Mayer named Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow

Mark Mayer will be Cornell College’s first Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow.

Mayer has studied fiction writing at Brown University, the University of Montana and the Iowa Writers Workshop. His fiction has received honors from Granta, Playboy and Glimmer Train, and he has twice been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. He has worked as a writing teacher for nearly 10 years, teaching creative writing to med students at Brown University, nine-year-old Katrina refugees in Texas, Bay area high schoolers, honors students at Montana middle schools and in the University of Iowa’s undergraduate writing program.

For the past two years, he has worked  in the University of Iowa’s Iowa Writers Living Learning Community—a “writers’ dorm” for first-year students interested in creative writing—and Ink Lit Mag, a student-run literary magazine. As a fellow, he will work half time for the college. He will teach two courses, Introduction to Creative Writing and a freshman Academic Writing course. He will also serve as an advisor for Cornell’s literary journal Open Field and assist in the planning and direction of Cornell’s visiting writers series. The position is also designed to afford Mr. Mayer time to complete his collection of short stories.

The position is part of the college’s Center for the Literary Arts, which opens this fall in the newly-acquired Van Etten-Lacey House in Mount Vernon. It 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.