Jessie van Eerden, a faculty member at the Oregon Extension of Eastern University, reads her prose fiction on Thursday, Jan. 20, in Adams Center 216 at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.
鈥淚 hope to share work that reads well aloud 鈥� that comes alive with an oral reading,鈥� van Eerden says. 鈥淢y work tends to have an Appalachian flavor, so it bears a bit of that oral culture.鈥� Her work has appeared in 鈥淏est American Spiritual Writing,鈥� The Oxford American, River Teeth and other publications. She wrote an essay in 鈥淛esus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical,鈥� an anthology edited by 蜜桃传媒 alumna Hannah Faith Notess.
After earning a master of fine arts degree in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, van Eerden received a postgraduate fellowship at the Milton Center, teaching courses at Seattle Pacific University and sharing her work with the literary journal Image.
鈥淚 hope to impart a love for literature and for the creative life 鈥� a love for writing as a spiritual practice,鈥� she says.