Machado, the 2026 Katie Jacobson Writer-in-Residence at CalArts, is a fiction writer and memoirist whose signature blend of horror writing, sci-fi, fantasy, and psychological realism has worked to transform our contemporary literary landscape. In 2018, The New York Times listed Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Machado’s acclaimed memoir, In the Dream House (2019), mixes styles and breaks conventions to tell the tale of an abusive relationship, and was hailed as “breathlessly inventive” by The New Yorker. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize.
The Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence program honors beloved Creative Writing MFA alumnx Katie Jacobson (class of 2010) for her notable dedication to public literary engagement in Los Angeles.
Thanks to the generous support of Katie’s family, the Creative Writing program is able to celebrate her memory each year by bringing a writer of great influence to campus and to the REDCAT theater in downtown Los Angeles for a lecture, a public reading and two days of intimate workshops with CalArts Creative Writing MFA students.
