Faculty M-R

Beth Boyle Machlan is a Clinical Associate Professor and a faculty mentor in the Expository Writing Program. She received her Ph.D. in American literature from Princeton University. She writes about parenting, music, health, fiction, and ice hockey, and her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Hairpin, The Awl, The Huffington Post, and the African-American Review.

Christine Malvasi is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, where she was awarded the Willy Gorrissen Award for her teaching. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and earned her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where she served as a Starworks Fellow. She's received multiple writing grants and fellowships, including awards from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and Poets & Writers.

David Markus is an interdisciplinary writer and educator. His work focuses on representations of dwelling and domesticity in late-capitalist contexts, social practices in contemporary art, and the conflict between intimacy and artistic ambition in twentieth-century literature, art, and film. His articles and reviews have appeared in publications such as Art in America, Frieze, Art Journal, Art Papers, and Flash Art. His book Notes on Trumpspace: Politics, Aesthetics, and the Fantasy of Home is forthcoming with Dead Letter Office/punctum books. David can be reached at dsm355@nyu.edu.

Denice Martone has been the Associate Director of the Expository Writing Program since 1992, and has been teaching Expository Writing at NYU since 1986. She received her Ph.D. at Steinhardt in Teaching and Learning, concentrating on English as a Second Language writers. Currently her academic work looks at the relationship between students’ perception of relevant ideas and the ways in which those ideas are rendered into sentences. Her other passions include photography, gardening, and cooking.

Matthew McClelland received his Ph. D. from the University of Washington and his BA from Whittier College. He currently teaches Writing The Essay: Science and is the UHall Writing Affiliate.

Laren McClung is author of a collection of poems, Between Here and Monkey Mountain (Sheep Meadow Press), and editor of the anthology Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees (W.W. Norton). Her poems have appeared in journals including Harvard Review, Poetry, Massachusetts Review, and Boston Review, among others. Her awards include fellowships from Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany, and she was named the 40th Poet Laureate of Bucks County in 2016. She has led writing workshops with residents at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, New York, and with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at New York University. Her current work is Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters, a collaboration with Yusef Komunyakaa.

Bridget McFarland received a PhD in English and American Literature from NYU and a BA and MA in English from Georgetown University. Her current research examines pantomime and cultures of performance in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. She has published in academic journals, including Theatre History Studies.

As an expository writing professor in Tisch, I teach young artists—playwrights, game designers, photographers, dancers, musicians, actors, and directors—about writing, and more specifically about how learning to write for collegiate studies is to explore and develop skill in an art form with its own elements of craft. The teaching and learning of my classes by necessity involve introspection, attunement, vulnerability, concentration, and resilience. I enjoy this work and can't imagine a more rewarding vocation. My own higher education degrees are a BA in English from Vassar College, an MFA in Fiction Writing from NYU, and an MA in Counseling in Mental Health and Wellness from NYU. I am a licensed psychotherapist (LMHC) with a private practice in Manhattan, and I'm also an independent writing consultant for students and others applying to institutions of higher education. I can be reached at djm393@nyu.edu and found online at http://danielmenely.com.

Nate Mickelson is Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Faculty Development in the Expository Writing Program. He earned a B.A. in English from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Hunter College, CUNY, and a Ph.D. in English from The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Mickelson’s research and teaching interests include American poetry and poetics, hermeneutics/interpretation theory, writing studies, and the relationships between creativity, literacy, and everyday life. His book City Poems and American Urban Crisis, 1945 – Present (Bloomsbury 2018) argues that approaching poetry as a mode of analysis and critique can enhance our attempts to produce more just and equitable urban futures. Mickelson edited Writing as a Way of Staying Human in a Time that Isn’t (Vernon Press 2018), a collection of essays that describes how writing nurtures vulnerability, compassion, and empathy among students and instructors alike. His scholarship has been published in Learning Communities Research & Practice, Transformative Dialogues, The Journal of College Literacy and Learning, and The Journal of Urban Cultural Studies. He is Vice Chair of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, a standing group of CCCC and NCTE.

Prior to joining NYU, Mickelson was a founding faculty member at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, CUNY. At Guttman, he led integrative learning communities, learning outcomes assessment, and faculty development programs. He was recognized as Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and received the Provost’s Award for Faculty Mentorship.

