To see presentations from some of our recent guests on YouTube click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n EWU’s Visiting Writers Series is promoted by Get Lit! Programs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Please contact us at MFA@ewu.edu<\/a> or 509.828.1434<\/a> for more information on visiting writers and all general program questions.<\/p>\n","blocks":[{"acf_fc_layout":"text","module_background_color":"white","copy":" TBD at the Get Lit! Festival<\/strong><\/p>\n Keetje Kuipers\u2019 fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers<\/em>, won the Isabella Gardner Award, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was recommended by Ron Charles for the Washington Post Book Club. Her poetry and prose have appeared in BOMB, the New York Times Magazine, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, NEA Literature Fellow in Creative Writing, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Previously a VP on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, Keetje has taught at many colleges and universities, including Auburn University, where she was a tenured Associate Professor, as well as festivals and conferences around the world from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown to the dual-language writers conference Under the Volcano in Tepoztl\u00e1n, Mexico. Keetje is currently Editor of Poetry Northwest, and lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she co-directs the Headwaters Reading Series for Health & Well-Being.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 20th, 2026 | <\/strong>7:30 p.m. at Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sunni Brown Wilkinson is a poet and essayist. Her newest poetry collection Rodeo<\/em> was selected by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published in 2025 by Autumn House Press. Other books are The Marriage of the Moon and the Field<\/em> (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing<\/em> (winner of the Sundress Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has also been awarded New Ohio Review\u2019s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Prize, and the Sherwin Howard Award.<\/p>\n Her recent work can be found in Mom Egg Review, Terrain, Rust & Moth, New Ohio Review and Best of the Net. She earned her MFA from Eastern Washington University and now teaches at Weber State University. She lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 13th, 2026 | <\/strong>7:30 p.m. at Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Dawn Raffel is the author of six books, most recently The Strange Case of Dr Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies<\/em> and Boundless as the Sky: Fables & Tales<\/em>, Some of Them True<\/em>. A longtime editor, she was recently Fiction Editor of the Northwest Review and guest editor of Best Micro 2024. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Conjunctions, BOMB, NOON, Willow Springs, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, New Micro, and many other periodicals and anthologies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n April 10th, 2026 | <\/strong>7:30 p.m. at Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sameer Pandya is the author of the novels Our Beautiful Boys<\/em> and Members Only<\/em>, a finalist for the California Book Award and an NPR Best Books of 2020, and the story collection The Blind Writer<\/em>, longlisted for the PEN\/Open Book Award. His cultural criticism has appeared in a range of publications, including the LA Review of Books, The Atlantic, Salon, and Sports Illustrated. He is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n","no_wrapper":false,"component_options_toggle":true,"component_options":{"disable_component":false,"nickname":"2025-2026 Visiting Writers Series","identifier":"vws","navigable":false}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text","module_background_color":"off-white","copy":" Alexandra Teague | October 25th<\/strong><\/p>\n Alexandra Teague is recent runner-up for the Idaho Book of the Year award and she comes to us to discuss her most recent work, [ominous music intensifying]<\/em> and her three books of poetry\u2014What We\u2019ll Call Desire<\/em>, The Wise and Foolish Builders<\/em>, and Mortal Geography<\/em>. A former Stegner Fellow and NEA recipient, she is a professor at University of Idaho, where she co-directs the MFA program.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum | November 22nd<\/strong><\/p>\n Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles<\/em>, a finalist for the PEN\/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping<\/em>, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her story collection, Likes<\/em>, was a finalist for the Story Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tin House, the Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Prize Stories. She lives in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Danusha Lam\u00e9ris | <\/strong>February 14th<\/strong><\/p>\n Danusha Lam\u00e9ris\u2019s third book of poems, Blade by Blade<\/em>, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2024. She is also the author of The Moons of August<\/em>, winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, 2014,\u00a0<\/em>and Bonfire Opera <\/em>(Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award. Lam\u00e9ris is on the faculty of Pacific University\u2019s Low-Residency MFA program and lives in Santa Cruz, California.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carolyn Kuebler\u2019s debut novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable<\/em>, was published in May 2024 by Melville House. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Common<\/em>\u00a0and Colorado Review<\/em>, among others, and \u201cWildflower Season\u201d (Massachusetts Review<\/em>) won the 2022 John Burroughs Award for Nature Essay.<\/em>\u00a0She was a co-founder of the literary magazine Rain Taxi<\/em>\u00a0and for the past ten years she has been the editor of the award-winning New England Review<\/em>\u00a0in Middlebury, Vermont.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of three collections of short fiction, most recently What We Do with the Wreckage,<\/em> which won the 2017 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published by UGA Press in 2018. Her debut novel, Elita<\/em>, comes out in January of 2025 with TriQuarterly\/Northwestern University Press. Kirsten’s short fiction has been widely published in journals, including McSweeney’s, The Sun, Conjunctions, One Story, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, and others. She has been the recipient of a PEN\/O. Henry Prize and fellowships from MacDowell, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Jack Straw Writers Program. Kirsten teaches middle school in Seattle and lives with her family near the shore of Puget Sound.