About
The long way round
Raised in the evangelical South. Made in the Pacific Northwest.
I grew up in the evangelical South, where Christmas got a fresh sermon every year and nobody asked what Advent was. Twenty-five years in the Bible belt, then the Pacific Northwest, where I fell for the church year, the long dark between Halloween and Christmas, and the people who will sit in a hard thing with you instead of trying to fix it.
I write about faith and doubt, grief and joy, motherhood, and the little things that turn out to be the big things. I’m an adoptive mom and a wife. My mother died, and I still write her letters. On Instagram I call myself Anglican’t, which is about right.
I wanted an MFA in creative writing for twenty years. Now I’m in one. Most days the best advice I have, for me and for you, is the same: sit your ass down and write.
For programs & journals
Emily Nye Hoos is a poet and essayist in Spokane, Washington, and the writer of always, emily, a newsletter about faith, grief, and paying attention to the little things. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing, teaches at Whitworth University, and serves on the editorial panel of Rock & Sling, a Christian literary journal of witness published at Whitworth. She writes at the corner of saintliness and the occasional curse word.