Poet, memoirist, librettist, and essayist Scott Cairns is the new director of SPU’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program.
Since 2015, he has served as a faculty mentor in the low-residency MFA program. He has authored eight poetry collections, a collection of translations of Christian mystics, a spiritual memoir, a book-length essay on suffering, and co-edited an anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His poems and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Poetry, Image, Paris Review, and many other journals. Cairns’ work has been included in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing. He is a regular blogger for the religion section of The Huffington Post and contributes a podcast for Ancient Faith Radio.
“Dr. Cairns is a gift to the MFA and to SPU,” says Debra Sequeira, dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. “He has a wealth of experience directing graduate creative writing programs and his own vast collection of literary works reveals a life of grace, passion, irony, religious depth, and an embrace of the mystery of faith.”
SPU’s unique program remains the only such creative writing program in the nation that focuses particularly on the intersection between the arts and faith.
Learn more at spu.edu/mfa.
