M.F.A. Students

Raquel Gordon (First Year, Poetry) is a poet from Seattle and has a B.A. in creative writing and dance from the University of Washington. She has performed in music videos, dance films, and choreographed several stage performances including a solo performance in 12 Minutes Max in Seattle. She also loves to sing.

Jason Cahoon (First Year, Fiction) comes from Amherst, Massachusetts. Jason’s work concerns the simultaneous restrictions and empowerments of communal belongingness. He studied English at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Jason taught English at Eaglebrook School, an independent school in Massachusetts. In addition to teaching, Jason served as an editor for The Outlook, the school’s art and literature magazine.

Kathleen Walker (First Year, Nonfiction) grew up in the foothills of South Carolina. Her work explores her childhood spent in rural Appalachia, queerness, witchcraft, and animals both mythical and real. Kathleen was chosen by Nikki Giovanni as the recipient of the 2021 Giovanni-Steger Poetry Prize. Her writing has been published in a variety of publications, including CutBank and Susurrus Magazine.

Annie Burky (First Year, Fiction) calls Colorado home and returns to the West by way of Brooklyn. While earning a M.A. at New York University, she was awarded the Gallatin Review’s prose prize. She writes on gender, religion, and inheritance. She has worked as managing editor at Ms. Mayhem magazine, literacy specialist in Uganda and instructor at China’s Southwest University.

Jennifer Yu (First Year, Fiction) is exploring.

Reid Brown (First Year, Poetry) writes on themes of femininity, mental illness, the human body, and the threads that connect people, place, and memory. She is the Associate Poetry Editor for Fugue. She lives with her husband, Shane, and their kitten BMO, and collects an unhealthy amount of yarn for knitting projects in various states of incompleteness.

Rya Sheppard (First Year, Fiction) is from Kellogg, Idaho. She is a graduate of the University of Idaho where she studied English and creative writing. Rya enjoys coffee shops, painting, and cats of all kinds.

Karissa Carmona (First Year, Poetry) hails from western Montana and writes about rural identity, violence, and surreality in the so-called American West. She is the winner of the 2022 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry. Prior to University of Idaho, Karissa worked as a bookseller, community arts studio manager, and organizer for a coalition against gendered violence.

Trixie Zwolfer (Second Year, Fiction), is originally from Boise, Idaho. For her undergraduate degree, she attended Montana State University, where she studied writing and literature. She enjoys threading between the reality of our world and the speculative possibility of what it could be in her writing. In her free time, she can be found reading, hiking, and drinking copious amounts of tea.

Tymber Wolf (Second Year, Nonfiction), a Florida Gulf Coast University graduate, is passionate about writing about many things, including philosophy, the environment, personal essays, Judaism, and more. As a Florida native, Tymber is excited to see the environment her namesake inhabits. You can find some of Tymber’s award-winning work in The Mangrove Review. When Tymber isn’t writing, they’re probably doing one (or five) of an indefinite amount of hobbies.

Alicia Gladman (Second Year, Nonfiction), is from Western Canada by way of Chattanooga, Tennessee. She has worked in harm reduction for fourteen years, interested in conversations about accountability and personal freedom. She has a dog, two cats, and a lot of plants.

Maggie Nipps (Second Year, Poetry) is a poet and playwright from Wisconsin. Her work appears in Figure 1, Pinwheel, Sporklet, No Contact, Sip Cup, petrichor, and elsewhere. She co-founded and co-edits Afternoon Visitor, a new quarterly journal of poetry, visual art, hybrid text, and visual art.

Spencer R. Young (Second Year, Poetry) is a queer, genderfluid poet obsessed with identity and its transient borders. Their work, published in Terrain.org, 13th Floor Magazine, and elsewhere, encounters these binaric borders of identity and attempts to envision the space beyond them. Twice nominated for Best New Poets, Spencer holds an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from Kansas State University.

Gianna Marie Starble (Second Year, Fiction) is originally from Colorado and received her undergraduate degree in Professional and Creative Writing from Central Washington University. Her work has appeared in Manastash Literary Journal and The Hunger. In 2020 she won second place for best creative nonfiction piece in the Write On The River competition. When she is not writing, she is probably running with her dog, Blue.

