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.
Christine Kwon is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue (Southeast Missouri State University Press 2023), which won the Cowles Poetry Prize. She is literary editor of Tilted House and lives in New Orleans. Read more on christinekwonwrites.com.
Catherine Kyle is the author of Fulgurite (Cornerstone Press, forthcoming), Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and other collections. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She was the winner of the 2019-2020 COG Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize in poetry. She is an assistant professor at DigiPen Institute of Technology, where she teaches creative writing and literature.
Samantha Ladwig is an essayist, creative writing instructor, and book reviewer based on a small island in the Salish Sea. Her work has been published by The Cut, Literary Hub, Vulture, Bustle, Vice, Real Simple, HuffPost, and Vox, among many others. Find her at samanthaladwig.com.
Describe your teaching style.
I like to create a warm and inviting atmosphere so that students feels comfortable to explore whatever subject they want to write about and also push through creative challenges to pinpoint the emotion of that subject. Respect is a key component of comfort, and I prioritize that by engaging with each student and managing constructive facilitation. My goal with teaching is to inspire, for students to leave the workshop excited to get back to the page. Simply tuning in to each student and including everyone in the overall conversation does just that.
USAMA LALI is a Pakistani writer working with English, Urdu and Punjabi, currently finishing his second year at the UW MFA program on the prose track. He is a recipient of the David Guterson Award 2023 and a Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlistee whose Punjabi poetry translations have appeared in Pancham and fiction is forthcoming in Addastories. You can find him on instagram @usamalali and twitter @usamalali_
Meghan Lamb is the author of COWARD, Failure to Thrive, All of Your Most Private Places, and Silk Flowers. She is a lecturer at the University of Chicago and the nonfiction editor of Nat. Brut, a Whiting Award-winning journal. Go to http://meghanlamb.com/ for more information.
Susan Landgraf was awarded an Academy of American Poetsâ Laureate award in 2020. Books include The Inspired Poet from Two Sylvias Press, What We Bury Changes the Ground, and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have been published in journals and magazines, most recently Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Calyx, The Meadow, and Tar River. Sheâs given more than 150 writing workshops and served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020.
Susan Landgraf was awarded an Academy of American Poetsâ Laureate award in 2020. Books include The Inspired Poet from Two Sylvias Press, What We Bury Changes the Ground, and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have been published in journals and magazines, most recently Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Calyx, The Meadow, and Tar River. Sheâs given more than 150 writing workshops and served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020.
Piper Lane is a writer, teacher, and fisherman from Homer, Alaska. She holds an MFA from UW Seattle. Both a Hugo House fellow alum and a Hedgebrook alum, her work can be found in PANK, Fourth River, Territory, and elsewhere. For more information go to piperlane.org or follow on Twitter: thealaskanwitch and Instagram: piper__l.
Sigrun Susan Lane is a poet from Seattle Washington. After a successful career in business, she returned to her initial passion: to be a writer. She began writing poetry with Nelson and Beth Bentley and publishing poems in regional and national journals such as the Crab Creek Review and The Seattle Review. Sheâs won prizes for her poems from the Seattle Arts Commission and the King County Arts Commission.
Lane has published three chapbooks; Little Bones and SALT from Goldfish Press and Drive from Finishing Line Press. SALT won the Josephine Miles award âfor excellence in poetryâ in 2020. Sigrun Susan is of Icelandic descent and often draws on her familyâs history in her poems, stories of immigrants and of the âold countryâ and of its history.
Nora Langeâs novel Us Fools is longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and New York Times Editorsâ Choice. Noraâs writing has appeared in BOMB, Hazlitt, Joyland, American Short Fiction and elsewhere.
Angela LangerâŻis originally from Colorado but has lived in Seattle for almost 18 years. She is a performer, theatre student, lawyer, lover of comedy, and proud dog parent of Frank the pug. She plays Forouq.Â
Erin Langner is an essayist whose work focuses on art, architecture and identity. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and METROPOLIS magazines. Her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in december, The Offing, The Normal School, Hobart, The Stranger, and ARCADE. She lives in Seattle and works on exhibitions and publications at the Frye Art Museum. Her debut collection, Souvenirs from Paradise, will be published by Zone 3 Press in 2022.