Rubinstein named Dana Fellow

Helen Rubinstein has been named the Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow for 2015-16.

Rubinstein received her B.A. from Yale University, an M.F.A. in fiction from Brooklyn College, and an M.F.A. in nonfiction from the University of Iowa. Her essays have appeared in The Seneca Review, The Paris Review Daily, Witness, The New York Times, and elsewhere, and her fiction in The Collagist, Ninth Letter, and Salt Hill.

Rubinstein has taught at the University of Iowa, where she received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, at Brooklyn College, and at New York City College of Technology.

She has worked as an in-house copy editor at Farrar Straus Giroux publishing house and has held a number of prestigious writing residencies, including at the MacDowell Colony and the Ragdale Foundation. Rubinstein is currently working on two books.

This fall, she will teach Introduction to Creative Writing and a first-year writing course on the Racial Imaginary. The Dana Fellow teaches two courses, assists with the administration of the Center for the Literary Arts, serves as an advisor for Open Field literary magazine, and works with students across campus on literary arts programming. The position is half-time, allowing the fellow to work on his or her own writing projects while in residence. The fellowship is named in honor of Robert Dana, the former poet laureate of Iowa and Cornell College English and creative writing professor who died in February 2010.