M.F.A. Faculty
MFA Core Faculty
- Nick Taylor (fiction)
- Selena Anderson (fiction)
- Keenan Norris (fiction, nonfiction)
- J. Michael Martinez (poetry)
- Brook McClurg (nonfiction)
- Matthew Spangler (playwriting)
- Barnaby Dallas (screenwriting)
 |
Nick TaylorProfessor & Director of Creative Writing Programs Faculty Offices 106 Nick Taylor directs the MFA Creative Writing Program at San Jose State University. He is the author of the novel The Disagreement (2008), winner of the 11th Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the William R. Kenan Endowment for Historic Preservation. |
|
 |
Selena AndersonAssociate Professor Faculty Offices 105 Selena Anderson completed her PhD at University of Houston and her MFA at Columbia University. Her stories have appeared in Fence, BOMB, The Baffler, Oxford American, and The Best American Short Stories and have been honored with the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, The Texas Emerging Star Award, and The Henfield/TransAtlantic Prize. She lives in San Francisco where she is working on a novel. |
|
 |
Keenan NorrisAssociate Professor; Coordinator of Steinbeck Fellows Program Faculty Offices 128 Keenan Norris teaches English and Creative Writing (Fiction and Non-Fiction) and serves as coordinator of the Steinbeck Fellows Program at San Jose State. Keenan's novel The Confession of Copeland Cane won the 2022 Northern California Book Award. His book of essays Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings and his novella Lustre were published in 2023. His essays have garnered the 2021-22 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award and 2021 Folio: Eddie Award. Keenan's debut novel Brother and the Dancer won the James D. Houston Award in 2012. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies of California literature, among them San Bernardino, Singing and Oakland Noir. Keenan is the editor of the critical volume Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape. Keenan’s essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Remezcla and Alta. He has published peer-reviewed articles in the Oxford Bibliographies in African-American History series, The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980-2020, Killens Review of Arts & Letters and Boom California. Keenan's multimedia educational resources about the life of abolitionist David Walker, "One of America's Most Dangerous Men," were part of TED-ED's 2023 Black History Month work. Keenan has served as 2023 Lannan Visiting Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the 2021 University of Virginia Rea Visiting Writer. He’s also been a 2017 Marin Headlands Artist-in-Residence and has garnered a Public Voices fellowship (2020-21), a Callaloo fellowship (2016) and two Yerba Buena Center for the Arts fellowships (2017, 2015). He served as California guest editor for the Oxford African-American Studies Center from 2015 through 2020. Keenan was previously tenured faculty at the community college level, where he wrote curriculum to establish the online course offerings for the English department at Evergreen Valley College. |
|
 |
J. Michael MartinezAssistant Professor; Director of the Center for Literary Arts Faculty Offices 110 Longlisted for the National Book Award, winner of the National Poetry Series, and a recipient of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, J. Michael Martinez is the author of three collections of poetry, Heredities (LSU Press), In the Garden of the Bridehouse (University of Arizona Press), and Museum of the Americas (Penguin Press). His fourth collection, Tarta Americana, is forthcoming from Penguin Press, Fall of 2023. His poetry may be found in various publications including PBS, The Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets Series, New American Writing, and POETRY. His writings have been anthologized in Ahsahta Press' The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, Rescue Press' The New Census: 40 American Poets, and Counterpath Press' Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing. Martinez has read, lectured, or taught at universities and organizations nationwide, including The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference, The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Naropa University, The University of Colorado at Boulder, The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, The Tucson Festival of Books, Canto Mundo, George Mason University and more. An assistant professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at San Jose State University, Martinez lives in California. |
|
 |
Brook McClurgAssistant Professor; Editor in Chief, Reed Magazine Faculty Offices 114 Brook McClurg is an Assistant Professor in the English and Comparative Literature Department at San José State University and editor-in-chief for Reed Magazine, California’s oldest literary journal. A Fulbright research fellow, his nonfiction, fiction, poetry and translation work have appeared in many literary journals. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize, and his work “Geometry of Absence” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. His first book, A Dictionary of Modern Consternation, won the Permafrost Prize in Nonfiction and was published by The University of Alaska Press. |
|
 |
Matthew SpanglerProfessor Hugh Gillis Hall 102 Matthew Spangler is Professor of Performance Studies, scholar, and an award-winning playwright. His teaching and research are in the areas of immigration studies, intercultural theatre, playwriting, adaptation, and Irish Studies. Dr. Spangler was the recipient of SJSU's 2021 President’s Scholar Award and the College of Social Sciences’ Austen D. Warburton Award of Merit, both annual awards given to a faculty member who has achieved widespread recognition based on the quality of their scholarship and creativity activities. His plays have been produced on Broadway (Hayes Theatre), in London’s West End (Wyndham’s Theatre and the London Playhouse), off-Broadway at 59E59, at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Dubai Opera House, the San José Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Cleveland Play House, Actors Theatre of Louisville, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Poets’ Theatre and New Repertory Theatre in Boston, Nottingham Playhouse, Liverpool Playhouse, Oxford Playhouse, Belfast Opera House, the Avignon Theatre Festival in France, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Dublin Theatre Festival, Carthage Theatre Days in Tunisia, as well as at many other theatres throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Some of his plays include: The Kite Runner from the novel by Khaled Hosseini (five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Awards, including awards for Original Script and Overall Production); The Beekeeper of Aleppo (UK and Irish tour); Albatross based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Elliot Norton Awards Boston for Outstanding Production and Solo Performance); Operation Ajax about the CIA coup in Iran in 1953; Striking Back, about the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strike in Ireland in the 1980s; Tortilla Curtain from the novel by T.C. Boyle; The Story of Zahra from the novel by Hanan al-Shaykh; The Forgotten Empress about the Mughal Empress Noor Jahan; and Shady Hills from the short stories of John Cheever. His plays are published by Penguin Press, Bloomsbury, and Stage Rights. In the summer months, he directs a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on the topic of immigration to California. |
|
 |
Barnaby DallasDirector of Film and Theatre Production Hugh Gillis Hall 102 Barnaby Dallas is the Director of Production for Film and Theatre at San José State University and the Director of Film Production for Spartan Film Studios. He also teaches screenwriting and story development for DreamWorks Animation and is a consultant with Nine Yards Entertainment. |
