Current Graduate Students 

Austin joined the English MAs looking to professionalize further. Since then, Austin has “worn a number of hats”, engaging in various projects from his lab collaborations at the Confluence Lab where he wrote for the Idaho INBRE (IDeA Network of Biomedical Research) magazine, wrote video games developed by Polymorphic Games. He also participated in the Sasakawa Peace Tour 2025 in Hiroshima, Japan, where he became an Orizuru Fellow and won the JASSO Scholarship for his dedication to peace and sustainability. His research focus includes environmental sciences and narratology where he explores narratives that communicate issues impacting the environment. He currently assumes a Research Assistantship with IMCI (Institute for Modeling Collaboration and Innovation) where he works directly with post-docs to polish manuscripts prior to publishing.

After five years of working as a high school English teacher, snowboard instructor, raft guide, and trail builder, Hannah became so fascinated by the question: how do stories influence human treatment of the natural world? that she decided to pursue a master’s degree to answer it. She has since discovered that this question is unanswerable—or rather, has many, many answers—but in her quest, Hannah became drawn into thinking about human-nature relationships through a wide range of disciplines, including narratology, affect studies, political ecology, archival studies, and critical geography. Her master's research seeks to understand the imaginative and material formation of Glen Canyon by reading the narratives archived in the canyon’s sediment. When she’s not working, Hannah can be found either tangled up in aerial silks, line dancing, or otherwise hiking, skiing, fishing, and biking, usually with her dog Janey.

Lexi Arritt-Edwards is a third-year M.A. English student. She works in enrollment marketing at the University of Idaho. In her free time, she enjoys binge-reading, hiking with her husband, and bothering her two cats, Ali and Simba.  

Victoria Kingsmore is a researcher and devotee of affect theory, queer/sapphic literature, and, most prominently, love. Originally from the Treasure Valley area, Victoria earned her BA in English at the University of Idaho in 2025 and simply wasn’t ready to leave the Palouse yet. Having worked in a variety of writing disciplines and tutoring/teaching experiences, Victoria returned for an MA to indulge her passion project of exploring what love is, how it feels, and why this major literary (and all-too-human) theme has eluded rigorous study. Alongside working as a first-year writing instructor and volunteering for the English Graduate Association, Victoria spends her time outside of class cross-stitching, journalling, and enjoying her ever-growing CD collection. At home, she has a sweet tuxedo kitty named Jane Clawsten, and she dreams of becoming a cat lady as well as a scholar and professor of literature. 

Aaron Lavery is an English MA interested in topics in the environmental humanities, especially in climate change, desert Southwest literatures, and nature writing as genre. He has previously studied the publications and archives of American environmentalist Bill McKibben. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and camping wherever possible, fixing bicycles, making pottery on the wheel, and baking.