Spring Festival

On this page: 2025 Spring Festival | Festival Schedule | Candidate Bios | Guest Artists | Previous Spring Festival Candidates

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.

2025 MFA Spring Festival

Saturday, June 7, 2025  |  12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
University of Washington Bothell  |  North Creek Events Center (NCEC)
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested.

Festival Schedule

with Guest Artist, Cedar Sigo

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of ten books and pamphlets of poetry, including All This Time (Wave Books, 2021), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005) and also the Bagley Wright Lecture Series book Guard the Mysteries (Wave Books, 2021). He has taught all over including St. Mary’s College, Naropa University and Bard University. He was a mentor in the low residency MFA program at The Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Lofall, Washington.

**Every year, our graduating cohort nominates a guest artist to serve as a benedictory reader at Spring Festival. These guests are nominated from among those visitors they have interacted with during their time in the program.

Featured Readings by MFA Candidates

• Noor Alnaaz, Homebound ~
• Mikayla Coleman, It’s Always Something Different in the End
• Geneviève Hicks, our shoulders branch across time
• Bethany Hudson, Everywhere the Light Touches/Alice Through the Looking Glass: Exposing the History of a Well-Behaved Woman
• Nat Mannino, re-
• Elfie Nelson, The Eschatology Database
• Mason Peterson, Carry-On
• Harley Tonelli, [COMMITMENT]

MFA Candidate Bios

Noor Alnaaz Islam is a poet, editor, and philosophy scholar from Assam, India, currently based in Seattle. Her work explores eco-poetics, the human condition, and matrilineal identity through a South Asian diasporic lens. She served as an editor at Clamor, UWB’s literary and arts magazine, and was part of the selection board for the incoming academic instructor. She also served as a reader for the 2025 Airlie Prize. Noor’s writing has appeared in Ambrosia Zine, Ancient Technology News, Clamor, and The Assam Tribune. She has been featured in multiple readings across Seattle and beyond. She currently works with Kelsey Street Press and hosts Sip and Share, a community circle. 

Mikayla Coleman (she/her/hers) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer currently located in Eugene, Oregon. She received her Bachelors in English and Art & Design from Western Oregon University in 2023. Her recent work focuses on perceiving and interacting with the world through a neurodivergent, feminine lens, often including visual or interactive elements. A strong advocate for increased accessibility in academia, she hopes to continue her education and English and Art at the college level. She is fascinated by all things analog, tactile, and mixed-medium, with a focus on film photography and fiber arts. Her poetry is included in forthcoming issues of Portland-area zine Lurch and Prickly Pear Magazine.

Geneviève Hicks (she/her), also known as GV, is a forever conjure woman // emerging poet // and physical therapist of over three decades. Her thesis, our shoulders branch across time, is a hybrid collection of poetry, prose, and visual art shaped by ancestral memory and meditative witness. Her work is grounded in Black lineage, somatic ritual, and the ghost of memory. GV co-created Formulas for Fair Futures with E.T. Russian, contributed guided meditations to the Seattle Art Museum’s City of Tomorrow exhibit, and was a 2024 Imagining America PAGE Fellow.She has taught meditation and yoga ~ leads workshops ~ writes ~ and, in the summer, can be found sleeping in a tent without its fly || high on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples.

Bethany Hudson (she/her) is a novelist, poet, and actress whose work most often finds itself at the intersection of historical and literary fiction. She is endlessly fascinated by the ways in which past informs present and fiction informs fact. Bethany holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Southern California. Her MFA thesis, Everywhere the Light Touches, is a fictionalized biopic of Alice K. Whitney Hutchison, a pioneering twentieth-century businesswoman from her hometown of Rochester, NY. Through the lens of grief, the project explores the tension existent between public and private realities, interrogating the known, while haunted by the context that hovers out of frame. Special thanks to the George Eastman Museum and the University of Rochester for their care and curation of the archives that have helped to resurrect Alice’s story. Bethany lives with her family in New York. You can follow her work at bethanyhudson.com.

Nat Mannino is a writer, creative, and bookseller originally from Michigan. She moved to Seattle two years ago to pursue her MFA in a state as moody as she is. Her written work centers around time, transcendence, and understanding the world around her, all of which are explored in her thesis titled “re-.” Natalie holds a BA in Psychology and a BA in English, both from Michigan State University. You can usually find her at Edmonds beach looking for crabs and seals, shelving books at Barnes & Noble, or crafting.

