Contact Information

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. Contact

Office Hours
MTh: 4:30-5:30 p.m.

Program Director Gregory Spatz is the author of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler’s Dream and No One But Us, and of the 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, New England Review, and Zyzzyva. He has written for Poets and Writers, as well as The Oxford American. He is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Washington State Book Award, and a 2012 NEA Fellowship in literature. 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, and being a step-dad to her two sons Tal and Angus.

Visit Greg’s website at gregoryspatz.com.

Read Greg’s article in Poets & Writers: “The Teachable Talent: Why Creative Writing Can Be Taught”. Check out Greg’s interview with Kenyon Review.

Office Hours
MWTh: 3-5 p.m.
F: By appointment only

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.

Office Hours
TW: 4-5:30 p.m.

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. His short fiction has appeared in Prairie Schooner, New England Review, New Ohio Review, and Gulf Coast, among other places, and his essays appear in The Inlander. Ligon edits the journal Willow Springs, and is Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.

Office Hours
F: 2-3 p.m. & by appointment

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 NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. His books include the poetry collections Mastodon, 80% Complete(Carnegie Mellon, 2001) and In the Land We Imagined Ourselves (Carnegie Mellon, 2010), and a memoir, Hannah and the Mountain (Nebraska, 2005). 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, the Lake Superior Coastal town of Marquette, Michigan, and his ancestral village of Glenelg in the Scottish Highland where his cousins are still crofters.

In addition to his regular course load, Jonathan teaches a unique summer writing class from Yellowstone National Park.

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.

Office Hours
TTh: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Spokane campus