Jaed Coffin

Jaed Coffin is an assistant professor of creative writing (nonfiction/fiction) in the English department and M.F.A. program. Coffin joined the UNH faculty as a lecturer, in fall 2014. He earned his B.A. in philosophy from Middlebury College and his M.F.A. in fiction from the Stonecoast M.F.A. at University of Southern Maine. His first book, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants (Da Capo/Perseus 2008), chronicles the summer he spent as a Buddhist monk in his mother's village in central Thailand. His forthcoming book, Roughhouse Friday (from Riverhead/Penguin), is about the year he won the middleweight title of a barroom boxing show in Juneau, Alaska. Coffin has lectured widely at over twenty colleges and universities, where he speaks on topics of multiculturalism, masculinity, and the environment. Prior to coming to UNH, Coffin served as a lecturer at Bowdoin College and as the artist in residence at the Telling Room, a nonprofit storytelling foundation that empowers refugee communities in Maine. He has published over forty articles and essays in a broad range of journals and magazines, and has also served as the Wilson Fellow in Creative Writing at Deerfield Academy, a Resident Fellow at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, and the William Sloane Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. In 2015, he was a featured storyteller on the MOTH Radio Hour.