Elfie Nelson, sometimes called Janus (they/them), is a genderqueer poet and new media artist. Their creative interests include digital spaces, collective narratives, augmented reality, horror, and dreamcore. They hold an MA in creative writing from University of California, Davis, where they taught and wrote poetry. Their hypertext thesis Directional Pilgrim was featured in the 2021 ELO Conference exhibition, “Platforming Utopias (and Platformed Dystopias).” After 3 years as a community college English instructor, their goal is to overhaul the structures of academia in favor of something equitable, inclusive, and radically accessible. They live in/close enough to Seattle with their two partners, Luke and Arnie, and two cats, Joyce Carol and The Professor. Find their interactive experiments at januslooks.itch.io and their MFA thesis project, The Eschatology Database, at endoftheworld.miraheze.org

Mason Peterson (they/them) is a multimedia artist and writer located in the Pacific Northwest. Much of their work flits somewhere between fantasy and reality, exploring themes of queer joy, the body, and whimsical otherness. Their current projects seek to create immersive narrative experiences by placing poetry in conversation with objects and visual art focused on materiality, transforming language into something tangible. Mason holds a bachelor’s degree in culture, literature, and the arts from the University of Washington, Bothell. They have a background in academic tutoring, collaborative storytelling, and classroom support. You can find their poetry in Clamor! and Silly Goose Press or on their website, https://mcpfolio.my.canva.site.

Harley Tonelli is a poet, musician, and lawyer from Seattle, Washington. Harley’s work grapples with the intersections of identity, trauma, madness, and the body through a lens of fragmentation and hyper-awareness of self. Harley received a degree in Music Business/Management from Berklee College of Music and a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law,. You can find Harley’s work in Tar River Poetry, Birdcoat Quarterly, Blue Mesa Review, Gold Man Review, New Plains Review, and elsewhere. When not writing or looking at birds, Harley practices as a legal aid attorney for survivors of domestic violence.

Spring Festival Archive:

Congratulations to our previous graduating cohorts!

2024

Featured Guest Artist: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

GRADUATES:

• Elisa Balabram, The Lighter Way
• Mae Barbee, Playgod: Entertainment for Fools
• Pria Dalrymple, Greetings from the Meat Aisle
• Phoenix Kai, Trans Universe Theory
• Lindsey Keefer, Propagation
• Farron Knechtel, The Internet Sad Boi Journals
• Melissa M. Knopp, Little Sufferings
• Emma McVeigh, We Might Have Been a River
• Korede Oluwaseyi Oseni, Fractured Personifications
• Felicia Madrid Payomo, T R I N K E T
• Parker Dean Smith, Bird Boy: Evolution at Lightspeed
• Kathryn M. Tran, Fragmentary Mother
• Candace Whitney-Morris, Variable Proximities: calculations of closeness | diagrams of distance
• Gradon Wong, Borrowed Mysteries: Lines Composed on Tantalus

2023

Featured Guest Artist: Robert Farid Karimi

Graduates:

• Alexandria Simmons, Fantasy and Folklore: The Education of Half-Orc Scarlette Urrug
• Alysa Levi-D’Ancona, Mist Manifesto
• Amy Eldridge, The Panther
• Bujinlkham Erdenebaatar, Veiled Street
• Connor James, The Carolyne Project: A Speculative Experiment of Narrative Structure
• Marwah M. Shebl, The Last of Our Days
• Matt Livezey Whitehurst, Anti-Parietal Epithalamus
• Raelynne Woo, Beyond the Curtain

2022

Featured Guest Artist: Selah Saterstrom

Graduates:

• 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.

2021

Featured Guest Artist: Diana Khoi Nguyen

Graduates: 

• Yuan Zhuang, Feather Coat.
• Scott Bentley, Bwai \ Remapping.
• Gregory Buck, … S& W8.
• Annika G. Rundberg Bunney, Long Exposure.
• Alec Gabin, The Son.
• Troy Landrum Jr., Dreaming of the Great Migration.
• Chris Ryan Lauer, La Fin du Monde.
• Sanika Nalgirkar, Memories- A Grief Journal.
• Joseph Niduaza, Chimera.
• Rose K. O’Connor, Dutch Boats.
• Julie Voss, A Woman’s Mutation.
• Cliff Watson, 6-foot pine.
• Simon Wolf, Charging.

2020

Featured Guest Artist: Don Mee Choi

Graduates: 

• Eric Acosta, Virgo.
• Marina Burandt, A Tiny Miniature World Where the Proportions Are Slightly Off.
• Nicolas Hauser, Ask the Doctor, He Might Know!.
• Sabina Livadariu, Behind the Curtain.
• Abigail Mandlin, Muses.
• Ashley Noelle, Asymptomatic.
• Matt Porter, A Soft-Boiled Potato.
• Stephanie Segura, Open Door Behind You.
• Nicholas Sweeney, Bed of Leaves.

2019

Featured Guest Artist: Dao Strom

Graduates: 

• Woogee Bae, Mung.
• Aya Bram BonnLuders, North of Nothing.
• Peter Buller, Pterratactile.
• Amy Jones, AOTA: all of the above.
• Reed Lowell, The Summer Years.
• dana middleton, the corridor closes at both ends.
• Virginia Soileau, Versus Jane Doe.

