Faculty Biographies

David Axelrod (Co-director/Poetry/Nonfiction)

David Axelrod’s ninth collection of poems is Years Beyond the River (Terrapin Books 2021), and his second collection of nonfiction is The Eclipse I Call Father: Essays on Absence (Oregon State University Press 2019). Axelrod wrote the introduction, “My Interests Are People,” for About People: Photographs by Gert Berliner, which appeared in the summer of 2018 from Arts End Books. In addition to co-founding the EOU MFA program, he is the founding co-editor (also with Jodi Varon) of basalt: a journal of fine & literary arts and serves on the editorial board of Lynx House Press. He makes his home in Missoula, Montana.

Jennifer Boyden (Poetry/Fiction)

Jennifer Boyden is the author of a novel, The Chief of Rally Tree (Skyhorse Publishing 2018), awarded the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, and two books of poetry: The Declarable Future (University of Wisconsin Press 2013), winner of the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry, and The Mouths of Grazing Things (University of Wisconsin Press 2010), winner of The Brittingham Prize in Poetry. Among other honors, Jennifer was a PEN Northwest Wilderness Writing Resident, which allows one writer to live and write for a year in unparalleled solitude in a remote region of the Rogue River in southern Oregon. Jennifer also serves on the faculty of Spring Street International School. She lives on an island in Washington state. Find her at jenniferboyden.com.

Claire Boyles (Fiction)

Claire Boyles (she/her) is the author of Site Fidelity (W.W. Norton 2021), longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection and winner of the High Plains Book Award in Fiction. She is the recipient of a 2022 Whiting Award. Her writing has appeared in VQR, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, Masters Review, and Sierra Magazine among others. She was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops and has received support from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation, the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers Workshop, and the Community of Writers. She is also a screenwriter. A former sustainable farmer, she lives with her family in Colorado and is at work on a novel forthcoming from W.W. Norton. Find her at claireboyleswrites.wordpress.com.

James Crews (Poetry)

James Crews is the editor of the best-selling anthology How to Love the World (Storey Publishing 2021), which has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as in The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He is the author of four prize-winning collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays (University of Nebraska Press 2011), Telling My Father (Southeast Missouri State UP 2017), Bluebird (Green Writers Press 2020), and Every Waking Moment (University of Washington Press 2020), and his poems have been printed in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and The Christian Century. Crews also teaches poetry at the University at Albany. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Find him at jamescrews.net.

Christopher Howell (Poetry)

Christopher Howell’s eleventh collection of poems is Love’s Last Number (Milkweed Editions 2017). His poems, essays, and translations have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Crazy Horse, Denver Quarterly, Field, Gettysburg Review, Harper’s, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review, and Volt. He has been the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, two National Endowment Fellowships, two fellowships from the Artist Trust, and the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for Editorial Excellence.

Christopher Kondrich (Poetry)

Christopher Kondrich is the author of Valuing (University of Georgia Press 2019), selected by Jericho Brown as a winner of the National Poetry Series, by Library Journal as a Best Poetry Book of 2019, and as a finalist for The Believer Book Award in Poetry; and of the book-length poem Contrapuntal (Free Verse Editions 2013). His poetry and essays appear widely in such venues as the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Believer, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry Northwest, and his work has been recognized with an Iowa Review Award, The Paris-American Reading Series Prize, and three Pushcart Prize nominations. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the I-Park Foundation, the University of Denver, and Columbia University. He also teaches creative writing at College of the Holy Cross and is an associate editor for 32 Poems. Find him at christopherkondrich.com.

Megan Kruse (Fiction)

Megan Kruse grew up in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Olympia. She studied creative writing at Oberlin College and earned her MFA at the University of Montana. Her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and her debut novel is Call Me Home (Hawthorne Books 2015), with an introduction by Elizabeth Gilbert. In addition to teaching fiction in EOU’s Low-Residency MFA program, she teaches at Hugo House and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She was the recipient of a 2016 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and was one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for 2015. Find her at megannicolekruse.com

Melissa Matthewson (Nonfiction)

Melissa Matthewson holds an MFA in nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. She is the author of a memoir-in-essays, Tracing the Desire Line (Split/Lip Press 2019), a finalist for the 2021 Oregon Book award, and is at work on her second essay collection, The Fire Trees (punctum books 2024). Her nonfiction has appeared in Guernica, Oregon Humanities, Longreads, American Literary Review, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Mid-American Review, The Rumpus, among other publications and anthologies. She has been awarded an AWP Intro Journals award in creative nonfiction as well as residencies and scholarships to Sundress Academy for the Arts, PLAYA, Art Smith, Tin House, and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her two children and also teaches at Southern Oregon University. Find her at melissamatthewson.com.

