Alden Jones is the author of the memoirs The Blind Masseuse and The Wanting Was a Wilderness and the story collection Unaccompanied Minors. Her short works of fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, BOMB MagazineNew York Magazine, The CutThe Believer, Agni, Post Road, The Barcelona Review, Prairie Schooner, Gulf CoastIowa Review, and Best American Travel Writing. Her awards include a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship, the NYU Fellowship in Fiction, the New American Fiction Prize, two Independent Publisher Book Awards, and the Alan L. Stanzler Award for Excellence in Teaching; her books have been finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, two Lambda Literary Awards, and the Edmund White Award for Debut LGBTQ Fiction. She is co-founder and co-director of the Cuba Writers Program and has a long international career as an educator with a focus in Latin America. In addition to teaching at Emerson, she is a core faculty member of the Newport MFA program at Salve Regina University, where she teaches nonfiction and fiction.

 Bset American TravelThe Blind Masseuse book jacketUnaccompanied Minors book jacketThe Wanting Was a Wilderness book jacket

About

Education

B.A., Brown University
M.A., New York University
M.F.A., Bennington College

Areas of Expertise

  • Creative Writing
  • Cultural Appropriation
  • Cultural Studies
  • Feminism
  • Global Studies
  • Intercultural Studies
  • Journalism
  • LGBTQIA+ Issues
  • Literature
  • Photography
  • Postcolonial Studies
  • Sexuality Studies

Global & Civic Engagement

Visiting Professor of English, Semester at Sea

2006

Co-Founder and Co-Director, The Cuba Writers Program

2015

Awards & Honors

New American Fiction Prize

2013

Bisexual Book Award in Memoir/Nonfiction

2014

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay Longlist

2014

The Edmund White Award for LGBT Debut Fiction Finalist

2015

Lascaux Book Prize

2016