The annual Spring Festival for the MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics program features readings and performances by graduating MFA candidates and a guest writer or artist. MFA candidates showcase selections from their MFA thesis projects.
2022 Spring Festival
Saturday, June 4, 2022 | 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
University of Washington Bothell | North Creek Events Center
- This event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested.
Register to Attend
Festival Schedule
Greetings and Opening Remarks
Featured Readings by MFA Candidates
- Amy Hirayama, Japanese Blood in the Heart of the Gothic: An Anthology of Gothic Stories from the Japanese Diaspora
- Meta LeCompte, Life Could Be What It Is Right Now
- Emily J. Mundy, What Blooms in the Dark
- Tricia Goetschius Fuentes, Sabotage of the Sunflowers
- Carson Thomas, Suspension
- Madison Nikfard, It's Still You: An Intimate Glimpse into Girlhood and Growth
- Sky O'Brien, Beginners
- Maria Delgado Stevens, He Died in the House, A Performance
- Harrison Lee, PLEASE: The Performance of the Chapbook
with Guest Artist, Selah Saterstrom
Selah Saterstrom is the author of the novels Slab, The Meat and Spirit Plan, and The Pink Institution, and a book of essays, Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. She is the director of Creative Writing at the University of Denver. https://www.selahsaterstrom.org/
MFA Candidate Bios
Amy Hirayama is a Hapa (mixed race Japanese and white) writer and educator from the Pacific Northwest. She believes writing can be a tool for justice, joy, connection and belonging. Food, humor and nature are important sources of inspiration for her writing. Amy's goals are to be a writer who is engaged with her community and to use writing as an act of love. She is currently a writer in residence with the Writers in the Schools program and works as Workshop Administrator for Clarion West. Her poetry can be found in the forthcoming chapbook, Hariboetry.
Meta LeCompte discovered her love for poetry at the University of Denver where she graduated with a degree in creative writing and sociology, Meta LeCompte continued the pursuit of her life's work by joining the University of Washington Bothell's MFA program. Throughout her time studying at Bothell, Meta wrote in all forms including documentary poetics, flash fiction, vignette, the long poem, and surreal prose. Meta has worked as an editor on Bothell's student magazine Clamor, as an undergraduate literary grader, as a teacher's assistant for creative writing workshops, and has written and helped produced two albums.
Emily J. Mundy is a Seattle-based poet, who believes in writing as a force that heals, illuminates, and connects. Her work reveres the mystical nature of language and often explores spirituality. She is proud to have made her home in the Pacific Northwest, and hints of this landscape reverberate throughout her poems. Emily is the creator of The Poetry Séance -- a quarterly reading and workshop series curated to enliven poetry shows and embolden the writing community, each season at a time. She shares a realm with her two cats and one beloved typewriter.
Tricia Goetschius Fuentes is the author of a continuing collection of strange thoughts, some of which she has committed to (arguably) coherent written forms. A civil servant by day, writer by night, she will receive her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing & Poetics from the University of Washington Bothell in June of 2022. Like her beloved late father, she was born and raised in Seattle. Like her Cuban mother and four Cuban aunties, she is filled with strong opinions in both English and Spanish and will gladly share them with you (whether solicited or not). She is the second of six (actually, seven) children and a mother to three spectacular kids of her own. A lover of coffee, cats, and family, you will often find her eating delicious meals prepared at home by her tall and handsome partner. You can visit her online at triciafuentes.com.
Carson Thomas is a visual artist, performance artist, and poet from Nashville, Tennessee.
Madison Nikfard is still writing, drawing, and growing.
Sky O'Brien is a fiction writer from Australia and deputy editor of Dispatches Magazine. Unless something weird happens, pretty soon he'll have an MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics from this university.
Maria Delgado Stevens has taught high school English for nineteen years and still loves the twentieth century American canon. Maria lives in Seattle, on a hill called Queen Anne, on Puget Sound Salish land. She keeps company with a slowly diminishing menagerie, and a constantly busy brood. Born in Manhattan, raised in Chicago, Maria moved from Los Angeles to Seattle about a nickel ago and doesn't intend to leave anytime soon. It was never her intention, but recently, she's been writing a lot about death and memory, and questioning the role of being captive to complicated lineages.
Harrison (Harry) Lee is a 25-year-old Seattle based poet, interested in using informal and conversational language to explore the more universal aspects of being human. He infuses rhythm and rhyme into almost all of his works, taking inspiration both from the vast cannon of classic literature, as well as hip hop, old and new. Lee also enjoys performing his poetry and has appeared at a number of open-mics and poetry readings around Seattle, hoping to continue to do so in the future.