Writing Week Events:

Jim Whiting ’65
Tuesday, March 5 at 5:30 p.m. (virtual)

Zoe Ballering ’12
Wednesday, March 6 at 4:30 p.m. (in person)

Katey Schultz ’01
Thursday, March 7 at noon (in person)

Zoe Ballering & Katey Schultz
Thursday, March 7, 2024, 7 p.m. (Reid Campus Center, Young Ballroom)

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Few, if any, authors can boast the wide range of accomplishments in writing as Jim Whiting ’65: More than 350 children’s nonfiction books. National award-winning regional running magazine and high school newspaper. Multi-genre editor with more than 500 credits. Humorous poetry. E-commerce. E-books. E-venue and events writer for American Online. Sports editor for his local newspaper. Official writer/photographer for Antarctica Marathon. The first piece of original fiction in Runner’s World. Contributor to publications as diverse as Seattle Times, Greece Travel, Seattle Weekly, and Northwest Book Arts. Jim was also by far the leading contributor to the Nonfiction Minute, a series of free daily 400-word mini-essays from a group of 30 award-winning national authors. And—according to Whiting—none of this would have happened if he had gone anywhere else than Whitman College. Learn more at jimwhiting.com.

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Whitman graduate, Zoe Ballering ’12 is a writer and teacher who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her speculative fiction has appeared in Electric Literature’s “Recommended Reading,” “Craft,“ “Hobart” and elsewhere. Her collection of stories—“There Is Only Us”—won the 2022 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and was released in November 2022.

Her writing is informed by her work in many different worlds: as the program manager for a historic tall ship, the receptionist at a garbage dump, an olive oil saleswoman, a teacher, a radio copywriter, and—currently—as the Assistant Dean of Admission Communication at Reed College.

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Whitman graduate Katey Schultz ’01 is the author of “Flashes of War,” which the Daily Beast praised as an “ambitious and fearless” collection, and “Still Come Home,” a novel, both published by Loyola University Maryland. Honors for her work include North Carolina’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the Linda Flowers Literary Award, Doris Betts Fiction Prize, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year award, gold and silver medals from the Military Writers Society of America, the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year award, five Pushcart nominations, a nomination to Best American Short Stories, National Indies Excellence recognition, and writing fellowships in eight states. She has taught all over the country—at Interlochen College of Creative Arts, Fishtrap, 49 Alaska Writing Center, StoryStudio Chicago—and her own organization Maximum Impact, among many others. She lives in Celo, North Carolina, and is the founder of Maximum Impact, a transformative mentoring service for creative writers that has been recognized by both CNBC and the What Works Network.

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The Visiting Writers Reading Series is sponsored by the Department of English, the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty, the Lawrence Parke Murphy and Robert Goldstein Trust, and by generous donations from the extended Whitman community.