Meet Our Staff

Ann Kendall, Graduate Program Director, holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Bay Path University and an M.A. in English from Heritage University. In addition, she is a proud Bellevue Community College and University of Washington graduate. Ann’s path to teaching was a midlife transition after 20-plus years in the nonprofit sector serving in leadership, research, program planning and editorial roles in human services, architecture and the arts.  

Ann’s creative works focus on place-based memoir and memoir-plus, combining a high level of research with author narrative, as well as human interest profiles, and arts/architecture preservation studies with a special focus on adaptive reuse of spiritual spaces. Ann has a special interest in narrative medicine and advocacy work, and serves as the co-founder, along with her daughter, of The Red Ink Project, and organization devoted to women and girls with rare bleeding disorders. Ann’s recent creative work has appeared in Multiplicity, Sacred Places Magazine, Reverie, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Partners for Sacred Places News, Sad Girl Diaries, , Humans of the World, Wanderlust Journal and more.   

As a professor in Multicultural Literature and Languages, Ann hopes that the program serves as an open door to everyone interested in the study of how written works foster community, compassion, and understanding. In 2021, Ann created the “walk-n-talk” activity to help students connect their research and writing coursework to their home lives and families, to bridge the gap that often takes place when students begin college. Ann has a deep interest in supporting first-generation students as well as building bridges between academic writing and students’ future professional lives. Her dream (and goal) as a professor is that through a concentrated and wide-ranging study of literature and writing forms, students and graduates will see new worlds emerge for themselves and their communities.  

When not teaching, Ann can be found trolling bookstores, searching for the perfect pen for sketching, trekking urban landscapes, sleuthing for hidden histories and writing endless appeals for healthcare equity and access.