Teachers

Melissa Freeman is a writer, lawyer, mindfulness teacher, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of The Container Community, a guided journaling community based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her ability to facilitate grounding spaces for reflection and connection, her unique approach to mindful growth, and her warm, belly laugh.

Melissa founded The Container Community in 2020 as an antidote to the isolation of lockdown and to respond to the eternal need to find authentic and meaningful connection, both with ourselves and others. She had previously left her career in law after her own self-discovery journey left her wanting something more.

Over the past two years, Melissa has guided dozens of groups and teams through her unique self-reflection process. She’s a big believer in the wisdom and insight contained within each individual, and the power of growing together in community.

Melissa graduated with highest honors from the University of California, Davis with a B.A. in English, and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Camellia Han Freeman is a Seattle-based writer and community educator. Past honors include notable mention in Best American Essays, Image’s Milton Postgraduate Fellowship, Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a summer residency in Provincetown.

Leora Fridman is author of My Fault, in addition to other books of prose, poetry, and translation. Work appears in the New York Times, the Rumpus, and the Believer, among others. She is currently faculty associate in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University, and Curator in Residence at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. For more information check out Leora's website: www.leorafridman.com

Kim Fu is the author of, most recently, the story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, which received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Foreword, Booklist, and Quill and Quire. Her first novel, For Today I Am a Boy, won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, as well as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her second novel, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the OLA Evergreen Award. Fu’s writing has appeared in Granta, the Atlantic, the New York Times, BOMB, Hazlitt, and the TLS. She lives in Seattle.

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Learn more on Levi Fuller's website!

Jeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with multiple sclerosis who served as the 2nd Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She's the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the Elgin Award, and the upcoming Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. She has a B.S. in Biology and M.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Pacific University. Her work appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.

Kate Gale is the co-founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press. She is the author of several books of poetry and of the libretto Rio de Sangre which was performed at the Florentine Opera.

Matt Gano is a Seattle based poet, MC, and Teaching Artist currently writing, recording, and performing as, "ENTENDRES." He is the author of Suits for the Swarm, a poetry collection from MoonPath Press, co-founder of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Program, and was the principle bricklayer/Program Director of Abbey Arts' NEXT STAGE program—a career training program for emerging artists. He works as a writer-in-residence for Seattle Arts and Lectures: Writers in the Schools program, and as a guest teaching artist for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. Gano made waves nationally as a spoken word poet and Slam champion in the early 2000’s while representing Seattle multiple years at the National Poetry Slam. With a voice rooted in and born of 90’s hiphop, Gano studied and built his craft in a rising era of the Seattle poetry and hiphop scene. Performing and writing alongside poets, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, Tara Hardy, Iyeoka Okoawo, and many others, he completed multiple tours across the United States as a featured artist performing poetry on some of the world’s most legendary stages.

Angela Garbes is the author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, called “a landmark and a lightning storm” by the New Yorker. Her first book, Like a Mother, was an NPR Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Washington State Book Award in nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, New York, Bon Appétit, and featured on NPR's Fresh Air. Garbes is also a community advocate for reproductive justice, working families, and equity and inclusion. A first-generation Filipina American, lives with her family in Seattle. 

Alma Garcia is the author of All That Rises (University of Arizona Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared as an award-winner in Narrative Magazine, Enizagam, Passages North, and Boulevard; has most recently appeared in phoebe, Kweli Journal, Duende, and Bluestem; and appears in anthologies including Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat Journal of the Arts). She is a past recipient of a fellowship from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She is a fiction instructor and manuscript consultant at Hugo House.

Describe your teaching style.

My teaching style is energetic, enthusiastic, encouraging, supportive, and (hopefully!) fun.

Diego, known as @Agitprop_poet, crafts verse that agitates, illuminates, and refuses to look away. His poetry blends political urgency with lyrical precision, drawing from lived experience, collective memory, and radical imagination. Whether on stage or the page, Diego’s work challenges silence and celebrates resistance. He’s performed across the Pacific Northwest and beyond, building community through word and witness. Expect poems that provoke, mourn, and mobilize.