Audre Lorde
A self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde was a graduate of both Hunter High School (1951) and Hunter College (1959). She went on to serve as Thomas Hunter Distinguished Professor (1981–82), and as a member of the Hunter English Department faculty until 1986. The Hunter College “Audre Lorde Award,” a prize for excellence in poetry and prose, is given in her honor.
Firelei Báez
Artist Firelei Báez graduated from Hunter College with an MFA in 2011. Widely exhibited and collected, her paintings, drawings, and installations draw upon diasporic histories, casting them into an imaginative realm and re-working visual references drawn from the past to explore new possibilities for the future. Báez was born in 1981 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent.
Alexia Arthurs
The celebrated author and Hunter College alumna Alexia Arthurs arrived in Brooklyn from Jamaica at age 12 as an undocumented immigrant. Now a rising literary voice known for her captivating storytelling and exploration of identity, belonging, and the complexities of human relationships, Arthurs has said it was her Hunter College education more than anything else that helped her achieve that dream.
Phil Klay
Accomplished author and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay has made a significant impact on the literary world. Klay earned his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth, where he was mentored by acclaimed poet—and Hunter College faculty member—Tom Sleigh. After serving as a United States Marine Corps officer during the Iraq War, Klay pursued his passion for writing and enrolled in the Creative Writing MFA program at Hunter College, with encouragement from Sleigh.
Coralina Rodriguez Meyer
Brooklyn and Miami-based artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer’s work tackles topics of racism, gender, and power imbalances. In 2005 she founded Abra Studio, a thriving interior and exterior design firm, where she does work for Fortune 500 companies and pioneering startups—getting coverage in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, the Los Angeles Times, and Metropolis.
Vinson Cunningham
Vinson Cunningham graduated with his bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in 2014, and is now a theatre critic for The New Yorker, where he has been on staff since 2016. An English major, Cunningham credits the courses and instructors at Hunter for helping him dive deeply into subject matter and extracting the most from his studies.
Alteronce Gumby
Abstract artist Alteronce Gumby is known for his vivid interstellar paintings that emerge from his profound fascination with the cosmos and theories of energy. After graduating from Hunter with his BFA in 2014, Gumby earned an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2016. Gumby is now an award-winning artist whose work has been exhibited at renowned galleries and museums such as Hauser & Wirth, Gladstone Gallery, and Camden Arts Centre.
Sharon Madanes
Artist and psychiatrist Sharon Madanes straddles two seemingly disparate professions, making artwork using hospital forms and rituals to illuminate matters of life and death. Madanes says she was able to find an interesting and fruitful balance between the two disciplines while earning her MFA from Hunter College.
Charly Evon Simpson
Hunter College Playwriting MFA alumna Charly Evon Simpson is a playwright, educator, and TV writer based in Brooklyn. Her plays include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown, and it’s not a trip it’s a journey. In TV, Simpson has worked as a writer on Showtime's American Rust and currently has an overall deal at HBO, where she has been a consulting producer on the second season of Industry, and a writer for several other limited series.
Hanna Novak
Hanna Novak is a New York City-based playwright, director, and theater producer. She is a 2018 graduate from the MFA Playwriting program at Hunter College, where she studied with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Annie Baker.
Mara Vélez Meléndez
Mara Vélez Meléndez is a playwright born and raised in Puerto Rico. She earned her MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College in 2019, where she began to develop her play Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, which made its Off Broadway debut in 2022 at the Soho Rep.
John J. Caswell Jr.
Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, John J. Caswell Jr. graduated with an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College in 2020. He went on to attend The Juilliard School as a fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwright Program.
Liz Appel
New York-based playwright Liz Appel graduated from Hunter’s MFA program in Playwriting in 2021, where she was awarded a Roberts Foundation Fellowship. Originally from Toronto, Appel also holds an MA and an MPhil from Yale University. Upon finishing her degree, Appel described her experience at Hunter College as “a decade’s worth of learning in two years—I’m exhausted, but thrilled.”
Garrett Zuercher
Actor, playwright, and filmmaker Garrett Zuercher earned his MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College in 2022. He identifies as a profoundly Deaf artist and a member of the LGBTQ community. “As a profoundly Deaf artist, it’s always a challenge to try and find the rare spaces where I feel like I fit in,” Zuercher said.