Faculty S-Z

Sarah Sala is a Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program. Her debut poetry collection, Devil's Lake, was a finalist for the 2017 Subito Book Prize. She received her BA in English literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan and her MFA in Poetry from New York University. She is the founder of Office Hours Poetry Workshop, and is currently at work on Migrainer, a lyric essay examining the interstices of migraine and creativity.

Leeore Schnairsohn holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. His reviews have been published in the Slavic and East European Journal and Canadian-American Slavic Studies, and he has work forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He has been teaching in the Expository Writing Program since 2011.

Brian Schwartz has published fiction and non-fiction in Harvard Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rhetoric Review and elsewhere. Areas of interest include creative non-fiction, the short story and the culture of American sports. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, and has also taught at Bard, U.C. Irvine, San Francisco State and at the Fir Acres Workshop at Lewis and Clark.

Megan Shea is lecturer at EWP who has taught classes in film, writing, acting, and theater history. A writer, actor, director and theater scholar, she received her Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University. Her work has been published in Theatre Topics, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and TheatreForum. She has served as President of ATHE's Performance Studies Focus Group and is currently a Faculty Affiliate at Goddard Residential College.

Normandy Sherwood is a Language Lecturer who has been teaching at EWP since 2012. She is theater maker (playwright, costumer, director) whose plays have been seen in NYC at The New Ohio Theatre, The Kitchen, and Dixon Place and others. She is a co-artistic director of the OBIE award winning National Theater of the United States of America. Her children's book, Animals vs. Furniture was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2013. MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College.

Geoff Shullenberger earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Brown University. His dissertation examined the representation of paranoia in modern fiction and psychoanalytic theory. His scholarly writing has appeared in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Romance Studies, and Chasqui. He has also covered academic labor, technology, and the humanities for publications such as Dissent and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is writing a book about paranoia and modern culture.

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Michael Shou-Yung Shum eventually found himself dealing poker in a dead-end casino in Lake Stevens, Washington. Two doctorates bookend this strange turn of events: the first in Psychology from Northwestern, and the second in English from the University of Tennessee. Along the way, Michael spent a dozen years in Chicago, touring the country as a rave DJ, and three years in Corvallis, Oregon, where he received his MFA in Fiction Writing. He currently resides in Astoria, New York, with Jaclyn Watterson and three cats.

Noel Sikorski is a Senior Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program. Her poems have appeared in American Poets Magazine, Georgetown Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Bellevue Literary Review.

Leah Souffrant, M.F.A., Ph.D., is the author of Plain Burned Things: A Poetics of the Unsayable. Her work is informed by interdisciplinary studies in 20th century and contemporary literature, feminist theory, aesthetics, and translation. Poetry and criticism by Souffrant can be found in publications including Bone Bouquet, Interim: Poetry & Poetics, Jacket2, Poet Lore, WSQ, and EOAGH. At NYU, she has taught Writing The Essay, Advanced College Essay, and a seminar on Poetics of the Unsayable, and she serves as a mentor in the Writing Tutors Program. 

Christopher Stahl is a Senior Language Lecturer, teaching at the Tisch School of the Arts. He has taught freshman seminars on the art, theory, and history of stage magic. His writing has appeared in the Village Voice, Theatre Journal, and Women & Performance, and received an award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage from NLGJA, The Association of Lesbian and Gay Journalists. Professor Stahl is the Faculty Affiliate for Service-Learning and Leadership Initiatives at the Residential College.

Madeleine Stein has been a lecturer in the Expository Writing Program since 2013. Previously she taught at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx and prior to that at The American Univeristy in Cairo, Egypt. Her writing has appeared in Saranac Review, London Review, and the Cairo Times.

Emily Stone writes essays and poems that draw on academic disciplines ranging from media criticism to anthropology. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Fourth Genre, North American Review, and Tin House and been among the notable selections in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. She holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School. A recipient of teaching awards from Pittsburgh and EWP, she has also taught at Sun Yat-sen University in China.

Avia Tadmor is Language Lecturer of Expository Writing. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Literary Translation from Columbia University and a B.A in Psychology from Harvard University.