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A 2017 graduate of the MFA at EWU, Cody Smith went on to acquire a PhD at Florida State University. His first book of poems, Gulf<\/em>, was the co-winner of the Summerlee Book Prize.\u00a0 River Hymnal<\/em>, his second book of poems, is forthcoming February 2025. Winner of the Mississippi Review and River Styx Prizes for poetry, his poems and essays appear in Poetry<\/em>, Prairie Schooner<\/em>, Willow Springs<\/em>, and elsewhere. He lives outside of Orlando with his wife, son, and daughter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","no_wrapper":false,"component_options_toggle":false,"component_options":{"disable_component":false,"nickname":"","identifier":"","navigable":false}},{"acf_fc_layout":"destination-eastern","module_background_color":"white","title":"Presented By:","subtitle":"","features":[{"icon":"","image":false,"feature_title":"The MFA at EWU","feature_content":"","link":{"title":"Program Information","url":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/english\/creative-writing\/mfa\/","target":""}},{"icon":"","image":false,"feature_title":"Get Lit! Programs","feature_content":"","link":{"title":"Get Lit! Website","url":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/getlit\/","target":"_blank"}}],"show_details":false,"details_title":"","copy":"","second_column_type":"quote","copy_2":"","quote":"","component_options_toggle":false,"component_options":{"disable_component":false,"nickname":"","identifier":"","navigable":false}},{"acf_fc_layout":"eastern-stories","module_background_color":"white","title":"Previous Visiting Writers","starting_display_type":"tag","tag":"visiting-writers","category":"","multisite_tag":"featured","multisite_curated_stories":false,"include_cat":false,"include_cta":false,"button_text":"More Eastern Stories","button_link":"","component_options_toggle":false,"component_options":{"disable_component":false,"nickname":"","identifier":"","navigable":false}},{"acf_fc_layout":"accordion-with-notes","module_background_color":"white","accordion_position":"left","title":"Previous Visiting Writers","notes":"","include_spacing":true,"expanded":false,"sections":[{"label":"2023-24","copy":" Stephanie Oakes<\/strong><\/p>\n Stephanie Oakes is a Spokane author with three novels. Her first two novels are The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, <\/i>a Morris Award finalist and a Golden Kite Honor book, and The Arsonist, <\/i>recipient of the Washington State Book Award. Her most recent novel, The Medows<\/i>, has been described as a queer, YA Handmaid’s Tale<\/em> meets Never Let Me Go. The Meadows <\/em>is about a dystopian society bent on relentless conformity, and the struggle of one girl to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies. Stephanie Oakes lives in Spokane, Washington with her wife and family.<\/p>\n October 20, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm at\u00a0Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of four collections of poetry: <\/span>Transitory,<\/span><\/i> 2023 winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry; <\/span>Surrender of Water in Hidden Places<\/span><\/i>, 2023 winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize; <\/span>Blue Hunger, Methow Press<\/span><\/i>,<\/span>\u00a0and <\/span>Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey<\/span><\/i>, 2004 winner of the A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize from BOA Editions in 2004.\u00a0 <\/span>She’s also a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. <\/span>She\u2019s a teaching artist, working in schools and libraries with youth and adults as well as private students. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals, including <\/span>The Diode Poetry Journal,<\/span><\/i> The<\/span><\/i> Bellevue Literary Review<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Indianapolis Review<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Smartish Pace, <\/span><\/i>and others.\u00a0 She lives in rural north central Washington on unceded Methow land.<\/span><\/p>\n December 1, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm at\u00a0Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carrie Oeding<\/strong><\/p>\n Carrie Oeding’s<\/b> collection of poems <\/span>If I Could Give You a Line<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 won the Akron Poetry Prize and was publis<\/span>hed by University of Akron Press (2023). She is also the author of Our List of Solutions<\/i> (42 Miles Press), which won the Lester M. Wolfson Prize. Her work has appeared in such places as Bennington Review, Sixth Finch, PBS NewsHour’s ArtBeat, DIAGRAM, and Denver Quarterly. She was the recipient of the 2020 Rhode Island Council on the Arts’ Fellowship in Poetry. She received her PhD in creative writing from Ohio University and MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University. She has taught in such positions as Visiting Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University, an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Marshall University and is currently an instructional designer and educator at Johnson and Wales University in Providence Rhode Island. She lives with her husband and daughter in Rhode Island.<\/p>\n January 19, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm at\u00a0Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Edan Lepucki<\/strong><\/p>\n Edan Lepucki is the bestselling author of the novels California<\/em>, Woman No. 17<\/em>, and Time’s Mouth.<\/em> She is also the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits as We Never Saw Them<\/em>. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and The Cut, among other publications.\u00a0 She is a lecturer in creative writing at Caltech. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n March 1, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm at\u00a0Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kai Carlson-Wee Kai Carlson-Wee is the author of RAIL (BOA Editions, 2018). He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He is the winner of a <\/span>Pushcart Prize<\/span><\/i>, the <\/span>Lynda Hull Memorial Prize <\/span><\/i>from Crazyhorse, and the <\/span>Editor’s Prize <\/span><\/i>from The Missouri Review. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and his work has appeared in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Tin House, AGNI, and The Southern Review. He currently lives in San Francisco and is a lecturer at Stanford University.