Tin House & PSU

Portland State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing has partnered with Portland-based international publishing enterprise Tin House to establish the Tin House Seminar and the Tin House Writer-in-Residence at Portland State. The partnership brings two distinguished writers to Portland each spring.

The Tin House Writer-in-Residence teaches a term-long workshop in the MFA Program and resides in an apartment that is part of the Tin House headquarters in Northwest Portland. Past Writers-in-Residence include Nam Le, Joanna Klink, Ginger Strand, and Amy Stewart.  The 2016 Writer-in-Residence will be D. A. Powell.

The Tin House Seminar is a term-long intensive study of a contemporary writer’s body of work, culminating in a public reading and staged interview with the writer. Past seminar writers include Mary Ruefle, Karen Russell, Maggie Nelson, and Anthony Doerr.

Paul Collins will teach the 2016 Tin House seminar on the work of Dave Eggers, culminating in a reading and interview with the author at Lincoln Hall on May 25th.

Tin House

Established in Portland, OR, as a magazine in May 1999 (and later expanded to Brooklyn, NY), Tin House’s mission is to publish compelling and authentic narratives of our time. The quarterly Tin House salutes the artistic edge but remains rooted in the tenets of the classic storytelling tradition. Magazine excerpts appear regularly in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, the O.Henry Prize Stories, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. Tin House Books publishes fiction, nonfiction, story collections, and everything in between. The Tin House Writer’s Workshop takes place every summer in Portland and includes workshops, seminars, panels, and readings led by the editors of Tin House magazine and Tin House Books and guests—prominent contemporary American writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.


Creative Writing at PSU


Located in the center of one of the country's most vibrantly literary cities, the Creative Writing Program at Portland State University provides writers with opportunities for creative development with a core faculty of prominent authors: Diana Abu-Jaber, Charles McLeod, A.B. Paulson, and Leni Zumas in Fiction; John Beer and Michele Glazer in Poetry; and Paul Collins and Michael McGregor in Nonfiction.

Our BFA and MFA degrees emphasize workshops and close mentorship by core faculty, while also offering the flexibility of a part-time option and the rich course offerings of Oregon's largest university. Alumni have written for publications ranging from Tin House and the New Yorker to The Believer andIowa Review. But above all, our program is part of Portland: long after graduating, many students stay on to make this city of Powell's and Wordstock their home.