School of Writing, Literature, and Film

Jeff Fearnside’s teaching and research interests include writing about place, culture, and the natural environment. He is author of the short-story collection Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air: And Other Stories of Flight (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2016), which was a finalist for both the New Rivers Press MVP Award and the Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction. It has been called “rich in so many ways: in its deep explorations of diverse lives and experiences; in its immersion in place, which often becomes a character itself” (Small Press Picks). He has published widely in literary journals and anthologies such as Story, Rosebud, Crab Orchard Review, and The Pinch (fiction); The Fourth River, Permafrost, Clackamas Literary Review, and The Los Angeles Review (poetry); and New Madrid, Potomac Review, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (creative nonfiction).

National awards for his writing include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Project’s Literary Awards Program and the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize, and he is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission. He lived and worked in Central Asia for four years, first as a university instructor through the U.S. Peace Corps and later as manager of the Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He earned degrees in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University (BFA) and Eastern Washington University (MFA, emphasis in Fiction), and has previously taught writing and literature at the Academy of Languages in Kazakhstan, Washington State University, Western Kentucky University, and Prescott College.