Nonfiction: Related Content
![Photo of Anna Gazmarian by Joe Lindsay](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/anna.png?itok=-1imyybd)
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Anna Gazmarian (MFA, ’20, Nonfiction) began work on what would become her debut, Devout: A Memoir of Doubt (Simone & Schuster, 2024), while she was a nonfiction student in the Bennington Writing Seminars. The book chronicles her struggles with bipolar disorder as a member of the Evangelical community, where prayer was posited as the only solution to mental health distress. I talked to Anna on the heels of her book tour. Among other things, we discuss writing, publishing, and going to church at the gym.
![stack of 2023 books in library at Bennington](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/20231116-holiday-e-card-2023-for-web-david-morelos-img_5868.png?itok=prUQlgfS)
The latest additions to Bennington’s rich literary history have hit bookstore shelves. Their authors join Bennington notables, including Donna Tartt '86, Kiran Desai '93, Michael Pollan '76, Ann Goldstein '71, Anaïs Duplan '14, Anne Waldman '66, Cynthia Sweeney MFA '13, Jamie Quatro MFA '09, Amy Gerstler '01, Morgan Jerkins MFA '16, and Charles Bock '97.
![Eula Biss](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/eula_bliss.png?itok=8QdeZ0gz)
Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member Eula Biss has been selected as a 2023 New America National Fellow.
![Image of Forbes 30 Under 30 Logo](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Forbes-30-under-30-logo300.jpg?itok=7c_A_Giv)
Bennington College alum Asad J. Malik '19 and Bennington Writing Seminars alum Morgan Jerkins MFA '16 have been selected as 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees.
![Maya Healers](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Maya%20Healers%20300x225.jpg?itok=eSITTw6r)
Fran Antmann ’69 recently published Maya Healers: A Thousand Dreams (Nirala Publications, 2017).
![cover of threat bennington review issue three](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/bennington-review-3_300x225_new_0.jpg?itok=jDoJrb0N)
NewPages.com glowingly reviewed issue three of Bennington Review, calling it "an incredibly strong issue put forth by an excellent journal."
![2017 Jaffe award winners group photo](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/2017JaffeWinners_300x225.jpg?itok=-4M9JJMt)
Shawna Kay Rodenberg MFA '12 has been awarded a $30,000 grant by The Rona Jaffe Foundation, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country.
![book cover](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/feast_300x225.jpg?itok=j-5_0RO9)
Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen, the debut memoir by Hannah Howard MFA '18, is forthcoming from Little A/Amazon in April 2018.
![Best American Essays](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/best%20american%20essays.jpg?itok=S3kCK803)
Five alumni of Bennington’s MFA in Writing program were distinguished in The Best American Essays 2017 for their notable essays published in the previous year.
![Andrea Jarrell](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Andrea_Jarrell.jpg?itok=yNLRX0g8)
Andrea Jarrell MFA ’01 was profiled in Publishers Weekly for her “spellbinding … gracefully written” new memoir, I’m the One Who Got Away.
![Fred Hampton](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/fred%20hampton.jpg?itok=QrAcdKw2)
A book by Jeffrey Haas MFA ’07 on the 1969 assassination of Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party, is being developed into a movie by Antoine Fuqua, director of Training Day, The Equalizer, and The Magnificent Seven.
![Suzanne Koven](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Suzzane_Koven_225x300.jpg?itok=FT5bftVu)
Suzanne Koven MFA ’12, a longtime physician and current writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital, penned a letter to her younger self as part of a recent orientation session for new medical interns in Boston.
!["A Traveler's Memoir" Returns in Paperback](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Jones-The-Blind-Masseuse_300x225.jpg?itok=A4-SqoS5)
The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler's Memoir from Costa Rica to Cambodia, by award-winning author Alden Jones MFA '01, will be re-released in paperback in March.
![Pen America](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Pen-America300x225.jpg?itok=3FGfphvD)
Morgan Jerkins MFA '16 was interviewed as part of the Pen Ten interview series on Pen America last month. She spoke about "the responsibility of the writer" which she sees as "to be honest and vulnerable. Jerkins is the author of a forthcoming collection of essays, This Will Be My Undoing. She is currently a contributing editor for Catapult. Her take on the Colin Kaepernick controversy, "What Colin Kaepernick's National Anthem Protest Reveals About American" was published in Rolling Stone in August.
![Summer Brennan](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/TwitterSwap300x225.jpg?itok=lxC6Y-TD)
Summer Brennan '01 used tactics straight out of 12th Night in an attempt to undermine internet trolls. She told Flare Magazine about what she learned when she changed her profile picture on Twitter to one of her brother.