Kathryn Miles (Nonfiction)

Kathryn Miles is an award-winning journalist, science writer, and author of five books: Adventures with Ari, All Standing, Superstorm, Quakeland, and most recently Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders (Algonquin 2022). She holds a PhD in English from the University of Delaware. Her essays and articles have appeared in publications including Audubon, Best American Essays, The Boston Globe, Down East, Ecotone, History, The New York Times, Outside, Pacific Standard, Politico, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, and Time. She currently serves as a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council and as an advisor in Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program. She lives in Portland, Maine. Find her at kathrynmiles.net.

Nick Neely (Co-director/Nonfiction)

Nick Neely’s first book, Coast Range (Counterpoint 2016)–largely about the Rogue River area of southwestern Oregon–was a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing. His second book, Alta California (Counterpoint 2019), a Los Angeles Times bestseller, details his twelve-week trek from San Diego to San Francisco to retrace the first overland Spanish expedition through California. His nonfiction has appeared in Orion, High Country News, Mother Jones, Kenyon Review, and The Georgia Review, among others. The recipient of PEN Northwest’s Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, a UC Berkeley–11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, and an AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, Nick is an Assistant Professor of English/Writing at EOU and lives in La Grande. Find him at nickneely.com.

Molly Reid (Fiction)

Molly Reid is the author of the short story collection The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary (BOA 2019). Her writing has appeared on NPR and in the journals TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Witness, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, and Lit Hub, among others. She has received fellowship and residency support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Anderson Center, the Ucross Foundation, I-Park, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She also teaches at Gettysburg College as their Emerging Writer Lecturer. Find her at mollyjeanreid.com.

James Stolen (Fiction)

James Stolen grew up in the Grande Ronde Valley and has published work in Callaloo, Shenandoah, Bellevue Literary Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Outside in Literary and Travel Magazine, High Desert Journal, and Ghost Town, among others. Between 2008 and 2010 he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kingdom of Lesotho. He has taught previously at Virginia Tech, where he earned his MFA in creative writing, and is now a Senior Instructor at Eastern Oregon University. He is presently working on a collection of short stories and a novel, and is an enthusiastic faculty leader for EOU’s Outdoor Adventure Program.

Jodi Varon (Nonfiction)

Jodi Varon is a founding editor of the award-winning basalt: a journal of fine & literary arts, as well as a founder and first director of EOU’s MFA program. She is the author of Drawing to an Inside Straight: The Legacy of an Absent Father (University of Missouri Press 2006), which was a WILLA Award finalist from Women Writing the West, and the forthcoming memoir Your Eyes Will Be My Window (University of Georgia Press 2023). Other awards include a first place award in non-fiction from New Millennium Writing, The William Stafford Fellowship in Non-Fiction from Literary Arts, and two awards to publishers from Literary Arts for Calapooya and basalt. Her work appears in Rock & Sling: A Journal of Witness, New Letters, The Northwest Review, The Seattle Review, the High Plains Literary Review, WomenArts Quarterly, The Western Humanities Review, the Oregon Encyclopedia, among others. Also a translator from the Chinese, her translation of the Tang Dynasty poet Li He are collected in The Rock’s Cold Breath: Selected Poems of Li He (Ice River Press).

Joe Wilkins (Fiction/Nonfiction/Poetry)

Joe Wilkins is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die (Little, Brown 2019), praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for the First Novel Award from The Center for Fiction and for the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award and has now been translated into French, Spanish, and Italian. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers (Counterpoint 2013), winner of a GLCA New Writers Award, andfour collections of poetry, including most recently Thieve (University of Washington Press 2019) and When We Were Birds (University of Arkansas Press 2016), winner of the Oregon Book Award. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Orion, The Sun, and the Pushcart Prize XXXIX. Wilkins grew up north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the Yamhill Valley of Oregon. Find him at joewilkins.org.