Nancy Canyon’s (2007) story “Ringed Light on Freshwater Swamp” was one of ten Walk Award Winners in The Poetry Department’s Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest. Nancy’s essay “Abuse” was short-listed for Memoir Magazine’s #MeToo essay contest.

Bernard Grant (2016) spoke on the panel "Pedagogical Interplay: Combining Composition and Creative Writing" at the UC Graduate Conference.

Jill McCabe Johnson (2008) received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for the NEH Summer Scholar Institute "The Native American West." Jill participated in two panels at the Orcas Island Lit Fest: "Writing the Unspeakable," with RWW Director Rick Barot and alumna Tina Schumann (2009), moderated by RWW faculty member Kevin Clark, and "From Sea to Land to Sky: Nature as Storyteller," with Thor Hanson and Jonathan White. She also emceed the Battle of Genres at the Orcas Island Lit Fest. Her chapbook Pendulum was a finalist in the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Contest and will be published by Seven Kitchens Press in July.

Carol McMahon (2016) read poetry at the Stone Canoe launch on April 20, 2018 in Syracuse, New York. Carol also read at the Mom Egg Review launch on June 2 at Poets House in New York, New York.

Warren Read’s (2015) novel Ash Falls was a gold medalist in the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards for Best Regional Fiction: West (Pacific) and winner of the 12th annual National Indie Excellence Awards for Best Regional Fiction: West. Ash Falls was also a Silver award winner for the 2017 Foreword Reviews INDIES for General Fiction.

Julie Riddle (2009) auditioned for and read her essay "These Words Are True" as a cast member of the 2018 Listen to Your Mother Spokane show.

Tina Schumann’s (2009) anthology Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents was a bronze medalist in the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Multicultural Non-Fiction Adult category.

Chris Wilson Simpkins (2012) won third place and a fellowship in the Summer Literary Seminars' 2018 Poetry Contest; Chris plans to attend the seminar in Nairobi, Kenya, in December 2018.

Cindy Skaggs (2017) accepted a position as an adjunct professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University. Cindy read her recent essay, "Check Yes or No," at the Spring Reading event at Pikes Peak Community College in April, and she was a Spotlight Author at the Mountain of Authors annual mini-conference.

Jen Soriano (2018) was chosen as a finalist for the 2018 Newfound Prose Prize for her nonfiction chapbook manuscript "Making the Tongue Dry."

Molly Spencer’s (2017) poem “Interior with a Woman Peeling Oranges, Snapping Beans” won the Poetry Society of America’s 2018 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award.