Our faculty mentors write, teach and publish across genres, engage in interdisciplinary projects, take care of the communities they are a part of, and, most of all, approach the twenty-first century writing life with invention, pragmatism and creativity. With like-minded faculty to aid them, students at OSU-Cascades are encouraged to cultivate the spontaneity, innovation, courage and commitment the writing life demands.
Faculty
Beth Alvarado
Fiction/Creative Nonfiction
Beth Alvarado is the author of the essay collection "Anxious Attachments," which won the 2020 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was long listed for the PEN Art of the Essay Award. Her recent story collection, "Jillian in the Borderlands," marries the social justice novel with magical realism, and her memoir, "Anthropologies," is a lyric rendering of her family's history. Her first story collection, "Not a Matter of Love," won the Many Voices Prize from New Rivers Press in 2005. In 2020, she was awarded an Oregon Literary Career Fellowship.
Alvarado believes that everything we write is an evolving experiment and that an education gives us the critical tools and community we need to keep the practice going. She believes that reading and writing are transformative. In addition to teaching, she is an editorial advisor for JackLeg Press and was on the editorial board of Puro Chicanx Writing of the 21st Century. She earned her M.A. in Literature from Stanford University and her MFA in Fiction from the University of Arizona, where she taught for years. You can find her work at bethalvarado.com.
Christopher Boucher
Fiction/Digital Humanities
Christopher Boucher is the author of the novels "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive" (Melville House, 2011), "Golden Delicious" (Melville House, 2016), and "Big Giant Floating Head" (Melville House, 2019). He’s also the editor of Jonathan Lethem's "More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers" (Melville House, 2016). Chris received his MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University in 2002, and he currently teaches in the English Department at Boston College; he’s also the managing editor of Post Road Magazine. Chris’s academic interests include postmodern and contemporary fiction, hybrid texts and digital humanities. Chris lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. In his free time, he plays the five-string banjo.
As a writing teacher, Chris emphasizes the intrinsic value of a regular writing practice; he sees it as a mode of inquiry — a way of listening in the world. He looks forward to working with writers at OSU to cultivate an artistic practice that is rigorous, sustainable, ever-evolving and always surprising. Find him @heychrisboucher on Twitter and Instagram.
Irene Cooper
Poetry
Irene Cooper is the author of the feminist noir novel "FOUND," winner of the North Street Prize; "COMMITTAL," poet-friendly spy-fy; "spare change," finalist for the Stafford/Hall Award for poetry, 2022 Oregon Book Awards; and the forthcoming poetry collection, "even my dreams are over the constant state of anxiety." Stories, essays, and critical reviews appear variously. Irene supports AIC-directed creative writing at a regional prison, teaches in community and at OSU-Cascades, and currently serves as an editor for Airlie Press. She lives with her people and mourns Maggie in Oregon.
Mike Cooper
Fiction/Creative Nonfiction
Mike Cooper holds an MFA from Oregon State University – Cascades in Bend, Oregon where he lives with his family. His short story “Call Me When You Get There” was published in The Baltimore Review winter ’24 issue and he has been a finalist in Glimmer Train, The Lascaux Review, Driftwood Press and Cutthroat. He is president of the Central Oregon Writers Guild and teaches writing at Central Oregon Community College and OSU-Cascades (undergraduate and in the MFA Program), as well as creative writing workshops through Blank Pages Workshops and The Forge, and at the Deschutes Public Library, COCC Community Learning and Deer Ridge Correctional Institute.
Jeff Fearnside
Fiction
Jeff Fearnside is the author of two full-length books and two chapbooks, most recently "Ships in the Desert" (SFWP, 2022), winner of several post-publication awards, including a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award. Other awards for his writing include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Project’s Literary Awards Program, the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize from the National League of American Pen Women, and an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship.
His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review, Story, The Sun, and Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (University of Washington Press, 2016). Fearnside was a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan for two years and lived and worked in Central Asia for four years in all. He has taught writing and literature in Kazakhstan and at various institutions in the U.S.: Washington State University, Western Kentucky University, Prescott College, Oregon State University and OSU-Cascades. More info at jeff-fearnside.com
Kim Johnson
Fiction
Kim Johnson's bestselling novel, "This Is My America," won numerous 2021 accolades, including the Pacific Northwest Book Award and Malka Penn Human Rights Award for Children’s Literature. Her second novel, "Invisible Son," was a 2023 LA Times Book Award and Amelia Elizabeth Warden Finalist. Both novels were selected as NPR Best Books and Kirkus Best Books. "The Color of a Lie" is her first historical thriller.
She received her MFA from Oregon State University – Cascades and holds a B.S. in Ethnic Studies from the University of Oregon and M.Ed. from the University of Maryland, College Park. She now lives in the Washington D.C area.
T. Geronimo Johnson
Fiction
T. Geronimo Johnson's debut novel "Hold it ‘Til it Hurts" was a 2013 PEN/Faulkner finalist. "Welcome to Braggsville," a dark, socially provocative comedic novel about four liberal college kids who attempt to stage a lynching during a Civil War reenactment, was released in the U.S. and U.K. in early 2015 by William Morrow. "Welcome to Braggsville" was on the 2015 National Book Awards Longlist for Fiction and won the Gaines Book Award for 2015. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Best New American Voices, the LA Review, and Illuminations, among others.
He has taught writing and held fellowships — including a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowship — at ASU, Iowa, Berkeley, Stanford and WMU. Geronimo’s academic interests include new media, creative writing pedagogy and the film essay. Geronimo received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and his M.A. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from UC Berkeley. His website is geronimo1.com.
Joy Manesiotis
Visiting Poetry Faculty
Joy Manesiotis is the author of three collections of poems, "A Short History of Anger," chosen by Brenda Hillman for The New Measure Poetry Prize (forthcoming, Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press), "Revoke" (forthcoming, Airlie Press), and "They Sing to Her Bones," which won the New Issues Poetry Prize. She is the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, in California. joymanesiotis.com
Joshua Mohr
Creative Nonfiction/Fiction
Joshua Mohr is the author of the memoirs “Model Citizen” (2021) and "Sirens," as well as five novels including "Damascus," which The New York Times called "Beat-poet cool." He’s also written "Fight Song" and "Some Things that Meant the World to Me," one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as "Termite Parade," an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times. His novel "All This Life" won the Northern California Book Award. He is the founder of Decant Editorial.
Ellen Waterston
Creative Nonfiction/Poetry
A New Englander who married and moved to the ranching West, much of Waterston’s prose and poetry is inspired by the remote reaches of southeastern Oregon’s Outback. Her most recent title, "Walking the High Desert," received this review: “Woven out of her own remarkable stories, her trek becomes an insightful search for how we might all get along, here and elsewhere, in a perilously shifting world.” Of her collection of award-winning essays, "Where the Crooked River Rises," a reviewer said “Like Wallace Stegner and Ivan Doig, Waterston writes masterfully about what it means — what it really means — to live in the West.” She is also the author of a memoir, "Then There Was No Mountain," a Foreword and WILLA finalist.
Waterston has published four poetry titles and is winner of the Obsidian Prize in Poetry and two-time winner of the WILLA Award in Poetry. In addition to her work as an author, Waterston founded the for-profit Writing Ranch and two literary arts nonprofits, The Nature of Words and the Waterston Desert Writing Prize. She has instructed creative writing at undergraduate and graduate levels. Her work as an author and commitment to literary arts advocacy was recognized with an honorary Ph.D. in Humane Letters from OSU-Cascades in 2007 and, in 2024, with Literary Arts of Oregon’s Holbrook Award and Soapstone’s Bread and Roses Award. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and M.A. in Archeology from the University of Madagascar. www.writingranch.com
Distinguished Visiting Writers (Past)
Kaui Hart Hemmings, Jason Buchholz, Beth Piatote, Mia Susan Amir, Geraldine Brooks, CA Conrad, Karen Finneyfrock, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Raquel Gutiérrez, Kristiana Kahakauwila, Colleen Kinder, Deborah A. Miranda, Elizabeth A.I. Powell, James Prosek, Justin Taylor, Jennifer Tseng
Staff
Jenna Goldsmith
MFA Program Manager
Jenna Goldsmith is a poet, writer and teacher based in Illinois. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including "CRUSH," winner of the 2022 Baltic Writing Residency Chapbook Contest, and "TITLE NINE," which was published by Press 254, the teaching press of Illinois State University. Her writing has been featured in numerous journals including New Delta Review, South Carolina Review, and Cleveland Review of Books, and her full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. She is an associate editor for Spoon River Poetry Review and the City Poet Laureate of Rockford, Illinois, where she resides.
Raye Lynn McCabe
Graduate Student Recruitment Coordinator
Born and raised in Northern Arizona, Raye Lynn earned her civil engineering bachelor of science degree from Arizona State University. Before she could get a job in engineering, she started substituting in her home school district, Tuba City Unified School District. She loved being in the classroom and interacting with young people. Raye Lynn became a secondary certified math teacher and was in the school for 19 years. She obtained a master of science in education degree in educational leadership from the University of Kansas and eventually became the principal of Tuba City High School. Raye Lynn served as the principal for six years.
She enjoys reading, running, traveling, watching college basketball or football, and spending time with family.