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n March 8, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm at\u00a0Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, <\/span>Part of the World<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Kamby Bolongo Mean River<\/span><\/i> \u2014named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, <\/span>All Back Full<\/span><\/i>, and two story collections, <\/span>Asunder <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Good People. <\/span><\/i>A new novel-in-stories, <\/span>A Better Class Of People<\/span><\/i>, will be published by Dzanc Books in April, 2022. <\/span>Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere<\/span><\/i>, his first nonfiction book, will be published by Two Dollar Radio in March, 2023. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including <\/span>Bomb<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>The Threepenny Review<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Vice Magazine<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>New England Review<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>The Sun<\/span><\/i>, and the <\/span>Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction \u2013 Latino<\/span><\/i>. He teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia University, The New School, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n April 12, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n Robert Lopez\u2019s Visiting Writer event will be part of the Get Lit! Festival.<\/a> More details to follow.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n K<\/strong>eenan N<\/strong>orris<\/strong><\/p>\n Keenan Nor<\/span>ris\u2019s latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane<\/i>, winner of the 2022 Northern California Book Award. His essays have garnered a 2021-22 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award and 2021 Folio: Eddie Award, while his debut novel <\/span>Brother and the Dancer<\/span><\/i> w<\/span>on the 2012 James D. Houston Award. In 2023, he’s authored the biblio-memoir Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings<\/i> and the novella Lustre<\/i>. Keenan is an Associate Professor and coordinator of the Steinbeck Fellows Program at San Jose State University.<\/p>\n May 17, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm – 9pm at Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Melissa Kwasny<\/b><\/p>\n The author of seven books of poetry, including The Cloud Path (Milkweed Editions 2024), Where Outside the Body is the Soul Today and The Nine Senses, as well as a collection of essays Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision. She is also the editor of two anthologies: I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poets in Defense of Global Human Rights and Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950. A book of nonfiction, Putting on the Dog: The Animal Origins of What We Wear, explores the cultural, labor, and environmental histories of clothing materials provided by animals.<\/p>\n Widely published in journals, including Willow Springs, Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Orion, Bellingham Review, Kenyon Review, and Boston Review, Kwasny\u2019s poems and essays are also included in the anthologies Queer Nature\u202f(Michael Walsh, ed.), Poetics for the More-Than-Human World (Newell, Quetchenbach, and Nolan, eds.); The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Corey and Waldrep, eds.); Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart (Patterson, ed.); Poems Across the Big Sky and New Poets of the American West (Jaeger, ed.), as well as in West of 98: Living and Writing the American West (Rowland and Stegner, eds.)<\/p>\n Kwasny holds an M.F.A. in Poetry and an M.A. in Literature from the University of Montana.<\/p>\n She is the recipient of the Poetry Society of America\u2019s Cecil Hemley Award, judged by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for a work in progress, judged by Ed Robertson. She has been awarded the Montana Art Council’s Artist’s Innovation Award and an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellowship, as well as residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ucross, Hedgebrook, Vermount Studio Center, the Taft Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities, and Open Air at American Prairie. She served as Montana Poet Laureate from 2019-2021, a position she shared with M.L. Smoker.<\/p>\n May 17, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n 7:30 pm – 9pm at Spark Central<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\n2025-26 Visiting Writers<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/12\/Keetje-Kuipers-e1765240642546-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\nKeetje Kuipers<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/12\/Sunni-Wilkinson-scaled-e1765326087311-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSunni Brown Wilkinson<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/12\/Dawn-Raffel-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDawn Raffel<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/12\/Sameer-Pandya-e1765325687288-150x150.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nSameer Pandya<\/strong><\/h4>\n
2024-25 Visiting Writers<\/h2>\n
![\"Alexandra](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2024\/11\/Teague-Author-Photo-scaled-e1730757949135-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2024\/11\/sarah-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2024\/12\/D-Wisteria-Pic-5-High-res-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/01\/Carolyn-Kuebler-credit-Karen-Pike-scaled-e1736978973273-150x150.jpg\")
Carolyn Kuebler | March 7th<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Kirsten](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2024\/11\/Kirsten-Lunstrom-photo-150x150.jpg\")
<\/strong>Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum | April 18th\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/01\/IMG_0150-e1736979685748-150x150.jpeg\")
Cody Smith | May 23rd<\/strong><\/p>\n2023-24 Visiting Writers<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/10\/Oakes-Author-Photo-2022-scaled-e1698866565442-216x300.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/10\/Subhaga-Crystal-BaconJPG-232x300.jpg\")
Subhaga Crystal Bacon<\/b><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/11\/IMG-9363-scaled-e1699828856924-203x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/10\/Edan_Lapucki_photo-credit-Ralph-Palumbo-200x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/11\/KaiCW-Headshot-scaled-e1699829231409-241x300.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/11\/Lopez-207x300.jpg\")
Robert Lopez<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2023\/11\/Keenan-Norris-e1699829916982-220x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/cahss\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2024\/05\/kwansy-300x300.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n