Event

Beltran Family Program

Creative Writing faculty member Max Apple, winner of the 2023–2024 Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring, has invited four of his former students – Ariel Djanikian, Dan Finkel, Sanaë Lemoine, and Alicia Oltuski — to share their writing.

ARIEL DJANIKIAN is the author of two novels, The Prospectors (William Morrow, 2023), selected for the Barnes & Noble Book Club, and The Office of Mercy (Viking, 2013). She attended the University of Pennsylvania and the MFA program at the University of Michigan. She is the previous recipient of a Fulbright grant, Meijer Fellowship, Cowden Award, and Hopwood Award, and her writing has appeared in Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, The Millions, and The Rumpus. Born in Philadelphia, she currently lives near Washington, DC, where she teaches creative writing at Georgetown University.

DANIEL FINKEL is a writer from Philadelphia. He graduated from Penn in 2020 with a degree in English and is working on his first novel, a comedy about union-busting.

SANAË LEMOINE is a novelist and cookbook author. She is the author of The Margot Affair, a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick, and a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Born to a Japanese mother and French father, Sanaë was raised in France and Australia, and now lives in Brooklyn.

ALICIA OLTUSKI’s work has appeared on TheNewYorker.com, Esquire.com, in Tin House magazine, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Barcelona Review, and in book form as Precious Objects. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has included writing, lecturing, project management, translation from German, and amateur dog walking.

For more information, see the Kelly Writers House calendar.