Kaitlyn Greenidge
Accomplished author Kaitlyn Greenidge published her debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books, 2016) after earning her MFA at Hunter College. The novel explores the legacy of the American eugenics movement, and also served as a meditation on language, family, and race. It was named one of The New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016.
Tina Howe
Award-winning playwright Tina Howe served as the head of Hunter’s MFA in Playwriting program from 2010 until 2015. An esteemed educator as well as a formidable playwright, Howe was a beloved member of the artistic community to which she belonged, and well-known to have infused her art into the everyday. Most recognized for her Tony-nominated play Coastal Disturbances, Howe wrote 14 full-length plays, including two Pulitzer prize finalists, Pride’s Crossing and Painting Churches.
Megha Majumdar
Megha Majumdar is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning (Knopf, 2020), which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal. It was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and Time Magazine.
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.
Victoria Cheah
A graduate of the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter, Victoria Cheah is an accomplished composer who has created her own unique works of contemporary music for audiences all over the world.
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.
Ryan Ponder McNamara
Brooklyn-based artist Ryan McNamara is both a member of the Hunter College faculty and a graduate of the MFA program. He works in a multitude of media and methods including performance, installation, photography, drawing, and sculpture.
Tiffany Geigel
Tiffany Geigel initially enrolled at Hunter College as a business major, despite having nurtured a talent for ballet all her life. Born with a rare genetic bone disorder called Jarcho-Levin Syndrome, Geigel didn’t think it was realistic to pursue a dance career, but continued to teach dance classes to kids because she loved it.
Sasha Wortzel
Award-winning visual artist and filmmaker Sasha Wortzel is a graduate of the Integrated Media Arts program at Hunter College. Her work explores the archival and the imaginary, and Wortzel specifically attends to sites and stories systematically erased or ignored. Raised in South Florida and based in Miami and New York City, she uses film, sculpture, and installation to investigate how structures of power shape our lives around race, gender, desire, and landscape.
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.
Lindsey Ferrentino
In-demand playwright and screenwriter Lindsey Ferrentino graduated from Hunter College with an MFA in Playwriting in 2013. Her plays include Ugly Lies the Bone (Roundabout Theatre Company and The National Theatre, UK), the barrier breaking Amy and the Orphans (Roundabout Theatre Company), This Flat Earth (Playwrights Horizons), and The Year to Come (La Jolla Playhouse).
Guadalupe Maravilla
Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer, who grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts belonging to the undocumented and cancer communities. A cancer survivor who now seeks to heal others, Maravilla is also a former unaccompanied, undocumented immigrant, who at the age of eight was part of the first wave of children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War.
Annie Berman
Annie Berman is a New York-based media artist whose films, videos, performances, and installations have been shown internationally in cinemas, festivals, galleries, universities, and conferences, including the MoMA Documentary Fortnight, Le FIFA International Festival of Films on Art, Camden International Film Festival, DocPoint Helsinki, Rooftop Films, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger Berlin, and Kassel Hauptbahnhof.
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.
Dana Czapnik
Native New Yorker Dana Czapnik entered Hunter’s MFA program in creative writing after having a successful career as a sports editor at ESPN and other outlets. At Hunter she was recognized with a Hertog Fellowship, and worked with Rivka Galchen.
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.
Nathan Fitch
Filmmaker and visual journalist Nathan Fitch has had his award winning work published and broadcast by The New York Times Op Docs, Time magazine, The New Yorker, PBS, and NPR. A graduate of the Integrated Media Arts Program at Hunter College, Fitch had considered graduate school for some time, but was nervous about the prospect of taking on debt for another degree.
Leonardo Freire
Leonardo Freire is a Brazilian-born and New York City-based international touring musician, music director, and educator. As a drummer he has toured around the world for multi-platinum selling artists, and played some of the industry’s most famous and largest stages.