Faculty & Staff

English

Joe Wilkins, M.F.A.
Director of Creative Writing and Associate Professor of English
Phone: 641-585-8206
Fax: 641-585-8194
Email: wilkinsj@waldorf.edu

Education:

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing - the University of Idaho

Bachelor of Science in Engineering (honors) - Gonzaga University

Biography:

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers and two collections of poems, Notes from the Journey Westward, winner of the 17th Annual White Pine Press Prize in Poetry, and Killing the Murnion Dogs, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the High Plains Book Award. A 2010 National Magazine Award finalist and PEN Center USA Award finalist, he is the recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center, which goes to “a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice.”

His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in a host of the most vital literary journals and magazines in the country, including The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Sun, Orion, and Slate. His work has also won numerous honors and awards, including appearances in Best American Magazine Writing 2010, Writing Today, New Poets of the American West, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Best New Poets 2006 and 2009; notable mention in Best American Essays 2008 and special mention in Pushcart Prize XXXIV: Best of the Small Presses; and the Obsidian Prize for Nonfiction, the Obsidian Prize for Fiction, the Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers, Briar Cliff Review's Literary Nonfiction Prize, Memoir (and)'s Grand Prize for Memoir, Boulevard‘s Emerging Poets Contest, and the 2015 Boyden Wilderness Residency from PEN Northwest.

Academic Experience:
•English Instructor, English Department, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho
•Literature Teacher, TRIO Regional Center for Math and Science, Moscow, Idaho
•Corps Member Advisor, Teach For America, Houston, Texas
•Writing Tutor, University of Idaho Writing Center, Moscow, Idaho
•Pre-Algebra Teacher, Teach For America Corps Member, Cassie Pennington Junior High School, Title I, Indianola, Mississippi

Publications:
Books
•The Mountain and the Fathers. Berkeley: Counterpoint.
•Killing the Murnion Dogs. New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2011.

Chapbooks
•Ragged Point Road. Charlotte: Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2006.

Additional Information:
Teaching Philosophy
I think of my classrooms as conversations, conversations that are rigorous, honest, and compassionate. With each course, my students and I have the unique opportunity of engaging with one another, and the writers and thinkers who have come before us, in the ongoing conversation concerning, say, modern and contemporary American literature or the writing of poetry. Through these conversations, we move toward a deeper, fuller understanding of the subject at hand; we further develop our skills as readers, thinkers, and writers; and we come to know more about ourselves as human beings, and how we might then move through our world more humanely.