NYU Names Poet Deborah Landau Director of Its Creative Writing Program

Landau Joins Celebrated Authors and Poets E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa at NYU

New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Science has named poet Deborah Landau as director of its Creative Writing Program. Landau is an award winning poet whose 2004 collection, Orchidelirium, was a National Poetry Series finalist. Beginning Feb. 5., Landau joins internationally renowned poets and authors, including E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall, Sharon Olds, and Yusef Komunyakaa, as Director, with responsibility for providing vision and leadership for NYU’s Creative Writing Program.

Landau replaces Melissa Hammerle, who directed the Creating Writing Program for nine years. Hammerle is now consulting with a wide range of literary organizations, conferences, and programs.

“Creative Writing at NYU is a program with a historic faculty and the most promising of students,” said Catharine Stimpson, dean of NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science, which houses the Creative Writing Program. “Deborah Landau will bring exceptional grace, talents, and experience to the program. She has a reputation for being an inspired and inspiring teacher and administrator and we’re delighted that she will be guiding our creative writing program going forward. We are grateful to Melissa Hammerle for her dedicated leadership and wish her all the best in her new endeavors.”

Landau is a two-time winner of the Los Angeles Poetry in the Windows Contest and was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Orchidelirium, a collection of her poems, won the 2003 Anhinga Prize for Poetry and was short-listed for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her poems, articles, essays and reviews have appeared widely. Active on the New York literary scene, Landau serves as co-director of the KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series and is currently Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the New School Writing Program.

Landau has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a master’s degree from Columbia, and a Ph.D. in English from Brown University, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow.