Tess Gunty

Tess Gunty serves as a Writer in Residence in the Creative Writing Program at New York University, teaching graduate and undergraduate students. An award-winning novelist, she is best known for her debut The Rabbit Hutch, a New York Times Bestseller that won the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction and has been translated into twelve languages.

Gunty studied English with an honors concentration in creative writing at the University of Notre Dame, winning the Ernest Sandeen Award for poetry. She earned her MFA at New York University as a Lillian Vernon Fellow, receiving a Graduate Institute Research Fellowship to develop her thesis in Paris. Her literary work explores contemporary social themes through literary fiction, critically acclaimed by major publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and NPR.

• National Book Award for Fiction (2022)
• Barnes and Noble Discover Prize
• Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize
• VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
• Lillian Vernon Fellow at NYU
• Paul La Farge Fellow at MacDowell
• Finalist for National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize
• Finalist for Open Bank Vanity Fair Award
• Finalist for Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
• Finalist for British Book Award for Debut Fiction
• Finalist for Inside Literary Prize

At NYU, Gunty mentors emerging writers through coursework while developing her second novel. Her fellowships provided dedicated writing time, including at MacDowell Colony. Though The Rabbit Hutch was optioned for film by Fremantle and Richard Brown, her primary academic contribution remains pedagogical within creative writing instruction.