Poetry
Elyssa Cook
Pronouns: Any
Elyssa Cook (any pronouns) was raised in Cassel, CA, and is returning to the West Coast after six years in Saint Paul, MN, where she graduated from Macalester College and worked at a high school for two years. Elyssa writes about interconnection, place, gender/queerness, grief, girlhood, and the body (among other things). Their poetics are deeply influenced by the slam & spoken word communities in the Twin Cities
Anmol Priya Desai
Tor Strand
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Tor Strand is a poet who promises to write an essay one of these days. He is also trying his hand at the making of abstract art through stained glass. Tor is a recipient of the Mari Sandoz emerging writer award, a Fishtrap fellowship, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Samples of his work can be found or forthcoming in Inverted Syntax, The Santa Ana River Review, and Palette Poetry.
Cheyenne Hollowell
Cheyenne Hollowell is a poetry MFA candidate from Dothan, Alabama. She graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2023, majoring in English and minoring in Public Health. Most recently, Cheyenne worked as a communications intern for UAB's Division of Nephrology and as an on-call shelter specialist at HOPE Place domestic violence shelter. Her poetry is intensely autobiographical, primarily exploring themes of grief, chronic illness, and mental health. While her career goals change with the tides, she is endlessly passionate about the field of social work and community health, aspiring to one day become a social worker. When she's not writing, you can find her having her weekly existential crisis over a plate of hummus at Khalo Naser.
Nicolette Ratz
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Nicolette Ratz is a Wisconsin-raised poet, naturalist, and seasonal worker. Recently, she alternated between conducting research for an organic cranberry farm (and getting wet pushing cranberry boats for harvest) and assisting climate science on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Her poetry explores liminal spaces, mushroom shadows, isolation, and dream-speak, with a particular interest in integrating myth and science. But you can also find her jotting down jokes or spinning wool. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Citron Review, Ghost City Review, Bramble, and Cider Press Review.
Monique Lanier
Monique originally comes from Salt Lake City, UT. She spent the last couple years in Cambridge, MA where she graduated with a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. In her poetry you will find her wrestling with theodicy, the apocalypse, motherhood, gender, and, of course, the Anthropocene and Patriarchy. To lighten things up, she explores longing, elemental distance, and the erotic/sensuality of, in, and lost, with the Beloved.
Sam Olson
Pronouns: he/him/his
"Sam Olson (he/him) was raised in Portland, OR. He returns to Oregon after nearly a decade spent between Montana and Washington, where he facilitated poetry workshops, taught environmental science, and patrolled wilderness trails. In part, his poetry seeks to respond to Elizabeth Woody’s demand that 'we must all the power of our minds and hearts to bring the salmon back.'"
Fiction
Iain Anderson
Pronouns: he/him/his
Iain Anderson is a fiction candidate who was raised on the rivers of Western Montana. He holds a B.A in English from Davidson College. His current obsessions include road maps, quesabirria, and the reality show The Traitors. He feels most beautiful when he's running through ocean waves.
Bethany Catlin-Johnson
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Bethany is a fiction MFA candidate from south central Indiana. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Macalester College, and writes about love, immigration, translation, music, gay stuff, the Midwest, and people who are having a hard time behaving.
Haley Kennedy
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Haley is a computational linguist with a BA in Linguistics and an MSc in Speech and Language Processing. Her recent fiction explores our relationships with language, housing, wildlife, and water. She wants to be a xenolinguist when she grows up.
Veronica Suchodolski
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Veronica Suchodolski found her way to Corvallis via Western Mass, New York City, and Seattle. She holds a BA from Barnard College and worked professionally as a social media manager. In fiction, she’s interested in women, social class, and expectation — “how we thought it would be, and how it is.” Loves farmers markets, hates driving, friendly with other dogs.
Sukayna Davanzo
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Sukayna is a fiction MFA candidate, originally from Dearborn, Michigan. She previously studied literature at Wayne State University, where she earned a BA and MA in English with a concentration in Middle Eastern representation/Orientalism in modern and post-modern media. In her fiction writing, Sukayna is interested in exploring the intergenerational relationships and tensions between immigrant women. When she isn’t writing, Sukayna can be found taking long walks or watching The Great British Bake Off on repeat.
