Joe Wilkins, associate professor of English at Linfield College, has released a limited-edition chapbook of essays called “We Had to Go On Living.”
The two essays in the collection, “Northern Pike,” originally published in The Harvard Review, and “Bruised,” originally published in The Sun Magazine, both grew out of the six years Wilkins and his wife spent living and working in a small town in north Iowa. The essays focus on themes of loneliness, dislocation and wounding, as well as strength, survival and family.
Wilkins, who joined the Linfield faculty last fall, has received many accolades for his writing. Most recently, he won the Iron Horse chapbook competition for his manuscript “Leviathan” and the Spring 2014 Sustainable Arts Promise Award, which funds work by artists with young children.
Wilkins’ poems, essays and stories have also appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Utne Reader, Ecotone, The Sun Magazine, Orion and Slate, among other magazines and literary journals. He has also been a National Magazine Award finalist and PEN Center USA Award finalist. He holds a master’s in creative writing from the University of Idaho, and a bachelor’s in engineering from Gonzaga University
