Faculty Profile

Jeff Overstreet

Jeffrey Overstreet

Assistant Professor of English and Writing; Writer-in-Residence

Email: overstreet@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2155
Office: Marston 232


Education: MFA, Seattle Pacific University, 2014; BA, English Literature, Seattle Pacific University, 1994. At SPU since 2016.

Recognized in The New Yorker, TIME, The Seattle Times, Image, and Christianity Today for his writing on cinema, Jeffrey Overstreet, an Assistant Professor of English and writing at Seattle Pacific University, teaches creative writing, English literature, academic writing, and film studies. He earned his BA in English literature and his MFA in creative writing from SPU.

Overstreet is the author of five books. His “memoir of dangerous moviegoing,” Through a Screen Darkly (Baker Books Books 2007), has become a popular textbook in classes on film, faith, and artistic engagement. His four novels — Auralia’s Colors, Cyndere’s Midnight, Raven’s Ladder, and The Ale Boy’s Feast — have been translated into French, German, and Dutch.

Traveling internationally, he has presented lectures and hosted workshops on faith, art, creative writing, and film interpretation. A prolific blogger and arts critic (he has contributed more than one hundred film-focused essays and interviews with artists to Image, and served as the senior film critic at Christianity Today), he blogs at LookingCloser.org.

Jeffrey and his wife, a published poet, are active members of the Chrysostom Society. Together they served as writers-in-residence at Covenant College in 2013.

Books Authored

Nonfiction

Novels

Contributions Published in Other Books

  • The Molehill, Vol. II. Essay: “Then Sings My Soul.” The Rabbit Room Press, 2013.
  • Danny Boyle: Interviews. Editor: Brent Dunham. University of Mississippi Press, 2010.
  • Faith and Pop Culture: Christianity Today Study Series. Thomas Nelson, 2009.

View Jeffrey Overstreet’s CV.


Why I Teach at SPU

Teaching SPU students is my passion. During my undergraduate and graduate studies at SPU, professors inspired my faith and equipped me to follow in the footsteps of both J.R.R. Tolkien as an author of fantasy novels and Roger Ebert as a film critic. I aim to bless each student as I’ve been blessed, prioritizing imaginative intercultural engagement, discernment in critical inquiry, excellence in creative writing, and an immersion in the Gospel’s vision of empathy, equality, and reconciliation.

Jeffrey Overstreet
Assistant Professor of English and Writing; Writer-in-Residence