People Background
Claire Boyles MA, MFA

Claire Boyles MA, MFA

Nature Writing Concentration Faculty

Contact Information

cboyles@western.edu
Remote
Personal Website

Functional Area

Nature Writing – Creative Writing

Education

MFA, Colorado State University, Creative Writing, 2018
MA, Colorado State University, Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language, 2001
BA, Colorado State University, Political Science, 1997

Biography

Claire Boyles is a writer and former farmer. A 2022 Whiting Award winner in fiction, she is the author of Site Fidelity, which won the High Plains Book Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award, the Colorado Book Award, and the Reading the West Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Sierra Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other journals, and she is a screenwriter with multiple credits on the Hallmark Channel. She teaches in low-residency MFA programs at both Eastern Oregon University and Western Colorado University. Her debut novel,  Appraisals, is forthcoming in 2026.