Erin Ergenbright is the co-author of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook (HarperCollins) with Thisbe Nissen, and a co-founder of the Loggernaut Reading Series. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, including The Believer Magazine, Tin House, Portland Monthly, The Oregonian, The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work and Pulling It All Together in Your Thirties (JP Tarcher), Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: On Cooking for One and Dining Alone (Riverhead Books), Citadel of the Spirit (Nestucca Spit Press), Indiana Review, and the Colorado Review. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, where she was a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellow. Other recent awards include a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and residencies from Caldera Arts and Soapstone.
Erin has taught writing at Marylhurst University, Clark College, Portland Community College, and the University of Iowa, as well as in dozens of writing workshops in elementary, middle and high schools throughout the greater Portland area. She currently teaches at Portland State University.
Erin has been hosting the Portland Spelling Bee since June 2008, and for her, one of the myriad joys of the job is the weekly opportunity to be surrounded by people who both love words and deeply desire to spell them correctly.