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Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | David Biespiel is a contributing writer at The Rumpus, Partisan, American Poetry Review, Politico, New Republic, Slate, Poetry, and The New York Times, among other publications.  He is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Charming Gardeners and The Book of Men and Women, which was chosen one of the Best Books of the Year by the Poetry Foundation and received the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.  His books of essays include A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry and a book on creativity, Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces.  He is a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.  Recipient of Lannan, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner fellowships, he has taught at Stanford University, University of Maryland, George Washington University, Portland State University, and Wake Forest University, in addition to other colleges and universities.  He is a longtime faculty member in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University and is the founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland. Mentor.

Nonfiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Barrie Jean Borich is the author of Apocalypse, Darling (2018), which was short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award.

Professor of Theatre | School of Music, Theatre & Dance | smithtt@plu.edu | 253-535-7323 | Tom Smith is a playwright, director and improviser.  His plays are published by Samuel French, Playscripts, and YouthPLAYS, among others.  Monologues from his plays appear in five collections of works, and his short plays have been produced internationally.  His work has been enjoyed by audiences in cities across the U.S., including Seattle, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Chicago, as well as in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.  Tom is also the author of The Other Blocking: Teaching and Performing Improvisation(Kendall Hunt) and articles and reviews for Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, The Players Journal, and several resource books.  Tom graduated from Whitman College with a BA in Dramatic Arts and Secondary Education certification, and earned his MFA in Directing from University of Missouri-Kansas City.  He is a proud member of the Dramatist’s Guild and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. .

Professor of Theatre | Theatre & Dance | smithtt@plu.edu | 253-535-7323 | Tom Smith is a playwright, director and improviser.  His plays are published by Samuel French, Playscripts, and YouthPLAYS, among others.  Monologues from his plays appear in five collections of works, and his short plays have been produced internationally.  His work has been enjoyed by audiences in cities across the U.S., including Seattle, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Chicago, as well as in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.  Tom is also the author of The Other Blocking: Teaching and Performing Improvisation(Kendall Hunt) and articles and reviews for Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, The Players Journal, and several resource books.  Tom graduated from Whitman College with a BA in Dramatic Arts and Secondary Education certification, and earned his MFA in Directing from University of Missouri-Kansas City.  He is a proud member of the Dramatist’s Guild and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. .

Fiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the national bestselling novel, How High We Go in the Dark (William Morrow, 2022), a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), silver medal winner of the 2016 Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year Award.

Lecturer - Guitar | Guitar & Lute Program | brownec@plu.edu | 253-535-7602 | A specialist in standard classical guitar as well as various early guitars and lutes, Elizabeth C.

Fiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | April Ayers Lawson is the author of Virgin and Other Stories, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Irish Times and Vice, and a Best Foreign Book of the Year by Spain’s Qué Leer Magazine.  Virgin and Other Stories has been (or will be) translated into German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Italian.  She has received The Plimpton Prize for Fiction, as well as a writing fellowship from The Corporation of Yaddo.   Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Die Welt, ZYZZYVA, and Oxford American, among others, has been cited as notable in Best American Short Stories, featured by Huffington Post, and anthologized in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review.  Her nonfiction has appeared in Der Spiegel, Granta, Vice, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung Magazine, and been named a Most Popular Read of the Year by Granta.  She has taught in the creative writing programs at Emory University and the University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now teaches at Clemson University. Mentor.  Workshops and classes in fiction. Statement: “The most important thing your writing can be is interesting.  And by that I mean interesting to you, because when you’re deeply engaged in the process, the work sparks alive.  This level of engagement involves writing into places you didn’t expect and opening to the risk of surprise.

Professor of Kinesiology | Department of Kinesiology | hackercm@plu.edu | 253-535-7363 | Dr.

Assistant Professor of French & Francophone Studies and Global Studies | French & Francophone Studies | lekani@plu.edu | 253-535-8340 | Dr.

Associate Professor of Music - Voice | Music | chosy@plu.edu | 253-535-7855 | Acclaimed by Opera News for her “potent” and “intense and incisive” stage presence, and praised by the Cincinnati Post as “regal in bearing, with vocal endowments to match,” lyric mezzo-soprano Soon Cho is an Associate Professor of Voice at Pacific Lutheran University.