Undergraduate Creative Writing Faculty

Martin Corless-Smith was born and raised in Worcestershire, England. His degrees include a BA and an MFA in painting and printmaking, an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Utah. His thirteenth book Golden Satellite Debris (Shearsman Books, UK) was released in 2024. His book of translations, Odious Horizons: Some versions of Horace came out in 2019.  The Poet’s Tomb, a collection of essays, was published in 2020 from Parlor Press. He edits the Free Poetry series.

Sara Nicholson is the author of three books of poetry, most recently April (2023), all from the Song Cave. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review online, the Chicago Review, Harper’s, Poetry, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, she was the Holloway Poet-in-Residence at the University of California, Berkeley. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas.

Anna Caritj is the author of Leda and the Swan (Riverhead, 2021). She holds a BA from the University of Virginia, where she studied English and Spanish literature, and an MFA from Hollins University. She was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where much of her work takes place, though she has lived, most recently, in Florida, California, New Mexico, and Texas. She is currently at work on a second novel.

Mitch Wieland is the author of the novels Willy Slater’s Lane and God’s Dogs. Willy Slater’s Lane received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist, and was optioned for a film. Named Idaho Book of the Year, God’s Dogs was featured in the annual Best of the West prize anthology, and was a top finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Award. Wieland’s short stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, among other publications. Wieland is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, a Boise State University Arts and Humanities Fellowship, and two Literature Fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

Taryn Birdsall is the author of The Anatomist (YesYes Books, 2015). She received a PhD from the University of Denver and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant and has lived and taught in Cambodia and Iraq.

Clyde Moneyhun received an MFA and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.  He translates from French, Italian, and Spanish, but primarily from Catalan, with an emphasis on contemporary Catalan poetry.  His books include El salobre/Salt by Ponç Pons (2017, Haikús del camioner/Truck Driver Haikus by Dolors Miquel (2019; nominated for the Warwick Women in Translation Award), El volcá/The Volcano by Anna Dodas (2022), and Bruixa de dol/Witch in Mourning by Maria-Mercé Marçal (2023).  He has received grants from the Alexa Rose Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Institute, the Institut d’Estudis Baleárics, and the Catalan Delegation to the United Kingdom.  He teaches workshops in creative nonfiction, travel writing, and literary translation at Boise State and the Universitat d’Alacant (Spain).

Christopher Eaton is originally from Western NY. He holds a BA from Oberlin College, an MA from the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

As C. Violet Eaton, he writes and translates poetry, having published Quartet (Ahsahta, 2018), and Some Habits (2015), which won the Omnidawn Open Prize. With his sister Emily, he translates work from Spanish—their translation of Cristina Piña’s Estaciones del yo was published in 2023 by Free Poetry and they are currently translating the collected poems of Alfonsina Storni. His most recent manuscript has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Dorset Prize. Eaton teaches classes in nonfiction, poetry and translation.

Matthew is originally from rural Virginia. He holds a BA from the University of Virginia and a PhD in fiction writing and literature of the American South from Florida State University. He was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His essays and fiction have been published in Best American, the Missouri Review, the Massachusetts Review, and The American Scholar.