CLAS Postgraduate Visiting Writers Josh Balicki (fiction), Eli Campbell (playwriting), Spencer Jones (nonfiction), & Brian Orozco (poetry) will present their writing.
Brian Orozco is a poet and artist who works in the still and moving image. He holds an MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art, an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and is currently participating in the Scholar's Program at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis. His work has been exhibited at David Zwirner Gallery, UTA Artist Space, among other venues. and his poetry has appeared in Paper Bag and Figs.
Originally from Chicago, Eli Campbell is a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, an alum of the New Harmony Conference, and a winner of the Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival National Student Playwriting Award. Their work has been developed at The Story Theatre (Chicago) and Dreamwell Theatre (Iowa City), as well as various theaters in North Carolina, Texas, Idaho, and Illinois.
As a queer and trans artist, their work often investigates transition, states of ambiguity, and the body. Eli avoids strict realism in favor of heightened theatricality, and their plays address loneliness, cruelty, and desperation through dark humor and attention to language.
Joshua Balicki is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He received an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers and an MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He's taught for the Iowa First Nations Program, Iowa Young Writers' Studio, Austin Bat Cave, and Austin Library Foundation. He’s from Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Spencer Lane Jones was a Bach Fellow in the Nonfiction Writing Program in Spring 2025. Part of her MFA thesis was selected as the 2nd Place essay in Sewanee Review's 2025 Nonfiction Contest, judged by John Jeremiah Sullivan. She has written for Commonweal, The Christian Century, Bennington Review, Hopkins Review, and other publications.