Meng Jin
Author and educator Meng Jin came to Hunter for the opportunity to work with the tight-knit group of faculty and students known to be deeply invested in each other’s success as writers. “What really matters at Hunter is the writing, and the opportunity to work with amazing writers,” she said.
Janice Rosario
Janice Rosario is a New York-based contemporary dance choreographer and improvisational dance instructor. A graduate of LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, Rosario is a native of Upper Manhattan and has studied at some of the most elite institutions including Ballet Hispánico, Ballet Academy East, Boston Ballet, and the Alvin Ailey School.
Derek Fordjour
Hunter College graduate Derek Fordjour was born in 1974 in Memphis, Tennessee, to parents of Ghanaian heritage. He earned a BA at Morehouse College before receiving an MEd in Arts Education at Harvard University. After a circuitous path to art making, Fordjour enrolled in the MFA program at Hunter College, graduating in 2016.
Henning Rübsam
Henning Rübsam is a choreographer, dancer, writer, and educator. He received his MFA in Dance Education from Hunter College in 2016. Already an accomplished dancer and choreographer when he began his studies at Hunter, Rübsam trained in classical ballet at John Neumeier’s Hamburg Opera Ballet School before emigrating to New York from Germany, then earned his BFA from the Juilliard School and eventually formed his own dance company, SENSEDANCE, in 1992.
Betty Yu
Socially engaged multimedia artist Betty Yu’s artistic practice integrates documentary film and new media platforms with community-infused activism and education. Born and raised in New York City to Chinese Immigrant parents, Yu co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade in 2015, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing.
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.
Vin Diesel
The actor Vin Diesel, also known as Mark Sinclair, attended Hunter College for three years in the late 1980s. He was immersed in the inner workings of the theatre through his stepfather, Irving Vincent, who worked as an acting coach and theatre manager.
Mariel Mayz
Renowned artist and piano virtuoso Mariel Mayz graduated from Hunter College with a dual Master’s degree in piano performance and composition in 2018. A New York native, Mayz debuted as a pianist with the Rockland Symphony Orchestra when she was only 16 years old.
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.
Timothy Edwards
Dancer, choreographer, and educator Timothy Edwards graduated with an BA in Dance from Hunter College in 2019. Edwards grew up in Hawaii and moved to California after high school to serve in the Air Force.
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.
Isabella Rossellini
An icon in film and fashion, actress Isabella Rossellini dedicated her recent years to the study of animal behavior and conservation, earning a Master’s degree from Hunter College in 2019. As she has explained in numerous interviews, this subject was a long-time passion, and became the premise of her one-woman shows Green Porno: Live on Stage (2008) and Link Link Circus (2019)
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.
Jeremy S. Levine
Jeremy S. Levine is an award-winning filmmaker exploring themes of race, class, and trauma—unearthing the buried tragedies of a society in active denial of its own past. Levine earned an MFA from the Integrated Media Arts program at Hunter College in 2020, and taught as an adjunct professor at Hunter as well.
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.”
Deepak Rauniyar
A writer, producer, and director whose work in film, radio, and television production spans over two decades, Deepak Rauniyar earned his MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College in 2021, while teaching film studies. He came to Hunter already having debuted two feature films at top international film festivals.
Alyssa Regent
Alyssa Regent began her undergraduate studies at Hunter College pursuing a degree in the sciences before discovering that composing was her true calling. Earning a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude, Regent went on to obtain her Master of Arts in composition in 2022.
Jamie Rubenstein
Jamie Rubenstein is a New York-based playwright whose works often include roles for different generations of women, and treats mortality, grief, and loneliness with humor and lightness. Prior to entering the MFA in playwriting program at Hunter College, Rubenstein taught English to middle and high school students in public and private schools for over a decade.
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.
Kathryn Alter
Kathryn Alter is a choreographer, teacher, dancer, and musician. She was a 2014 recipient of a CUNY Dance Initiative residency, and a 2018 Dance at Socrates Artist. A member of the Limón Dance Company for fifteen years, Alter was named the Associate Program Director for the Limon Professional Studies Program in 2018.