OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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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
Affiliated Faculty
Distinguished Visiting Writers
Jennifer A. Reimer
Program Coordinator, Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program
Assistant Professor, American Studies
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Jennifer received her Ph.D. in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2011 and her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco in 2005. She is the 2011 winner of the American Studies Association's Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award. She has numerous scholarly and creative publications. As a scholar, Jennifer writes about culture, race, gender and migration.
Her first prose poetry book, "The Rainy Season Diaries," was released in 2013 by Quale Press. The Turkish translation of "The Rainy Season Diaries" was released by Şiirden Press (Istanbul) in 2017. Her second poetry book, "Keşke" (pronounced kesh-kay), is forthcoming from Airlie Press, where she is now a member of the editorial board. Additionally, Jennifer is the forward editor for the Journal of Transnational American Studies.
As kindergarten classroom aide, professor, writer and freelance editor, Jennifer has lived and worked in Cyprus, Turkey, Denmark, Austria and spent her pandemic year in the Basque country, on the Spain-France border. Follow her on Facebook (Jennifer Andrea) and Instagram (@jenniandreaca).
Beth Alvarado
Creative Nonfiction/Fiction
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Beth Alvarado's most recent book, "Jillian in the Borderlands: A Cycle of Rather Dark Tales," was described by one reviewer as "marrying the social-justice novel with magical realism to render a disquieting portrait of the humanitarian toll of our immigration policies." Much of Alvarado's work addresses life in the US/Mexico borderlands. She has written extensively about marrying into her late husband's family when she was 19 years old. Her essay collection "Anxious Attachments," which a reviewer called "a love song to Fernando," was long listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the Art of the Essay and won the 2020 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her lyric memoir "Anthropologies" layers scenes, oral histories, portraits, family myths and dreams in a cross-cultural mosaic. Her first story collection, "Not a Matter of Love," won the Many Voices Project Prize for work that the final judge called "wise, witty and unflinching."
Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in many fine journals including The Sun, Ploughshares, Fourth Genre, The Southern Review, River Teeth, Guernica, LitHub, and the Los Angeles Review. Three of her essays have been chosen as Notable by "Best American Essays," and her stories have been anthologized in "The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women and New California Writing." She is on the Editorial Board for the anthology Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century and the Advisory Board of JackLeg Press. You can find out more about her work and listen to her read by visiting her website at bethalvarado.com. Her twitter address is @bethfromtucson.
Christopher Boucher
Fiction/Digital Humanities
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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
Fiction/Poetry
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Irene Cooper is the author of "FOUND," a new psychological thriller from Atmosphere Press, "Committal," speculative spy-fy about family from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press and "spare change," a poetry collection from Finishing Line Press, finalist for the Stafford/Hall Award. She co-edited, with Ellen Santasiero, "Placed: An Encyclopedia of Central Oregon, an anthology of Central Oregon writing." Poems, stories and reviews appear in The Feminist Wire, phoebe, Denver Quarterly, The Manifest-Station, The Rumpus, Witness and elsewhere. Irene teaches in community and lives with her people and a corgi in Oregon.
Raquel Gutiérrez
Creative Nonfiction/Poetry
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Raquel Gutiérrez works as a poet and arts writer working through ekphrasis as one way to reflect upon queer brown life in the arts in the Southwest borderlands. They work in a range of topics that have continued to inform their writing and teaching, including critical race theory, Queer and Latinx aesthetics, and performance art in the Americas.
Their poetry, nonfiction and critical writing are rooted in explorations of movement, mobility and migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States. These explorations elaborate on Gutiérrez’ perspective as a queer and brown writer engaging histories of desire and colonization in the Southwest United States or Greater Mexico, according to José Limón. They enact these elaborations through cross-genre engagements with performance studies, ekphrasis and experimental memoir by centering around questions concerning artistic identity and performativity. Their poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Inquiry, FENCE, Huizache, The Georgia Review, The Texas Review and Hayden’s Ferry Review. Raquel’s first book of prose, "Brown Neon," was published by Coffee House Press in 2022. And Raquel's first book of poetry, "Southwest Reconstruction," will be published by Noemi Press in 2022.
T. Geronimo Johnson
Fiction
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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.
Joshua Mohr
Creative Nonfiction/Fiction
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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
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Ellen Waterston has published three literary nonfiction titles, including "Walking the High Desert: Encounters with Rural America Along the Oregon Desert Trail" (University of Washington Press, 2020). Other prose titles include "Where the Crooked River Rises," a collection of essays (Oregon State University Press, 2010), and a memoir, "Then There Was No Mountain" (Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, 2003). Of her four poetry titles "Hotel Domilocos" (Moonglade Press, 2017) is her most recent collection. She adapted her verse novel, "Vía Láctea" (Atelier 6000, 2013), to a libretto that premiered in 2016 as a full-length opera and is slated for a second staging in 2022.
Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. In addition to fellowships and grants, awards include WILLA and Foreword finalist in literary nonfiction, two-time WILLA Award Winner in Poetry, the winner of the Obsidian Prize in Poetry and, in recognition of her achievements as an author and literary arts advocate, an honorary Ph.D. in Humane Letters from OSU-Cascades. A former New Englander who came West to ranch, she regards the high desert as her muse and greatest teacher. Read more at www.writingranch.com.
Mike Cooper
Creative Nonfiction
Michael Cooper holds an MFA from Oregon State University Cascades and lives in Bend, Oregon with his family and Maggie the Corgi. You can often find him wandering in the beautiful Cascade Range or the High Desert. His short stories have been finalists in Glimmer Train, The Lascaux Review, Driftwood Press, and Cutthroat. He is president of the Central Oregon Writers Guild and teaches writing at Oregon State University Cascades and Central Oregon Community College, as well as creative writing through Blank Pages Workshops and The Forge, and at the Deschutes Public Library and COCC Community Learning.
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Visiting Fiction Faculty
Kaui Hart Hemmings has degrees from Colorado College and Sarah Lawrence, and she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her first novel, a New York Times bestseller, "The Descendants," has been published in twenty-two other countries and is an Oscar-winning film directed by Alexander Payne and starring George Clooney. She is also the author of a story collection "House of Thieves," the novels "How to Party with an Infant" and "The Possibilities," and the YA novel "Juniors." She lives in Hawaii.
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.
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
