Hugo House Launched Me as a Writer: Book Launch for Bigger by Ren Cedar Fuller
Join Seattle author Ren Cedar Fuller and a panel of Hugo House alums to celebrate our city’s center for writing. Ren took her first of many creative writing classes at Hugo House at the start of the pandemic, and she credits inspirational instructors and the writing friends she met at Hugo House with developing her craft.
In her debut book, Ren explores how loving people who are different from her has expanded her world. She ponders her father’s neurodiversity, her child coming out as transgender, a disability that left her unable to cry, and her immigrant mother’s Alzheimer’s—which carried her back to childhood. Bigger, a memoir-in-essays, won the 2024 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize .Â
A book-signing will follow the panel discussion, and the house bar will be open to serve alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.Â
Stacey Jones
Hugo House and its many brilliant teachers welcomed me into the vast world of creative writing, encouraging me to write and challenging me to write better. The most precious gift Hugo House has given me is the opportunity to build relationships through writing with Darryl, Su, and Ren, and others.Â
Su Cummings
My first personal essay was published in fourth grade (“My Hobby is Art”), but it wasn’t my last. Having studied Creative Nonfiction with Hugo House, my writing keeps growing more expressive and meaningful because that’s where I found a nurturing crew of writers who inspire, coach and root for me.
Darryl Price
The Hugo House gift card my wife bought when I retired ignited a hidden world for me. In classes with Beth Slattery, Lisa Wells and Theo Nestor I found my voice. In our band of merry writers –Â Ren, Su and Stacey – the music of words came to life.
Vani Mandava
What started as a pandemic activity led to a steadfast community of writing friends and an enduring practice that brings rich meaning to all other aspects of life. Excited to see Ren Cedar Fuller’s outstanding book come to life and forever grateful to Beth Slattery who brought us all together!
Ren Cedar Fuller
Ren Cedar Fuller's debut book, Bigger, won the 2024 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Iron Horse Prize and the Santa Fe Writers Project 2023 Literary Awards Program.
Her creative nonfiction essays have won Under the Sun's Summer Writing Contest in 2022, been a finalist in the 2022 Terry Tempest Williams Prize for Creative Nonfiction at North American Review, and placed second in the 2022 Eunice Williams Nonfiction Prize. Ren’s essays have appeared in HerStry, Hippocampus, New England Review, North American Review, and Under the Sun, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays.
Ren is a parent facilitator at TransFamilies, an online hub for families with gender diverse children. She taught public school in California, Oregon, and Washington before founding a nonprofit early learning center in the Seattle area, where she continues teaching parent education.
Ren lives in Seattle with her husband, Jason, and loves to kayak on the Salish Sea. She is currently in the M.F.A. in Writing program at Pacific University.
Beth Slattery
Beth Slattery moved to Seattle after eighteen years of teaching creative writing and literature at Indiana University East. Since her relocation, she has been writing and editing. Beth is currently working on a collection of personal essays about her mid-life marriage to a Zimbabwean, a move from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, and a reluctant acceptance of the call to adventure. Her most recent publications appear in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and Southern Women’s Review. Beth’s recent editing work includes being a “beta” reader for an author with a multi-book publishing contract, content and copy editing of a personal essay collection, and providing comprehensive editing services on an edited academic volume that was later published by Oxford University Press. She has an M.A. in fiction writing from Miami University and an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine—Stonecoast.
Describe your teaching style.
I'm a firm believer that we learn best when we discuss subjects, ask big questions (that sometimes don't have answers), and then apply that new knowledge (or questions) to our writing. In other words: we talk a lot; we write a lot. Added bonus: we have fun.
