The Writer At Large (previously called the BFA Writer-in-Residence) is a distinguished writer who visits classes, meets with students, and participates in the life of the department each year. Past distinguished guests have included Renee Gladman, TC Tolbert, Michelle Tea, Layli Long Soldier, Kurt Anderson, Jenny Offil, Hilton Als, Francine Prose, Mary Gaitskill, Simone White, and Jen Hofer.
Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of five novels, seven plays, and a collection of his plays, essays and short stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and his plays have been performed by more than a hundred international companies. He received the Village Voice Obie Award for his first play “Invasion!” and in 2015 he was awarded the August Prize, Sweden’s highest literary honor for the novel Everything I Don’t Remember. In 2017 he became the first Swedish writer to have a short story published in The New Yorker and in 2020 his latest novel The Family Clause (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) was a finalist for the National Book Award in the United States and won the Prix Médicis Étranger, France’s highest honor for translated books. Khemiri was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and moved to New York for a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. He is currently teaching in the creative writing program at NYU.