<\/p>\n
Eastern Washington University\u2019s MFA program in Creative Writing is a vibrant and active community of writers and educators diverse enough to engage writers of all styles and small enough to provide the individual attention which truly nurtures great writing.\u00a0The faculty are highly educated and widely published; students interact in classrooms, at readings, and elsewhere. Part of the EWU MFA experience is learning to live the writer\u2019s life, and the program brings in a variety of visitors to help students explore that life.<\/p>\n
Recent guests include\u00a0Amy Tan,<\/a>\u00a0Susan Choi,<\/a> Morgan Talty<\/a>, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Dana Johnson, Bonnie Nadzam, Paul Harding, Lily Hoang, Krys Lee, William Finnegan, Albert Goldbarth, Thomas Lynch, Peter Everwine, Patricia Hampl, Linda Bierds, Thomas Lux, Alison Baker, James Tate, Dorianne Laux, Yusek Komunyakaa, Phillip Lopate, Lan Samantha Chang, Marilynne Robinson, Stuart Dybek, Jane Smiley, and many more.<\/p>\n See our Visiting Writers<\/a>\u00a0page for more.<\/p>\n Gregory Spatz is the author of the collection of linked stories and novellas, What Could Be Saved<\/em><\/strong>, and the novels Inukshuk<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0Fiddler’s Dream<\/em><\/strong>, and\u00a0No One But Us<\/strong>,<\/em> and the short story collections Half as Happy<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Wonderful Tricks<\/em><\/strong>. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker<\/em><\/strong>, Glimmer Train Stories<\/em><\/strong>, Shenandoah<\/em><\/strong>, Epoch<\/em><\/strong>, Kenyon Review<\/em><\/strong>, and New England Review<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> The recipient of a Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Washington State Book Award, and an NEA Fellowship in literature, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Spatz also plays the fiddle in the twice Juno-nominated bluegrass band John Reischman and the Jaybirds.<\/p>\n When not on the road with the Jaybirds or busy at work teaching and writing, he enjoys playing music with his wife, Caridwen, also a fiddler.<\/p>\n Read Greg’s article in Poets & Writers: “The Teachable Talent: \u00a0Why Creative Writing Can Be Taught”<\/a><\/p>\n Check out Greg’s interview with The Rumpus<\/a>, \u00a0the\u00a0Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>, and an interview with Kenyon Review.<\/a><\/p>\n Listen to Greg talk about MFA programs and the application process on Jared McCormack’s podcast: MFA Applications: Faculty Edition<\/a>.<\/p>\n To learn more about Greg’s work, visit his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Teaching Philosophy<\/strong><\/p>\n In my experience, becoming a good constructive critic\/editor of other people’s fiction is the first step to becoming a useful critic of your own work. It is the quickest way I know of, anyway, to begin understanding how to dismantle a piece of your own fiction and put it back together so it works better. Too, I’ve noticed that focusing more on constructive criticism than esthetic judgment in workshop tends to engender a working environment where students feel challenged and free to take risks. So, in all of my writing workshops, one thing I try to stress is this distinction between judgment and constructive criticism. Easy enough to look at a piece of fiction and draw conclusions based around your (mostly) esthetic reactions to it: this is trite and boring, I hate stories about teenagers, I hate voice-driven work, first person sucks…. In itself this sort of judgment does have limited value: it helps you to define your own esthetic; we all do it and it’s a legitimate response to any piece of art. However, it’s not so much use to the author of the piece whose work you’re judging. Constructive criticism, on the other hand, is criticism which focuses first on articulating a given story’s own best possible potential, despite all flaws and inconsistencies; it involves an effort to see past your esthetic preferences so you may face a story on its own terms, whether or not you like it. Then, bearing in mind the text’s best interests, it attempts to offer strategies for revision and editing.<\/p>\n Program Statement<\/strong><\/p>\n What I like best about teaching at the MFA at EWU is the sense of community. Maybe because of the genuine collegiality modeled by the faculty, there is a sense here that students support each other without any of the rancor or infighting so commonly present at writing programs. Not to say that our students don’t push each other to succeed. They do. Only rarely does it feel as if one student’s success or victory is perceived in the community as another student’s loss or failure. It’s a great, positive and challenging environment for learning\u2014one I wish I’d known about as a grad student myself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Polly Buckingham is the author of one book of poetry,\u00a0The River People<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0(Lost Horse Press 2020), two books of fiction,\u00a0The Expense of a View<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0(Katherine Anne Porter Award, UNT Press 2016) and\u00a0A Year of Silence<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0(Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award, Florida Review Press 2015), and of the forthcoming book\u00a0The Stolen Child and Other Stories<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0(Betty Books). She is the recipient of a 2014 Washington Artists Trust Fellowship. Polly is the editor of\u00a0Willow Springs<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0magazine and the series editor for The Katherine Anne Porter Award. Her work appears in\u00a0The Gettysburg Review<\/strong>, Threepenny Review<\/strong>, Alaska Quarterly Review<\/strong>, Sugar House<\/strong>, The Poetry Review<\/strong>, North American Review<\/strong>, Conduit<\/strong>, Spillway<\/strong>, The Moth<\/strong><\/i>\u00a0and elsewhere.