Hear Joe Wilkins Read from his Award-Winning Fiction and Poetry, and Share Your Own Work During the Open Mic

The Driftless Writing Center is thrilled to host a public reading by Joe Wilkins, which will be followed by an open mic. Those who wish to read during the open mic should bring a maximum of five minutes of writing to share.

Joe Wilkins is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred Booklist review. A finalist for the First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the 2020 High Plains Book Award and has been translated into French, Spanish, and Italian. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, the winner of a 2014 GLCA New Writers Award—an honor that has previously recognized early work by the likes of Richard Ford, Louise Erdrich, and Alice Munro—and four collections of poetry, including most recently Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

Wilkins lives with his family in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.