Nicole B. Wallack (B.A., McGill University, 1988; M.Sc., University of Edinburgh, 1989; Ph.D., New York University, 2004), is the Director of Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. At Columbia, she teaches seminars on writing pedagogy, American literature and film, creative nonfiction and literatures of fact, public intellectuals, and undergraduate essay-writing courses. As a Senior Associate at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, she conducts intensive seminars on writing-based teaching for educators across disciplines to enhance their intellectual lives and devise inherently purposeful curricula from kindergarten through graduate school.

Her scholarship focuses on the history, pedagogy, and aesthetics of the American essay; rhetoric and composition; writing studies; teacher education; and educational history. Her book, Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, 2017), offers theoretical and pedagogical arguments for how an essay-based pedagogy in high school and college can enact the goals of a liberal education more effectively and ethically than “college and career readiness” paradigms. Currently, she is co-editing a new collection--The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay--for Edinburgh University Press.