<\/p>\n Jonathan Johnson\u2019s poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry, published in recent issues of Ploughshares<\/strong><\/em>, Southern Review<\/strong><\/em>, Witness<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, Prairie Schooner<\/strong><\/em>, Poetry Northwest<\/strong><\/em>, New Ohio Review<\/strong><\/em>, Missouri Review<\/strong><\/em><\/a> and Gettysburg Review<\/strong><\/em>, and read on NPR\u2019s Writer\u2019s Almanac<\/strong>. His books include the poetry collections Mastodon, 80% Complete<\/strong><\/em> (Carnegie Mellon, 2001), In the Land We Imagined Ourselves<\/strong><\/em> (Carnegie Mellon 2010), and May Is an Island<\/strong><\/em> (Carnegie Mellon 2018); and the memoirs, Hannah and the Mountain<\/strong><\/em> (Nebraska, 2005) and The Desk on the Sea<\/strong><\/em> (Wayne State, 2019). Ode, his play about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, was produced as part of the GetLit! Literary Festival, and his fiction has appeared recently in Ploughshares<\/strong><\/em>, Bellevue Literary Review<\/strong><\/em>, and Missouri Review<\/strong><\/em>. Johnson migrates between the Northwest; his hometown of Marquette, Michigan; and his ancestral village of Glenelg in the Scottish Highland where his cousins are still crofters.<\/p>\n In addition to his regular course load, Jonathan teaches a unique summer writing class from Yellowstone National Park. All students in previous sections of this course have watched wolves. Other observations have included wild trout, grizzly bears, falcons, mountain goats, and bison (lots and lots of bison). The course is designed to be a peak life experience that inspires writers to observe their world closely, to conduct field research, and to write from their own experiences for years to come.<\/p>\n Interviews with Johnson can be read at:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.theswampmagazine.com\/jonathan-johnson-interview<\/a>\u00a0 and http:\/\/www.towncreekpoetry.com\/SPR10\/JJ_INTERVIEW.htm<\/a><\/p>\n Teaching Philosophy<\/strong><\/p>\n I believe the most important quality a teacher of writing can possess is the ability to imaginatively inhabit a student’s work, to read and consider and comment on it as if from the inside. I try to let each piece I read teach itself to me, show me its methods and aesthetic. Only then do I attempt to comprehend and articulate its potentials\u2014realized and unrealized\u2014and offer my comments. This sort of reading often requires the ability and willingness to set aside much of my own literary agenda and taste and adopt, at least partly, the agenda and taste of the student. I think of myself much less as an editor of students’ writing then as a guide, taking them through their own words, helping them make discoveries and decisions. And as I see it, an ideal workshop environment is one in which the entire group is far less interested in making this or that piece better and far more interested in deep, careful and enlightening exploration of the work at hand. Thus, the ultimate goal of a writing workshop should not be however many pages of improved writing\u2014which tends to happen anyway\u2014but the fostering of each writers’ long-term capacity to create and skillfully refine his or her own, wholly unique art.<\/p>\n Program Statement<\/strong><\/p>\n The MFA at EWU is a wonderful place to teach because we’ve specifically designed every element of the program to contribute to the artistic development of the students. One of my personal favorites of these elements is our literature requirement. These courses are a delight to teach because we read and study the literature not primarily as scholars or critics, but as fellow artists, looking for models, inspiration, and contexts for our own work. Then in the workshops our discussions and debates are informed by this reading, made richer and more helpful by the coordinates and common artistic vernacular we’ve established.<\/p>\n Spokane itself is lively and vibrant and our program is at the center of its active literary scene. But it’s the magnificent surrounding landscape in which I feel most at home. Several times a week I run through the sage and pine on the trails of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge where I frequently see elk and coyotes. And the Silkirk Mountains, which extend north from just outside Spokane, is the only mountain range in the lower forty-eight states not to lose any animal to extinction in the last ten thousand years. Wolves, lynx, grizzlies, even caribou are all still there. Glimpsing that wild high country on the horizon, knowing it’s always there, is like living day in and day out with the muse.