Seattle Pacific University Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Thanks to the close relationship between Image journal and SPU’s MFA program, each residency will feature a host of visiting writers who will give readings and conduct craft classes. And because writers so often find their work stimulated by other art forms, we’ll be taking advantage of those Image contacts to invite visual artists and musicians to enrich our times together.

Following are some of our recent and upcoming visitors.


	Robert Cording has published five books of poetry: Life-List, What Binds Us to This World, Heavy Grace, Against Consolation, and Common Life. He teaches English and creative writing at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and recently received his second National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry. His poems have appeared in The Nation, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry, DoubleTake, Orion, Paris Review, and The New Yorker, as well as many other magazines.

	Charles D’Ambrosio is the author of the essay collection Orphans and the short story collections The Dead Fish Museum and The Point. His fiction has been published to wide acclaim and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and other journals and anthologies.

	Madeline DeFrees is the author or seven poetry collections. Her most recent, Blue Dusk (Copper Canyon), won the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize for 2002. She has poems forthcoming in New Letters, The Atlantic Monthly, Hubbub, and Puerto del Sol. She lives and writes in Seattle.

	David James Duncan is the author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K, the collections River Teeth and My Story as Told by Water, and, most recently, the book God Laughs and Plays. Honors include the Western States Book Award, a National Book Award nomination, and inclusion in three volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing. He lives with his family on a Montana trout stream.

	Dana Gioia is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. He is also an accomplished poet, translator, essayist, and long time commentator for the BBC. His 1991 book of essays, Can Poetry Matter?, received critical acclaim and national attention for its critique of the state of letters in America. His most recent book of poetry, Interrogations at Noon, won the American Book Award.

	Debra Gwartney is on the nonfiction writing faculty at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and is co-editor, with Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. Her short stories, personal narratives, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers. Her new book, Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters, will be published in February 2009 by Houghton Mifflin. She lives in Western Oregon with her husband, the writer Barry Lopez.

	Patricia Hampl is the author of the memoirs I Could Tell You Stories, Virgin Time, A Romantic Education, and, most recently, The Florist’s Daughter, along with numerous acclaimed poetry collections. She is also the author of Blue Arabesque, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times Favorite Non-fiction Book of the Year.

	Andrew Hudgins is the author of several poetry collections, including Ecstatic in the Poison, The Never-Ending (a National Book Award finalist), After the Lost War (winner of the Poets’ Prize), Saints and Strangers (a Pulitzer finalist), and Babylon in a Jar. He is also the author of an essay collection, The Glass Anvil. He is Humanities Distinguished Professor in English at Ohio State University.

	Alan Jacobs is a literary critic and essayist and teaches English at Wheaton College. He is the author of the essay collections A Visit to Vanity Fair and Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling, works of criticism including The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, A Theology Of Reading: The Hermeneutics Of Love, and most recently, Original Sin: A Cultural History and a book about narrative theology, Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life.

	Jan Krist is a singer-songwriter whose albums include the 2004 release When Planets Collide and the 1993 recording Decapitated Society, which was selected by Billboard magazine as that year’s best album in a (broadly defined) gospel genre.

	Thomas Lynch is an essayist, poet, and funeral director. His books include The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, Bodies in Motion and at Rest, Still Life in Milford, and Booking Passage: We Irish & Americans (all four books are from Norton). He is regularly featured on the op-ed page of The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Times of London, as well as in the pages of Harper’s. He has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC, the NBC "Today" program and the PBS series "On Our Own Terms." He lives in Milford, Michigan.

	Erin McGraw is the author of the collections Bodies at Sea, Lies of the Saints (a New York Times Notable Book of 1996), and most recently The Good Life, as well as a novel, The Baby Tree . Her awards include Yaddo and Wallace Stegner Fellowships, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, and the Pushcart Prize. She teaches at Ohio State University.

	Barry Moser’s work can be found in numerous collections and libraries around the world, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Vatican Library, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. His engraved illustrations of the King James Bible, Moby-Dick, The Divine Comedy, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland have received international acclaim.

	Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of twelve books and three chapbooks, including The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems. Her books have won many awards, including the Poets’ Prize, two Boston Globe/Hornbook Awards, and the Annisfield-Wolf Award, and they have been finalists for three National Book Awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, the Lenore Marshall Prize, and the Newbery Prize. She is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut and founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’ colony.

	Over the Rhine Musicians-in-Residence, Glen Workshop Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler are Over the Rhine, the lush, literate, Ohio-based band whose songwriting Paste magazine calls "deep and wide, playful and serious, sad and joyful - full of tiny experiments, rabbit trails, and the wine-dark sparkle of inspired phrase." They’ll give a concert and play in the evening worship services. For more, visit www.overtherhine.com.

	Eugene H. Peterson is a pastor, scholar, writer, and poet. He has authored more than twenty books, including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, The Contemplative Pastor, and Leap Over a Wall, and developed the popular paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. He is Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Peterson founded Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he was the pastor for twenty-nine years. He lives with his wife, Jan, in Montana.

	Pierce Pettis, hailed as one of America’s most thoughtful and moving singer-songwriters, is known for his exquisitely wrought lyrics and virtuosic guitar-playing. As William Michael Smith has written in Rockzilla World : "Across the entire range of his styles, Pettis constantly reinforces the sensation that he is a thoughtful, sensitive, serious poet, a man who looks deep and ponders long."

	Valerie Sayers is the author of five novels, including Brain Fever and Who Do You Love, both New York Times “Notable Books of the Year.” Her many stories, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in, among others, the New York Times, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, and Image. Her work has won an NEA and a Pushcart Prize and has been cited by Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She is professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, where she founded the Notre Dame Review.

	Luci Shaw’s books include nine volumes of poetry and several nonfiction works. She is writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, BC and a frequent retreat facilitator and writing workshop leader. Her poetry has appeared in Weavings, Image, Books & Culture, Christian Century, First Things, Harper’s Best Spiritual Writing anthologies, and others.

	Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Christianity Today, The Christian Century, Books and Culture, Oxford American, and the New York Times Book Review. She teaches at Duke Divinity School, and lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Last Modified: 8/24/2009