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Teachers

Meet Our 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.

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    Merna Ann Hecht

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    Ann Hedreen

  • Headshot of Christine Hemp

    Christine Hemp

  • Headshot of Joel Heng Hartse

    Joel Heng Hartse

  • Headshot of Patricia Henley

    Patricia Henley

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    Gabriella Herkert

  • Headshot of Jose Hernandez Diaz

    Jose Hernandez Diaz

  • Headshot of Claudia Hernandez Ocadiz

    Claudia Hernandez Ocadiz

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    Juan Felipe Herrera

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    Sheila Heti

  • Headshot of Marissa Higgins

    Marissa Higgins

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    Nathan Hill

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    DaMaris B. Hill

  • Headshot of Amy Hirayama

    Amy Hirayama

  • Headshot of Paul Hlava Ceballos

    Paul Hlava Ceballos

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    Tony Hoagland

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    Justin Hocking

  • Headshot of Lauren Hohle

    Lauren Hohle

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    Bruce Holbert

  • Headshot of Jodie Hollander

    Jodie Hollander

  • Headshot of Bill Hollands

    Bill Hollands

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    Santi Holley

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    Tanya Holtland

  • Headshot of Nicole Homer

    Nicole Homer

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Merna Ann Hecht

Headshot of Ann Hedreen

Ann Hedreen

Pronouns: she/her

Ann Hedreen is an author (Her Beautiful Brain), teacher, and documentary filmmaker. Ann has written for 3rd Act Magazine, About Place Journal, The Seattle Times, and other publications, including her award-winning blog, The Restless Nest. She is working on a collection of essays.

Headshot of Christine Hemp

Christine Hemp

Pronouns: she/her

A chapter of Christine Hemp’s memoir, Wild Ride Home, was recently published in The New York Times. Her poems and essays have also appeared in Salon.com, Iowa Review, Psychology Today, and on NPR. She believes that to write well, we must live well, not in terms of "professional success" or achieving the "perfect" essay. story, or poem, but in how we embrace the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and the ecstatic. Only then can we offer our readers the truths they thirst for.

Website: https://christinehemp.com/index.html

Facebook: /hemprope

Instagram: @christinehemp

Headshot of Joel Heng Hartse

Joel Heng Hartse

Joel Heng Hartse teaches writing at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. His books include Dancing about Architecture is a Reasonable Thing to Do (2022), and TL;DR: A Very Brief Guide to Reading & Writing in University (UBC Press, 2023).

Headshot of Patricia Henley

Patricia Henley

Patricia Henley’s fifth collection of short stories, Apple & Palm, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2026. She is the author of three novels, five collections of stories, two chapbooks of poetry, and a stage play. Her first novel, Hummingbird House, was a finalist for the National Book Award and The New Yorker Fiction Prize. Haywire Books published a 20th Anniversary Edition of Hummingbird House in November, 2019. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and other journals. Her first collection of stories, Friday Night at Silver Star (Graywolf), won the Montana First Book Award. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Circle of Women, The Last Best Place, and other anthologies. For 26 years she taught in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Purdue University. She teaches a monthly Zoom workshop for women writers and lives in Kingston, Washington.

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Gabriella Herkert

Pronouns: she/her
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Jose Hernandez Diaz

Pronouns: he/ him/ his

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Go to josehernandezdiaz.com for more information or follow Jose @josehernandezdz.

Headshot of Claudia Hernandez Ocadiz

Claudia Hernandez Ocadiz

Narradora y escritora mexicana. Estudió derecho en la UNAM y administración pública en el ITAM. Cursó Narrativa y Novela en la Escuela de Escritura Ateneu Barcelonés en España. En 2016 fue becada para estudiar Crónica Latina por la Escuela de Periodismo Portátil en colaboración con la Universidad de Stanford. Coautora seleccionada por concurso literario y publicada en las Antologías: Puentes (2017), Sabores de mi tierra (2019) y Efectos secundarios (2020). Ganadora en el Concurso de poesía: "Tu cuerpo de agua" Poetry on Buses Seattle 2016. 

Su testimonio, "No todo lo que brilla es oro. Reinventándome como mujer migrante" fue publicado por INAH en el libro Recuerdos, añoranzas y vivencias (2019). Creadora y autora del blog Khomparte. Sus relatos han sido publicados en los periódicos La Voz de Argentina; La Raza del Noroeste y El Siete Días en el estado de Washington, en la Revista Digital Seattle Escribe y en la organización literaria para escritores emergentes per-e-gren

En 2022 fue ganadora del concurso para realizar la primera residencia de escritura en español en los Estados Unidos otorgada por Mineral School y Seattle Escribe, espacio de donde emerge su primer libro sobre cuentos callejeros.  

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Juan Felipe Herrera

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Sheila Heti

Headshot of Marissa Higgins

Marissa Higgins

Pronouns: she/her/hers
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Nathan Hill

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DaMaris B. Hill

Headshot of Amy Hirayama

Amy Hirayama

Amy Hirayama is a UW Bothell Creative Writing and Poetics MFA candidate who is currently working on her thesis. She is a former middle school teacher who worked in South Seattle for seven years. Amy uses writing as a way to explore her mixed-race Hapa identity, imagine spaces of belonging for herself and connect across difference. Born in the Pacific Northwest, she finds inspiration in the beauty of this region. Amy is a 2021-2022 Imagining America PAGE Fellow. Her poetry can be found in the fall/winter 2021 issue of Strait Up magazine as well as the forthcoming chapbook Hariboetry.

Headshot of Paul Hlava Ceballos

Paul Hlava Ceballos

Pronouns: he/him

Paul Hlava Ceballos is the author of banana [ ], which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. banana [ ] also was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and the Kate Tufts Award. His collaborative chapbook, Banana [ ] / we pilot the blood, shares pages with Quenton Baker and Christina Sharpe. He is a CantoMundista and has been featured on the Poetry Magazine Podcast and Seattle’s The Stranger. He currently is the Poetry Editor of The Seattle Met and practices echocardiography. 

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Tony Hoagland

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Justin Hocking

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Lauren Hohle

Pronouns: She/her

Lauren Hohle is a writer, editor, and educator. Her fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, the Sun, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Ecotone, and other journals.

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Bruce Holbert

Headshot of Jodie Hollander

Jodie Hollander

Pronouns: she/hers
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Bill Hollands

Bill Hollands was born and raised in Miami, Florida, graduated from Williams College, and received his MA in English as a Dr. Herchel Smith Fellow at Cambridge University. He worked for the New York Public Library and Microsoft before becoming a high school English teacher. He lives in Seattle with his husband and their son. He has returned to poetry after a long hiatus, and his recent poems have appeared in such journals as The Adroit Journal, The Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, Rattle, The Florida Review, DIAGRAM, Boulevard, and Plume, as well as on The Slowdown podcast. A multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, he has been a finalist for North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize, Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize in Poetry, Smartish Pace’s Erskine J. Poetry Prize, and New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize. He reads submissions for Poetry Northwest. His debut poetry collection Mangrove (ELJ Editions) will be published in 2025.

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Santi Holley

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Tanya Holtland

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Nicole Homer

NICOLE HOMER is a community college educator, poet, writer, performer, and author of Pecking Order. Homer lives online at nicolehomer.com and lurks on social media as @realnicolehomer.