Kathryn Trueblood’s newest novel, Take Daily As Needed, presents the challenges of parenting while ill with the desperado humor the subject deserves; it was published by the University of New Mexico Press in September 2019. Trueblood offered workshops in therapeutic writing at “The Examined Life” Conference at the University of Iowa, the Hugo House in Seattle, and the Lighthouse Writers Conference in Denver. Her essay, “Writing from a Pile of Shoes: Chronic Illness, Kids, and Creation,” was published by Literary Mama in November 2019, and “Honey, Don’t Break Yourself” is forthcoming in Minerva Rising #18. You can find her interviews at Invisible Not Broken Podcast, Montana Public Radio, and Writing It Real.
Suzanne Paola
Suzanne Paola has had three books accepted for publication this year: one, The Devil’s Castle (nonfiction), is in the writing stage and appearing in 2022 from Counterpoint Press. Two are finished and in the publication process— Entangled Objects: A Novel in Quantum Parts (Slant Books, fiction) and The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here (OSU 21st Century Essay series, nonfiction)— both appearing in 2021. She has published poetry in the South Carolina Review and essays in Signal Mountain Review, the UK Independent, and the New York Times. Additionally, she has published the critical article “Speculative Nonfiction” in the AWP Chronicle and contributed a chapter, “The Truth in Schreber’s Delusions,” to the scholarly work The Futures of Neurodiversity, forthcoming from Modern Language Association Books.
Donna Qualley
Donna Qualley and Matthew Sorlien (English Literature major and PWLR minor, WWU Fall 2020) co-wrote a chapter, “Our (Students’) Work (and Play) Can Make Us Smarter Next Time” for an edited collection entitled Inventing the Discipline: Student Work in Composition Studies, edited by Peter Moe and Stacey Waite and to be published by Parlor Press in 2021. The collection focuses for the important role of student writing in composition studies research and the impact it has had on the development of the field.
Christopher Patton
Christopher Patton’s book of translations from Old English, Unlikeness Is Us (Gaspereau Press) received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. His book of poems, Dumuzi (Gaspereau), appeared this spring 2020.
Ely Shipley
Ely Shipley’s second full-length book Some Animal won the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender Variant Literature, is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, and has received positive reviews in Publishers Weekly, DIAGRAM, Ocean State Review, and Lambda Literary Review. Publishers Weekly calls it a “riveting exploration of what it means to come of age in a genderqueer body” that is “steeped in Anglo-American poetry and literary theory” and claims that “what sets this book apart is its focused attention to the experience of defying the gender binary, of being in a body that intimates and strangers alike are bent on denying…Shipley’s book is one of hard truths, lovingly rendered.” Some Animal was listed as one of the best poetry collections of 2018 by Entropy, as well as poet CA Conrad. Ely has been having a blast teaching poetry and multigenre workshops, as well as a course on Anne Carson.
Kami Westhoff
Kami Westhoff’s Your Body a Bullet, a collaborative book with alumna Elizabeth Vignali, was published by Unsolicited Press in November 2018. She presented “Immensities” at the PMLA conference, a poetry project that seeks to honor women who’ve been murdered in Whatcom County. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction appeared in various journals including SWIMM, Ghost City, Stirring, Hippocampus, Threadcount, Permafrost, A-Minor, and Contrary, received six Best of the Net nominations and two Pushcart Prize nominations, and will be included in three anthologies: Mansion, by Ghost City Press, and Ways of Looking, by Carve, and the Running Wild Novella Anthology, by Running Wild Press.
Elizabeth Colen
In Fall 2018 Black Lawrence Press published Elizabeth Colen’s sixth book, a fiction collaboration entitled True Ash. This spring she entered her third year as an editor at Tupelo Press. This summer she hopes to spend a lot of time returning to a novel project, as well as preparing for several new courses she’s developing for next year, including AIDS Literature and Black Feminist Dystopian Narratives, which was inspired by the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s M Archive.
Brenda Miller
Brenda Miller, with her colleague Suzanne Paola, has been hard at work on the updates for the Third Edition of Tell it Slant: Creating, Refining and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, scheduled for release this summer. Her poetry and essays have appeared in such venues as Tupelo Quarterly, Jet Fuel Review (with alum Julie Marie Wade), and Psaltery & Lyre (edited by alum Dayna Patterson). Brenda’s essay “The Shape of Emptiness,” originally published in Brevity, received recognition as a “Notable Essay of 2018” in Best American Essays. Her article “The Fine Art of Containment in Creative Nonfiction” appeared in the March issue of The Writer’s Chronicle. In her teaching, she developed a new course focused solely on “Hermit Crab Essays” for ENG 458: Topics in Nonfiction Writing, and a graduate course (ENG 598) exploring the assumptions and practices of creative writing pedagogy.
Laura Laffrado
Laura Laffrado and her work on Pacific Northwest author Ella Rhoads Higginson were featured in the Seattle Sunday Times Magazine cover story “Poetic Justice.” Her project for a bronze bust honoring Higginson was completed in November with installation of the bust in the Wilson Library foyer and the Ella Higginson Celebration (watch the event). Her book Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature received the 2018 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Edition Award ( watch her acceptance speech in Denver). Her essay, “The Value of Digitized Newspaper Collections in Researching Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century U.S. Women’s Writing: Two Newly Recovered Poems by Ella Rhoads Higginson,” appeared in the Readex Report and her Op-Ed “The New West” appeared in The Seattle Times.
BA, 2000: Heather June Gibbons
Heather June Gibbons (BA, 2000) published, though The University of Utah Press, the poetry book Her Mouth as Souvenir which was selected by Jericho Brown as the winner of the 2017 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize.