Tag: MFA Alumni Bio

A graduate of the class of 2016, Andrew Koch now lives in Denton, Texas where he is pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of North Texas.  He is the author of the poetry chapbook, Brick-Woman (Hermeneutic Chaos, 2016) and serves as managing editor of the online journal Stirring: A Literary Collection. His work has recently appeared or is…

Originally from Minnesota, LeAnn Bjerken is a 2014 graduate of the MFA program. Upon graduating she spent a year writing for the Colville Tribes’ Tribal Tribune, earning a Native American Journalist Association award in 2015 for her feature story “Building a Dream”. She now works as a reporter for the Spokane Journal of Business, and continues to submit…

After graduating from the EWU MFA program in 2010, Brandon Getz lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Philadelphia, PA, before settling back in his home city of Pittsburgh. His first published piece, “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before,” appeared in Versal #9 and was a joke story originally written for the EWU graduate-student reading series at the…

Yvonne Higgins Leach is the author of Another Autumn (WordTech Editions, 2014). Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. A native of Washington state, she earned a Master of Fine Arts from Eastern Washington University. She spent decades balancing a career in communications and public relations, raising a family, and pursuing her love of writing poetry.…

Seth Marlin is a former Web Editor of Willow Springs, and received his MFA in Fiction from Eastern in 2013. He is the author of Shred, a chapbook of poetry, and his stories and verse have appeared in Spark, Knockout, Betwixt, A cappella Zoo, and Silk Road Review, among others. He is the winner of University of Glasgow’s 2016 prize for Science Fiction…

Heather Solsvik has been an English teacher at Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy since 2001 and a resident of Coeur d’Alene her entire life. She enrolled in the EWU Creative Writing MFA program (non-fiction) while also teaching full-time, which made it possible for her to acquire her Master’s Degree while still working—a great bonus. She thoroughly…

Greg Leunig is a 2011 graduate of the Eastern Washington University MFA in fiction writing. While there, he was Web Editor for Willow Springs and dabbled in the Writers in the Community program as well. His short stories can be found in Daily Science Fiction, Read Short Fiction, Shimmer, and others. His poetry can be found at Strange Horizons and Apex. His day job…

Born and raised in the deciduous greenery of eastern Kansas, Melissa Rhoades moved to the Evergreen State in 2001 to attend EWU. After receiving her MFA in 2003, Melissa taught English Composition and Intro to Literature at Big Bend Community College and Spokane Falls Community College before accepting a full time position as an in-house copywriter for…

Kathryn Collison (nee Allen) earned her MFA in poetry from EWU in 2006. Since 2007, she has taught in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. She teaches humanities, writing and speaking, and fine arts classes. She was also faculty advisor for the award-winning Honors College literary magazine Scribendi in 2007-2008. She serves as an Honors…

J. Duncan Wiley earned his MFA in Fiction from EWU in 2006, and since his fiction has been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2015 and has appeared in Pleiades, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and Nimrod where his short story “Inclusions” won the 2015 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. His essays have appeared in Pleiades and Bayou Magazine. In addition to his…