Elliot Laurence
Pronouns: He/They
Elliot 'Icarus' Laurence is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. He drove to Oregon with his sister, his dog, and his cat to write about underrepresented groups in a style he calls 'poverty fiction'. As a transgender Air Force veteran and activist for the LGBTQ+ community, Laurence is a recipient of the Young Alumni Award from Webster University, where he earned his B.A. in English, minor in Creative Writing, and certificate in Digital Media. Laurence enjoys hiking when they have time; Laurence likes having time.
Sandy Thein Naing
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Sandy writes fiction (and the occasional essay) often exploring relationships with family, migration, power, and wealth - particularly within pockets of the Burmese diaspora. She has a BA in English and American Studies and worked in finance, retail, restaurants, tech / startups, and at nonprofits before starting in the MFA program here. In her spare time, she crawls around her home with her toddler who likes to pretend they are cats. Meow.
Creative Nonfiction
Celestina Agabi
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Celestina is a writer from Maryland. She holds a BA in English from Salisbury University where she developed a love for writing about cats, comfort, childhood, and cultural inheritance. Celestina enjoys including various aspects of her Nigerian heritage in her writing and you can read some of her work in Michigan Quarterly Review. In her free time, Celestina may be found watching HGTV or wandering through a museum. She loves entomology displays, suitcases, and wind chimes.
Cooper Dart
Pronouns: he/him/his
Cooper is an essayist from central Idaho who writes in, of, and from the rural American West. His obsessions include pickled red onions, Muji’s 0.38mm gel pens, and the light fixture aisle of Home Depot. His essays can be found in DIAGRAM, The Adroit Journal, and Washington Square Review, and he holds a B.A. in environmental studies and anthropology from Bowdoin College.
Hyrum Blanchard
Pronouns: They/Them
Hyrum’s work explores Utah and the west, investigating the ways history, religion, and place combine to make and unmake us. When not haunting the library, you can find Hyrum riding loops on the bus, binging popular tv and indie movies, and picking things up and putting them down again in thrift stores.
Ellison Rose
Pronouns: They/She
Ellison is a nonfiction writer and poet born and raised in the rural South. They hold a B.A. in English: Creative Writing from the University of Memphis and spent 8 years in food service before making their way to the MFA. While here, they intend to use their work to explore rural cultural wealth, as well as the legacies of immigration, assimilation, and intergenerational trauma. When not hunched over a book or a notebook, you can find them scampering through the forest taking film photographs of water droplets, or else sprawled out on the carpet making flower crowns while listening to podcasts.
Isabelle Robinson
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Isabelle Robinson is a cross-genre writer and poet from South Florida, by way of a long line of New York Jews. In 2018, she returned to New York to study English and creative writing at Barnard College. In all forms, her work is moored in themes of grief and loss, violence, and memory. If she had to choose an emblem of her writing, it would be an empty chair. Her other literary and academic interests include playwriting, Shakespeare, gender and sexuality studies, and the photographic essay. She loves rooftops, Scream (1996), the almighty em-dash, and everything bagels—ideally toasted with veggie cream cheese.
Natalie Van Gelder
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Natalie Van Gelder’s research, writing, and teaching interests center around the use of narrative medicine in the medical humanities and writing across the curriculum, specifically as it applies to neurodiversity, child development, and trauma studies. She holds an MA in creative writing from California State University Northridge and a BA in English and sociology from CSU Bakersfield. Natalie calls Agua Dulce, California home and is often inspired by her childhood and the natural landscapes of the Mojave Desert where she grew up. When not writing or teaching, Natalie can often be found looking down at the ground in search of insects or up at the stars wondering about extraterrestrials.
Cora Lassen
Cora is a writer from Iowa. She received her undergraduate education at the University of Iowa, where she studied English, psychology, and theatre. With experience working in marketing and education, her writing tends to explore the oddities of the Internet age and has an anthropological bent. She’s often thinking about perfume and the olfactory arts, “talking games” like TTRPGs or social deduction, and those macaques in Bali who camp outside of tourist destinations, snatch people’s phones, and ransom them for snacks.
Georgia Gibbons
Georgia is a lifelong New Englander who joins OSU's Nonfiction MFA cohort from that other Portland (Maine). She’s been writing for a long time, by turns in the magazine world, the advertising industry, and most recently, in public and government affairs. Her personal work is often about relationship dynamics, defense mechanisms, and the eternal quest for dopamine.