Writers Series

Samiya Bashir, called a “dynamic, shape-shifting machine of perpetual motion,” by Diego Báez, writing for Booklist, is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poetry maker. Samiya’s honors include the Rome Prize in Literature, the Pushcart Prize, Oregon’s Arts & Culture Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature plus residencies including MacDowell, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the New York Council on the Arts. In addition to her books, Bashir has served as editor to national magazines and anthologies of literature and artwork. In 2002 she was co-founder of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer’s festival for LGBT writers of African descent with whom she worked through 2015. Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, including Field Theories, winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Award’s Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.  Her fourth collection, I Hope this Helps, was released to wide acclaim from Nightboat Books in 2025.  She is the 2026-27 Viebranz Visiting Professor.  The Writers Series welcomes Samiya on September 10, 2026.
Photo by Jes Neal.

A Guggenheim Fellow, Alison Hawthorne Deming had two books out in 2025: the poetry anthology The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, & Connection and the new poetry collection Blue Flax & Yellow Mustard Flower. Her most recent nonfiction book A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress was published by Counterpoint Press in 2021. She is the author of four other poetry books, an essay collection, and three nonfiction books.  The Writers Series and the Center for the Environment welcome Alison on October 20, 2026.
Photo by Bear Guerra.

Madeline ffitch is the author of two novels Avalon, Rise, and Stay and Fight, as well as the story collection, Valparaiso, Round the Horn. Stay and Fight was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Washington State Book Award, and a Lambda Literary Prize. Ffitch co-founded the punk theater company The Missoula Oblongata and was part of the rural direct action collective Appalachia Resist! Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, N+1, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Creative Capital State of the Art Grant, two O. Henry prizes and was included in the 2024 Best American Short Stories anthology. She lives with her two children in the hills of Appalachian Ohio. The Writers Series welcomes Madeline on November 12, 2026.

Alison Stine’s first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Her second novel Trashlands was longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and her most recent book Dust won the High Plains International Book Award. The Raven Engagement, the first novel in her new fantasy series, is forthcoming from Wednesday Books (Macmillan) in 2027. Also the author of three books of poetry and a novella, she works as a journalist.  The Writers Series welcomes Alison on March 4, 2027.