Scott Cairns
Program Director
Email: cairnss@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2109
Office: Marston 236
Education: PhD, University of Utah; MFA, Bowling Green State University
Scott Cairns is a librettist, memoirist, translator, and author of nine poetry collections. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, etc., and both have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing. His recent books are Anaphora (2019), Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015), Idiot Psalms (2014), Short Trip to the Edge (spiritual memoir, 2007), Endless Life (translations and adaptations of Christian mystics, 2014), and a book-length essay, The End of Suffering (2009). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and the Denise Levertov Award in 2014. His new projects include Descent to the Heart, a verse adaptation of selections from the writings of Saint Isaak of Syria. His spiritual memoir was recently released in Greek and Romanian editions, and a second, expanded English edition appeared from Paraclete Press in 2016. He is Emeritus Curators’ Distinguished Professor at University of Missouri, and founding director of Writing Workshops in Greece, a program now in its fourteenth year bringing writers to Greece every June for engagement with literary life in modern Greece. With Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky, he will lead Mystikós: A Poet’s Retreat in Greece in June, 2024.
Dena Jones
Assistant Director
Email: denajones@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2070
Office: Marston 245
Education: MAIS, University of Washington
Puget Sound native Dena Jones received a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) from the University of Washington. Her poetry has appeared in Tahoma West, UW Literary and Visual Arts magazines. Additionally, she worked as an editorial assistant for Tiger Oak Media, Inc. She has written articles for Seattle Magazine, Seattle Bride, and Northwest Home + Garden. Most recently, she worked as an academic advisor and writing instructor for the University of Washington. Jones, along with Program Director Scott Cairns, manages SPU’s MFA program.
Nate Hoover
Program Coordinator
Email: hoovern@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2727
Office: Marston 229
Education: MA, Seattle Pacific Seminary; MFA Seattle Pacific University
Nate Hoover is a Washington native and two-time SPU alum. He writes in all genres, draws cartoons, and teaches in the undergraduate writing program at SPU. Nate enjoys being able to support the MFA program at SPU, which shaped him as a writer. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons.
David McGlynn
First-Year Creative Nonfiction Mentor
mcglynnd@spu.edu
Education: PhD, University of Utah
David McGlynn is the author of three books – One Day You'll Thank Me: Lessons From an Unexpected Fatherhood, A Door in the Ocean, and The End of the Straight and Narrow, all published by Counterpoint Press. Portions of One Day You'll Thank Me appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Real Simple, Parents, O., The Oprah Magazine, and David appeared on radio and TV programs around the country. A Door in the Ocean was reviewed on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, won the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Nonfiction Book Award in 2013, and was named an Outstanding Achievement by the Wisconsin Librarians’ Association. The End of the Straight and Narrow won the 2008 Utah Book Award, was a finalist for the 2009 Steven Turner Award for Best First Fiction by the Texas Institute of Letters, and was named an “Outstanding Achievement” by the Wisconsin Librarians’ Association.
Robert Clark
Second-Year Creative Nonfiction Mentor
Email: clar260@spu.edu
Education: MA, University of London
www.robertclark.us.com
Robert Clark is the author of five books of nonfiction and five novels, most recently the nonfiction book Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces and the forthcoming novel Two-Hearted River. His other novels include Lives of the Artists, Love Among the Ruins, Mr. White's Confession (Edgar Award for best novel of the year), and In the Deep Midwinter. He is also the author of a spiritual memoir, My Grandfather's House: A Genealogy of Doubt and Faith, River of the West, and the essay collection Bayham Street. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and his books have been TLS and The New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He is a winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Washington State Book Award as well as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Mr. White’s Confession and Love Among the Ruins are in development as films, and he has just completed a memoir/cultural history of Victorian writers, artists, and critics titled My Victorians: Lost in the Nineteenth Century.
