WVC Visiting Writers event on April 18 in honor of Earth Week and National Poetry Month

March 18, 2016

Media Contact: Derek Sheffield, English faculty, 509.682.6737, or Libby Siebens, community relations executive director, 509.682.6436 (Mon. – Thurs.)

Wenatchee Valley College Visiting Writers Series presents a reading by Steve Coughlin, Ana Maria Spagna and Joe Wilkins on Monday, April 18, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., in The Grove Recital Hall, Music and Art Center. The event is in honor of Earth Week and National Poetry Month, and it is free and open to the public.

A book signing will immediately follow the reading.

Steve Coughlin’s first book of poetry, Another City, was a finalist for the FutureCycle Book Prize. His poems, essays and stories have appeared in several notable magazines and literary journals, including the Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Green Mountains Review, Seneca Review, New Ohio Review and Slate. Coughlin was featured as the emerging writer in the summer 2013 issue of Pleiades. He teaches creative writing and American literature at Chadron State College in Nebraska.

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize and finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and two collections of essays, Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness and Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw, a Seattle Times Best Book of 2004.  Her distinctive voice is often praised for its warmth, insight and humor, and her work appears regularly in journals and magazines including Orion, Portland, Creative Nonfiction and High Country News and has been listed as "notable" in Best American Essays.

Spagna was born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Riverside, California, but has lived most of her adult life in Stehekin. She teaches creative nonfiction at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts where she serves as assistant director of the MFA program.

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, winner of a 2014 GLCA New Writers Award, and two collections of poetry, Notes from the Journey Westward and Killing the Murnion Dogs. His third full-length collection of poetry, When We Were Birds, is forthcoming from the University of Arkansas Press. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award finalist, Wilkins lives in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College. 

The WVC Visiting Writers Series brings professional writers to WVC to give students, faculty, staff and community members the opportunity to engage with some of the most talented writers in the U.S. Through the visits, college and community members learn new ways to think and talk about writing, in the classroom and in their own practice.

The reading is sponsored by the WVC Transfer English division, WVC Foundation and WVC Instruction Office.