Missoula Writing Collaborative

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Staff

Caroline Patterson — Executive Director

Caroline_Parretson_Lowell_3Caroline Patterson is the executive director of the Missoula Writing Collaborative. Patterson has been teaching for the Missoula Writing Collaborative since 2009 and at the University of Montana-Missoula since 2002. The author of Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart, two children’s books on the natural world, Patterson has published numerous short stories in journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Outside, Southwest Review and Seventeen, and was awarded fellowships including the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Fiction and an award from the San Francisco Foundation and the Henfield Foundation. She has a story collection, Ballet at the Moose Lodge.

Sheryl Noethe — Artistic Director

Sheryl_Noethe_1000Sheryl Noethe is both Artistic Director and a writer-in-residence for the Missoula Writing Collaborative. She is co-author of the teaching text Poetry Everywhere, now in its third printing. She is the recipient of a Montana Arts Council Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the CutBank Hugo Prize, a McKnight Prize for Literature, an American Academy of Poetry Award, an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize, and other honors for her poetry. In 2004 she received the Cultural Achievement Award from the Missoula Cultural Council for her work in Missoula schools. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, and she has published four collections of poetry: The Descent of Heaven Over the Lake; Ghost Openings, which won a Northwest Publisher’s Best Book Award; As Is; and Grey Dog Big Sky. In 2011 Sheryl became Montana’s fourth Poet Laureate, an honor she held until 2013.

Sheryl’s role in the founding of the Missoula Writing Collaborative is the subject of Mackenzie Enich’s short film, “Notes From a Poet and a One Eyed Cat.” Watch it here.

Nick Littman – Programs Director

Nick Littman

As Programs Director of the Missoula Writing Collaborative, Nick Littman helped to collect the 500 place poems, illustrations, and recordings that make up the digital Missoula Children’s Poetry Map. He organizes MWC’s annual Words with Wings summer camp and other events. In 2017, Nick won The Montana Quarterly’s Big Snowy Prize for his essay “Passing Through”. He has published essays in Blueline, The Hopper, Camas and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book about maple syrup, vocation, and the Adirondack Mountains. When not teaching or coordinating for MWC, he is teaching field courses for high school and college,  or exploring the wilds of Montana with his wife and six-month-old daughter.

Clara Moser – AmeriCorps Vista

Clara Moser will be serving as the 2019-2020 Americorps VISTA for Free Verse and the Missoula Writing Collaborative. She holds a BA in English Literature with a concentration in poetry from Skidmore College. Moser hopes to pursue a career in social work while continuing her practice as a poet. She is excited to be serving both Free Verse and the Missoula Writing Collaborative: two organizations that blend together her interests in prisoner’s rights, restorative justice, creative writing, and youth advocacy through the arts. Previously, Moser has worked as an advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence and has served as an Americorps Leader with high schoolers.