Teachers

Emme Lund’s most recent novel, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest, was awarded the 2019 Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Fiction and was just nominated for The Oregon Book Award. Her previous novel is The Sacred Text of Rosa Who is Great. Emme’s short pieces have appeared in Electric Literature, TIME Magazine, The Rumpus, Romper, the Portland Mercury, and Autostraddle, among many other venues. She lives and writes in Portland.

Balin Lusby is a magician, a maker, an author, a poet, an engineer, an artist, a fencer, an archer, and a two-time brain tumor survivor. His award-winning magic seeks to spark joy in every audience member, from child to adult, while his poetry shares complex trauma in a way that is accessible to people from all walks of life. His poems and short stories have been published in Highline College’s Arcturus and featured in VALA's Reviving exhibition, his magic has received awards from the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians, and some of his creations have been displayed at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire. You can find him online on Facebook and Instagram with the handle TheGreatCigma and at www.balinlusby.com.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran-American author, editor, and translator. She is the author of Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022); the chapbook Piedra (La Chifurnia, 2022); and the poetry collection, Matria, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Alexandra holds fellowships at CantoMundo and Letras Latinas and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, poets.org, World Literature Today, and the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog, among others. Her translations of contemporary Latin American poetry appear in Poetry International, FENCE, and Tupelo Quarterly and she is the translator of Family or Oblivion by Elena Salamanca and Prewar by Tania Pleitez. She is the co-founding editor of Kalina, a press that showcases bilingual, Central American-themed books and she is assistant editor at SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women-identifying poets. Website: www.alexandralyttonregalado.com

Nan Ma is a mother, teacher, and contributing book reviewer for The International Examiner. She writes creatively in both Chinese and English.

Alex Madison is a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Bitch, Salon, Harvard Review and elsewhere. She holds a Master in Teaching from the University of Washington and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Describe your teaching style.

It's important to me that every writer feels "speaking rights" in the room, so I often employ turn-and-talk and small group discussion practices, as well as invitations for larger-group conversation. At the same time, I also want to share the wisdom I've acquired from my own teachers and readings, so I will provide handouts and brief discussion leadership (i.e some spurts of lecture and talking "at" you). I like to invite writers to share their own writing but will not require it in this class; you can always opt to share your experience with the between-class habits without sharing the output.

Mita Mahato is a comix artist and poet whose work joins fragments of used and discarded materials in poetic experiments that dramatize ecosystemic survival against capitalism. Her books are Arctic Play (The 3rd Thing 2024) and In Between (Pleiades 2017), and her poetry comix have appeared in places including PRISM, Ecotone, Shenandoah, Iterant, ANMLY, and Drunken Boat. Her work has been supported by San Francisco Center for the Book, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK), Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), Loghaven, Storyknife, Black Earth Institute, Mineral School, and Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

TAYLOR MALI is a four-time National Poetry Slam champion and one of the original poets on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. The author of six books of poetry including Late Father & Other Poems, he is also the inventor of Metaphor Dice, a game that helps writers think more figuratively. He lives in Brooklyn.

Usman T. Malik (CW ‘13) is the award-winning author of Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan and has published stories in Al-Jazeera, WIRED, Center for Science and Imagination’s Us In Flux, New Voices of Fantasy and more than a dozen best of the year anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series.

Born in New Mexico and raised in Nebraska and Colorado, Erin Malone is the author of two full-length collections: Site of Disappearance, finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Hover, as well as a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make. Recent honors include the Coniston Prize and the Robert Creeley Memorial Prize, and residency support from Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Anderson Center, Ucross and Jentel Foundations. The recipient of grants and fellowships from Artist Trust, 4Culture, Jack Straw, and the Colorado Council on the Arts, Erin formerly taught in Writers in the Schools, served as Editor of Poetry Northwest, and now works as a bookseller. She lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington State with her husband, novelist Shawn Wong.

Website: www.erinmalonepoet.com

Instagram: @erinmalonepoet

What started as a pandemic activity led to a steadfast community of writing friends and an enduring practice that brings rich meaning to all other aspects of life. Excited to see Ren Cedar Fuller’s outstanding book come to life and forever grateful to Beth Slattery who brought us all together!

Becky Mandelbaum is the author of The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals (Simon & Schuster, 2020), an Indie Next Pick, and Bad Kansas (UGA Press, 2017), which received the 2016 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the 2018 High Plains Book Award for First Book, and was a Kansas Notable Book. Her short fiction, essays, and humor writing have appeared in The New Yorker, One Story, The Sun, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. 

She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Writing by Writers, Lighthouse Works, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation and was a finalist for the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Short Story Award, the Joyland Open Border Fiction Contest, the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Prize in Fiction, and the DISQUIET Prize for Fiction. She has taught creative writing at the University of California Davis, Hugo House, and through Whatcom Community College’s Chuckanut Writers Series. Originally from Kansas, she currently lives in Bellingham, Washington.

Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad, 2023) which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, and author of Blue Hallelujahs. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among other foundations. For 10 years she curated Soul Sister Revue, a quarterly reading series that promoted poetry as storytelling and featured emerging poets, poet laureates, and Pulitzer prize winners. Manick’s poem “Things I Carry into the World” was made into a film by Motionpoems and debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A storyteller at literary festivals, libraries, and museums, her work has also featured in VOICES, an audio play by Aja Monet and Eve Ensler’s V-Day, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Brooklyn Rail, the Rumpus and other outlets. She currently serves on the editorial board of Alice James Books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York but travels widely for poetry.

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, jean mann picked up the guitar in 1995. A self-taught Americana singer-songwriter, she has released eight original records; performing on tenor and acoustic guitars, ukulele and harmonica in support of an ethereal vocal style. Touring since 2000, jean has headlined house concerts and listening rooms, churches, wineries, festivals; and performed in such iconic rooms as CBGB's in New York. She has opened for Peter Mulvey, Peter Himmelman, Blame Sally and shared the stage with Laura Veirs and Vicci Martinez. In 2014, she made her tour debut in Europe, and continues growing her international fan base. When she's not teaching ukulele/songwriting lessons at her cottage in Seattle, jean is recording her ninth album at Froglips Studio in Indianola, WA.

Corinne Manning's debut story collection We Had No Rules has received starred reviews from Booklist and Publisher's Weekly the latter noting it "exquisitely examines queer relationships with equal parts humor, heartache, and titillation." Corinne has taught for Hugo House since 2011.

Magda Manning is a queer trans writer, artist, and educator from Taos, New Mexico. They received their MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2019, and are a current Hugo House Fellow (2022-2023). For Magda, writing is a process of self-making, a way of engaging with/in community, and a powerful practice of embodiment for all people, young and old. They are in a two-person cribbage league with their mom, and live in Seattle with their partner. 

Marjorie Manwaring lives in Seattle where she is a technical writer and poet. She is the author of Search for a Velvet-Lined Cape (Mayapple Press, 2013) and What to Make of a Diminished Thing (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). She took a long hiatus from creative writing but over the past couple years has been dipping her toe back in through offerings at Hugo House, for which she is very grateful.