Raphael joined the MBS English Department in the fall of 2020. He teaches Humanities English 10 and two Creative Writing Senior Electives: Writing Our Lives and Poetry, Self, and World.

 

Raphael holds a BA in English Literature from Swarthmore, an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from the University of Oregon, and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah. His experience in education includes teaching as a writer-in-the-schools in Portland, Oregon high schools, and extensive college teaching at various universities in the U.S. and abroad, including Lewis and Clark College, Loyola University Maryland, Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, and the American University of Central Asia (a Bard College affiliate in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan).
 

At MBS, Raphael values the school’s combination of flexibility and rigor. Raphael urges his students to attend closely to textual details in order to explore their own productive questions about stories, poems, and plays under discussion. In his creative writing classes, students tap into their own style when asked to take a thematic focus or formal pattern and make it their own. Raphael strives to include a diversity of voices in his reading lists, and also strives to make his classroom welcoming, encouraging students to consider their own perspectives on readings and on their world.

 

Along with teaching, Raphael is also a published writer and photographer. His first book of poetry was published in 2014, and his poems, lyric essays, and photographs are regularly published in journals such as The North American Review, The Southern Review, The Offing, Blackbird, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. A second manuscript of poems is currently under review, and two more books—a third poetry manuscript and a collection of lyric essays—are in the works. Raphael’s writing has won numerous awards, such as the American Literary Review Creative Nonfiction Prize, the Mountain States Writers Award in Poetry, and others, and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and other organizations.

 

In addition to his career as a teacher and writer, Raphael spent fifteen years as a self-employed maker of custom cabinets and fine furniture. One day, behind a house shaded by oaks or maples, he will once again have a shop, and in summers enjoy the hum of the jointer and the scent of sawdust.