Teachers

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.

Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. In 2022, she served as executive editor for Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World. In 2021, her collection of micro essays, Allegiance, received the Bronze IPPY award (Essays). Her poetry chapbook, Other Small Histories, won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award, judged by Patricia Smith. In 2015, she received the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence for her nonfiction book, Writing the Hawaiʻi Memoir. Darien lives with her family on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Websites: dariengee.com and writer-ish.com

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. In 2022, she served as executive editor for Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World. In 2021, her collection of micro essays, Allegiance, received the Bronze IPPY award (Essays). Her poetry chapbook, Other Small Histories, won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award, judged by Patricia Smith. In 2015, she received the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence for her nonfiction book, Writing the Hawaiʻi Memoir. Darien lives with her family on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Websites: dariengee.com and writer-ish.com

Nicole J. Georges is a writer, illustrator, podcaster, and professor. Her Lambda Award-winning graphic memoir, Calling Dr. Laura, was called “engrossing, lovable, smart and ultimately poignant” by Rachel Maddow. Nicole’s second graphic memoir, Fetch :How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home, is currently being developed for television. Nicole is the creator of the podcast Relative Fiction with Oregon Public Broadcasting, and hosts a weekly queer feminist art podcast, Sagittarian Matters. This is her third Sister Spit tour.

EMILY GIANGIULIO is a writer from Philadelphia currently working toward an MFA in prose at the University of Washington. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Bennington Review and Hayden’s Ferry Review, and has recently been nominated for the 2023 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and the Pushcart Prize. When not writing, she frequents the tide pools along the Washington coast and tends to her growing family of plants. You can find her at https://emilygiangiulio.com. 

Kaelie Giffel, Ph.D., is the author of the academic memoir, University for a Good Woman. She writes about feminism, literature, and travel. You can find her writing published and forthcoming in Public Books, Full Stop, Oh Reader, SOLO Travel, and other places. She currently lives in Helena, MT where you can find her lifting weights and visiting hot springs.

Describe your teaching style.

My classes revolve around discussion: while I prepare mini-lectures, discussion questions, and have destinations in mind, classes are at their best when everyone comes with thoughts about the reading and about their own writing. In that way, what you get out of the class is commensurate with what you put in. We also move between discussing craft and having broader conversations about the content of a work because you cannot separate the two. Finally, I always end class with writing prompts to help generate material related to our discussions that students can work up into more polished pieces.

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020), won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Gastronomica, Crab Creek Review, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper and a 2022 Jack Straw Writer. Her latest work is A Little Bit of Land, published by Oregon State University Press.

Anis is your hot gay dad. According to their titas, they are and always have been masyadong suplada, masungit, walang hiya. They write about surviving sexual violence, which is to say, they write about returning to trust. They are disliked, disbelieved, and less and less afraid. Follow their instagram attempts @artista_anisgisele.

c.r. glasgow (doc/she/we) is a non-binary, queer, first-generation Afro-Caribbean-American healing artist, writer, and educator. c’s work has been supported by fellowships and craft shops through Hugo House, VONA, The Watering Hole, Hurston/Wright, and Anaphora. We have also been the recipient of the Haitian Heritage Scholarship through VONA in 2021. Their chapbook the Devils that raised Us was longlisted at Frontier Poetry. c’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Killens Review, Black Lawrence Press, Breathe, Moko: Caribbean Arts & Letters, and Rigorous Magazine; and performances with Butch Is Not a Dirty Word, Leaf Lit Live!, Brooklyn Yawp, LitCrawl Seattle, and the Seattle Public Library, Hugo House, and Elliott Bay Book Company. With nearly 20 years as a healing artist, doc supports the global majority in addressing grief, liminal space, and intergenerational and ancestral traumas towards a path of embodied liberation.  

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet is the author of The Greenhouse (Frost Place Chapbook Prize) and Tulips, Water, Ash (Morse Poetry Prize). Her poems have appeared in journals including Plume, Zyzzyva, and Kenyon Review and anthologies including Nasty Women Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She holds a BA in contemporary American literature from Yale University and an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where she was a Javits Fellow. Lisa lives in Portland, OR, where she reads, writes, edits, parents, and cohosts the literary reading series Lilla Lit. (lisagluskinstonestreet.com)

Veronica Golos is author of four poetry books: A Bell Buried Deep (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize); Vocabulary of Silence (New Mexico Poetry Prize); Rootwork and GIRL (Naji Naaman Honor Prize for Poetry.) Her work has been extensively translated into Arabic; also Persian and Italian. She lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Edgar Gomez is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, he is a recipient of the 2019 Marcia McQuern Award for nonfiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in This American Life, POPSUGAR, Narratively, Longreads, Catapult, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Lamda Literary, and elsewhere online and in print. His first book, a memoir titled High-Risk Homosexual, is forthcoming in January 2022 with Soft Skull Press. He currently lives in New York, where he is saving up for good lotion. For more, visit EdgarGomez.net.

Laura Gonzalez is an editorial assistant at Catapult Books. Previously, she was a marketing assistant at Catapult, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull Press and a bookseller at The Strand. She lives in Philadelphia, where she likes to bake cookies and play with her cats.

Oranj Goodman is just happy to be here.