Alongside poetry, Avia’s interests include Writing Studies and Writing in the Medical Humanities. Her poetry appears in The Adroit Journal, New England Review, Crab Orchard Review, Apogee, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. Her research appears in the Journal of Palliative Medicine and the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

Prior to joining NYU, Avia was a lecturer at Columbia University, where she advised the Medical Humanities writing courses. In the past, she taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary and at Gilda’s Club, a day center for individuals affected by cancer. She also served as a reader and poetry mentor for The Adroit Journal and is the recipient of a writing fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Avia is a Best New Poets nominee. She was named a finalist for the Indiana Review Poetry Prize and The Adroit Journal’s Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program, as well as a semi-finalist for the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. 

Kimberly Thomas is a Senior Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program. She specializes in second language acquisition, English as a Second Language pedagogy, Second Language (L2) writing, and composition and rhetoric.  She received her Ph.D.  from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she studied rhetoric and composition and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Her current research examines racial identity, mentoring, and the role of culture and literacy in professionalization.

Michael Tyrell, a Senior Language Lecturer, is the author of the poetry collections The Wanted and Phantom Laundry. With Julia Spicher Kasdorf, he edited the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn. His poems have appeared in AGNI, The Best American Poetry, The Iowa Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of NYU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has worked as an actor at the New York Fringe Festival, on television, and in several short films. He values the essay as a genre that takes its shape and direction from many disciplines and forms.

Zach Udko studied at Stanford University (BA and MA, English) and NYU (MFA, Dramatic Writing; MA, Applied Psychology). He has written and directed shows in New York and the UK, and has contributed to Condé Nast Traveler, Christie's, British Airways’ High LifeMagazine, Backstage West, and The Huffington Post. Zach is the Coordinator of the NYU College Writing Workshop and the Faculty Affiliate for the "Laughing Matters" Comedy Explorations Community. He is also a psychotherapist in Manhattan.

Joe Vallese is Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program. He holds an MFA in Fiction from NYU, an MAT in Literature and a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bard College. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and pop culture criticism appear in a variety of publications including VICE, Backstage, North American Review, Southeast Review, Narrative Northeast, PopMatters, and VIA: Voices in Italian-Americana. He is coeditor of the poetry, fiction, and essay anthology What's Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey (Word Riot Press), is currently at work on a novel, and is curating an anthology of queer writers reflecting on their relationship to horror films. His personal essay "Blood, Brothers" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a Notable in Best American Essays. Joe returns to NYU--he previously taught in the Expository Writing Program from 2006-2013 and served as a Writing Faculty Affiliate for Goddard Residential College--after five years of serving as site director, writing faculty, and reentry coordinator for the Bard Prison Initiative, a program offering incarcerated students the opportunity to earn their AA and BA degrees in the liberal arts.

Christina Van Houten is a Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. She specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century literature and culture, with an emphasis on late modernism. Other research interests include critical and feminist theory and critical regionalism. Recent work has been published in Comparative Literature Studies, Women’s Studies, and Politics and Culture.

Christopher Wall (BA, Dartmouth College, MFA New York University) writes plays, lyrics, and essays. He was commissioned by New World Symphony to write a mixed-genre play about what it’s like to live with PTSD. His play Dreams of the Washer King premiered Off Broadway and was subsequently produced in LA. Songs from his musical The God of In-Between, co-written with Howard Fishman, have been performed at Joe’s Pub and other venues across the city.

He was a fellow in nonfiction at the Norman Mailer Center, and his essays have appeared in Longform, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Missouri Review, Poets & Writers, The Gettysburg Review, and other magazines. Three works have been cited as a Notable Essay of the Year in the Best American Essays anthology. He was interviewed by Phillip Lopate on the Leonard Lopate Show and read from his prizewinning essay “The Size of the Room.” He enjoys innovating in the classroom and has developed a progression that allows Tisch students to do research into their own creative process. He currently teaches at Bard College and New York University. Find out what he’s working on these days at www.christopherwall.org.

Sara Wallace is a Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. She is the author of The Rival, winner of the 2015 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize (The University of Utah Press) and the chapbook Edge, winner of The 2014 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Competition.

Justin Warner is a playwright, lyricist, librettist, and journalist.  His plays have been produced throughout the US, UK, and Canada.  He is a recent finalist for the Kleban Prize in Musical Theater, the Sundance Theater Lab, and the Jonathan Larson Grants, and is writing the libretto for a musical-theater adaptation of Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree, currently in development.  Previously, Justin was a longtime staff writer, editor, and audio producer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and won a Peabody Award for his work on a National Science Foundation-funded children's radio show.  He has also written for New Scientist, Popular Science, American Theatre, and McSweeney’s, among other publications, and was a founding member of Washington Improv Theater.  Justin has taught the CAS, Science, and Tisch versions of Writing The Essay, and will teach the first-year seminar "Neurostories" in Spring 2021.

