Join us on Thursday, April 16, at 5 pm pacific time / 8 pm eastern time for a 90-minute live course on “keeping your story in balance.” All four of our editors will teach from examples in the magazine, their work, and other beloved texts that demonstrate how to balance exposition, scene, and summary, and when to break for reflection.

Participants will leave the class with actionable tools for how to revise and structure their own work for greater clarity and impact.

The class will be recorded and all attendees will receive a copy of the recording. We hope to see you there!

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The editorial staff here at sneaker wave magazine share a common origin. We all have roots with Pacific University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing. Mike Magnuson, our Editor in Chief, has been on the faculty with the program for many years. And our Executive Editor, Managing Editor, and Editor at Large—McKenzie Watson-Fore, Angela Wang, and Julie Levine, respectively—each hold an MFA in Writing from Pacific University.

We can’t recommend this program enough. We’re from the Nonfiction genre, obviously, with our dedication to publishing true stories, but the program also offers robust study in poetry and fiction, with truly world class faculty teaching in all three genres. If you enroll in the program, you will have the opportunity to study in genres other than your genre in which you’re specializing.

Now, sneaker wave magazine is not an official part of Pacific University but a group that has emerged from the wide community of hundreds of writers who have gone through the program over the years. The possibilities for us, and for everyone in the Pacific MFA community, have literally been limitless.

So today, we’re sharing some information about the program, along with a number of useful links. If you like what you see, which we know you will, we urge you to apply and to join our wonderful community of writers.

Pacific University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing program celebrates writing as an art that has the potential to make a difference in the world. We start with community, gathering at 10-day writing residencies twice a year in the stunning Pacific Northwest, where our distinguished faculty and visiting writers offer lectures and classes and workshops that consider craft as our guiding light.

The Pacific MFA in Writing program is currently welcoming applications for the summer residency and Summer/Fall 2026 semester, and our Residency Writers Conference, which we’ll host on the Pacific University campus in Forest Grove, Oregon, from June 18-28, 2026. Our priority due date is March 1, and we’ll be accepting applications through mid-May.

Participants in the Residency Writers Conference join MFA students in workshop and attend craft talks, classes, faculty readings, and more. You can find more information, including how to apply, on the program website.

The MFA is hosting a number of online information sessions this spring on Wednesdays on the following dates: March 11 and 18, April 1, 15, and 29, and May 13. All sessions are held at 4 pm Pacific time. We invite you to email the MFA office at mfa@pacificu.edu to register for a session.

Meantime, here’s a photo of Tillamook Head in Seaside, Oregon, where we hold our January residencies every year.

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Welcome to the Education Section of sneaker wave magazine!

Our first course offering will be the Foundations of Writing a Submission-Ready Story, a useful ninety-minute online session covering how to prepare a manuscript for publication. This course will be with all four of our editors, and we will will provide both a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the nuts and bolts of what we look for in a typical sneaker wave true story and what are best practices for submitting a story for publication anywhere.

We’d love for you to join us on Wednesday, February 25.

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