Our Faculty

About

Polly Buckingham’s collection The Expense of a View won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (2016), her chapbook A Year of Silence won the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award (2014), and she was the recipient of a 2014 Washington State Artists Trust fellowship. Her work appears in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, The Poetry Review, North American Review, Hanging Loose, Witness, The New Orleans Review, The Tampa Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Polly is the founding editor of StringTown Press. She teaches both poetry and fiction and is the editor for Willow Springs magazine.

For more information on Polly’s work, visit her website.

About

Christopher Howell’s Light’s Ladder won the Washington State Book Award in 2005. His poems, essays, and translations have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Crazy Horse, Denver Quarterly, Field, Gettysburg Review, Harper’s, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review and Volt. He has been the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and two National Endowment fellowships, as well as a number of other awards.

About

Jonathan Johnson’s poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry; published in recent issues of Ploughshares, Southern Review, Witness, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, New Ohio Review, Missouri Review and Gettysburg Review; and read on National Public Radio. His books include the poetry collections Mastodon, 80% Complete (Carnegie Mellon, 2001), In the Land We Imagined Ourselves (Carnegie Mellon, 2010), and May Is an island (Carnegie Mellon, 2018); and the memoirs, Hannah and the Mountain (Nebraska, 2005) and The Desk on the Sea (Wayne State, 2019). Ode, his play about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, premiered in 2013 as part of the GetLit! Literary Festival. He teaches in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University and migrates between Washington; his Lake Superior coastal hometown of Marquette, Michigan; and his ancestral village of Glenelg in the Scottish Highland where his cousins are still crofters.

Johnson teaches a special summer class in Yellowstone National Park in which EWU Creative Writing students of all genres watch wolves and other wildlife and write new work about the experience.  See “Summer Yellowstone Class” below for details.

Interviews with Johnson can be read at:  http://www.theswampmagazine.com/jonathan-johnson-interview  and http://www.towncreekpoetry.com/SPR10/JJ_INTERVIEW.htm

Teaching Philosophy

I believe the most important quality a teacher of writing can possess is the ability to imaginatively inhabit a student’s work, to read and consider and comment on it as if from the inside. I try to let each piece I read teach itself to me, show me its methods and aesthetic. Only then do I attempt to comprehend and articulate its potentials—realized and unrealized—and offer my comments. This sort of reading is especially time consuming and often requires the ability and willingness to set aside much of my own literary agenda and taste and adopt, at least partly, the agenda and taste of the student.  I think of myself much less as an editor of students’ writing than as a guide, taking them through their own words, helping them make discoveries and decisions. And as I see it, an ideal workshop environment is one in which the entire group is far less interested in making this or that piece better and far more interested in deep, careful and enlightening exploration of the work at hand. Thus, the ultimate goal of a writing workshop should not be however many pages of improved writing—which tends to happen anyway—but the fostering of each writers’ long-term capacity to create and skillfully refine his or her own, wholly unique art.

Program Statement

EWU is a wonderful place to teach because we’ve specifically designed every element of the program to contribute to the artistic development of the students.  One of my personal favorites of these elements is our literature requirement, which consists of a series of three courses in each genre.  These courses are a delight to teach because we read and study the literature not primarily as scholars or critics, but as fellow artists, looking for models, inspiration, and contexts for our own work.  Then in the workshops, our discussions and debates are informed by this reading, made more rich and intelligent and helpful by the coordinates and common artistic vernacular we’ve established. Spokane itself is lively and vibrant and our program is at the center of its active literary scene. But it’s the magnificent surrounding landscape in which I feel most at home. Several times a week I run through the sage and pine on the trails of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge where I frequently see elk and coyotes. And the Selkirk Mountains, which extend north from just outside Spokane, is the only mountain range in the lower forty-eight states not to lose any animal to extinction in the last ten thousand years. Wolves, lynx, grizzlies, even caribou are all still there. Glimpsing that wild high country on the horizon, knowing it’s always there, is like living day in and day out with the muse.

