Jeff Fearnside

Jeff Fearnside

MFA Alumni Bio

After graduating with his MFA in Fiction from EWU in 2000, Jeff Fearnside fulfilled a longtime dream by serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Central Asia for two years, remaining in the region for four years in all. He is the author of the short-story collection Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2016), which was a finalist for the New Rivers Press MVP Award and the Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction. His fiction has appeared widely in journals and anthologies such as The Pinch, Rosebud, Many Mountains Moving, Bayou Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, and—most recently—Story, Fourteen Hills, Pacific Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet (Press 53, 2014).

Jeff’s essays and poems have also appeared in many publications, including The Fourth River, New Madrid, Permafrost, The Los Angeles Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Potomac Review, The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays(MacKenzie Publishing, 2012), and Forest Under Story: A Decade of Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (University of Washington Press, 2016). His writing has been nominated for Best New American Voices and three times for a Pushcart Prize, and he is the recipient of a 2015 Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission. Jeff has taught writing and literature for many years at the Academy of Languages in Kazakhstan, Washington State University, Western Kentucky University, Prescott College, and currently Oregon State University. He lives with his wife and their two cats in Corvallis.

More info can be found at jeff-fearnside.com

A sampling of some more of Jeff’s work may be found below: