

Wanjikū Wa Ngūgī

Faculty, MFA in Writing [fiction]

Adam McOmber

Faculty Co-chair, MFA in Writing [fiction/hybrid forms]; Editor in Chief, Hunger Mountain Review

Barbara Hurd

Faculty, MFA in Writing [CNF]

Philip Metres

Faculty, MFA in Writing [poetry]

Ellen Lesser

Faculty, MFA in Writing [fiction]; Director, Postgraduate Writers' Conference