Category: English & Philosophy

Melissa Rhoades earned an MFA in 2003. Her poems have been published in Redactions, Coal City Review, Nerve Cowboy, and other journals. Her poem “Dutch East India Company” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2003, and is featured in SUNY Open Textbooks’ Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations (2018), by…

In July 2023, five current EWU MFA students in fiction – Isadora Anderson, Aimee Brooks, Dylan Cooper, Alex Farrier, and Shraya Singh – were invited to attend the Community of Writers(CoW) workshop in Olympic Valley, California along with MFA program director, Gregory Spatz, who is a regular faculty member at the writers’ conference.  The Community…

2012 graduate in fiction, Leyna Krow, has made the inland northwest her home for the past decade since moving to Spokane for her MFA. Taking her love for Spokane and its culture, geography, and weirdness in general, she has chosen this place as the setting for her debut novel Fire Season which was published by Viking…

Leyna Krow graduated with her MFA from EWU in 2012. Her fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the author of the short story collection I’m Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking (Featherproof Books 2017) which was a Believer Book Award finalist and the novel Fire Season…

Ryan Scariano is the author of two poetry collections: Not Your Happy Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Smithereens (Imperfect Press). Some of his recent poetry has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, basalt, Rock & Sling, Phantom Drift, The Oklahoma Review, and SOFTBLOW. He currently serves as an assistant poetry editor for Narrative Magazine.…

Maya Jewell Zeller, EWU MFA alum 2007, is the author of Rust Fish (which came out of her thesis project); Yesterday, the Bees; Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts (a collaboration with visual artist Carrie DeBacker); and the forthcoming out takes/ glove box, chosen by Eduardo Corral for the New American Poetry Prize; she is also co-editor, with Sharma Shields, of…

Shann Ray grew up in Montana and spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. His work has been featured in Poetry, Narrative, Esquire, McSweeney’s, Poetry International, and Salon. Named a finalist with Ted Kooser’s Splitting an Order and Erin Belieu’s Slant Six, Ray’s debut book of poems, Balefire, won the High Plains Book Award in Poetry. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature…

Ashley Wurzbacher earned her MFA in Fiction from Eastern in 2010 and her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston in 2016. Her stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. Her novel, How to Care for a Human Girl (Atria Books) will be published in August 2023.…

Jennifer Pullen graduated from EWU in 2012 with an MFA in Fiction, and went on to earn her PhD in Creative Writing at Ohio University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio Northern University.  Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including: Going Down Swinging (AU), Cleaver, Phantom Drift…

In celebration of our college graduates, we reached out to our seniors for a little highlight and feedback from their time at Eastern. Congratulations on getting your degree! And welcome to the Eagle Alumni Family! Go Eags!   What is your major and minor/certificate and what made you choose that major/ minor? My majors are…