Rene Steinke ’86

Novelist and Professor of Creative Writing
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Brooklyn, NY

Rene Steinke is a novelist and Professor of Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her most recent novel, Friendswood (Riverhead), was named on of National Public Radio’s Best Books of 2014. Friendswood was shortlisted for the St. Francis Literary Prize; it was also an Amazon Book of the Month, and one of O Magazine’s Fall 2014 “picks.” Her previous novel, Holy Skirts, an imaginative retelling of the life of the artist and provocateur, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was a Finalist for the National Book Award. Her first novel is The Fires. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, O Magazine, Salon, Bookforum, and in anthologies. Steinke is the former Editor of The Literary Review, where she remains Editor-at-Large. She has taught at the New School and at Columbia University, and she is currently the Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is a member of PEN and the Authors Guild. She graduated from Christ College in 1986 (Humanities and English). She holds an M.F.A from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee..