Rachel Toor
October 4, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC Ballroom
Rachel Toor is the author of four works of nonfiction and one novel. Her most recent book is Misunderstood: Why The Humble Rat May Be Your Best Pet Ever (FSG 2016). She is a professor in the graduate creative writing program at Eastern Washington University. Her work has been published in a wide variety of places, including The New York Times, The LA Times, Ploughshares, SB Nation, Glamour, Reader’s Digest, Runner’s World and JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, and she writes a monthly for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her next book, which will be published by the University of Chicago Press in Fall 2017, is for high school students on writing the college application essay. She graduated from Yale University and received an MFA from the University of Montana. You can learn more about Rachel on her website.

There will also be a craft talk by Rachel at noon in Black Hall Rm 151.

Eduardo C. Corral
October 18, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC Ballroom

Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He's the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA Fellowship, and the Holmes National Poetry Prize. He's currently the writer-in-residence at North Carolina State University. Website.

There will also be a craft talk by Eduardo at noon in Black Hall, Rm 151.

Marjorie Agosín
November 1, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC 137

Marjorie Agosín was raised in Chile, the daughter of Jewish parents. Heeding rumors of the coup that would install Augusto Pinochet, Agosín’s family left the country for the United States, where Agosín earned a BA from the University of Georgia and an MA and a PhD from Indiana University. In both her scholarship and her creative work, she focuses on social justice, feminism, and remembrance. Agosín is the author of numerous works of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism.

Agosín has received numerous honors and awards for her writing and work as a human rights activist, including a Jeanette Rankin Award in Human Rights and a United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights. The Chilean government honored her with a Gabriela Mistral Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Agosín is the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American studies and a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. Website.

There will also be a craft talk by Marjorie at noon in Black Hall, Rm 151.

Zach VandeZande
January 24, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC Ballroom

Zach VandeZande is an Assistant Professor at Central Washington University. He is the author of the novel Apathy and Paying Rent and the forthcoming story collection Lesser American Boys. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Gettysburg Review, Yemassee, Word Riot, Portland Review, Cutbank, Sundog Literature, Passages North, Beloit, Slice Magazine, Atlas Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. He enjoys baking bread, hammocks, and people who bring their dogs.

There will also be a craft talk by Zach at noon in Black Hall, Rm 151.

Maya Zeller
February 21, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC Ballroom

Born upstairs in her parents' gas station on the Oregon Coast, Maya lived a nomadic childhood in the Pacific Northwest. She attended Western Washington University in the late 1990s, where she earned a B.A. in English Education. After teaching high school and coaching cross country and track on the Olympic Peninsula, Maya moved to Spokane for graduate school. She worked as an editor for Eastern Washington University Press as well as for Willow Springs Magazine before earning a MFA in creative writing in 2007 and teaching for the Community Colleges of Spokane and then Gonzaga University, before coming to Central Washington University. Maya's poetry collections are Rust Fish and Yesterday, the Bees; individual essays and poems appear widely. Maya's work has won various awards, including a residency in the H.J. Andrews Forest and a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Maya serves as fiction editor for Crab Creek Review and as a teacher to many fine students at CWU. Website.

There will also be a craft talk by Maya at noon in Black Hall, Rm 151.

Amy Quan Barry
April 12, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC Ballroom

Amy Quan Barry is the author of four books of poetry and the novel She Weeps Each Time You're Born, published by Pantheon in 2015. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Ms. and The New Yorker, and she is the recipient of two NEA Fellowships in both fiction and poetry. Barry currently directs the MFA Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

There will also be a craft talk by Amy at noon in Black Hall, Rm 151.

“NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.”
“El proyecto NEA Big Read es una iniciativa del National Endowment for the Arts (el Fondo Nacional para las Artes de Estados Unidos) en cooperación con Arts Midwest.”

Tim O'Brien
April 25, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
McConnell Hall

Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien is the author of one of the best novels ever written about the Vietnam war—The Things They Carried. Born in Minnesota, and graduated from Macalester College with a Political Science degree, he was drafted and served as a foot soldier from 1969 to 1970 with the 46th Infantry.  He was sent home with a Purple Heart and then attended Harvard University, where he wrote a memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973). He then worked as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post for a year, after which he began writing books full time. He published Northern Lights (1975), Going After Cacciato (1978) --which won the National Book Award, The Nuclear Age (1981), The Things They Carried (1990), In the Lake of the Woods (1994), Tomcat in Love (1999), and July, July (2002). He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He currently teaches creative writing at Texas State University. O’Brien is visiting Ellensburg as part of an NEA Big Read grant and also is co-sponsored by the CWU College of Arts & Humanities, English Dept., CWU Brooks Library, CWU Center for Leadership Civic Engagement, CWU Museum of Culture & Environment, Ellensburg School District, Roslyn Friends of the Library, CWU Veterans’ Center, CWU Wildcat Shop, CWU Inklings Club, and Karen Gookin.

There will also be a craft talk by Tim at noon in the Music Recital Hall.

“NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.”
“El proyecto NEA Big Read es una iniciativa del National Endowment for the Arts (el Fondo Nacional para las Artes de Estados Unidos) en cooperación con Arts Midwest.”

Sayantani Dasgupta
May 9, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
CWU SURC Ballroom

Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta teaches at the University of Idaho. Her essays and stories have appeared in The Rumpus, Phoebe, and Gulf Stream, among other magazines and literary journals. She edits nonfiction for Crab Creek Review, and previous honors include a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and a Centrum Fellowship. In Fire Girl, her debut collection of essays, Sayantani examines her personal story against the history, religion, popular culture and mythology of South Asia and her current home in the American West. Website.

There will also be a craft talk by Sayantani at noon in Black Hall, Rm 151

Kate Lebo, Tiffany Midge, and Elissa Washuta
May 23, 2017 at 7:30pm
Museum of Culture - Dean Hall

Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo is the author of two cookbooks, Pie School and A Commonplace Book of Pie. Her essays and poems have appeared in Best American Essays, Best New Poets, New England Review, Willow Springs, High Desert Journal, The Rumpus, and Gastronomica. In 2017, Sasquatch Books will release Pie & Whiskey, an anthology co-edited with Sam Ligon and based on their popular Pie & Whiskey reading series. She lives in Spokane, Washington. Website.

Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge is an assistant poetry editor for The Rumpus, and a humor columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network. Her poetry collection "The Woman Who Married a Bear" (University of New Mexico Press) won the Kenyon Review Earthworks Indigenous Poetry Prize. Tiffany's work has been featured in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Waxwing, The Butter, Okey-Pankey, and Moss. Tiffany is a Hunkpapa Lakota and allergic to horses. She aspires to be the distinguished writer in residence in Seattle’s Space Needle.

Elissa Washuta

Elissa Washuta, a member of the Cowlitz Indian tribe, is the author of two books, Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules. Essayist and poet Kate Lebo is the author of Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour and Butter, and A Commonplace Book of Pie. Poet Tiffany Midge, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, is the author of Outlaws, Renegades and Saints: Diary of a Mixed-Up Halfbreed, The Woman Who Married a Bear, and others. Website.

There will be a discussion panel in Black Hall-151 from 12-1pm that addresses editor-author relationships as well as perspectives on Native issues.