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essays with Julie Marie Wade, Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, received the Cleveland Poetry Center Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her poetry chapbook, The Daughters of Elderly Women, received the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She coauthored, with Suzanne Paola, the textbook Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, now in its third edition from McGraw-Hill. Mentor. Workshops and classes in nonfiction. Statement: “As both a writer and a teacher, I’m so interested

Mara Finkelstein Lecturer - Cello Phone: 253-535-7602 Email: finkelm@plu.edu Biography Biography Mara Finkelstein studied cello at the Gnessin College of Music and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow before coming to the U.S. in 1989. Ms. Finkelstein was Principal Cellist of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and the only woman in the all men orchestra. She toured in Europe as a member of the New European Strings, and recently played with that group in a series of virtual recordings during the

Judith Kitchen Founding Director, In Memoriam Biography Biography Judith Kitchen (1941-2014)  was the co-founder of the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at PLU.  She is the author of four collections of essays, most recently The Circus Train (Ovenbird Books, 2014).  Her other collections are Half in Shade: Family, Photography, Fate and Distance and Direction (Coffeehouse Press) and Only the Dance (U. of South Carolina Press).  She is also the author of a novel, The House on Eccles Road

Matt Young Fiction, Nonfiction Biography Biography Matt Young  is the author of the memoir, Eat the Apple (Bloomsbury, 2018), and the novel, End of Active Service (Bloomsbury, 2024). His stories and essays have appeared in TIME, Granta, Tin House, Catapult, and The Cincinnati Review among other publications. He is the recipient of fellowships from Words After War and The Carey Institute for Global Good, and teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Centralia College in Washington

books of poems by Mexican-Zapotec poet Irma Pineda, with whom she shared the 2022 John Frederick Nims Prize for Translation from the Poetry Foundation: In the Belly of Night and Other Poems (Pluralia/Eulalia, 2022) and Nostalgia Doesn’t Flow Away Like Riverwater (Deep Vellum, 2024). Her co-translation of How to be a Good Savage and Other Poems (Milkweed, 2024), by Zoque poet Mikeas Sánchez, was called “a significant work in more ways than one” by the New York Times. Wendy has received grants and

she studied with Octavio Más-Arocas and Katherine Kilburn. She received her MM in Orchestral Conducting from University of Massachusetts-Amherst under the mentorship of Morihiko Nakahara, and Kristo Kondakci. Ms. Mahyar obtained her BM degree in Choral Conducting from Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan, Armenia with Hovhaness Mirzoyan where she continued further studies in Orchestral Conducting to learn more from Ruben Asatryan. Coming from Iran and being one of the very few female conductors

and men to tell their own stories through writing. Davis currently lives in the Ozarks, where he teaches for the Program in Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas. Raised by the Pacific Northwest, he also serves as Poetry Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.  Mentor. Workshops and classes in poetry. Statement: I encourage writers to keep sight of what comes next. Yes, we will work on sharpening our craft through intensive practice with technique and through a study of

her to the realm of cardiology, where she worked as a Nurse Practitioner in both inpatient and outpatient settings until 2019. It was during this time that she discovered her true calling in aesthetics. Since the summer of 2023, she has been a member of the PLU community, sharing her knowledge and basic nursing skills with her students. She finds immense satisfaction in teaching and supporting new students during their clinicals, witnessing their remarkable progress in a short span of time

Rigoberto González Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry Biography Biography Rigoberto González is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Unpeopled Eden, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and eleven books of prose, including Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, which received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.  The recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rolón fellowships, a NYFA grant in

Aram Mrjoian Creative Nonfiction, Fiction Biography Biography Aram Mrjoian is the editor-in-chief of The Rumpus and a 2022 Creative Armenia-AGBU Fellow. His debut novel, Waterline, is forthcoming with Harper Via in 2025. Aram has previously worked as an editor at the Chicago Review of Books, the Southeast Review, and TriQuarterly. He is the editor of the anthology We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora published by the University of Texas Press (March 2023). His writing has appeared in