Bestselling Author Carmen Maria Machado is Fall 2022 Harman Writer-in-Residence
August 17, 2022
Carmen Maria Machado, as the Fall 2022 Harman Writer-in-Resident, will teach a course on horror, mystery, and suspense, leveraging her expertise as a bestselling author in the genres.
Bestselling author Carmen Maria Machado will be the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence for the Fall 2022 semester at Baruch College’s Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.
Machado, who published her renowned memoir In the Dream House in 2019, is also the author of graphic novel The Low, Low Woods and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties.
She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize.
In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.”
In a review for the New York Times, critic Parul Sehgal wrote that Machado’s work is “a love letter to an obstinate genre that won’t be gentrified. It’s a wild thing, this book, covered in sequins and scales, blazing with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link and Helen Oyeyemi, and borrowing from science fiction, queer theory and horror.”
A ‘Thrilling’ Course for Students
This Fall, Machado, who holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, will teach a course on horror, mystery, and suspense. In the description for the course, which students applied for last semester, Machado invites students to “come and confront the darkness.”
According to the description, students will “read a wide range of works in the [horror genre] and eventually craft their own canny, uncanny, and original contributions to the genres of slow-ratcheted, nigh-unbearable tension and white-knuckle, heart-pounding terror.”
“I am excited to welcome Carmen Maria Machado to the Harman Writer-in-Residence Program,” said Professor Esther Allen, director of the Harman Program. “Her unique, award-winning style and writing brings new genres –– horror, mystery, and suspense –– to the program, and students will enjoy her fresh, truly groundbreaking approach to crafting fiction for a 21st Century audience.”
About the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program
The Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program, endowed in Baruch College’s Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, brings a distinguished writer to campus every semester. Past participants have been Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, National Book Awardees, and Poet Laureates, including famed playwrights Tony Kushner and Stew Stewart, the novelist Xialou Guo, and Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. Carmen Maria Mochado is the 49th Writer-in-Residence, as the Program closes out its 24th year.
Endowed by alumnus Dr. Sidney Harman (’39), the Harman residency reflects his belief that “good writing is revelatory. It is not merely a transference of fully formed material from brain to paper. Writing is an act of magical creation; writing is discovery.”
The Harman program relies on an intense workshop design, where visiting writers teach small classes and hold individual conferences. Students are encouraged to hone their personal styles and to find their own creative voices.
Next Semester: A Baruch Alumnus Returns as Writer-in-Residence
The Spring 2023 Harman Writer-in-Residence is Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard, who graduated from Baruch in 1973.
Students who are interested in applying for the Spring 2023 course should visit the program page here.
Applications will open October 31.
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