ENGLISH, CREATIVE WRITING - Nathan Harris graduated with a B.A. in English from the UO, and is now a New York Times best-selling author. His book, The Sweetness of Water, has been a smash hit.

CREATIVE WRITING - Kirstin Valdez Quade was a graduate student in the creative writing program when Professor Ehud Havazelet offered that advice. Today Quade, MFA ’09 (creative writing), is an award-winning novelist and creative writing professor at Princeton University who is, she says, “profoundly grateful” for the program and Havazelet, who died in 2015.

ENGLISH - Mat Johnson, a professor in the Creative Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, is the UO’s newest Philip H. Knight Chair. Johnson joined the UO faculty in 2018 after a decade teaching at the University of Houston’s creative writing program.

Sixteen UO faculty members are being honored with the Presidential Fellowships in Humanistic Studies for their contributions to the arts and humanities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the College of Arts and Sciences is recognizing and celebrating both the 2020 and 2021 fellows together.