Teachers

The Go Janes feature ukulele, guitar, and generous doses of delicious harmony vocals. 

We have decades of experience as creative artists, community organizers, educators and inquisitive consumers of life. Arni and Patrice are members of the satirical trio Uncle Bonsai; Kathleen Tracy is an accomplished solo artist and community chorus director. Patrice has produced the Wintergrass Festival almost from its inception. Arni and Patrice are also visual artists. and Arni and Kathleen are both sought after educators and coaches working with children, adults and the differently-abled. 

Our writing ranges from tender and sweet love tributes to the simple act of being human with each other, to how weird it is that magicians used to (pretend to) saw women in half for entertainment. From monkey-infested golf courses in India, and what that teaches us about how to greet life’s challenges, to letting go of our independent children, and losing those we love in more lasting ways. Along the way we pay homage to our ancestors and to each others’ most idiosyncratic selves. And there are knife-throwers, and howling dogs, and how the pandemic made us fight with each other (and ourselves). 

Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of the interdisciplinary collaboration (with visual artist Carrie DeBacker) Alchemy For Cells & Other Beasts, the chapbook Yesterday, the Bees, and the poetry collection Rust Fish; her prose appears in such places as Brevity and Gettysburg Review. Recipient of a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation as well as a Residency in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Maya is Associate Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Poetry Faculty for Western Colorado University's low-res MFA. Find Maya on Twitter @MayaJZeller.

Sonora Jha is the author of four books, including the novel The Laughter, winner of the 2024 Washington State Book Award. Her previous books are the novel Foreign (2013) and the memoir How To Raise A Feminist Son (2021). After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a Ph.D. in media and public affairs. Sonora’s work has been featured in The New York Times, on the BBC, in literary anthologies, and elsewhere. She is a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University and lives in Seattle. Her new novel, Intemperance, will be out from Harper Via in October 2025.

Nanya Jhingran is a poet, scholar and teacher from Lucknow, India currently living by the coastal margin of the Salish Sea, on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People (upon which the city of Seattle was built). She is an Associate Editor at Poetry Northwest, where she edits the book reviews section. Her recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Seventh Wave, Poetry Northwest, and Honey Literary, among others. You can find her online at nanyajhingran.com

Ruth Joffre is the author of the story collection Night Beast, which was longlisted for The Story Prize. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Lightspeed, Pleiades, khōréō, The Florida Review Online, Reckoning, Wigleaf, Baffling Magazine, and the anthologies Best Microfiction 2021 & 2022, Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness, and Evergreen: Grim Tales & Verses from the Gloomy Northwest. A graduate of Cornell University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Ruth served as the 2020-2022 Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House and co-organized the Fight for Our Lives performance series. In 2023, she will be a visiting writer at University of Washington Bothell. 

Describe your teaching style.

In generative classes, I like to give students a lot of opportunities to try things out and experiment with unfamiliar styles with the help of gentle guidance and examples. Students may be introduced to new concepts but will have lots of time to ask questions and experiment during class time.

Janae Johnson is an award-winning poet, performer, and educator. Her writing celebrates and centers on Black queer masculinity, kinship, and belonging. She is a former National Poetry Slam Champion, Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, and a founder of two nationally recognized poetry venues: The Root Slam (Oakland, CA) and The House Slam (Boston, MA). Janae’s full-length poetry collection Lessons on Being Tenderheaded is forthcoming in Spring 2022 by Write Bloody Publishing. Janae currently resides in Tacoma, WA. 

Clare Johnson is a dyke-identified writer + visual artist, with honors including fellowships from Jack Straw and Mineral School; residencies at Surel’s Place, Crosstown Arts and Vashon Artist Residency; and publications including Poetry Northwest, Raven Chronicles and Shake The Tree. Recent multidisciplinary public art projects include banners decorating fencing around a Tiny House Village; window art in Cal Anderson Park about HIV and family; a banner series based on local seniors’ memories around water; and a scavenger hunt of art on the backs of traffic signs (currently viewable along the Delridge-Highland Park Neighborhood Greenway in West Seattle). For 15 years Clare has also drawn/written on a post-it every night to hold onto something from each ending day, making over 5,000 pieces so far, which were excerpted for years in a monthly Seattle Review of Books lyric essay column. 

Zachary Kellian is the editor-in-chief of an award-winning international literary journal committed to championing new and diverse voices. As an author,​ he has had over a dozen​ short stories published in the last two years. For more information go to zacharykellian.com or follow on social media @zackellian.

Jeremiah (He/Him) has spent the last four decades on and around stages all over the Pacific Northwest, doing everything from writing, producing, and performing in original fantasy rock operas, swinging swords as a knight in shining armor in a professional jousting troupe, moonlighting as a lyric tenor in traditional opera companies, playing roles and managing tech in countless musical theater productions, and throwing horns as a vocalist and guitarist in symphonic metal bands. He is also an indie video game developer, specializing in narrative design, technical art, and music and audio composition. In his free time, he loves crafting elaborate, emotional storylines for his D&D players, and has been a ‘Forever DM’ for close to thirty (amazing) years.