Meet our talented family of teachers—each an accomplished writer and trustworthy guide. Leaf through our faculty bios, profiles, book excerpts, and writing advice articles. You’ll like the people you meet.
R. Dean Johnson

Faculty Profile

Meet R. Dean Johnson

Becoming a writer was not quite straightforward for Gotham Fiction Writing teacher Robert Dean Johnson. Even as a teenager, Robert was the creative type, but this came with some mixed results.

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Jolie De Feis

Faculty Profile

Meet Jolie De Feis

“I was interested in mental health. I was interested in helping people and helping them understand things,” she says, “It was kind of a blend of science and humanity... It just seemed to be the right move for me.”


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The instructor loves his material and his students.

Erin Bekowies, book publishing production associate

Faculty Excerpts

The Heart is Meat: An 80s Memoir

The Heart is Meat: An 80s Memoir

Michael Backus
This is an excerpt from Michael Backus's forthcoming memoir The Heart is Meat.Dumping my dead grandmother’s 1968 Chevy Caprice across the street from where I work has been one of those mistakes that compounds by the minute. It’s still fucking...
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Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification

Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification

Melissa Petro
The following is an excerpt from Melissa Petro's nonfiction book, Shame on You. ***The Power of the PenBack then I had no one.I did, however, have my journals.For as long as I can remember, spiral notebooks served as safe containers...
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Faculty Articles

Robert Repino

The Essential Storytelling Device that Fuels Superman and The Matrix

Robert Repino
I am both proud and slightly horrified to say that my first published novel took over a year to write, and three long years to rewrite. And that’s not counting the failed book projects that preceded it over the previous...
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

On Revision

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Writers have a love­/hate relationship with revi­sion. On the one hand, we hate it because we want our pieces to come out right the first time, and the drafting process is so much more fun, full of prom­ise and discovery,...