Summer Yellowstone Class

The purpose of this course is to foster the development of new work though field observations, note-taking, and discussion. Days will begin very early with wildlife observation and filed note-taking. We will be staying at an historic log lodge, to which we’ll return at mid-day (time dependent upon our success at wildlife observations) for rest and writing. Late afternoons will include group discussion and instruction. After dinner we will head into the field once again for more wildlife observation. Our main focus will be on attempting to observe wolves using spotting scopes, but we will also attempt to observe bison, elk, antelope, grizzly bears, trout, and birds. Note will also be made of the geology and botany of the area.

All students in previous sections of this course have watched wolves. Other observations have included wild trout spawning in mountain streams, wolves hunting elk and killing bison, wolf pups emerging from the den to play and howl, and grizzly cubs playing beside their mother. Students form close bonds by traveling, cooking and conducting flora and fauna observations together. These close bonds allow students with widely varying levels of writing experience to understand and trust one another’s insights on the composition process. The course is designed to be a peak life experience that inspires writers to observe their world closely, to conduct research based on and to aid that observation, and to write from their own experiences for years to come.

About

Natalie Kusz is the author of the memoir Road Song, and has published essays and reviews in Harper’s, Threepenny Review, McCall’s, Real Simple, The New York Times Book Review, and other periodicals. Her work has earned, among other honors, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the NEA, the Bush Foundation, and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.

A former faculty member of Bethel College and of Harvard University, she now teaches in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University.

About

Samuel Ligon is the author of two novels—Among the Dead and Dreaming and Safe in Heaven Dead—and two collections of stories, Wonderland, illustrated by Stephen Knezovich, and Drift and Swerve. He’s co-editor, with Kate Lebo, of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze. His short fiction has appeared in Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, The Quarterly, and elsewhere. Ligon serves as the Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.

Teaching Philosophy

In the classroom, we use critical language to approach and discuss writing, as if it were rational. And it is, on many levels. But the rendering of who people are and how they behave and what connects us as humans transcends the merely rational. What we’re really after, it seems, as writers and readers, is something we recognize first in our guts, which must then be struggled with intellectually while still resonating in the guts. As writers, readers, and editors, we use our critical minds to rationally approach any piece of writing; but this critical sensibility, and, certainly our writer’s sensibility, is informed by an evolving irrational and instinctive understanding of what makes a line or story powerful and true. I think it’s crucial to recognize the enormous depth of what we don’t know, what nobody knows, what we have to constantly struggle to learn, which is how to write a line, a story, a novel that reveals to the reader, viscerally and intellectually, something about what it means to be human. My goal as a teacher is to promote conscious exploration and understanding of elements of craft, while also emphasizing the importance of the irrational, provoking and promoting, then, both rational and irrational—conscious and unconscious—approaches to line, character, voice, story, and all the problems that come with trying to make something that matters.

Program Statement

My favorite aspect of this program is that most of my interaction with students takes place outside the classroom: during weekly editorial meetings for Willow Springs; in one on one thesis advising; at dinners with visiting writers before they read and at the parties that follow; at student and faculty readings; at GetLit! events in Spokane; at the AWP conference, where I take students every year; at regional book festivals in Seattle, Missoula, and Portland; and in a variety of other social and professional settings in which faculty, students, and other local artists interact. The Inland Northwest Center for Writers is the heart of a thriving community of writers in Spokane. I think one of the most important elements of an MFA program is that students have the opportunity to completely devote two years of their lives to writing and reading, surrounded, encouraged, and provoked by peers and teachers similarly devoted and engaged, similarly immersed in writing and reading. In her essay, “Writing Short Stories,” Flannery O’Connor writes that “Art is the habit of the artist; and habits have to be rooted deep in the whole personality. They have to be cultivated like any other habit…, and teaching any kind of writing is largely a matter of helping the student develop the habit of art.” Spokane’s community of writers, readers, and editors cultivates that “habit of art” in students and teachers alike.

For more information, visit Sam’s website.

About

Gregory Spatz is the author of the collection of linked stories and novellas, What Could Be Saved, and the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler’s Dream, and No One But Us, and the short story collections Half as Happy and Wonderful Tricks. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train Stories, Shenandoah, Epoch, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. The recipient of a Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Washington State Book Award, and an NEA Fellowship in literature, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Spatz also plays the fiddle in the twice Juno-nominated bluegrass band John Reischman and the Jaybirds.