2018

Featured Guest Artist: Suzanne Morrison

Graduates: 

• Jacq Marie Babb, WEYOUI.
• Michael Warren Bagby, Weighing Words.
• Cristina Cortez, Unbound.
• Jessica Hagy, Watermarks.
• Dylan Hogan, The Streets Around Here Tell You Exactly Where You Are.
• Mitchell Kopitch, Din’s Grimoire: Of Games, Gender, Memories, and Self Acceptance.
• Amanda Lybeck, Black Lake.
• Tomm McCarthy, Selections from Dakopeta.
• Subha Nair, To the Moon I Go and Other Stories.
• Katelyn Oppegard, Near Before and After.

2017

Featured Guest Artist: Renee Gladman

Graduates: 

• Corbin Louis, No Way Out But Through.
• Yohandra Cabello, The Anatomical Grip.
• Brent Cox, The River Twice.
• Terrell Fox, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.
• Liezel Moraleja Hackett, Matindi.
• Amanda Hurtado, POST.
• Nicole McCarthy, The Blueprints of Memory. 
• Denise Calvetti Michaels, The Things Downriver.
• Allison Morton, The Missing Hour.
• Joshua Osborn, Mother, Memory, Monotony.
• September Thorlin, A Nursery Rhyme from Another Summer.
• Cora Walker, Hindsight 2050.

2016

Featured Guest Artist: Nathaniel Mackey

Graduates:

• Ben Burland, The Tuck.
• Andrew Carson, Self Taut.
• Ellen Donnelly, Bag of Flesh.
• Tracy Jane Gregory, Helene.
• Andy Hoffman, Black Medicine.
• Anthony Johnson, Beastiarium.
• Greg S. Prichard, Stand-To.
• Dave Sanders, County.
• Carol Anderson Shaw, On My Mind.
• David Shrauger, Images of a Broken World.
• Natalie Singer-Velush, California Calling.
• Jack Wyss, Divine Immolation.
• Kaitlin Young, We/Me.

2015

Featured Guest Artist: Julie Carr

Graduates: 

• Sarah Baker, Water’s Work.
• Breka Blakeslee, Probably It Will Not Be Okay.
• Scott Brown, Private Browsing.
• Laura Burgher, The Researcher’s Book of Her/mes.
• Samuel Iniguez, HisJazzRaptoMe: Hip Hop Vignettes & Quarter Waters.
• Denise Coville, Chairs.
• Lynarra Featherly, The Feminology of Spirit.
• Colin MacArthur, The Boatman of Hades.
• Megan McGinnis, Newness and Nowness.
• Penny Quinteros, Toeing the Line: A Short Story Collection.
• Travis Sharp, Love Poems to the Poet’s Body.
• Todd Simmons, Still We Rise.
• Christine Smith, The Spirit Cabinet.

2014

Featured Guest Artist: CAConrad

Graduates: 

• Ellen Bauer, Ordinary Saints and Monsters.
• Marcus Bingham, Restless.
• John Boucher, The Chirurgeon.
• Susan Marie Brown, Love & Courage: Historic Fiction.
• Chelsea Carter, Read Without Listening.
• Margaret Chiavetta, Untitled Collection of Essays.
• Sandy D’Entremont, The Beauty of Molokai’i.
• Kelle Grace Gaddis, Polishing A Gem On The Surface Of The Sea.
• Aimee Harrison, Autoorthography: identity poetics with poetry.
• Andrew Huskamp, Tales from Here and There.
• Lauren Light, Dieter.
• Jay Loomis, Blade Against the Heart.
• Rev.Tiare L. Mathison, A~Mash~Up: A Poetics of Defiance in the Age of the Internet of Everything.
• Michael Paschall, phrases of the moon.
• Billy Phillips, Fractured Poetics.
• Talena Lachelle Queen, Fourteen.
• J.D. Satlin, A Poetics of Miscommunication.
• Diana Savora, Quivering Tongues.

2013

Featured Guest Artist: Bhanu Kapil

Addidtional Featurings:

Roundtable on “Hybrid Forms, Organisms, Biologies,” with Bhanu Kapil, Jennifer Calkins and Sarah Dowling and Reading & Conversation Workshop with Robert Glück 

Graduates:

Margaret Chiavetta, John Boucher, Sandy D’Entremont, Kat Seidemann, Susan Brown, Kelle Gaddis, Marcus Bingham, Lauren Light, Michael Paschall, Chelsea Carter, Talena Kettrell, Jay Loomis, Tiare Mathison, Ellen Bauer, Andrew Huskamp, Billy Phillips, J.D. Satlin, Aimee Harrison, Diana Savora.