Featured YWW Alumni
Jonathan Ade (Alum, 2001-2002; Program Documentarian, 2010)
Jonathan Ade attended the Workshop in playwriting (2001-2002), joined the residential staff (2007-2009), filmed a documentary of the program (2010), and, most recently, created the YWW alumni video interview series. His documentary Policing and Mental Illness for NBC Left Field earned him a Peabody Award for News (2020); another documentary, The New West Coast Sound, was awarded an LA Area Emmy Award (2021). Read more about Jonathan.
Will Arbery (Alum, 2006; Teacher-Counselor, 2009 & 2012)
Will Arbery attended the Workshop in poetry in 2006 and joined the residential staff as a teacher and counselor in 2009 and 2012. He is a playwright, performer, and filmmaker from Texas + Wyoming and his play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama. Read more about Will.
Molly McCully Brown (Alum, 2007-2008)
Molly McCully Brown attended the Workshop in poetry from 2007-2008. Her debut poetry collection, The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded, was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017 and won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. She is also the recipient of a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship and the author of the essay collection Places I’ve Taken My Body (2020).
Bryan Doerries (Alum, 1991; Teacher-Counselor, 1995-1998)
Bryan Doerries attended the Workshop in poetry in 1992 and joined the residential staff as a teacher and counselor from 1995-98. He is the founder of Theater of War, a project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to service members, veterans, and their families to help them initiate conversations about the visible and invisible wounds of war. In 2017, he was named the New York City Public Artist in Residence.
Andrew Rose Gregory (Alum, 1996-1998; Teaching Songwriter, 2008-2009)
Andrew Rose Gregory attended the Workshop in poetry from 1996-98, joined the residential staff as a teacher and counselor from 2002-04, and returned as a teaching songwriter in 2008 and 2009. He is a member of The Gregory Brothers, the creators of Auto-Tune the News and Songify This! Read more about Andrew.
Valley Haggard (Alum, 1990-1991; Teacher-Counselor, 1995-1996)
and Bird Cox (Alum, 1997)
Valley Haggard (née Yane-Smith) attended the Workshop in 1990 (poetry) and 1991 (in fiction), joining the residential staff in 1995 and 1996; Bird attended in 1997 (poetry). In 2009 their paths crossed in Richmond, Virginia where, together, they built the Richmond Young Writers program into the amazing program it is today – a creative writing nonprofit for Richmond-area young writers that Bird now directs, while Valley devotes her creative energy to adult writing workshops at Life in Ten Minutes, as well as to her own writing (The Halfway House for Writers and Surrender Your Weapons: Writing to Heal). Read more about Valley.
Henry Hoke (Alum, 2000-2001; Teaching Scriptwriter, 2008-2021)
Henry Hoke attended the Workshop in playwriting in 2000 and 2001, joined the residential staff as a teacher and counselor in 2005 and 2006, and returned as a teaching screenwriter from 2008-2021. He is the author of five books: The Book of Endless Sleepovers, Genevieves, The Groundhog Forever, Sticker, and his most recent, Open Throat. Read more. Photo Credit: Myles Pettengill
Anushay Hossain (Alum, 1997)
Anushay Hossain attended the Workshop in creative nonfiction in 1997. She is the author of The Pain Gap, a deeply reported examination of women’s traumatic experiences within America’s health care system. She is a journalist and political analyst who has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, among other outlets, and she hosts the Spilling Chai podcast. Read more about Anushay.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Alum, 1998 & 2000-2001)
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins attended the Workshop in both fiction and playwriting (1998 & 2000-2001). He was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2016. His plays “Appropriate” and “An Octaroon” won the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play; “Gloria” (2016) and “Everybody” (2018) were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Selected by Octavia Butler’s literary estate to shepherd her fiction into film, he is the showrunner for the screen adaptation of Butler’s novel, “Kindred”, which premiered as a Hulu series in December 2022. Photo Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Alum, 1988)
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson attended the Workshop in fiction in 1988. Her debut novella and collected short stories, My Monticello, was released in October 2021, and Netflix acquired the rights to the title story for a film adaptation. Her work has also appeared in Best American Short Stories 2018, edited by Roxane Gay. Photo Credit: Billy Hunt
Lisa Ko (Alum, 1993)
Lisa Ko attended the Workshop as a fiction student in 1993. Her first novel, The Leavers, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2017. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, and Buzzfeed among other places. Photo Credit: Bartosl Potocki
Andrew Martin (Alum, 2002)
Andrew Martin attended the Workshop as a fiction student in 2002. His debut novel, Early Work, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018 and was included in The New Yorker’s and Book Forum’s Best Books of the Year. His short story collection, Cool for America, was released in 2020. Read more about Andrew.
Ransom Riggs (Alum, 1994-1996)
Ransom Riggs attended the Workshop from 1994-1996 in fiction, dramatic writing, and songwriting. He is the author of the Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children series, the first book of which was made into a feature film in 2016, directed by Tim Burton. Photo Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Read more about Ransom.
Sarah Stillman (Alum, 2000)
Sarah Stillman attended the Workshop in 2000. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and her investigative journalism has twice won the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, first in 2012 for her reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan and again in 2019 for her reporting on the dangers deported immigrants face on returning to their home countries. In 2016 she was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Photo Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation