{"id":29,"date":"2012-07-10T16:23:40","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T16:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/staging-writing\/?page_id=29"},"modified":"2026-03-03T19:40:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:40:25","slug":"visiting-writers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/visiting-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"EOU Visiting Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The New Nature Writing Series & the Carl and Sandra Ellston Ars Poetica Fund<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

An EOU literary lecture series has promoted literary arts in the region since its inception in the early 1960s, hosting as many as a dozen visiting writers every academic year. Past visiting writers include Czeslaw Milosz, Denise Levertov, Richard Hugo, William Stafford, Robert Creeley, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In more recent years, the Carl and Sandra Ellston Ars Poetica Fund<\/strong> has made possible readings and workshops by Carl Adamshick, Sandra Alcosser, Sherman Alexie, Christopher Buckley, Kerry Cohen, Jon Davis, Matthew Dickman, Anthony Doerr, Danielle Deulen, Debra Earling, Scott Elliot, Molly Gloss, Garrett Hongo, Marie Howe, Thomas Kennedy, Keejte Kuipers, William Kittredge, Melissa Kwasny, Dorianne Laux, Michael McGriff, Joseph Millar, Lance Olsen, Katrina Roberts, Peter Rock, Primus St. John, Carter Sickels, Mandy Smoker, Jess Walter, Crystal Williams, and many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EOU English\/Writing Program and MFA in Creative Writing continue to bring standout writers to campus, in person and virtually, for readings and conversation. In 2025, the programs launched the EOU New Nature Writing Series<\/strong>. Building on the momentum of EOU’s New Nature Writing Con<\/a>, this hybrid online\/in-person reading and conversation series highlights books and authors pushing the boundaries of eco-writing, broadly construed, in the Northwest and beyond. The series aims to both honor and reimagine \u201cnature writing\u201d by seeking out inclusive, hybrid, interdisciplinary, and forward-thinking work. The series is also devoted to craft of writing more generally. An Ars Poetica reading will continue to be held annually in the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scroll below for some of our latest visitors and please subscribe to our YouTube channel<\/a>. Older reading events are available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Upcoming Events:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Thursday, March 5, 2026, 1 pm PT, in the Zabel Hall <\/strong>(in conversation; livestream link<\/a>) and 6 pm in the EOU Library <\/strong>(reading from new books; livestream link<\/a>):<\/strong> Darla Mottram<\/strong> on Recurrent<\/a> <\/em>and Stephanie Adams-Santos<\/strong> Dream of Xibalba<\/a><\/em>. “In Recurrent<\/em>, Darla Mottram brushes family history against the grain, using exquisitely crafted poetic texts to question, amplify, expose, undermine, and redeem a documentary and archival chronicle of abandonments and temporary retrievals. In the process, she actively exhibits why it is only poetry, through its own peculiar linguistic and formal deviances, that can even try to resuscitate the life-worlds and the lived realities of those people, including herself, whose shades flicker around the edges of bureaucratic reports, photographs, letters, and fragmentary memories …” \/\/ “Dream of Xibalba<\/em>, Stephanie Adams-Santos’s incantatory long poem, draws the reader into a dreamworld where the barrier between life and death grows porous, populated by ancestors and spirits. The influence of such poets as Cecilia Vicu\u00f1a, Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca, and Yvan Goll is evident here, yet Adams-Santos’s voice and vision are entirely her own. Dream of Xibalba<\/em> is a unique, epic work of cultural and spiritual significance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Past Events:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n

Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 1 pm PT, livestreamed<\/a>:<\/strong> Rachel Richardson<\/a> on Smother: Poems<\/a><\/em>: “How should we raise our children in, and for, a world that is burning? Rachel Richardson\u2019s third collection, Smother, interrogates this impossible question. The poet, raising young daughters and grieving the death of a mother friend, documents a string of record-breaking fires across the California landscape and the rage, sorrow, and detachment that follow amidst the pervasive smoke. Environmental and physical predation\u2014on the earth and on the female body\u2014weave through the book in layers. But these are not poems of giving up. The poems in Smother gather accomplices in grief and mothering, seek out guides and girlfriends, remember the dead, keep watch at the firebreaks, and plant new trees on the burn scars. From lyric forms to moments of prose and documentary collage, these poems sing their song of resistance made from the music that is available to us now.” Rachel Richardson is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship, among other honors. She lives in Berkeley.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Tuesday, March 4, 2025, 4 pm PT, in the EOU Library and livestreamed:<\/strong> Jessica E. Johnson<\/a><\/strong> on Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home<\/a><\/em>. \u201cIn the weeks after her first child is born, Jessica E. Johnson receives an email from her mother that contains artifacts of the author\u2019s early childhood: scans of Polaroids and letters her mother wrote in mountain west mining camps and ghost towns\u2014places without running water, companions, or help. Awash in love and restlessness, Johnson begins to see how the bedrock images of her isolated upbringing have stayed with her, even when she believed she was removing herself from their logic. \u2026 Johnson starts digging through her mother\u2019s keepsakes and the histories of the places her family passed through, uncovering the linked misogyny and disconnection that characterized her childhood world\u2014a world with uncomfortable echoes in the present and even in the act of writing itself. The resulting journey encompasses Johnson\u2019s early memories, the story of the earth told in the language of geology, bits of vivid correspondence, a mothering manual from the early twentieth century, and the daily challenges of personal and collective care in a lonesome-crowded Pacific wonderland. Mettlework <\/em>traces intergenerational failures of homemaking, traveling toward presence and relationship amid the remains of extractive industry and unsustainable notions of family.\u201dJessica E. Johnson is the author of the book-length poem Metabolics<\/em>, the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other<\/em>, and the memoir Mettlework<\/em>. Jessica is a career community college instructor based in Portland, Oregon. They are interested in inclusive learning environments, knowledge production, radical care, and the relationships between art, friendship, community, and social change. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review<\/em>, Tin House<\/em>, The New Republic<\/em>, and Poetry Northwest<\/em> among other publications. Her honors include an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and In Absolutes We Seek Each Other <\/em>and Metabolics <\/em>were finalists for the Oregon Book Award in poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4 pm PT, livestreamed:<\/strong> Wei Tchou<\/a><\/strong> on Little Seed<\/em><\/a><\/em>. “Little Seed<\/em> is an experimental memoir that braids together the narrative of the author’s relationship with her brother and family with a deeply personal field guide to ferns. The chapters move associatively, commenting on each other indirectly and drawing out questions of assimilation, race, class, gender, nature and the general problem of being and knowing. When the author’s brother has a psychotic break, the rigid structure of the book itself breaks apart and the protagonist adventures to the cloud forest of Oaxaca in order to truly live: to know the world by experiencing it rather than reading about it or following the direction of others. Some persistent themes throughout the book: What does it mean to be Chinese? What is love and how best to love? What really is a fern?\u201dWei Tchou’s essays and reporting can be found in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review<\/em>, and The Oxford American<\/em>, among other publications. She likes to write about food, nature, and the complications of identity. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and has an MFA from Hunter College. She lives in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Tuesday, January 21, 2025, 4 pm PT, livestreamed:<\/strong> Jennifer Case<\/a><\/strong> on We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood<\/a><\/em>. \u201cWhen Jennifer Case became pregnant unexpectedly with her second child, the prospect of caring for another infant in a society with high expectations and low support for mothers overwhelmed her. \u2026 We Are Animals <\/em>draws attention to these issues by examining key moments in Case\u2019s life where her experience as a woman in twenty-first-century America came in conflict with her experience as a child-bearing mammal. In doing so, these essays offer a balm for women who have struggled in silence over childbirth trauma, conflicted responses to motherhood, or a deeply felt intuition that what their bodies needed as mothers did not match what society provided. The essays also offer a much needed, nuanced perspective for policymakers, activists, and medical professionals who continue to shape women\u2019s experience of motherhood.\u201d Jennifer Cases\u2019s writing explores issues related to place, environment, home, family, and motherhood. Her work has appeared in journals such as Orion<\/em>, North American Review, Prairie Schooner,<\/em> and Michigan Quarterly Review. <\/em>She is the author of two books: We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood<\/em> and Sawbill: A Search for Place<\/em>. She teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Saturday, June 3, 2023<\/strong>, 5 pm PT, Loso Hall Lobby and livestreamed<\/a>:<\/strong> Allison Cobb<\/strong><\/a>, whose latest book, Plastic: An Autobiography<\/a><\/em>, won the 2022 Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Cobb’s obsession with a large plastic car part leads her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposes the interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies, and racism. As critic John Freeman says, \u201cWhy have we created a culture of such wanton waste if we want to live on earth? In the long shelf of books interrogating our moment in the climate crisis, this memoir is a sharp, urgent breakthrough, a triumph of honesty.\u201d Also a poet, Cobb is the author of three previous books and is a Senior Director for Equity and Justice at Environmental Defense Fund. She lives in Portland. She’ll be in conversation with EOU Assistant Professor Nick Neely<\/strong> in an event sponsored by Literary Arts<\/a> as part of EOU’s Second Annual Arts Fest<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

May 18, 2023, 6 pm PT, Zoom<\/a><\/strong>: Memoirist Bryce Andrews<\/a> <\/strong>reading and in conversation with Taylor Brorby<\/strong>. Andrews’s latest book is Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West<\/em><\/a>. As Alta<\/em> magazine writes, \u201cAndrews\u2019s heartfelt reflection on the American West confronts one of the region\u2019s essential paradoxes: that a place defined by innovation and beauty also has a  legacy of horrible violence. For the author, the catalyst is inheriting his grandfather\u2019s Smith & Wesson handgun, which carries its own awful history. From his ranch in Montana, Andrews turns to neighbors and family as he seeks a new way to live in the West.\u201d Andrews\u2019s previous books are Down from the Mountain<\/em> and Badluck Way, <\/em>which won a Reading the West Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. Andrews will be in conversation with Taylor Brorby, author of the recent memoir Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land. <\/em>Register here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Thursday, March 2, 2023<\/strong>, 6 pm PT, EOU Library and livestreamed<\/a>:<\/strong> Adrian Shirk<\/a>, whose latest book is Heaven is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia<\/a> <\/em>(Counterpoint 2022): <\/em>\u201cTold in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth<\/em> is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experiments\u2014from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement\u2014through the lens of one woman\u2019s quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.\u201d Kirkus Reviews<\/em> calls the book \u201c[a] sprawling synthesis of memoir and social history . . . [A] rigorous, personalized argument for the continued relevance of an old idea.\u201d Shirk is also the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Stories From the Byways of American Women and Religion<\/em>, named an NPR Best Book of 2017. Raised in Portland, Oregon, she now lives at the Mutual Aid Society in the Catskill Mountains and teaches in Pratt Institute\u2019s BFA creative writing program. She is a frequent contributor to Catapult<\/em>, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic<\/em> and Atlas Obscura<\/em>, among other publications. Shirk will be in conversation with Nick Neely<\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English\/Writing.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

February 8, 2023, 6 pm PT, Zoom<\/strong>: Poet Sara Eliza Johnson<\/strong><\/a> reading and in conversation with MFA faculty member Christopher Kondrich<\/strong><\/a>. Johnson’s second book is Vapor<\/a><\/em> <\/a>(Milkweed 2022): \u201cWith a mind informed by physics, and a heart yearning for sky burial, Vapor<\/em>\u2019s epic vision swerves from the microscopic to telescopic, evoking an Anthropocene for a body and planet that are continually dying. … Almost omnipresently, Vapor<\/em> stitches stars to microbes, oceans to space, and love to pain, collapsing time and space to converge everything at once.\u201d Johnson\u2019s first book is Bone Map<\/em>, and she is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers\u2019 Award among other honors. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska\u2013Fairbanks. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

January 19, 2023<\/strong>, 6 pm PT, <\/strong> Zoom:<\/strong> Essayist, poet, and environmental activist Taylor Brorby<\/strong><\/a> reading and in conversation with Nick Neely<\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English\/Writing. Brorby is the author of the new memoir Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land<\/a>. <\/em>In a New York Times <\/a><\/em>review<\/a>, novelist Jung Yun writes, \u201cBrorby has written not only a truly great memoir, but also a frighteningly relevant one that speaks to the many battles we still have left to fight.\u201d Brorby is currently the Annie Tanner Clark Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the University of Utah. <\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

December 8, 2022, 6 pm PT, Zoom<\/strong>: Poet Robert Wrigley<\/strong> <\/a>reading and in conversation with MFA Faculty Member Joe Wilkins<\/strong><\/a>. In his latest collection, The True Account of Myself as a Bird<\/a><\/em>, Wrigley “means to use poetry to capture the primal conversation between human beings and the perilously threatened planet on which they love and live.” Wrigley has won numerous awards, including the Kingsley Tufts Award, the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award, and a Pacific Northwest Book Award. He lives in the woods of Idaho, with his wife the writer Kim Barnes. The True Account of Myself As a Bird<\/em> is his twelfth collection of poems. He is also the author of a collection of personal essays, mostly about poetry, called Nemerov\u2019s Door<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

May 21, 2022, 5 pm PT, Gilbert Center Plaza<\/strong>: Memoirist Tina Ontiveros<\/strong><\/a> reading and in conversation with Nick Neely,<\/strong> Assistant Professor of English\/Writing. Ontiveros’s debut book <\/em>is Rough House<\/em><\/a> (Oregon State UP 2021): \u201cA memoir of family, addiction, joy, and adventure set in the rural spaces of the Pacific Northwest. Ontiveros follows her logger father as he migrates across his wooded territory, cobbling together shelters for his family, burning bridges, and forever starting over.\u201d The book won a Pacific Northwest Book Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Our first in-person Ars Poetica in several years, held during the inaugural EOU Arts Fest.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 28, 2022, 6 pm PT, Zoom:<\/strong> Poet Allison Adelle Hedge Coke<\/strong><\/a> reading and in conversation with MFA faculty member Abigail Chabitnoy<\/strong><\/a>. Hedge Coke\u2019s newest book, now a National Book Award finalist, is Look at This Blue<\/em> (Coffee House Press 2022): \u201cInterweaving elegy, indictment, and hope into a love letter to California, Look at This Blue<\/a><\/em> examines America\u2019s genocidal past and present to warn of a future threatened by mass extinction and climate peril.\u201d Hedge Coke has written seven books of poetry, a book of nonfiction, and a play, and has edited ten anthologies. She is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 7, 6 pm PT, Zoom: <\/strong>Essayist Marco Wilkinson<\/strong> reading and in conversation with Nick Neely<\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English\/Writing. Wilkinson\u2019s debut is Madder: A Memoir in Weeds<\/a> <\/em>(Coffee House Press 2021), <\/em>which \u201ccombines poetic meditations on nature, immigration, queer sensuality, and willful forgetting with recollections of Wilkinson\u2019s Rhode Island childhood and glimpses of his maternal family\u2019s life in Uruguay.\u201d A one-time farmer and horticulturist, Wilkinson has taught at Oberlin College; University of California, San Diego; James Madison University; and in Antioch University\u2019s MFA program. His essays have appeared in journals such as Kenyon Review, Seneca Review<\/em>, and Bennington Review<\/em>. He is the nonfiction editor of the Los Angeles Review<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 3, 2022, 6 pm PT, Zoom<\/strong>: Featuring Katherine Standefer<\/a>, author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life<\/em>, about her troubled relationship to her own implanted cardiac defibrillator; and Emily Maloney<\/a>, whose first book The Cost of Living: Essays<\/em>, chronicles her experiences as both patient and caregiver. In conversation with MFA faculty member Melissa Matthewson<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n