![NPR.org](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/npr440x300_sfw.jpg?itok=r5WDIKbC)
In its Guide to 2016’s Great Reads, NPR recommended Nitro Mountain by Lee Clay Johnson ’07, The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney MFAW ’13, Kookooland by Gloria Norris ’76, and The Queen of the Night by former MFAW faculty Alexander Chee.
![Bennington PEN nominations](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/PenSticker300x225.jpg?itok=jnLLrESH)
Earlier this week, Mashable announced their long lists for several categories of the 2017 PEN Literary awards, which include a number of Bennington graduates.
![Buzzfeed](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/buzzfeed-logo300x225.jpg?itok=U93gP3N5)
Last month, Buzzfeed published a memoir-style essay by Chandra Ganguly MFAW '18 called "How They Killed My Grandmother."
![Donald Hall publishes in The New Yorker](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Hall-One_Illo-300.jpg?itok=h7mL6MZ-)
MFA Writer-in-Residence Donald Hall writes a moving essay in the New Yorker in which he meditates on the role the solitude has played throughout his life. Now living alone at age eight-seven, he recalls his wife, Jane, who passed away in 1995. He writes: "In the separation of our double solitude, we each wrote poetry in the morning."
![The Oyster War](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/BrennanSummer_TheOysterWar_600x450_0.jpg?itok=7yp3sV-c)
The Oyster War by Summer Brennan '01 was named as a finalist for the Orion Book Award.
![Sven Birkert's New Book Changing the Subject Garnering Attention](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/BirkertsSven_Changing%20the%20Subject.jpg?itok=tMcSflqZ)
A new book by Sven Birkerts, director of the MFA in Writing Program at Bennington College, is receiving warm attention. Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, published by Grey Wolf Press, which focuses on the effect of digital culture on our ability to engage with our world, and the fate of writing in such a context, has been reviewed in the Chronicle for Higher Education, New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review.
![Image of Fedwa Malti-Douglas](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/stories/Malti-DouglasFedwa_NationalEndowmentForTheHumanities_Medalist_600x450.jpg?itok=32Ay1RgY)
The National Endowment for the Humanities has named Fedwa Malti-Douglas (nonfiction, June ’11) a National Humanities Medalist for her studies of Arabic letters. Fedwa has mapped the discourse of gender and letters in the Arab Middle East and applied her insights to American culture.
![Photo of Lance Richardson](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/richardson-lance-photo.png?itok=hlzHAvVf)
Lance Richardson is the author of House of Nutter (2018) and True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, which will be published internationally in September 2025.
![Photo of Spencer Reece](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/reece.png?itok=18txGbMW)
In 2003, Spencer Reece authored The Clerk's Tale, selected by Louise Glück, awarded the Bakeless Prize, and recognized with an award from the Library of Congress. In 2014, The Road to Emmaus was published, long-listed for the National Book Award, and short-listed for the Griffin Prize. He is the vicar of St. Paul’s, Wickford, Rhode Island. More than a decade in the making, Acts is his long-awaited third collection of poems.
![Photo of Sabrina Orah Mark by Sarah Baugh](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/mark-sabrina-orah_photo-by-sarah-baugh_320w.png?itok=H7awAeF9)
Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections Tsim Tsum and The Babies, the story collection Wild Milk, and the essay collection Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales.
![Photo of Greg Wren](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/wrenn2.png?itok=Ygtc8gjF)
Greg Wrenn is the author of the queer ayahuasca eco-memoir Mothership and the Brittingham Prize-winning poetry collection Centaur. His work has appeared in HuffPost, The New Republic, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, Writer's Digest, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He was a recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
![Photo of Shawna Kay Rodenberg](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/rodenberg_shawna-kay_320w.png?itok=H-urEfSu)
Shawna Kay Rodenberg is the author of the memoir Kin. She has been the recipient of a Jean Ritchie Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, and her essays have appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, and Elle.
![Brian Blanchfield](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/Bb-Idaho-cropped.jpg?itok=6gcsrKt-)
Blanchfield is the author of three books of poetry and prose, most recently Proxies. A collection of essays—part cultural close reading, part dicey autobiography—Proxies was awarded a 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction, and was named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir and the PEN USA Literary Award in Nonfiction.
![Image of Sven Birkerts](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/BirkertsSven_320x230px.jpg?itok=6Z6PK1V1)
Sven Birkerts is author of The Gutenberg Elegies. His many books and essays examine the fraught interrelationship between reading culture and electronic culture.
![Melissa Febos Headshot](/sites/default/files/styles/alumni_story_300x225/public/sources/faculty/febos-melissa_320x230.jpg?itok=2xdwooWL)
Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart and the essay collection, Abandon Me, which The New Yorker called “mesmerizing,” and was an Indie Next Pick and named a Best Book of 2017 by Esquire, Book Riot, The Cut, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Bustle, Refinery29, Salon, and The Rumpus. Her second essay collection is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2019.