Alexandra Kleeman

Alexandra Kleeman is an Assistant Professor of Writing at The New School, affiliated with the SPE (School/Program not fully spelled out in text). She is renowned for her fiction and nonfiction works, including You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Everything New Under the Sun. A recipient of prestigious awards like the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, Rome Prize, and Berlin Prize, her research explores themes such as economic precarity, existentialism, and philosophical inquiry in literature. She is currently working on a novel examining the rise and fall of money and its symbolic representations, alongside a screenplay adaptation of her work.

Her teaching emphasizes collaborative, democratic approaches to writing, inspiring students through the Writing Program’s innovative ethos. She incorporates works by her Guggenheim peers into her curriculum, fostering a community-driven environment. Kleeman advocates for writers to prioritize personal passion over external validation, emphasizing the importance of creative integrity.

Recent projects include a foreword for a book by a noted French philosopher and ongoing research into islands as symbols of radical divergence. She plans to use her Guggenheim fellowship to take a year-long hiatus from teaching to focus on her novel.