Hugo House teachers are at the core of our goal to help writers become better writers. Our teachers are writers; they are selected on the basis of their active engagement in the literary world as well as their love of teaching.
Teachers
Hugo House teachers are at the core of our goal to help writers become better writers. Our teachers are writers; they are selected on the basis of their active engagement in the literary world as well as their love of teaching.
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.
Kristi Coulter is author of Nothing Good Can Come From This and the forthcoming Exit Interview. Her work appears in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Elle, and elsewhere. She has taught at Hugo House and the University of Washington. Go to www.kristicoulter.com for more information.
Social Media: @KristiCCCoulter (Twitter and Instagram)
Christina Crabbe writes Campy, Synthy Plant Themed Songs of Queer Joy and Revenge.
Shaun Crawford writes songs for the lost and wondering.
Learn more at Jed Crisologo's website!
DAVID NIKKI CROUSE is author of the short story collections The Man Back There, winner of the Mary McCarthy Award in Short Fiction, Copy Cats, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award, and the forthcoming I’m Here: Alaska Stories. Their collection of novellas, Trouble Will Save You, was published recently by the University of Colorado Press. They have also written horror comic books for Dark Horse Publishing and a graphic novel about a trans superheroine. Nikki is the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Endowed Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Washington-Seattle, where they direct the MFA Program.
Carla Crujido is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the co-editor of the anthology Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays of Being in the World forthcoming from Woodhall Press. Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Yellow Medicine Review, Ricepaper Magazine, Tinfish Press, The Ana, and elsewhere. Originally from San Francisco, she now calls Portland home.
Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and The Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and the Jack Straw Writers Program. Her first book, Tributaries, won the 2016 American Book Award. Her newest book is Instruments of the True Measure (University of Arizona Press, 2018). Go to www.laurada.com for more information.
Instagram: @lauralouiseda
Twitter @Laura_L_Da
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lauralda
Sarah Dalton is a Latina writer, editor, and teacher. She is an alumna of VONA, Macondo, and San Jose State. Her nonfiction has appeared in [pank], MUTHA Magazine, Reed, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, and The Sun's Readers Write.
Sarah Dalton is a Latina writer, editor, and teacher. She is an alumna of VONA, Macondo, and San Jose State. Her nonfiction has appeared in [pank], MUTHA Magazine, Reed, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, and The Sun's Readers Write.
Sarah Dalton is a Latina writer, editor, and teacher. She is an alumna of VONA, Macondo, and San Jose State. Her nonfiction has appeared in [pank], MUTHA Magazine, Reed, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, and The Sun's Readers Write.
Molly Damm is a Writing lecturer at Montana State University, as well as a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in private practice in Bozeman, Montana. Her work has appeared in the Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, Terrain.org, and Western Humanities Review, among other publications. She is the author of the poetry collection Ground-truth (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and was a Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, where she earned her MFA.
Lilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space (2021), a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and the editor of Burn It Down (2019), a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger from Seal Press. She is currently at work on an essay collection about the power and complexity of female friendship. Lilly's writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She lives in New York City, and you can find her on Twitter at @lillydancyger.
Brian Dang (they/them) is a Vietnamese/Chinese playwright/poet/teaching artist based in Duwamish Territory (Seattle). For Brian, writing is an act of envisioning an eventual communing, an opportunity to freeze time as we know it, and a reaching for joy. They really like bread. Website: brianeatswords.com.
With songs that sound like Top 40 hits but read like tarot cards, Brittany Danielle, who has been playing piano since 8-years-old and boasts a graduate degree in music, creates compositions that touch opposite sides of the spectrum. On Danielle’s debut LP, which she will unveil in 2022, many of the tracks were born from the pandemic and the song exercises that kept her sane throughout. Woven together with truths about her mental health (and its own unraveling), the songs represent growth, new connections.
Danielle, who has played in popular bands in Seattle like Purr Gato, graced stages like The Tractor Tavern and those abroad in cities as far away as Germany, has worked in children’s theater and performed in musicals, too. She’s a quilt of experience held with uneasy stitching. At times her songs sound like a stroll down a city street, others like the corners of your consciousness. Standouts include the unburdening, “Hindsight,” and sauntering, “Nothing.” But don’t fret. In the end, of course, she’s got the world dancing on a line.
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