Anis Mojgani (September 24) Anis Mojgani s the 10th Poet Laureate of Oregon and two-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis Mojgani will serve as the EAR Forest’s Artist-in-Residence for the Fall 2025. The author of six books of poetry and the opera libretto for Sanctuaries, his first children’s book is forthcoming from Holiday House/Neal Porter Books. His latest poetry collection is, The Tigers They Let Me. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Portland Oregon.
Alexia Arthurs (October 30) A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Alexia Arthurs has published fiction in Granta, The Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vice, Shondaland, Buzzfeed, Ploughshares, and The Paris Review, which awarded her the Plimpton Prize in 2017. Her first book, How to Love a Jamaican, was published in 2018. In 2024, she is one of the featured authors in Lovers Rock: Seven Jamaican Love Stories, a partnership between Calabash International Literary Festival and Audible Originals. Arthurs lives in Washington, DC, and is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University.
Julia Elliott (November 7) Julia Elliott is the author of the story collection Hellions, a TIME book of the month, the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch, and the story collection The Wilds, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice (all from Tin House). She has won a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.
Rick Barot (February 9) was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His earlier collections include The Darker Fall, Want, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and Chord, all published by Sarabande Books. Chord received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stanford University. He lives in Tacoma, Washington and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University. His newest book of poems, Moving the Bones, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2024.
Joe Wilkins (February 24) is a poet and novelist. His novel Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. Short-listed for the First Novel Prize from the Center For Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Fall Back Down When I Die won the 2020 High Plains Book Award and has now been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and German. Wilkins’s memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, was a finalist for the Orion Book Award and won the GLCA Emerging Writers Award, an honor that has previously recognized early work by Richard Ford, Louise Erdrich, and other luminaries. His second novel, The Entire Sky, was published by Little, Brown in July.
Elizabeth Willis (March 12) is the author of Liontaming in America (New Directions, 2024), a hybrid work engaged with American belief and relationship structures, theatre, activism, and film. Her other books of poetry include Alive (New York Review Books, 2015), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Address; Meteoric Flowers; Turneresque; The Human Abstract; and the artist’s book Spectral Evidence . She also writes about the intersection of art and labor and edited the volume Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place. She teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
