Caylin Capra-Thomas

Caylin Capra-Thomas is a writer and educator pursuing a PhD in English from the University of Missouri, where she has been recognized with the William Peden Award for Outstanding Teaching of Creative Writing. She has a BA in English from the University of Vermont and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana.

Caylin has taught first-year writing and rhetoric to undergraduates at the University of Missouri, the University of Montana, and Santa Fe College, where she also tutored in the Writing Lab. She has taught creative writing at the University of Missouri, the University of Montana, and Idyllwild Arts Academy, an arts boarding high school where she was on creative writing faculty as the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence. Caylin’s former students have gone on to publish their work in respected literary journals and have placed in national writing competitions like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Poetry Society of America’s Student Poetry Competition, and Narrative Magazine’s High School Writing Competition. She has also taught ESL to secondary students in Toulouse, France and to adults in Boston.

Caylin knows that all students are capable of growth in their writing, and some of her most enthusiastic evaluations have come from students who said they previously hated English classes. She emphasizes writing as a process, and she’ll never climb down from her messy-first-draft soapbox. She also specializes in demystifying research and its role in shaping ideas and arguments, helping students experience it less as an onerous, strictly academic form of torture and more as a curiosity-satisfying practice that helps them better know and articulate the world they live in.

As for her own writing, Caylin is the author of a poetry collection, Iguana Iguana, which was listed by the New York Public Library as one of 2022’s Best New Poetry Books for Adults, as well as two chapbooks of poetry. The recipient of numerous awards and honors for her writing, her individual poems and creative nonfiction essays have been published widely in literary journals, and she has also published interviews and scholarly writing. When not writing, teaching, or reading for her comprehensive exams, she can be found playing with her dog, a half-Chihuahua-half-menace-to-society named Frankie, or making up songs with her partner. She lives in Missouri, but she calls New England home.