All Sackett Street instructors are professional writers, teachers and editors, who have taught at major universities and have earned MFA degrees at the most prestigious graduate writing programs in the country. More importantly, they are the most dedicated writing instructors in New York City because teaching the craft of writing is their passion.

The Sacket Street Writers’ Workshop Faculty are:

JULIA FIERRO
HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL
JUSTIN FEINSTEIN
ARIA SLOSS
AMY SHEARN
MICHELLE MAISTO
KATE HILL CANTRILL
JACKIE DELAMATRE
MYUNG! JOH
CAELI WOLFSON WIDGER
BROOKE SHAFFNER
ABBY SHER
BENJAMIN HALE
AJA GABEL

JULIA FIERRO, Workshop Director and Instructor of Novel-Writing and the Post-MFA Fiction-Writing Workshop, is a graduate of The Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow and worked with Marilynne Robinson, Frank Conroy, Ethan Canin, Chris Offutt, Lan Samantha Chang and Francine Prose. She founded The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in 2002. She has taught Creative Writing in the Honors Program at Hofstra University and Fiction-Writing at the University of Iowa. Julia recently contributed to Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (Random House), edited by Bret Anthony Johnston.
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HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL, Assistant Director and Instructor of Fiction-Writing, teaches literature and creative writing at CUNY Hunter College and is the former co-director of one of New York's most prominent reading series The Speakeasy Reading Series. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2004 where she studied with Peter Cameron, Valerie Martin and Joshua Henkin. Her work has been published in several literary journals, including Spinning Jenny, Bostonia, Portland Review, Contemporary Verse 2 and Many Mountains Moving. A freelance writer for various publications, she writes the monthly book column Across the Page for AfterEllen.com.
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JUSTIN FEINSTEIN, Assistant Director and Instructor of Copywriting, earned his Masters Degree in Media Studies from the New School. With ten years of advertising and journalism experience, Justin has written and provided creative direction for the Associated Press, the International Olympic Committee and Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Panasonic and Delta Air Lines. He has experience in virtually every form of interactive advertising, but hasn't lost his love for print. Justin is currently a creative director at BoomBox, an interactive agency in New York City.
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ARIA SLOSS, Instructor of Fiction Writing and Novel Writing, received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied with Lan Samantha Chang, Ethan Canin, Marilynne Robinson, and Charles D'Ambrosio. She has been awarded an Iowa Arts Fellowship and a Vermont Studio Fellowship, as well as a fellowship at Yaddo. Aria won the 2008 Glimmer Train Press Short Story Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize: her fiction has been published in Glimmer Train and the Harvard Review.
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AMY SHEARN, Instructor of Fiction, is a graduate of the University of Iowa and received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Minnesota. Her first novel, How Far Is the Ocean from Here, was published in 2008 by Shaye Areheart/Crown Books. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, The L Magazine, Opium, Five Chapters, and elsewhere, including the 2009 Found anthology Requiem for a Paper Bag. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has taught at the University of Minnesota, Gotham Writers' Workshop, and NYU.
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MICHELLE MAISTO, Instructor of Nonfiction Writing, is an eater and writer in Brooklyn with an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, where she was the recipient of a Hertog Fellowship and a Writing Merit Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Women Studies Quarterly, The New York Times and Gourmet magazine. Her first book, "The Gastronomy of Marriage: A Memoir of Food and Love," is about the not-so-straightforward process of sitting to dinner with another person each night. It will be available from Random House in September 2009.
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KATE HILL CANTRILL, Instructor of Fiction and Novel Writing, received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary publications including: StoryQuarterly, The Believer, Quick Fiction, Pindeldyboz, Mississippi Review, Diagram, Drunken Boat, Swink, and others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and awarded residencies at both Jentel and the Corporation of Yaddo. Kate has taught at both the University of the Arts and the University of Texas in Austin, where she also ran the Utter Reading Series.
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JACKIE DELAMATRE,Instructor of Fiction Writing, graduated from Brown University and received her MFA from New York University's Creative Writing Program where she was chosen to represent the Masters program at a reading alongside E.L. Doctorow and Yusef Komenyaka. She has studied under Rick Moody, Gary Shteyngart, Darin Strauss, Lawrence Weschler, and E.L. Doctorow. Jackie currently teaches art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and has published non-fiction in New York Press as well as an excerpt of her novel in CapGun Magazine.
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MYUNG! JOH, Instructor of Fiction, graduated with an A.B. in English from Harvard, where she studied creative writing with Brad Watson. In 2008, she received her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she studied as a Henry Hoyns Fellow with Chris Tilghman, Deborah Eisenberg, Ann Beattie, and John Casey, and taught undergraduate fiction workshops. She has had short stories published in Juked and Yisei magazines and was recently awarded a fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center.
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CAELI WOLFSON WIDGER, Assistant Director and Instructor of Intermediate and Advanced Fiction-Writing, graduated from Wellesley College and received her MFA from the University of Montana's Creative Writing Program. She was selected as one of two Summer Teaching Fellows at the University of Montana where she taught creative writing and literature. She was awarded a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center in 2001 and has attended the Napa Valley and Yellow Bay Writer's Conferences. Caeli, a published poet, recently had a short story published in the Madison Review. Caeli has recently published work in The Madison Review and in Another Chicago Magazine, where she was a finalist in their 2008 Emerging New Writers contest.
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BROOKE SHAFFNER, Instructor of Nonfiction Writing and Fiction Writing, received her MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, where she was a Dean’s Fellow. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Hudson Review and the anthology Lost and Found: Stories from New York. She has been awarded residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, Jentel, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; and scholarships from VCCA-France, Summer Literary Seminars, and the Prague Summer Program. Her novel, Fight/Flight, is represented by Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., and she is at work on a collection of stories, Borderlands. She lives in Brooklyn, where she curates a monthly reading and artist talk series at Park Slope’s 440 Gallery.
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ABBY SHER, Instructor of Fiction Writing and Memoir Writing, is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn. Her memoir, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl who Couldn’t Stop Praying, was published by Scribner in October, 2009 and was named Best Nonfiction of 2009 by The Chicago Tribune, Moment Magazine and Elle. Her words have also appeared in Modern Love: Tales of Love and Obsession, Behind the Bedroom Door, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, Self, Jane, Elle, Elle UK, Marie Claire, HeeB, and Redbook.
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BENJAMIN HALE, Instructor of Fiction Writing, received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2008. He is a recipient of a University of Iowa Provost’s Teaching-Writing Fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. His novel, THE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE, will be published by Twelve Books in February, 2011.
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AJA GABEL, Instructor of Fiction Writing, holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Virginia and a BA from Wesleyan University. She was the fiction editor at Meridian and served on the editorial board of the Virginia Quarterly Review, where she frequently contributes online content. For the past three years she taught writing at the University of Virginia and most recently served on the faculty of the Sweet Briar Writers Conference and presented a pedagogy paper at AWP Denver. In the fall she will begin pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Her fiction can be found in the New England Review, the New Ohio Review, Slush Pile, the Southeast Review, and the South Carolina Review, and was a finalist in the 2008 Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest.
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