Elizabeth Mikesell holds advanced degrees in creative writing and multimedia art. Her creations include interactive sculpture (Patty the Meat Robot, The Head Reliquary of Karen Carpenter), web experiments (The Saddest Thing I Own), a children’s book (Marlene, Marlene Queen of the Mean, with actress Jane Lynch); a course in arts funding; and essays exploring the convergence of art, personal narrative, and physical sciences, among other projects.

Jono Mischkot holds an MA in English from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Fiction from New York University. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Writing in the Disciplines. He received the Outstanding Teacher Award from NYU in 2008 and developed and edited the core textbooks for the Advanced College Essay courses. His short fiction has appeared in Oasis, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Third Place Magazine.

Blagovesta Momchedjikova, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor, is the editor of Captured By The City: Perspectives in Urban Culture Studies (2013), guest-editor of Streetnotes: Urban Feel (2010), and contributor to The Everyday of Memory; Robert Moses and the Modern City; Streetnotes; Iso Magazine; The Journal of American Culture; Tourist Studies; Genre: Imagined Cities; and Piers. Also: Urban Culture Area Chair (MAPACA); PANORAMA educator (Queens Museum); Board Member (International Panorama Council).

William Morgan is Director of the Writing Center and Clinical Professor of Expository Writing at New York University. He teaches essay writing, directs the Writing Center and all of its tutoring programs, and contributes to the leadership of the Expository Writing Program. His articles on style, the practices of tutoring, and the reading-writing connection have appeared in College English, Praxis, and Reader. His book of literary criticism is titled Questionable Charity: Gender, Humanitarianism and Complicity in U.S. Literary Realism. William can be reached at wm32@nyu.edu.

Megan Murtha is a theater maker (playwright, director, composer) whose work has been performed at The Tank, Classic Stage Company, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, The Bushwick Starr, Target Margin Theater, and other venues in NYC. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow, and a Vermont Studio Center Fellow. She has also been a Visiting Artist at Bucknell University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and St. Joseph's College, where she led object theater workshops.

Matthew Nicholas is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program who has taught Writing the Essay, Writing the Essay: Science, and Advanced College Essay. He studies twentieth-century Irish and English literature, with a particular focus on the works of James Joyce. He also serves as a contributing editor for The Modern Spectator, a literary journal focusing on sports and culture.

Ger O’Donoghue is Clinical Associate Professor at EWP. He teaches Writing the Essay and International Writing Workshops 1 & 2. He mentors Peer Tutors in the Writing Partners Program. Formerly, Ger was Faculty Affiliate for living-learning residential communities at Goddard Hall and Rubin Hall. He has led CAS Freshman Seminars on concepts of credit and debt in American literature and on Joyce's Ulysses. Ger's research interests focus on Jewish American literature and Irish literature. He wrote American Kaddishim (Cambria, 2019) and has published essays in Philip Roth Studies, Notes and Queries, and the Dublin James Joyce Journal. Ger holds a BA in English Lit. & Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin and MSt and DPhil degrees in English Lit. from Oxford University. Ger won the CAS  Golden Dozen Teaching Award in 2017.

Lorelei Ormrod is Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program. A Rhodes Scholar, she focused her graduate work on British literary modernism and contemporary post-colonial fiction, producing theses on Virginia Woolf and Michael Ondaatje. She loves travel and nature writing, and is currently at work on a book about the body and trauma, healing and community. Passionate about international education and civic engagement, she leads the social justice stream at Goddard.

Colm O’Shea has been an NYU writing consultant and professor since 2009. He has a D.Phil from Trinity College, and an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Oxford University. His poetry was featured in the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century by Bloodaxe Books. He has written for the New Stage Theatre Company, helped develop documentaries for the Oscar-nominated Red Antelope Films, and writes on the intersection of film and philosophy.

Eric Ozawa is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program. His fiction, journalism, and translations have appeared in Granta.com, Columbia, and The Nation magazine, for which he has covered Japan’s March 11th earthquake and the nuclear crisis that followed.

Tara K. Parmiter is a Clinical Associate Professor and Mentor in the Writing Tutors Program. Her research interests include literature and the environment, urban nature writing, children’s literature, and popular culture. She has published on topics ranging from the imagined landscapes of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables novels to summer vacationing in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening to journey narratives in the Muppet movies. She earned her B.A. from Cornell and her Ph.D. from NYU.

