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 of Writers was established in 1969 by novelists local to the Olympic Valley and has since hosted workshops in screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting and poetry. Many great writers have emerged from, attended, and taught at the writers’ workshop including past EWU MFA visiting writers Amy Tan, Molly Giles, and Dana Johnson.

Apart from daily workshop sessions, participants have the opportunity to attend various craft talks, panels, and readings throughout the week and interact with other writers (faculty included) in an environment that has the intimacy of a close-knit, welcoming, and friendly community. Some of the illustrious faculty for this year included the likes of Claire Vaye Watkins, Oscar Villalon, Vanessa Hua, Edan Lepucki, Héctor Tobar, Lynn Freed, and Peter Orner amidst others.

“After speaking with, Greg Spatz, director of EWU’s MFA, last summer, I knew I wanted to attend the Community of Writers. All my expectations were surpassed as I spent mornings in workshops with thoughtful, articulate individuals at varying stages of their writing careers and afternoons at panels and craft talks from established authors, literary agents, and editors. In the evenings we listened to readings from recently published or unreleased work by teachers and alumni of the workshop.

 

With New York still viewed as the primary literary hub of the United States, this workshop was influential to my perspective as a writer living in the West, having conversations with writers who view Los Angeles as an up-and-coming center for literature or who work in the isolation of rural areas. This workshop reinforced the need for community in the arts and I am incredibly grateful to an MFA that gave me the tools and support to make attending this program a possibility.” – Aimee Brooks

Every year, students from EWU’s MFA program attend CoW in July with the help of scholarships from EWU as well as scholarships offered by CoW which are based on manuscript submissions. Through the Community of Writers, participants have the unique opportunity of participating in workshops led by instructors of writing and practicing authors as well as literary editors and agents. They also engage in one-on-one sessions with other faculty members to receive feedback on their work outside of the regular workshops.

This variety in feedback from other workshop participants and active writers, editors, and agents is helpful to students in developing understanding of how their work would be received across different populations, demographics, and in the rest of the world outside the classroom setting of the MFA program.

“Community of writers was a wonderful opportunity to learn and share work with people of all kinds of literary backgrounds. My discussion with Tara Parsons (editor and publisher from HarperCollins) was one of the most helpful workshops of my own work I’ve had, especially in getting to hear perspectives outside the graduate MFA setting. I loved hearing readings and craft talks, many from writers I hadn’t known before but will eagerly read their work now. And made some cool friends along the way!” – Dylan Cooper

All the participants found the intimate environment of the workshop completely enthralling, especially because of the opportunity and ease with which workshop participants could talk to authors, ask them questions, and discuss their work after panels or over dinner!

Other highlights included the opportunity to form new connections in the literary world, discover new favorite books and authors (both published and unpublished!) and hear a great deal of amazing writers perform their “non-writerly” talents on the last day of the week-long workshop while nestled in the heart of the beautiful Olympic Valley. 

Every year the MFA program invites several prestigious writers to campus, where they lead workshops of student work and give readings to the broader community.

Here are the writers we got to work with for the academic school year of 2022-23:

Peter Markus

Peter Markus is the author of several books, the most recent of which is When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds (Wayne State University Press). Other books include the novel Bob, or Man on Boat, the collection of short fiction We Make Mud, and the book of non-fiction Inside My Pencil: Teaching Poetry in Detroit Public Schools. His writing has appeared in such journals as Northwest Review, Willow Springs, Seattle Review, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Review, and Iowa Review, among others. He lives in Michigan where he teaches at Oakland University and is the Senior Writer with InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit.

September 30th, 2022 at 7:30 pm at the Catalyst Building in Spokane, WA

Morgan Talty

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. He is the author of the story collection Night of the Living Rez from Tin House Books, and his work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.

November 11th, 2022

Arna Hemenway

Arna Bontemps Hemenway is the author of Elegy on Kinderklavier (Sarabande Books), winner of the PEN/Hemingway Prize, finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. His short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Best American Short Stories 2015, A Public Space, Ecotone, and The Missouri Review, among other venues. He holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently Associate Professor of English in Creative Writing at Baylor University.

November 18th, 2022

Rick Barot

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions and was longlisted for the National Book Award.  His earlier collections include The Darker Fall, Want, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and Chord, all published by Sarabande Books.  Chord received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award.  It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize.  His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic,Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.  He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stanford University.  He lives in Tacoma, Washington and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University.

January 20th, 2023
Spark Central, Spokane, WA

Dana Johnson

Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review and Huizache, among others. Her most recent work is Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California. Born and raised in and around Los Angeles, she is a professor of English at the University of Southern California where she is director of the PhD in creative writing and literature program.

February 10th, 2023
Spark Central, Spokane, WA

Megan Cummins

Megan Cummins is the author of If the Body Allows It, which won the 2019 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and was longlisted for the Story Prize and the PEN/Bingham Award for Debut Short Story Collection. The managing editor of A Public Space, she lives in New York City.

March 3rd, 2023
Spark Central, Spokane, WA

Jane Wong

Jane Wong is the author of two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House in May 2023. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, and others. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.

Part of the Get Lit! Festival 2023

Emily Van Kley

Emily Van Kley is a queer poet and circus artist currently based in Olympia, Washington. She is the author of Arrhythmia (2022) and The Cold and the Rust (2018, Winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize), both from Persea Books. Her poetry has received the Loraine Williams Prize for Poetry, the Iowa Review Award, the Florida Review Editor’s Award, and has been featured in editions of Best American Poetry and Best New Poets. Originally from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Emily holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University and has been awarded fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. When not writing, she can often be found teaching or performing aerial acrobatics.

May 2023

Stay tuned for Visiting Writers 23-24!

The MFA at EWU regularly puts out a newsletter not only on our MFA program, but regional literary events as well. We also include a collection of calls for submission, contests, and fellowships.

Here are the links to the 2017 Newsletters:

• November 2017
• October 2017
• May 2017
• April 2017
• March 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017

The MFA at EWU regularly puts out a newsletter not only on our MFA program, but regional literary events as well. We also include a collection of calls for submission, contests, and fellowships.

Here are the links to the 2016 Newsletters:

• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• June 2016
• May 2016
• April 2016

The MFA at EWU regularly puts out a newsletter not only on our MFA program, but regional literary events as well. We also include a collection of calls for submission, contests, and fellowships.

Here are the links to the 2015 Newsletters:

• December 2015
• November 2015
• May 2015
• January 2015

The MFA at EWU regularly puts out a newsletter not only on our MFA program, but regional literary events as well. We also include a collection of calls for submission, contests, and fellowships.

Here are the links to the 2014 Newsletters:

• December 2014
• November 2014
• May 2014
• April 2014
• March 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014