Lauren F. Winner
First-Year Spiritual Writing: Open Genre Mentor
Email: winnerl@spu.edu
Education: PhD, Columbia University
Lauren F. Winner is the author of numerous nonfiction books, including Wearing God, Still, Girl Meets God (which was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program, the first book with faith as a central theme to be thus selected), A Word to Live By,and Mudhouse Sabbath. In October 2018, Yale University Press published her study, The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin. She has written for the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Christian Century, Image, and Christianity Today. Her research has been supported by numerous institutions, including Monticello, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, and the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. She has appeared on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and has served as a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” An Episcopal priest, Lauren is vicar of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Louisburg, North Carolina, and she teaches at Duke Divinity School.
Mark S. Burrows
Second-Year Spiritual Writing: Open Genre Mentor
Email: mark.s.burrows@gmail.com
Education: M.Div. and PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary
www.msburrows.com
Mark S. Burrows is a writer, scholar, teacher, and award-winning poet and translator of German poetry. He is also much sought-after as a retreat leader and speaker in the US, UK, and Europe, on topics related to spirituality, poetry, and the arts. His recent popular books include a collection of poems, The Chance of Home (2018) and two best-selling collections of poems inspired by the writings of the medieval mystic Eckhart: Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart and Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets (both co-written with Jon M. Sweeney; 2017 & 2019). His translation of Rilke’s Prayers of a Young Poet marked the first English publication of poems Rilke later gathered as the opening section of The Book of Hours. His poems and translations have appeared in more than 30 journals internationally, and he currently serves as Poetry Editor for the journals Spiritus and ARTS. An oblate of Glastonbury Abbey and member of the Iona Community, he is past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, a member of the American Theological Society, and the recipient of the Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology, among other prizes in the field.
Gina Ochsner
First-Year Fiction Mentor
Email: gina@ginaochsner.com
Education: MA, Iowa State University; MFA, University of Oregon
www.ginaochsner.com
Gina Ochsner is the acclaimed author of the short story collection The Necessary Grace to Fall, which received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the story collection People I Wanted to Be. Both books received the Oregon Book Award. Her novel entitled The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight received the Grub Street Book Prize in 2011, and was long listed for the Orange Prize in 2010. Her most recent novel is titled The Hidden Letters of Velta B. Ochsner has been awarded a John L. Simon Guggenheim grant and a grant from the National Endowment of Arts. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and Kenyon Review.
Bryan Bliss
Second-Year Fiction Mentor
Email: blissb1@spu.edu
Education: MFA, Seattle Pacific University; MTS, Vanderbilt Divinity School
Bryan Bliss is the critically acclaimed author of five books, including the novel We’ll Fly Away which was long listed for the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. His most recent book is a work of nonfiction theology, Bad Things, Good People, and God. HarperCollins will publish his next novel in 2023. His fiction and nonfiction has been published in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals across the country. He is (almost) an Episcopal Priest and is currently pursuing a doctorate in public theology. He lives in St. Paul, MN with his family.
Mischa Willett
First-Year Poetry Mentor
Email: mwillett@spu.edu
Education: PhD, University of Washington
Mischa Willett is the author of The Elegy Beta (Mockingbird 2020) and Phases (Cascade, 2017), which was listed among the Best Books of 2017 by the Washington Independent Review of Books. Also a scholar of Romantic aesthetics, Willett serves as editor of the poems of Phillip James Bailey, and publishes research on Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley.
His poems, academic articles, essays, and translations appear in journals such as Chronicle of Higher Education, The Gospel Coalition, Victorian Literature and Culture, Rio Grande Review, The Cresset, Comment Magazine and elsewhere.
Jennifer Maier
Second-Year Poetry Mentor
Email: jmaier@spu.edu
Education: PhD, Tulane University
Jennifer Maier is a professor of poetry and modern literature, as well as Writer in Residence, at Seattle Pacific University, where she also co-founded and directs the English Department's Rome Study Abroad Program. From 2007-2018 she served as associate editor of the arts quarterly Image. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Plume, The Gettysburg Review, American Poet, New Letters, and elsewhere. Her first book, Dark Alphabet (Southern Illinois UP), was named on of the Ten Remarkable Books of 2006 by the Academy of American Poets and was shortlisted for the 2008 Poets' Prize; a second, Now, Now, was published in 2013 from The University of Pittsburgh Press. Her latest collection The Occupant, is expected in 2021 from The University of Pittsburgh Press.