After Lewis & Clark

English is a practical degree with broad applications. Here are a few examples of what some recent English majors are doing now:

  • Noah Foster-Koth ’19 is completing his second year as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Colombia, where he teaches English and writing, and works as an editor for a university’s publishing department.
  • Alex Cohen ’19 interned in US Senator Ron Wyden’s office while a student at LC. He is now Senior Political Strategist at Sierra Club in Washington D.C.
  • Arista Rawat Engineer ’19 is a recent English major who, along with completing an Honors thesis, took all the creative writing courses offered by the department. She won the LC Fiction Prize for her short story, “At His Feet”. Since graduation, she has been working as a writer and tutor for a nonprofit organization in Pittsburgh. She shall return to the academic sphere in the fall of 2020 at Chatham University. Arista has received their Creative Writing program’s most prestigious fellowship, the Margaret Lehr Whitford, which comes with a full tuition remission. She plans to pursue an MFA with a dual genre focus (fiction and poetry) and a concentration in pedagogy.
  • Eliza Frakes ’19 is a recent LC grad from the English department and has been living and working in Los Angeles since graduation. While in school, Eliza was heavily involved in both the English and Theatre department, and completed an independent study in conjunction with both departments that allowed her to write a pilot and a play. After working as an RA/TA at Fir Acres writing workshop, she moved to Los Angeles and started working at Fuzzy Door Productions, where she had worked remotely as a script coverage writer while still a student. In September of 2019, Eliza landed a gig as a Writer’s PA on a new show for CBS all access, which allowed her to work in the support staff, and learn from sitting in on the TV writers room. During this time, Eliza founded an interdisciplinary art group, Might Be A Bad One Collective, which has been meeting twice a month with the goal of making a space for collaboration, accountability, and creative community. MBABO has several LC alums as members, included Emma Rempel, Amanda Tugangui, and Nathaniel Kaye. In April, she was selected to be an Echo Young Playwright, a year long LA based residency through the Echo Theatre. The program meets twice a month (on zoom, for the time being!) and centers around collaborative workshop, apprenticeship with professional writers in the area, and public readings with the Echo company of actors. She uses the critique and analysis skills she learned at Lewis and Clark every day, and is incredibly grateful for the professors who encouraged her to follow this path.
  • Audrey Gutierrez ’19 is a recent Lewis & Clark College Rhetoric and Media Studies major who was heavily involved in the English department. She has worked as a resident advisor for the Fir Acres Writing Workshop and written for the LC Lit Review and the LC Journal of Social Justice. In college, she worked for CALYX Press and Artslandia Magazine. She has spent the last year teaching preschoolers and highschoolers English in southern Spain. She is currently writing her first novel about five sisters living on the edge of Cuba during the revolution. These sisters face the death of their parents, the siege of soldiers, and the threat of madness amidst their isolation. Audrey was also recently chosen as the winner of the F(r)iction Literary Magazine Winter 2019 Short Story Award. She will be attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the fall of 2020.
  • Emma Grillo ’17 has had her work published in Vice, Vox, and New York Magazine and is now a news assistant at the New York Times.
  • Seraphie Allen ’15 is deputy director of planning and community development at the City of Redmond.
  • Jake Bartman ’15 is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Florida. His story “Night Swim” earned a Pushcart Prize Special Mention in 2021.
  • Erica Terpening-Romeo ’14 was the first person ever to win both of the college’s highest academic honors. She was active in Lewis & Clark’s theatre department and the broader Portland theatre scene. She served as artistic director for a local Shakespeare company while studying at L&C! She is now working toward an MFA in directing at Boston University.
  • Marissa Fenley ’13 is a PhD candidate in English and theater and performance studies at the University of Chicago. She is currently a fellow at the Franke Institute for the Humanities.
  • Casey Newbegin ’12 earned an MS in museum studies from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2016 and is now a fine art consultant for an insurance company.
  • Lily Reiner ’15 was a writers’ assistant for Showtime Networks and now is senior marketing and communications specialist for the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles.
  • Isabel Greiner ’12 graduated with a double major in English and art history. Since then, one thing has led to another and she has pursued a number of professional interests, including museum work, interior design, and research psychology. She is currently earning a master’s in social work at Smith College.
  • Sam Barber ’11 spent his first few years after graduating brewing beer for Breakside Brewery here in Portland. He now lobbies at the Oregon Legislature on behalf of clients like the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians and the Oregon Rural Health Association.
  • Nate Moyer ’11 double majored in English and Hispanic studies. In 2017 he earned a master’s of public administration from the University of Washington with a specialty in international development. Nate has worked as the executive director of Zosseo Overland Support, a nonprofit bringing dental care to underserved areas of East Africa, and served with the Peace Corps in China. He is currently working for Seattle International Foundation, where he leads the annual Central America Donors Forum.
  • Corey Van Landingham ’08, after completing her MFA, was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and now is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). Her new poetry collection, Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, was published by Tupelo Press earlier this year.
  • Maxfield Fulton ’08 received his PhD from Yale’s History of Art department in 2022. His dissertation was awarded the Francis Blanchard Prize for Outstanding Dissertation.

Calling all English alumni! What have you been up to since graduation? Start an interesting job? Discover a hidden talent? Used your liberal arts experience and degree to better the world? Adopt a cat? We’d love to know!