Miriam Akervall (Second Year, Poetry) was born in Lund, Sweden, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the past six years they lived and worked in high country; most recently, the Idaho Boulder Mountains. Lately, they have been thinking about how memory lives in the body. Their work has appeared in Stone Journal, Ariadne Magazine, Voicemail Poems, and Apiary Magazine.

Emily Holmes (Second Year, Nonfiction) has spent most of her life living in wild places, looking for beauty and adventure. She seeks to connect people to place by telling stories about nature and exploring human relationships to wilderness. While studying rangeland ecology at Montana State University, Emily learned more about ski-bum life, trail running, and environmental advocacy about rangelands. These experiences strongly inform her creative projects.

Alex Connors (Second Year, Fiction) is originally from the north shore of Massachusetts. They attended UMass Amherst, where they studied poetry and social thought. They are working on a collection of short stories that explores the complexities of friendship, family, and queerness within working-class communities. Before coming to the University of Idaho, Alex spent many years as a farmer in western Massachusetts.

Natalie Kinkade (Third Year, Nonfiction) was born and raised in Bend, Oregon. She writes about art, religion, depression, childhood, and her puppy, Pippin, among other things. Before attending the University of Idaho, she earned an M.A. in English from Ohio University. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast and The Rumpus and is forthcoming in The Harvard Review.

Michael Harper (Third Year, Fiction; Hemingway Fellow) completed his M.A. in English at the University of Vienna. His work has appeared in The Manzano Mountain Review, Litro Magazine, Decomp Journal, and CafeLit. Prior to the University of Idaho, he taught English as a second language in Europe.

Emma Neal (Third Year, Fiction) was born and raised in Boise, Idaho. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied creative writing and religion. Currently, she is working on a collection of short stories about young women trying to understand themselves and searching for their communities. Emma enjoys coffee shops, live music, and painting. She taught yoga for two years at Sarah Lawrence College.

Steff Sirois (Third Year, Fiction) is a writer from Connecticut who is currently writing about womanliness, the multiple versions of her Self, and ghosts. Some of her recent work has appeared in Prism Review, LandLocked, and The Washington Post.

Daniel Lurie (Third Year, Poetry) grew up in eastern Montana. He attended Montana State University, Billings, where he received his B.A. in Organizational Communications. Daniel is the Poetry Editor for Fugue. His work has appeared in NewVerseNews, The Palouse Review, and FeverDream. His poem “One Night Only” is stamped into a concrete street in Billings.

Isabel Marlens (Third Year, Nonfiction) grew up in California and Colorado, and studied literature and ecology & evolution at Bennington College. She went on to work in the nonprofit world, writing about local economies and initiatives for community and ecological renewal. She is working on essays that layer the personal with thoughts on literature, psychology, evolutionary theory, history, and politics. She spends most of her free time rock climbing and traversing the rural West.

Christian Perry (Third Year, Nonfiction) is a white, Queer, Midwesterner born and raised in Michigan. They attended Michigan State University, where they studied a myriad of subjects and obtained a B.A. in English/Creative Writing in 2019. In 2020, Christian self-published their undergraduate thesis, thanks. Their free time is often spent playing Nintendo games and going on long walks.

Sam Simmons (Third Year, Fiction) is a writer from California. He is the current web editor for Fugue and teaches first-year composition and introductory creative writing. He is currently at work on a novel.

Cameron Martin (Third Year, Poetry) is a fat and queer writer originally from Michigan. He attended Wayne State University and the University of Idaho, where he studied English. Their writing has appeared in Sonora Review, The Normal School, Palette Poetry, and Afternoon Visitor. He’s currently working on collections of poetry and personal essays. In Moscow, they are one of the co-coordinators of the ‘queer-minded, queer-hearted’ Pop-Up Prose reading series.

Crystal Cox's (Third Year, Poetry) work has appeared in The Shore, Nimrod, Kissing Dynamite, The Bookends Review, and on the Academy of American Poets website. Her poem “Self-Portrait with Dolly Parton” won the 2022 Academy of American Poets University Prize, selected by Andrew Grace. She calls Missouri home.

Katie Ludwig (First Year, Nonfiction) has lived on the Palouse for 18 years. She is a performing singer/songwriter, Mom of 2 teenagers, and Native Plant Landscaper. She does exploratory writing about the Environment, Spiritual Philosophy, Self, Native Practices, and Hard Topics.