Joshua Ewing Weber is the co-writer of the forthcoming feature films Focus Puller and Mission Road. His short fiction has appeared in Concepts and Elysian Fields. A Senior Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program, he holds a B.A. from Southern Methodist University and an MFA in fiction from NYU.

Laura Weinert-Kendt is a writer and senior lecturer at NYU. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Newsday, and Back Stage West. Her fiction has appeared in Witness and The Mechanics' Institute Review. At NYU, she created the course Writing in Community, which pairs college writing mentors with NYC high school students. She also serves as a Writing in the Disciplines consultant. In 2012, she received NYU’s Golden Dozen Teaching Award.

Greg Weiss is a Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Southeast Review, and other journals, and his first book, Interstate, was released by WordTech Communications in 2014.

Wil Weitzel teaches in the Expository Writing Program at NYU, and his stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, The 2017 O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. His creative nonfiction was recognized as "Notable" in The Best American Essays 2016, and his fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He received a NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship at The Center for Fiction and won the 2014 Washington Square Flash Fiction Award. He is currently at work on his first novel.

Tana Wojczuk is the author of Lady Romeo: The Radical, Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity and a contributing editor at Guernica Magazine. She has taught writing since 2007 as a lecturer and course director at Columbia University and as a lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at NYU since 2017. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Believer, Smithsonian Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, North American Review, Bomb Magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, Apogee, Vice, Narrative, the Rumpus, Huffington Post UK, Guernica and Gulf Coast where she was a finalist for the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize judged by David Shields. She has received a fellowship from the NYU Global Research Initiative to research her book in Florence, a Helene Wurlitzer residency, and Academy of American Poets University prize. She started working as a barista at fifteen; ask her to make you a dry cappuccino.

Amanda is a senior language lecturer and professional musical theatre writer whose lyrics have won a Kleban Prize, Jonathan Larson Award, Dramatists Guild Fellowship, Jamie deRoy Award, Dottie Burman Award, Distinguished Alumni of Berklee Award, and 8 MAC nominations. Selected: Her work has been produced at Portland Center Stage and the Hangar Theatre, presented at the Kennedy Center, performed by the Boston Pops, and published by The Dramatist and The New York Times (lyrics and Sunday crossword). BA (Tufts), MM (Boston Conservatory), MFA (NYU).

Ethan Youngerman, a Senior Language Lecturer and Faculty Mentor, began teaching at EWP in 2001. Research interests: integrative learning; co-curricular initiatives. His plays include The Sublet Experiment (6-month commercial production in NYC, award-winning run in Charlotte), and have been workshopped at MTC, the Living, Prospect Theatre, etc. He’s a Faculty Fellow in Residence (University Hall) and a Faculty Senator. Ethan won the Golden Dozen Teaching Award for full-time faculty in 2013.

Natasha Zaretsky (Senior Lecturer) received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University. Her research interests include human rights, migration, and memory in the Americas and the Jewish diaspora. Her latest book, Acts of Repair (Rutgers University Press 2021), examines transitional justice and the politics of memory in Argentina through the lived experiences of ordinary people facing the aftermath of genocide and political violence. She also co-edited Landscapes of Memory and Impunity (A. Levine; Brill 2015) and her articles have appeared in Religious Studies and Theology, The Tablet, Global Americans, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, and Foreign Affairs. A former Fulbright scholar, she has also been awarded an NYU Global Research Institute Fellowship and received a 2020 NYU Arts and Science Teaching Innovation Award. At EWP, she currently coordinates the Senior Honors Thesis Writing Group Program, and has served on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the Professional Development Committee, and the Steering Committee, as well as organizing the Advanced College Essay Student Symposium. In addition, she leads the Truth in the Americas program as a Visiting Scholar at the Rutgers University Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. She loves teaching writing and has also taught first-year seminars on Borderlands and Belonging in the Americas. In addition to writing and teaching, she is currently working on a documentary film,1000 Mondays, about memory and social justice in Argentina.  For her latest projects, please visit www.natashazaretsky.com.