Oregon Author to Share Prose at Reading

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.

“I hope to share work that reads well aloud — that comes alive with an oral reading,” van Eerden says. “My work tends to have an Appalachian flavor, so it bears a bit of that oral culture.” Her work has appeared in “Best American Spiritual Writing,” The Oxford American, River Teeth and other publications. She wrote an essay in “Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical,” an anthology edited by Westmont 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.

“I hope to impart a love for literature and for the creative life — a love for writing as a spiritual practice,” she says.