Spring Festival

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.

2026 Spring Festival

Saturday, June 6, 2026| 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
University of Washington Bothell |  North Creek Events Center (NCEC)
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested

2026 Schedule – Tentative

Spring Festival Archive:

Congratulations to our previous graduating cohorts!

2025

Featured Guest Artist: Cedar Sigo

GRADUATES:

• 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]

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.