Visiting Writers and Open Mics

American Patchwork Quartet 

Write a song. Win. Perform it onstage. American Patchwork Quartet invites Weber State students to explore the American protest-song tradition, write the next verse, and bring a new song into the convo. Through the American Protest Song Challenge, students will dig into the tradition, write something of their own, and get a shot at taking the stage with APQ. Participants will also receive a free ticket to the October 14 concert, where the quartet cracks open the American folk tradition and rebuilds it for the present. Participate in this amazing songwriting workshop!

Siân Griffiths serves as a Professor and Associate Chair of English and Creative Writing at Weber State University. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, American Short Fiction, and Booth among many other publications. She is the author of the novels Borrowed Horses, Scrapple, and the short fiction chapbook The Heart Keeps Faulty Time. Her latest book, The Sum of Her Parts, is out from University of Georgia Press. Currently, she reads fiction as part of the editorial team at Barrelhouse. For more information, please visit sbgriffiths.com

Daniel Paul comes from New York City and graduated from Columbia College in Chicago. He has an MFA from Southern Illinois University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati in English and Creative Writing. His stories, essays, poems, and humor writing have appeared in The Iowa Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, Passages North, Shenandoah, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hobart, and elsewhere.

Ryan Ridge is the author of Climate Strange (with Mel Bosworth), Ox, New Bad News, and American Homes, among other books. His poetry, fiction, and book reviews have appeared in more than 100 literary magazines. His honors include the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, a Kentucky Writers Fellowship, and the The Linda Bruckheimer Prize in Kentucky Literature. Ridge teaches creative writing and currently serves as Chair of the English Department. He lives in Salt Lake City with the writer, Ashley Marie Farmer, and their greyhound, Doug, and plays bass in the freak folk band the Snarlin' Yarns. He is currently working on a novel and, with Mel Bosworth, a book about monsters.

Abraham Smith is professor of English and co-director of the Wasatch Writers Center. His poetry has appeared in Poetry and American Poetry Review and his recent poetry collections include Surgencies (Baobab Press, 2026), One Warm Morning (Stubborn Mule Press, 2025), and Insomniac Sentinel (Baobab Press, 2023). He’s been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center, Dear Butte, and the Chautauqua Institution. He’s performed his poetry from City Lights to Prairie Lights and everywhere in between. Away from campus, Smith improvises poems inside songs with the Snarlin' Yarns.

Courtney Craggett is an Associate Professor of English and co-directs the Wasatch Writers Center. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of North Texas. She is the author of the story collection Tornado Season (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). Her fiction appears in Image, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, Baltimore Review, and Booth, among others. Originally from Texas, she writes eco-fabulist fiction about wildfires and tornadoes and drought. She lives in Ogden with her dog, two cats, and two young children.