College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
MFA Creative Writing

Faculty

The full-time faculty currently teaching in the program are all actively publishing writers with strong regional and national reputations in their fields. 

Andy Levy Andrew Levy - Professor, on sabbatical Fall 2012
(317) 940-9803
alevy@butler.edu
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Andrew Levy received his BA from Brown, MA from Johns Hopkins, and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The First Emancipator (2005), winner of the Slatten Prize for biography, and A Brain Wider Than The Sky: A Migraine Diary (2009), co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction (1997), and co-author of the textbook Creating Fiction: A Writer's Companion (1995).  His essays and reviews have appeared in Best American Essays, Harper's, the American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere.

 

Dan Barden1 Dan Barden - Associate Professor
(317) 940-9688
dbarden@butler.edu
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Dan Barden received his BA from UC-Berkeley and his MFA from Columbia University.  He is the author of John Wayne: A Novel, published by Doubleday (1997), and The Next Right Thing (Dial Press, 2011). His essays have appeared in Esquire, GQ, Details, and Poets and Writers, among other journals and anthologies.

Flanzbaum 101Hilene Flanzbaum - Professor, Director of MFA program
(317) 940-9860
hflanzba@butler.edu
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Hilene Flanzbaum earned her BA from Brandeis, MA from Johns Hopkins, and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.  She is the editor of the Norton Anthology of Jewish-American Literature, and The Americanization of the Holocaust, published by Johns Hopkins UP in 1999.  Her essays and poetry have been widely published in venues such as O, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and Tikkun.

Chris Forhan Chris Forhan - Assistant Professor
(317) 940-9865
cforhan@butler.edu
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Chris Forhan earned an MA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA from the University of Virginia. He is the author of Forgive Us Our Happiness (1999), co-winner of the Bakeless Prize; The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars (2003), winner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and the Washington State Book Award; and Black Leapt In (2009), winner of the Barrow Street Press Book Prize and the Best Book of Indiana Award.  Forhan's poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and in Poetry, Paris Review, New England Review, and other journals, and he has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two Pushcart Prizes.

Alessandra Author Photo Alessandra Lynch - Lecturer
(317) 940-9500
ajlynch1@butler.edu

Alessandra Lynch holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers's Workshop. Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and other journals.  She is the author of of Sails the Wind Left Behind (2002), winner of the Alice James Books New England / New York Competition, and It was a terrible cloud at twilight (2008), winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize.

Neville 101 Susan Neville - Professor, Director of Creative Writing
(317) 940-9676
sneville@butler.edu
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Susan Neville is the author of four works of creative nonfiction: Indiana Winter; Fabrication: Essays on Making Things and Making Meaning; Twilight in Arcadia; Iconography: A Writer's Meditation; and Sailing the Inland Sea. Her short fiction includes In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan prize and listed as a 'Notable Book' by the Chicago Tribune, and Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Pushcart Prize anthology and in Extreme Fiction (Longman) and The Story Behind the Story (Norton.) In November 2010, Indiana University Press will release her Butler's Big Dance, a book of nonfiction about Butler University and the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

 

Dana Roeserdana roeser - Continuing Lecturer
(317) 940-9293
droeser@butler.edu

Dana Roeser is the author of Beautiful Motion and In the Truth Room, both winners of the Morse Poetry Prize. She has received an NEA fellowship, the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington Fellowship, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Roeser's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Iowa Review, Harvard Review,  Virginia Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Northwest Review, Antioch Review, Southern Review, Blackbird, and other journals, and on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Check out Roeser's website for more information.

Dahlie Picture 2Michael Dahlie - Booth Tarkington Writer-in-Residence
(317) 940-8733
mdahlie@butler.edu

Michael Dahlie's first novel, A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living, came out in 2008 with W.W. Norton and won the 2009 Pen/Hemingway Award.  He's also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a 2010 Whiting Award.  His next novel, The Best of Youth, will be published with Norton in January 2013.  Michael Dahlie's short fiction has appeared in magazines and journals such as Harper's, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares.  He received a BA from Colorado College and an MFA from Washington University in St Louis.

 

Allison Lynn

Allison Lynn - Continuing Adjunct
adlynn@butler.edu

Allison Lynn holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA from New York University. Her novel Now You See It (2004) won the William Faulkner Medal from the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society and the Chapter One Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Sun-Times, People, InStyle and Post Road, as well as several anthologies.

 

 

Micah -LingMicah Ling - Continuing Adjunct
(317)940-9544
mling@butler.edu

Micah Ling earned her master's degree in 20th Century American Literature and her master of fine arts degree in Poetry at Indiana University. She teaches in the English department at Franklin College, and in the MFA program at Butler University. Her third collection of poetry, Settlement, was released by sunnyoutside Press in May, 2012. She has two previous collections of poetry from sunnyoutside, Three Islands and Sweetgrass. Ling won the Indiana Emerging Author award for 2011.