Tag: 2000s alum

On April 1, 2021, Rena Priest was appointed Washington State Poet Laureate by Governor Jay Inslee.

Winner of the 2018 American Book Award for her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues, Priest is an enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation and the the first Indigenous poet to be named Washington State’s Poet Laureate.

Priest is a Vadon Foundation Fellow, and a recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. She previously served as a National Geographic Explorer (2018-2020) and as a Jack Straw Writer (2019). She holds a BA in English from WWU and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her most recent work is Sublime Subliminal.

“I am incredibly excited and honored to take on this role,” said Priest in a NW Book Lovers interview. “I’m fascinated by the way people come together around poetry. I am always delighted by how they gather in quiet rooms and let themselves be drawn in, lit up, and transformed by the words of other people. It’s a powerful way of connecting.”

“Poetry is a gift,” said Priest. “This is my approach to it and my belief about it: I’m very lucky to have it. We all are.”

“We are in an important historical moment when science has given us a deadline to make significant changes to heal our planet,” she said. “I want to use poetry as a tool to offer new perspectives and generate enthusiasm for the idea that we can slow and reverse the effects of ecological destruction simply by loving the Earth.”

Priest’s work can be found in Poetry Northwest, Pontoon Poetry, Verse Daily, Poem-a-Day at Poets.org, and elsewhere. She has taught Comparative Cultural Studies and Contemporary American Issues at Western and Native American Literature at Northwest Indian College. She lives in Bellingham.

You can learn more about Rena at her website, https://www.renapriest.com/

Claude Atcho’s Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just was published this year by Brazos Press. Claude is a teacher and the pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, VA. Each chapter of his book takes up a theological category for inquiry through a close literary reading and theological reflection on a primary literary text, from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Richard Wright’s Native Son to Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Angie Griffin and Julie Marie Wade met in September 2001 when they were both beginning our MA program in English. Angie now works as Technical Services and Systems Librarian for the Appalachian College Association, and Julie is an Associate Professor of English at Florida International University. They married legally in Bellingham in 2014. In June of this year, they will celebrate twenty years together.

Zoe Wise was awarded Williams Achievement and Heurta Scholarships that grant her three years of full funding at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she will pursue her Juris Doctorate at the James E. Rogers College of Law. Zoe is a citizen of the Muskogee Nation and will specialize in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in 2019.

Jaima Lindell loved attending Western, and when she had the opportunity to move back to Bellingham last April she was thrilled to be part of the community again. A few years after graduating, she traveled to New Zealand where she worked and lived on the Working Holiday Visa and met her husband. They moved to Australia on the same visa for a year before coming back to the states. Not long after that, she fell into a career in project management, obtaining her certification in November 2020, and she now works for a digital marketing company in Bellingham. She has not strayed too far from her degree, however. For the past ten-plus years, she has been writing a fantasy novel. It is now in the editing phase and she hopes to release it later this year through Earth and Fire Publishing, an up-and-coming Seattle-based indie publisher. Jaima maintains an active blog that includes more details about her novel in progress.

Cindy Hollenbeck recently celebrated ten years as an employee at Washington State University, eight as a marketing and communications coordinator, and four as a senior writer. She remembers being challenged by her education at Western, and she knows the degree she earned here made a positive impact on her career. She is so grateful for the time she spent in Bellingham and at the university, and she has maintained many wonderful friendships with faculty and peers.

This past fall, Antonio began his second year teaching English composition as a full-time Communications Instructor at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, Wisconsin. He took the position after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December 2019 with a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric. Antonio’s son Westley turned three on November 7 last year. Before that, the family purchased their first home, a lovely ranch-style house with a large deck, in May. Antonio sends his regards to Professor Laura Laffrado.

Emily Reynolds was recently hired as a writer and editor for the video game review site, gameravenreview.com. Marrying her passions for writing and video games, the job is a dream come true!