Ms. Eileen Espinoza
Adjunct Professor of English
Office: Knutti 201E
Phone: TBD
E-Mail: eespinoz@shepherd.edu
Areas of Specialization
Creative Writing: Poetry, Nonfiction, and Hybrid Forms; Death Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies; Spirituality/Religious Studies; Magazines and Publishing
Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza graduated from Shepherd University in 2015 and returned to the Department of English and Modern Languages as adjunct faculty in the fall of 2023. Previously, she taught creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, where she also received her M.F.A. in Nonfiction. She teaches poetry in the M.F.A. program at Maharishi International University in Iowa. At Shepherd University, she teaches composition in the first-year writing program.
Professor Espinoza writes about popular culture, death rituals, and nature. She is the recipient of the 2021 McQuern Award in Nonfiction, a finalist for the 2021 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a finalist for the 2020 Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry. Her nonfiction has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bellevue Literary Review, Joyland Magazine, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been anthologized by Dorothy Allison and bell hooks.
In 2016, she cofounded Boshemia, a British-American feminist arts and culture magazine published biannually in the UK. Her first book, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World (University Press of Kentucky, 2024), is a lyrical nonfiction narrative exploring the social and sacred function of grief rituals in the West. She lives in Shepherdstown with her wife, the poet Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, though they are often in the Mojave Desert.