When not on the road with the Jaybirds or busy at work teaching and writing, he enjoys playing music with his wife, Caridwen, also a fiddler.

Read Greg’s article in Poets & Writers: “The Teachable Talent:  Why Creative Writing Can Be Taught”

Check out Greg’s interview with The Rumpus,  the Los Angeles Review of Books, and an interview with Kenyon Review.

To learn more about Greg’s work, visit his website.

Teaching Philosophy

In my experience, becoming a good constructive critic/editor of other people’s fiction is the first step to becoming a useful critic of your own work. It is the quickest way I know of, anyway, to begin understanding how to dismantle a piece of your own fiction and put it back together so it works better. Too, I’ve noticed that focusing more on constructive criticism than esthetic judgment in workshop tends to engender a working environment where students feel challenged and free to take risks. So, in all of my writing workshops, one thing I try to stress is this distinction between judgment and constructive criticism. Easy enough to look at a piece of fiction and draw conclusions based around your (mostly) esthetic reactions to it: this is trite and boring, I hate stories about teenagers, I hate voice-driven work, first person sucks…. In itself this sort of judgment does have limited value: it helps you to define your own esthetic; we all do it and it’s a legitimate response to any piece of art. However, it’s not so much use to the author of the piece whose work you’re judging. Constructive criticism, on the other hand, is criticism which focuses first on articulating a given story’s own best possible potential, despite all flaws and inconsistencies; it involves an effort to see past your esthetic preferences so you may face a story on its own terms, whether or not you like it. Then, bearing in mind the text’s best interests, it attempts to offer strategies for revision and editing.

Program Statement

What I like best about teaching at the MFA at EWU is the sense of community. Maybe because of the genuine collegiality modeled by the faculty, there is a sense here that students support each other without any of the rancor or infighting so commonly present at writing programs. Not to say that our students don’t push each other to succeed. They do. Only rarely does it feel as if one student’s success or victory is perceived in the community as another student’s loss or failure. It’s a great, positive and challenging environment for learning—one I wish I’d known about as a grad student myself.

About

Rachel Toor is the author of five books of creative nonfiction: Write Your Way In (Chicago, 2016); Misunderstood (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015); Personal Record (Nebraska, 2008); The Pig and I (Penguin, 2005; Nebraska, 2009) and Admissions Confidential (St. Martin’s, 2001). Her first novel, On the Road to Find Out, was published in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She writes a monthly column on issues in writing and publishing for The Chronicle of Higher Education and “Everything is Copy,” which appears monthly in the Spokesman-Review. She was a longtime contributor to Running Times and in 2012 she was given an award for journalistic excellence by the Road Runners of America. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, SB Nation, Glamour, Inside Higher Ed, Reader’s Digest, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The LA Times, and other various and diverse publications. Three times she has had essays listed as Notable in Best American Sports Writing, and once in Best American Essays, and in 2017 she received a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize. She’s been sponsored by Athleta and SkirtSports.

After graduating from Yale, Rachel spent a dozen years as an acquisitions editor at Oxford and Duke University Presses. She has an MFA from the University of Montana.

Teaching Philosophy
After a dozen years in scholarly publishing, I came to see my role in terms of what an ex-President called “The Vision Thing.” As an acquisitions editor, I had to suss out which manuscripts could be turned into books that would make important contributions to their fields; once I signed them up, I had to help the authors get to where they wanted to go. The process was about seeing something not only for what it was, but for what it could be—an act of creative insight. It required suppression of the ego and an outward focus. Teaching has been similar for me: finding what is possible lurking within each student and working to bring that to the fore. The most important thing for me, and it’s obvious, is to establish with my students bonds of trust and respect. I do not worry about maintaining authority in the classroom; instead I think about how to open myself up to students in a way that invites them to share their ideas and experiences, to take intellectual risks, and to be unafraid to claim their own ignorance.

Program Statement
I figured out that if you keep a big bowl of candy (with lots of chocolate) in your office, people will drop by with delightful frequency. The faculty and students in this program are a remarkable and eclectic group—people you want to work with, people you want to visit with.

For more information visit Rachel’s website.