English

Lion Rock Visiting Writers 2019-2020

The Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series schedules readings every quarter and features nationally known writers reading their own work. We have hosted two winners of the MacArthur Genius Award, as well as the WA State Poet Laureate, and recipients of NEA Fellowships and other major prizes.

Each spring, students enrolled in ENG 468: Contemporary Writers Colloquium (an upper-level multi-genre writing workshop), meet with three visiting writers from the Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series. We also sponsor talks by professional editors and publishers, readings by faculty and students, including open mics, and an annual reading for students who have their work published in CWU's literary magazine, Manastash.

Past readers in the Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series include Lucia Perillo, Anthony Doerr, Major Jackson, Kim Barnes, Linda Bierds, David Guterson, David Wojahn, Prageeta Sharma and Sam Green.

TANEUM BAMBRICK

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Craft talk at 12 noon; Reading at 6 p.m.

Both events in Brooks Library 2nd Floor Commons

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of the Wildcat Shop.

Taneum Bambrick is the author of VANTAGE, which was selected by Sharon Olds for the 2019 American Poetry Review/Honickman first book award (distributed by Copper Canyon Press). A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Taneum is from Ellensburg and currently teaches online for CWU.

Read a review of her book.

Read an interview with Bambrick.

You can learn more about Bambrick by visiting her website.

Bambrick's work would pair well with course themes that explore environment and/or ecocriticism, conservation, landscape and regional history, gender, sexuality, class, and violence.

Sponsored by CWU College of Arts and Humanities, CWU Dept. of English, Brooks Library, Multimodal Education Center, Karen Gookin, CWU Wildcat Shop, CWU Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Editing, Graduate School, & Professionalizing Beyond the Classroom: A How-To Panel

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020

Email the English Department for a link to this video.

ELISSA WASHUTA

Tuesday, March 10th, 2020

Craft talk at 12 noon; Reading at 6 p.m.

Both events in Brooks Library 2nd Floor Commons

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of the Wildcat Shop.

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Potlatch Fund. Elissa is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.

Read an interview with Washuta here.

Read an excerpt of her work, "This Indian Does Not Owe You," here.

You can learn more about Washuta by visiting her website.

Washuta’s work would pair well with course themes that explore sex, gender, trauma, mental illness, native nonfiction, indigenous studies, sustainability, landscape, and more.

Sponsored by CWU College of Arts and Humanities, CWU Dept. of English, Brooks Library, Multimodal Education Center, Karen Gookin, CWU Wildcat Shop, CWU Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, CWU Diversity and Equity Center

SHARMA SHIELDS

Due to COVID-19 Campus Closures, Sharma Shields' events will be held virtually for use in CWU classes and programming. Please see the Brooks Library Streaming Media Channel for Shields' Virtual Talk and Reading.

Sharma Shields is the author of a short story collection, Favorite Monster, and two novels, The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac and The Cassandra. Sharma’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Lit, Catapult, Slice, Slate, Fairy Tale Review, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Fugue, and elsewhere and have garnered such awards as the 2016 Washington State Book Award, the Autumn House Fiction Prize, the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor, a Grant for Artist Projects from Artist Trust, and the A.B. Guthrie Award for Outstanding Prose. She received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Washington (2000) and her MFA from the University of Montana (2004). Sharma has worked in independent bookstores and public libraries throughout Washington State and lives in Spokane with her husband (writer and graphic novelist Simeon Mills) and their young children.

Read an interview with Shields here.

You can learn more about Shields by visiting her website.

Shields’ work pairs well with courses that explore mythology, trauma and consent, gender and sex, disability and the body, women’s rights, sustainability, science, magical realism, Hanford, regional history, and more.

Sponsored by CWU College of Arts and Humanities, CWU Dept. of English, Brooks Library, Multimodal Education Center, Karen Gookin, CWU Wildcat Shop, CWU Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ellensburg Community Libraries

MITA MAHATO

Due to COVID-19 Campus Closures, Mita Mahato's events will be held virtually for use in CWU classes and programming. Mita Mahato's talk is available on VIMEO for the CWU community. Please contact Maya Zeller for the password.

Mita Mahato is a Seattle-based cut paper, collage, and comix artist and educator whose work focuses on lost, discarded, and disappeared animals and objects. Her book of comics poetry, In Between, is listed in The Best American Comics: The Notable Comics of 2019 and her silent comic book “Sea” received the award for “Best Comic Book of 2015” from Cartoonists Northwest. Her work is published in Coast/No Coast, Shenandoah, Illustrated PEN, MUTHA, Drunken Boat, and Seattle Weekly and has been exhibited widely (including at SOIL Gallery, Seattle; Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago; Schnitzer Art Museum, Pullman; and Antenna Gallery, New Orleans). She is currently working on a long-form, experimental comic book that uses common materials to surreal effect as a means of expanding the anthropocentric discourse of climate crisis to include nonhuman life and other earth objects. The project is based upon her experiences as a 2017 Arctic Circle resident artist and is supported by a CityArtist Project Grant from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

Read an interview with Mahato here.

See an excerpt of her work, "Lullaby" here.

You can learn more about Mahato by visiting her website.

Mahato’s work deals with environment and illness, the body and the planet in various states of trauma, as well as love, loss, reconnection, and the limits of language. The ways that text and image interact also pair well with new media poetics and narrative courses, as well as art and design courses that approach cross-genre and hybrid genre collage.

Sponsored by CWU College of Arts and Humanities, CWU Dept. of English, Brooks Library, Multimodal Education Center, Karen Gookin, CWU Wildcat Shop, CWU Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, CWU Dept. of Art + Design.