Teachers

Serena Chopra is a writer, dancer, filmmaker and a visual and performance artist. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, a RedLine Artist In-Residence and a Fulbright Scholar (Bangalore, India). Her third book, Dayawati, Of Mercy, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2026. She has two films, Dogana/Chapti (2019, Official Selection at Frameline43 and Seattle Queer Film Festival) and Mother Ghosting (2018). She was a featured artist in Harper's Bazaar (India), Revry, as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives.” She has recent publications with The Academy of American Poets, Burrow Press Review, Sink, Foglifter, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (Washington State Book Award, 2021). She also has critical essays in Matters of Feminist Practice (Belladonna Collective, 2019), Rehearsing Racial Equity: A Critical Anthology on Anti-Racism and Repair in the Arts (Amherst College Press, forthcoming 2024) and in the republication of Judy Grahn’s The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition (Sinister Wisdom, Fall 2023). Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University. You can find out more at SerenaChopra.com.

Aimee’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC Think, Poets & Writers, Atticus Review, Entropy, and more. She is a writing instructor and editor and the founder of Writing Personhood, a writing center for adoptees only. She is currently querying her memoir about adoption and identity. Find out more about Aimee at aimeechristian.net @thewriteaimee

HENRY ELIZABETH CHRISTOPHER is a trans writer from Akron, Ohio. His writing has been published in journals such as Witness, The Threepenny Review, Gordon Square Review, Delay Fiction, HASH, and Gigantic Sequins, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Henry works at CRAFT Literary as the section editor for critical essays and interviews section and editorial feedback consultant. His debut novel, No One Dies in Palmyra Ohio, is available through What Books Press. He’s currently working toward his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Hon Lai Chu is one of Hong Kong's most prominent writers and the author of several novels, including Mending Bodies, Degravitation Zone, and A Dictionary of Two Cities, co-authored with Dorothy Tse, which won the Hong Kong Book Prize. Her most recent works are Half-Eclipse and Darkness under the Sun, two diaristic essay collections about Hong Kong. She has also received accolades from Taiwan's Unitas Literary Association, the Liang Shiu-chiu Literature Award, the Dream of the Red Chamber Award, and the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature, among many others.

Ansley is the author of Bloodline (MoonPath Press 2024) and the chapbook Geography (dancing girl press 2015). Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Colorado Review, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. She is the director of the Writing Center at The Evergreen State College and teaches composition, rhetoric, and creative writing classes at various organizations around the Pacific Northwest. She currently lives in Olympia, Washington.

SARA CLINE is a poet, birder, comedian, and University of Washington MFA candidate born and bred in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. She received a BA in psychology and Honors English at the University of Texas in Austin, and was pleased to receive the Burleson prize for her thesis on Virginia Woolf's ambivalent Hellenism. Her work can be found in The Albion Review, A Velvet Giant, Hothouse Literary Journal, and the Bad AI and Beyond Festival.

Mac Collins is a Texas born and Atlanta raised poet. He studied political science and public administration at the University of Miami. After becoming disillusioned with the circus that is politics, Mac decided to do something meaningful with his life and is now pursuing an MFA student at the University of Washington. In his free time he enjoys playing guitar, collecting records, and shooting pool.

STEPHANIE COLWELL is a Black writer from right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She likes to write about life, love, and desire from a fat Black perspective. If she had more money she'd buy a sphynx cat. She has yet to be published or win any awards, but maybe when she does, she'll finally get that cat. 

Tara Conklin is a writer and former lawyer whose first novel, The House Girl, (William Morrow) was a New York Times bestseller, #1 IndieNext pick, Target book club pick and has been translated into 8 languages. Her second novel, The Last Romantics (William Morrow) was published in 2019 to wide acclaim. An instant New York Times bestseller, The Last Romantics was a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, IndieNext Pick, and was selected by Jenna Bush Hager as the inaugural read for The Today Show Book Club. Her latest novel Community Board is out now and available in stores and online in all the usual places. The recipient of an Artist Trust grant, her writing has appeared in Vogue, the Berkshire Eagle and elsewhere. 

​

Before turning to fiction, Tara worked for an international human rights organization and at corporate law firms in London and New York. She was born in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands and grew up in western Massachusetts. She holds a BA in history from Yale University, a JD from NYU School of Law and a Master of Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Tara now lives in Seattle with her family where she writes, teaches at Hugo House and works with private clients on manuscript development. 

BRENDAN CONSTANTINE is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Poem-a-Day. He currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been working with speech pathologists across the country to develop poetry workshops for people with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). 

Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Hailed as “original, politically daring, and passionately written” by Vogue, her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree earned the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an Indie Next Pick, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection.

Her debut memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds was named a TIME “Best Book of Summer.” Rojas Contreras brings readers into her childhood, where her grandfather, Nono, was a renowned community healer gifted with “the secrets”: powers that included talking to the dead, fortunetelling, treating the sick, and moving the clouds. The Man Who Could Move Clouds interweaves enchanting family lore, Colombian history, and a reckoning with the bounds of reality.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ essays and short stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. She has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, the Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Rojas Contreras is a Visiting Writer at the University of San Francisco. 

Corinna Cook is the author of Leavetakings, an essay collection (University of Alaska Press 2020). She is a former Fulbright Fellow, an Alaska Literary Award recipient, and a Rasmuson Foundation awardee. Corinna’s creative work appears in Flyway, Alaska Quarterly Review, Alaska Magazine, Brink, and elsewhere; her journalism appears in Yukon North of Ordinary and GlacierHub; her critical articles appear in Assay, New Writing, and Essay Daily; and she writes about teaching for Pedagogy and American Literary Studies. Corinna holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. More at corinnacook.com.

I will send you BIO and photo in the email, as having trouble negotiating this form with other docs.

TO be clear: the POETS are the performers. I can be there to introduce the event and to bring it to a close with a theater action with the entire audience.

Diverse in ethnicities, experiences, and careers, Hiromi Cota (They/She) is an Indigenous Okinawan and Yaeyaman, as well as a Mexican, Japanese, and Swedish American. Hiromi has been a special operations heavy weapons expert, medical first responder, adjunct professor, rave journalist, and the flaming-sword-swinging lead in a heavy metal opera. They (singular) have worked on over 100 TTRPG books and love creating & expanding worlds. In their ‘free’ time, they’re an actor-combatant, specializing in spears and daggers. They’ve lived in nations around the world but have settled down in Seattle with their spouse Randi and their (plural) dog Nasus.