A native of Florence, Italy, Alessia Palanti is a Clinical Assistant Professor in NYU’s Expository Writing Program. She holds a PhD from Columbia University where she has been a full time writing instructor for almost six years. Her published work includes “We Want Lesbians Too: A Lesbian Feminist Counter-History Inspired by We Want Roses Too,” which appears in the anthology Queering Italian Media. She currently also teaches writing with NYU’s Prison Education Program, and she has taught incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students in Columbia’s Justice in Education initiative. She is currently working on a video project interviewing formerly incarcerated students about their experiences taking writing courses inside the prison. Alessia has taught for college prep programs based in China and has become passionate about studying Mandarin and Chinese culture. She is interested in writing pedagogy for international student populations and for students with a history of incarceration. Outside academia, Alessia is a dance performer and choreographer.

Amira Pierce got her MFA in Fiction from VCU in 2011. Since 2013, she has been a professor at EWP, where she specializes in working with International students and their teachers. She spent Spring 2019 teaching at NYU-Shanghai as part of a departmental exchange, and summer 2019 took her to Spain, with the support of a grant from NYU's Global Research Initiative to work on a project called "Reading the Quran in Madrid," which has now become, "Reading Quran in the Time of Corona." She writes fiction and nonfiction with hopes of finding beauty through brokenness. She has served as a literacy volunteer and writing mentor with various organizations across New York City, and she is a founding member of Inner Fields Sangha. She lives in Bushwick and was born in Beirut. Amira can be reached at awp201@nyu.edu.

Jenni Quilter is the Executive Director and Assistant Vice Dean of General Education at CAS, and she is the former Director of Fellowships Advising at NYU, helping students apply for nationally prestigious scholarships. Her most recent published book is Painters and Poets of the New York School: Neon in Daylight (Rizzoli 2014). She's currently writing and publishing about silent cinema, bodybuilding, Zeno's paradoxes, Afro-futurism, North-African piracy, Norway, and animal migration. Jenni won the Golden Dozen Teaching Award in 2014.

Abby Rabinowitz is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program in the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University, and Associate Director for Writing in the Sciences and Engineering. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University School of the Arts and a BA in History from Brown University. Abby is a nonfiction writer whose work focuses on science and technology, with an emphasis on climate change and reproductive technologies. Her story on Indian surrogacy, reported over six years in Mumbai, ran as the Spring 2016 cover story of The Virginia Quarterly Review and in The Guardian. Her reporting on climate change has appeared in The New York Times, Wired and The New Republic. Her writing has also appeared in Vice, Buzzfeed, Nautilus, Guernica and the journal Science, among other publications. Prior to joining NYU, Abby was a Course Co-Director and Lecturer in Discipline at Columbia University, where she created and led first-year writing seminars on sustainable development and medical humanities. She also taught writing to graduate students in the Neuroscience Department and in the Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences. At Columbia, Abby helped found Neuwrite, Columbia’s association of writers and scientists. She is a Fulbright Grant recipient and has won residencies at the Ucross Foundation and Jentel Artist Residency Program.

Originally from Atlanta, Jackie Reitzes holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Fiction from Cornell University. She has published short stories in Epoch, The Nashville Review (for which she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize), Iron Horse Literary Review and The Madison Review, and her non-fiction has appeared in The Huffington Post, ESPN: The Magazine, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune. She was a 2012 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow. A lover of contemporary fiction and American lit, she is currently at work on a short story collection. In 2022, Jackie won the College of Arts and Science Golden Dozen Teaching award. Jackie can be reached at jr2774@nyu.edu.

Raymond J. Ricketts is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program. He previously taught writing and English literature at Bryn Mawr College, where he also served as visiting director of the Writing Center. Ricketts holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University; his dissertation focused on eighteenth century British literature and performance. A former classical ballet dancer, Ricketts performed with the Chicago City Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater.

Sahar Romani teaches writing as a mode of inquiry, critical thinking, and discovery. As a poet with academic training in human geography and ethnography, she integrates the arts and social sciences in her undergraduate teaching.

Sahar's poetry has been published in The Yale Review, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review, Guernica, Poetry Society of America, and elsewhere. She’s received fellowships and support from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Poets House, Clarendon Fund, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, and NYU’s Creative Writing Program, where she earned her MFA in Poetry. Sahar also holds a PhD in Geography from Oxford University, MA in South Asian Studies from University of Washington, and BA in English from Seattle University.