All Student Success Letters

Margot Singer

Dear Gotham,

I wanted to let you know that I recently published my first book, The Pale of Settlement (University of Georgia Press, 2007). It won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and the Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction.

It's been a while since I first picked up one of Gotham's newsprint flyers from a sidewalk box and enrolled in Adam Sexton's fiction class back in 1995. But without Adam's encouragement and the support of my Gotham classmates, I would never be writing today. Adam's class inspired me to quit my job and leave New York City to get my Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Utah. I now teach creative writing at Denison University, in Granville, Ohio, as well as in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University. My stories and essays have appeared in such literary journals as Conjunctions, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, The Western Humanities Review, and many others. Thanks to Gotham, writing is now my life and my career.

I have recommended Gotham to many friends, as my class there was one of the best writing classes I've taken. It's the model I still hold in my head as I teach today. There is nothing better than a smart, supportive, challenging group of writing peers.

Thanks so much.

Keep up the great work!

Margot Singer
margot-singer.com