Assistant Professor, English & Communications
PhD, University of Utah, 2016
MFA, University of Montana, 2009
BA, Columbia College Chicago, 2005
ENGL 208: Experiments in Creative Writing
ENGL 300: Creative Writing: Fiction
ENGL 150: College Writing II
In class I will lecture, conduct open discussion, and—most importantly—facilitate in-class writing. I believe we can use the tension of togetherness, and the momentousness of our meeting, to produce work that risks and communicates. No work is sui generis, produced in a vacuum and/or wholly unique; it is made in conversation (witting or more passive) with what has already been made, and in conversation with one's community. This is why it's so important that we read (copiously, curiously, with wit) what has already been written, and actively become one another's contemporaries. I am also interested in shifting focus from product to practice. What [radical] practices might you develop that could sustain, feed, or even challenge the stories you've wanted to tell?
I currently enjoy coordinating different co-curricular programs that our Writing concentrators and minors (and everyone else) can enjoy, such as our Senior Writing Contest (in which our seniors submit their writing to an outside judge, typically one of our esteemed visiting writers) and Senior Flex, a reading series for (you guessed it) seniors who are in the concentration or minor. There's also our "Under 27 Writer's Residency" program, in which our students host a young emerging writer here in North Adams in collaboration with MassMoCA. I believe that studying creative writing is just as much about community, and festivity, as it is about time well spent in a classroom.
My own prose experiments have traversed memoir, autofiction, the novel, and collaborative writing projects to touch upon largely feminist themes and I’ve been increasingly interested in disability poetics, in my teaching and writing.
I am the author of Americans, Guests or Us (short stories); The University of Pennsylvania (a novel); SPAIN (an autofiction); and Blackfishing the IUD (a work of creative nonfiction and a CLMP Firecracker Award finalist). My short stories have appeared in places such as Fence, McSweeney's, LA Review of Books, The Offing, Wolfman New Life Quarterly and Territory. My essays and reviews can be found at the literary site www.full-stop.net, for which I serve as an editor.
Beilin, Caren. Blackfishing the IUD. Wolfman Books, 2019.
Beilin, Caren. SPAIN. Rescue Press, 2018.
Beilin, Caren. The University of Pennsylvania. Noemi Press, 2014.
