Columbia College Chicago : Faculty

Randall Albers chairs the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, home to the Story Workshop® approach to teaching writing and one of the largest graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs in the country. He is also the founding producer of Story Week Festival of Writers. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Chicago Review, Northfield Magazine, Mendocino Review, f Magazine, Writing From Start to Finish, and elsewhere. A chapter from his novel-in-progress, All the World Before Them, appearing in the Summer 2001 issue of f Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Selections from his roundtable discussion with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Bharati Mukherjee, April Sinclair, Don DeGrazia, and Geling Yan, "Censorship and the Writer's Voice," appeared in f5. He is the co-writer and co-producer of the Story Workshop® creative writing videotapes, The Living Voice Moves and Story From First Impulse to Final Draft, and had presented at AWP and many other national conferences on writing and the teaching of writing. A Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher, he is a former recipient of the Columbia College Chicago Teaching Excellence Award.

Andrew Allegretti is the winner of numerous Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowships and Literary Awards, and is a professor in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. His fiction has been published in many magazines, including TriQuarterly, Private Arts, Stand, Bandit-Lit, and f magazine. "Heat Lightning," the prologue to his novel, Winter House, was also a semifinalist for the James Fellowship for Novels in Progress, sponsored by the Heekin Foundation. Recently, an excerpt from A Fool's Game appeared in f4. Allegretti has chaired the John Schultz & Betty Shiflett Story Workshop® Scholarship Fund gala, is a board member of the Story Workshop Institute, and an active member of the Cultural Committee of the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation. He grew up in Fox River Valley and in Watseka, IL, where his father published a daily newspaper. Allegretti currently resides in Chicago.

Don DeGrazia is a full-time Fiction Writing professor at Columbia College, where he also earned his BA and MFA. After completing his master's thesis, American Skin, DeGrazia decided to send it off to London's prestigious publisher, Jonathan Cape, who had worked with Irvine Welsh and the Scottish Beats he so admired. Cape offered him a contract, and in January 1998, American Skin was published in the U.K. Hailed as an American classic, the book was so highly acclaimed by critics that it caught the attention of publishers around the world, and in April 2000, American Skin was released in the U.S. by Scribner. A flood of positive reviews appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. It is now in its fourth printing and is being translated into other languages. Plans are underway for a feature film. DeGrazia is also the editor of f Magazine, a journal devoted to new fiction. He resides in Chicago, where he is at work on his second novel.

Ann Hemenway earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published fiction and creative nonfiction in Writing From Start to Finish, Emergence, Private Arts, Sport Literate, and other magazines. Hemenway is an AWP Intro award winner, and has edited numerous publications. She is a Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher and full-time professor in the Fiction Writing department at Columbia College Chicago, and is currently at work on a novel.

Gary Johnson is a writer/producer of creative nonfiction for Public Radio on Morning Edition, Soundprint, Living On Earth, and Pacifica. Among his awards are the Associated Press Award for Best Radio Documentary, National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Silver Reel. He was a Herman Kogan Media Award finalist and a winner of the Edwin L. Schuman Award for Fiction, Northwestern University. His fiction appears in F2, F3, Private Arts, Hyphen, and his articles have appeared in the Chicago Reader. He is a Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher.

Eric May graduated with a BA in Writing/English from Columbia in 1975 and the following year joined what was then Columbia's Writing/English Department as a part-time instructor. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1985 to attend graduate school at American University and began working at the Washington Post as a newsroom clerk. In 1987, he joined the Post staff where he was a reporter on the Metro section. He returned to Columbia College in 1993. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in such literary anthologies as Fish Stories: Collective I, Sport Literate, Angels in My Oven, and f5 Magazine. May is a Certified Story Workshop Director, and Associate Faculty member at the Stonecoast Writers' Conference in Maine, and a past Board of Judges member for the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). He is currently at work on a novel and a memoir.

Alexis Pride, coordinator of Story Week and Fiction Writing Department outreach events, earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, where today she is a full-time Fiction Writing Department professor. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Pride served as former Director of Curriculum Planning at the Saturday Academy and was a consultant for the Chicago Public Schools through the Chicago Teachers Center at Northeastern Illinois University. Pride received the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) Award for her short story "Fried Buffalo." She has recently completed a book on Mama Hawk, a Chicago educator and social activist, entitled Where the River Ends.