Alysia Sawchyn

Assistant Professor of English - Creative Writing

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and a Feature Editor at West Branch, Bucknell’s national literary magazine. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards, and their second, I Have This Thing for Flowers, is forthcoming in 2026. Formerly the editor in chief of The Rumpus, she has received fellowships from The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Education

  • MFA, University of South Florida
  • MA, Ball State University

Teaching Interests

  • Creative Writing: nonfiction (essay, memoir, flash), hybrid, fiction, research for the arts
  • Literary Editing & Publishing (print, digital)
  • Contemporary American Literature
  • Queer Literature

Current Projects and Research Interests

I Have This Thing for Flowers, Flatiron Press

Structured like an herbarium, each essay in this collection looks at a specific flower through varying lenses of botany, visual art, literature, and folklore.

Olfaction and memory

Yuzu Bodywash Near Me

Craft essays on the writing and teaching of creative nonfiction

Selected Publications

“Convert, Transfigure, Transform, Transmogrify.” Fairytale Review Rainbow Issue. March 2023.

Finalist for Lambda Literary LGBTQ+ Anthology

“Friendship.” Brevity Magazine 68. Fall 2021.

“1973: Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon.” 68to05. May 2021.

A Fish Growing Lungs. Burrow Press 2020.

Finalist for The Believer Book Award.

“Simple.” Brevity Magazine 59. Fall 2018.

Nominated for a Pushcart Prize

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