<\/p>\n Summer Yellowstone Class<\/strong><\/p>\n The purpose of this course is to foster the development of new work though field observations, note-taking, and discussion. Days will begin very early with wildlife observation and filed note-taking. We will be staying at an historic log lodge, to which we\u2019ll return at mid-day (time dependent upon our success at wildlife observations) for rest and writing. Late afternoons will include group discussion and instruction. After dinner we will head into the field once again for more wildlife observation. Our main focus will be on attempting to observe wolves using spotting scopes, but we will also attempt to observe bison, elk, antelope, grizzly bears, trout, and birds. Note will also be made of the geology and botany of the area.<\/p>\n All students in previous sections of this course have watched wolves. Other observations have included wild trout spawning in mountain streams, wolves hunting elk and killing bison, wolf pups emerging from the den to play and howl, and grizzly cubs playing beside their mother. Students form close bonds by traveling, cooking and conducting flora and fauna observations together. These close bonds allow students with widely varying levels of writing experience to understand and trust one another\u2019s insights on the composition process. The course is designed to be a peak life experience that inspires writers to observe their world closely, to conduct research based on and to aid that observation, and to write from their own experiences for years to come.<\/p>\n Leyna Krow is the author of the short story collection I’m Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking<\/strong><\/em> (Featherproof Books 2017) and the novel Fire Season<\/a> <\/strong><\/em>(Viking 2022), which was nominated for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her second story collection Sinkhole & Other Inexplicable Voids<\/strong><\/em> (Viking) is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in Spokane, WA with her husband and two children.<\/p>\n Find out more on her website: www.leynakrow.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Samuel Ligon is the author of two novels\u2014Among the Dead and Dreaming<\/em> and Safe in Heaven Dead<\/em>\u2014and two collections of stories, Wonderland<\/em>, illustrated by Stephen Knezovich, and Drift and Swerve<\/em>. He\u2019s co-editor, with Kate Lebo, of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze<\/em>. His short fiction has appeared in Georgia Review<\/em>, Prairie Schooner<\/em>, New England Review<\/em>, The Quarterly<\/em>, and elsewhere.\u00a0Ligon serves as the\u00a0Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers\u2019 Conference.<\/p>\n Teaching Philosophy<\/strong><\/p>\n In the classroom, we use critical language to approach and discuss writing, as if it were rational. And it is, on many levels. But the rendering of who people are and how they behave and what connects us as humans transcends the merely rational. What we’re really after, it seems, as writers and readers, is something we recognize first in our guts, which must then be struggled with intellectually while still resonating in the guts. As writers, readers, and editors, we use our critical minds to rationally approach any piece of writing; but this critical sensibility, and, certainly our writer’s sensibility, is informed by an evolving irrational and instinctive understanding of what makes a line or story powerful and true. I think it’s crucial to recognize the enormous depth of what we don’t know, what nobody knows, what we have to constantly struggle to learn, which is how to write a line, a story, a novel that reveals to the reader, viscerally and intellectually, something about what it means to be human. My goal as a teacher is to promote conscious exploration and understanding of elements of craft, while also emphasizing the importance of the irrational, provoking and promoting, then, both rational and irrational\u2014conscious and unconscious\u2014approaches to line, character, voice, story, and all the problems that come with trying to make something that matters.<\/p>\n Program Statement<\/strong><\/p>\n My favorite aspect of this program is that most of my interaction with students takes place outside the classroom: during weekly editorial meetings for Willow Springs; in one on one thesis advising; at dinners with visiting writers before they read and at the parties that follow; at student and faculty readings; at GetLit! events in Spokane; at the AWP conference, where I take students every year; at regional book festivals in Seattle, Missoula, and Portland; and in a variety of other social and professional settings in which faculty, students, and other local artists interact. The Inland Northwest Center for Writers is the heart of a thriving community of writers in Spokane. I think one of the most important elements of an MFA program is that students have the opportunity to completely devote two years of their lives to writing and reading, surrounded, encouraged, and provoked by peers and teachers similarly devoted and engaged, similarly immersed in writing and reading. In her essay, \u201cWriting Short Stories,\u201d Flannery O’Connor writes that \u201cArt is the habit of the artist; and habits have to be rooted deep in the whole personality. They have to be cultivated like any other habit\u2026, and teaching any kind of writing is largely a matter of helping the student develop the habit of art.\u201d Spokane’s community of writers, readers, and editors cultivates that \u201chabit of art\u201d in students and teachers alike.<\/p>\n