Just over a month ago, Nnedi Okorafor walked away with the World Fantasy Award for her fabulous post-apocalyptic novel Who Fears Death. But praise is not unusual for Okorafor's new novel. Since its publication in 2010, it's been a Nebula Award nominee, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010, a Library Journal Best Book of 2010, an Ebony Magazine Editor's Pick, and much more.

Okorafor will be teaching the Fantasy/Speculative Fiction workshop during our 29th Annual Summer Writers' Week (June 25-29, 2012). For a more in-depth look at Okorafor and her work, please watch the Africa Channel's "Behind the Words" to learn more.

The graduate program in creative writing at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY, is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of Camille Rankine as its new Assistant Director.

Rankine is the author of Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America's 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 "Discovery"/Boston Review Poetry Prize, she was featured as an emerging poet in the fall 2010 issue of American Poet and the April 2011 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

Camille Rankine received her BA from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. She serves on the Brooklyn Literary Council, acts as Co-Chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival Poetry Committee, and has worked for the past three years at the Cave Canem Foundation, most recently as the Manager of External Relations & National Programs.

Please join us in welcoming Camille Rankine to the graduate creative writing program at Manhattanville College.

We've added a link to our website for Summer Writers' Week (SWW). SWW runs from June 25-29, 2012. We've got an incredible list of workshop leaders and visitors this year, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Washington Post columnist Joby Warrick, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch, two-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia, and so much more. Our Summer Writers' Week webpage will be updated regularly as new information becomes available. And each of our SWW visiting writers will be previewed here at the Mville graduate creative writing program blog in the coming weeks. So bookmark us and come back to find out more about SWW and graduate creative writing @ Mville.

"Queenie," a fantastic new story by Prof. Jeff Bens, was recently published in the Fall 2011 issue of NOR: New Ohio Review. Produced by the Creative Writing program at Ohio University in Athens, the current issue includes new poetry, fiction, and non-fiction as well as a special feature -- "Six Poets on Six Movies" -- with Claudia Rankine, Jeffrey Harrison, George Bilgere, Lloyd Schwartz, Laurence Goldstein, and Linda Bamber. You can find a complete table of contents for the issue on NOR's website.