About

Mischa Willett is a poet, translator, and scholar from the Pacific Northwest. He directs the Whitworth MFA in Creative Writing based in Spokane, Washington. He is the author of three collections of poems: This Gift Card Has Already Been Redeemed (Paraclete Press, October 2026), The Elegy Beta (Mockingbird, 2020), and Phases (Cascade Books 2017) about which you can learn more at this very site. He also edited the critical edition of Philip James Bailey's Festus for Edinburgh University Press.

A first-generation college student, Willett earned his MFA and PhD at the University of Washington, where he taught literature and writing from 2007 to 2013. He went on to teach at Northwest University and, for eight years, at Seattle Pacific University before joining Whitworth in 2025. His poems have aired on NPR, and he hosts, albeit very sporadically, the podcast Poems for the People. He translates from Italian, German, and Greek, and writes essays on literature and the intellectual life.

Willett has been called “a library poet,” and his work often described as humor-filled and graceful, though it often returns often to a Cavafy-esque ordinary speech, to form as a kind of hospitality, and the long inheritance of Romantic verse. He also writes a monthly newsletter, Missive. Readers who want bookings, review copies, or news of upcoming events can reach him through the contact form below or at mischawillett@me.com.