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MFA Publications

Our program and students are very active in the small press community, which is a vital lifeline for contemporary poetry and poetics. Some have started their own presses, others have worked with local and national publishers. Our students also regularly have work published in print and online, and several have had books come out of their thesis work. We are incredibly proud of our students’ publications, some of which are featured here.

Alumni books and publication highlights

Essay Press / 56³Ô¹ÏÍø Bothell MFA Book Contest

We are also excited to partner with Essay Press on the EP/56³Ô¹ÏÍøB MFA book contest, which includes book publication and readings at 56³Ô¹ÏÍø Bothell and in Seattle for selected authors. Click here for details on the current reading period and previous winners.

Fall Convergence eBooks

Starting in 2021, we inaugurated a publication series in concert with the Fall Convergence on Poetics that features creative prompts provided by our speakers. Designed to share creative process and inspire our community to keep making work, these freely-available ebooks are designed by MFA students and used in our graduate and undergraduate classes. Learn more and see the publications here.

Hearing Voices

In 2020, the MFA launched its own video web journal, Hearing Voices, which showcases the work of our students and alumni. Since performance is a crucial aspect of poetics for many members of our program, Hearing Voices highlights alternative modalities of publication.

Student Presses

Snail Trail Press

: An Ecopoetics Press (Woogee Bae, Aya Bram, Amy Jones) (2019-present)

Snail Trail turns a curious eye toward the catastrophic violences—whether small or enormous—that penetrate our daily lives and envisions alternate possibilities, to rethink our current ecology and live collectively, consciously, and caringly together, with all our sticky residue.

Autodestuct.Online

Autodestuct.Online (Travis Sharp) (2018-present)

AUTO DESTRUCT is a micropress that publishes ephemeral texts, chapbooks, artists’ books, digital books, audiovisual work, text, image, anti-books, broadsides, PDFs, blank pages. AUTO DESTRUCT is interested in opening up the contradictory possibilities of an expanded book: a dematerialized “object” instantiated through a website, a physical object that can be passively absorbed or actively destroyed, an ephemeral object that is aware of its own disintegration. AUTO DESTRUCT may auto-destruct and disappear at any moment.

Brightly Press

Brightly Press: Kelle Grace Gaddis (2015-2018)

Brightly Presses annual anthology, Shake The Tree features some of the most recognized poets in the country including CA Conrad, Frank Sherlock, Kate Durbin, Malachi Black, Deborah Woodard, Kit Frick, Maged Zaher, Carolyne Lee Wright, Natasha Moni, TC Tolbert, Sam Ligon, Natalie Diaz, Douglas Kearney, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Cynthia Atkins, Tammy Robacker, Jane L. Carmen, Janice Lee, Matthew Trease, Joseph Musso, Sam Slaughter, David Tomas Martinez, Rebecca Chamaa, Trish Hopkinson, Stacey Levine, Chelsea Jean Werner-Jatzke, Karen Finneyfrock, Scott Driscoll, Ed Harkness, Connie Post, Chen Chen, Kaveh Akbar, Anastacia Renee Tolbert, Kristen Young, Chila Bradshaw Woychik,Clare Johnson, Kate Lebo, Kristen Scott, Carolyne Lee Wright and Christopher P. Locke.

Letter[r]Press

is a micropress that publishes chapbooks, artist’s books and ephemera, along with Small Po[r]tions. The press promotes the work of Small Po[r]tions contributors and publishes experimental and multi/intermedia writing and art. The press is run by Sarah Baker, LB Burgher, Lynarra Featherly, Aimee Harrison, and Travis Sharp. Chapbooks include work by shelley feller, Kevin MacClellan, Carrie Bennett, Terri Witek, Jill Magi, and others.

Small Portions Journal

(Sarah Baker, Laura Burgher, Travis Sharp, Aimee Harrison, Tracy Gregory, Lynarra Featherly) (2014-2018)

Small Po[r]tions is published by Letter [r] Press. The journal publishes short[er] work and multi/intermedia art. Each issue has a print component with a focus on book arts and an online component featuring selections from the print issue along with media work. Print copies of the journal can be purchased here. Currently edited by Sarah Baker, Laura Burgher, and Travis Sharp; former editors include Lynarra Featherly, Aimee Harrison, Breka Blakeslee, and Tracy Gregory.