Our Faculty: Summer 2024

Fiction Workshop Leader

Janika Oza

Janika Oza is the author of the novel A History of Burning, an instant national bestseller in Canada and a New York Times Notable Book of 2023. She is the winner of a 2022 O. Henry Award and the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications such as BOMB Magazine, The New York Times, The Best Small Fiction 2019 Anthology, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She is an assistant editor at The Rumpus and lives in Toronto.

photo: Yi Shi

Nonfiction Workshop Leader

Zahra Hankir

Zahra Hankir is a journalist, editor and author who writes about the intersection of politics, culture and society. Her work has appeared in publications including Teen Vogue, Town and Country, Condé Nast Traveler, The Observer Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and The Rumpus. She was awarded a Jack R. Howard Fellowship to attend the Columbia Journalism School and holds degrees in politics and Middle Eastern studies. Her first book, Our Women on the Ground, was a collection of essays by Arab women reporting from the Arab world. Her second book, Eyeliner: A Cultural History, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ pick. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

Distinguished Guest Prose Editor

Joseph Schneider

Joseph Schneider is the author of the critically acclaimed Tully Jarsdel mysteries. The second in the series, What Waits for You, was named Best of the Month by Apple Books and earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. He has sold multiple television concepts and is currently penning the entire first season of a new police procedural. 

Joseph's talents extend far beyond the written word: He has attended Sideshow School at the historic Coney Island Midway, studying escapology, fire-eating, and other arcane arts of the American carnival. When magic gigs were scarce, Joseph supplemented his income by teaching competitive ballroom dance, and earning an associate degree from the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. He served as a Teaching Fellow while earning his MFA in creative nonfiction. 

He is also a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the Crime Writers’ Association, the Academy of Magical Arts, and the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards.

Distinguished Guest Prose Editor

Rasheed Newson

Rasheed Newson is the author of My Government Means to Kill Me, which examines the political and sexual coming of age of a young, gay, Black man in New York City in the mid-1980s. The novel was a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “The 100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. Rasheed is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. Along with his television writing partner, T.J. Brady, he co-developed and is an executive producer of the drama series Bel-Air. Rasheed and T.J. have also worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series.  Rasheed lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena, California.

Distinguished Visiting Agent

Jim McCarthy

Jim McCarthy is a VP and senior agent at the New York Agency Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. As an avid fiction reader, his interests encompass both literary and commercial works in the adult, young adult, and middle grade categories. He is particularly interested in literary fiction, underrepresented voices, fantasy, mysteries, romance, anything unusual or unexpected, and any book that makes him cry or laugh out loud. In addition to fiction he is also interested in narrative nonfiction whether it be memoir, history, or pop culture.

Staff

  • Thomas Cooney

    Founder & Director

    Thomas Cooney is a graduate of UCLA with a degree in Art History, and NYU with an MA in Modernism. From 1997 – 2012 he anchored the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Saint Mary's College of California where he served as Acting Director, Director, and Coordinator. His short prose has been anthologized in The Answer, My Friend and Howl: A Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit, and his travel essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine (Liberation, Paradise Lost, Bollywood Dreams). His music criticism has been widely published. A Graham Greene scholar, he has also served on several advisory boards, and from 2006 – 2008 was appointed for three consecutive years to serve on the recommendation committee for the awarding of International Fulbright Awards in the field of Creative Writing.

  • Dianna Cannizzo

    Assistant Director

    Dianna Marie Cannizzo writes memoir, flash non-fiction and essays. A bilingual public speaker, Dianna has twenty years of experience working with disabled people, and has a background in clinical psychology. Her work is informed by her presentations on intergenerational war trauma. Her writings have appeared in Consequence Forum, War Literature and the Arts and the University of Udine’s Le Simplegadi. An excerpt from her memoir The Red Purses was a San Francisco Writer’s Conference finalist. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley and an MA in Clinical Psychology, JFK University. She has lived Italy for the last twenty years.

  • Lain Hart

    Founder & Co-Director (on leave)

    Lain Hart graduated from King's College, University of London, and completed an MA in Museum Anthropology at Columbia University in the City of New York. As a freelance writer and editor, and as an assistant to the curator of the Asian Ethnographic Collection of the American Museum of Natural History and the Education Department of the British Museum, he traveled throughout Europe and Southeast Asia, wrote and edited museum publications, and published non-fiction essays and articles in academic journals and books, including one award-winning collection.