Isabelle Appleton is an academic tutor, editor, and writer with experience in education, literary publishing, and test preparation. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU, where she teaches Introduction to Prose and Poetry, a hybrid craft class/workshop that emphasizes the fundamentals of writing including close reading, composition, grammar, and revision. She has taught creative writing to a wide range of students including first-generation precollege learners, aspiring novelists, and ESL learners. She’s also taught creative writing to residential hospital communities and incarcerated New Yorkers through correspondence programs.
Beyond the classroom, she has built a career in literary and academic publishing. For the past few years, she has worked in Editorial at The Princeton Review, where she assists in developing a wide range of test prep materials, including detailed study guides, strategic instructional videos, and comprehensive review books that cater to various learning styles and test formats. She has considerable experience with college essay writing and editing, most notably as one of the editors of a widely recognized collection of college application essays. She has also worked in editorial for various literary and academic publications and publishers including The Washington Square Review and The Bias Magazine. Prior to graduate school, she worked in the Literary Department at WME, where she supported award-winning authors.
Isabelle draws on these professional experiences in her teaching, giving students a window into the real-world contexts of writing, editing, and readership. Whether guiding a student through close reading an essay or story, brainstorming a supplemental college application essay, refining grammar and revision skills, or mentoring advanced creative writing projects, she encourages students to see writing as a mode of inquiry that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and confidence in high school, college, and beyond.
Her own fiction has appeared in journals including Conjunctions, Joyland, The New England Review, Protean Magazine, Civilization, and more. Her short story “Tank” is being adapted into a single-story print edition with Loose Tooth Press. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the PEN/Dau Prize, received NYU’s 2024 Thesis Research Award, and was recently awarded the Alpine Fellowship. In 2025, she will be a resident at the UCross Foundation. She holds an MFA in Fiction from NYU, where she was awarded the Goldwater Fellowship, a full-tuition and stipend award. She earned her BA in Religion from Vassar College, where she was Phi Beta Kappa and received the J. Howard Howson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Religion. Outside of her professional work, Isabelle loves reading, travel, her friends, and her cat, Missouri.