Teachers

Maya C. Popa is a Romanian-American poet and author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022), and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), which was a recipient of the North American Book Prize and a runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong. She is also the author of two chapbooks, both from the Diagram Chapbook Series: You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave and The Bees Have Been Canceled, which was a PBS Summer Choice.

About American Faith, Deborah Landau says, “Maya Popa’s clear-eyed lyrics register with steady power a spectrum of 21st-century violences. In poems that take on the devastating pressure of climate change, gun violence, and our threatened democracy, Popa uses her gift to grieve and in grieving forge song. Revelatory yet emphatically unsentimental, Popa’s unflinching distillations illuminate the facets of our broken world; there is much wisdom here, and grace, and heart.” And of her poetry Publishers Weekly reflects, “Child of immigrants, teacher, woman in a vulnerable body, the speakers of Popa’s poems seek to set the record straight, knowing how little anyone listens—to poetry, of course, but to other people in general. Popa’s questing and questioning lyric poems are kind company amid the uncertainty of the modern world.”

A selection of poems from her manuscript in progress received 2nd place in The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize judged by John Burnside and Gillian Clarke, and she was recently Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize.

Popa is the recipient of awards from the Poetry Foundation, the Oxford Poetry Society, the Hippocrates Society in London, and the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, Ireland, among others. She is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at NYU. She is director of creative writing at the Nightingale-Bamford school where she oversees visiting writers, workshops, and readings.

She holds degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College and is currently pursuing her PhD on the role of wonder in poetry at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Daniel Pope is a writer and musician from Seattle. His work has been published in Narrative Magazine, the Bellevue Literary Review, MQR Mixtape, and Gulf Coast Journal.

Mary Lane Potter (PhD, University of Chicago; MFA, Warren Wilson) has deep experience writing, editing, and teaching fiction and creative nonfiction. She’s the author of the novel A Woman of Salt (Counterpoint), Strangers and Sojourners: Stories from the Lowcountry (Counterpoint), and the memoir Seeking God and Losing the Way. Her essays and stories have appeared in in Parabola, Witness, River Teeth, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Minerva Rising, Women Studies Quarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, North American Review, Tampa Review, Tiferet, SUFI Journal, Spiritus, Leaping Clear, and others. She’s received a Washington State Arts Commission/Artist Trust Fellowship and enjoyed writing residencies at MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Caldera, and the Collegeville Institute of Cultural and Ecumenical Studies. A dedicated and experienced teacher, she’s taught writing for years, most recently at Hugo House, The Loft Literary Center, and The Collegeville Institute. Website: http://members.authorsguild.net/marylapotter/.

Passionate about all aspects of writing, Potter is especially tuned in to voice, character development, and narrative structure—and to the challenges of writing women’s experiences, the body, and spirituality.

Favorite writers; John Keene, Audré Lorde, Clarice Lispector, Merce Rodoreda, Kazuo Ishiguro, Isaac Babel, James Welch, M. Scott Momaday, George Saunders, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barry Lopez. Octavia Butler, George Eliot.

Katie Prince is a poet and essayist. Her first poetry book, Tell This to the Universe, was a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series and won the 2021 Pamet River Prize from YesYes Books. In the spring of 2017, she served as artist-in-residence at Klaustrið, in Iceland’s Fljótsdalur valley, and in 2019, she received a GAP Award from Artist Trust to continue working on the project she began there. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work has been published in Electric Literature, New South, Fugue, the Adroit Journal, and Poetry Northwest, among others. You can find her online at www.katieprince.com.

Naomi Price-Lazarus (she/her) is a sexuality educator, event facilitator, dance party host, and ultimate frisbee player and coach. She is passionate about creating space for youth and adults to explore and celebrate their bodies and sexualities, all the while building a stronger sense of self and connection to the community. She also creates and sells art that celebrates sexual anatomy and pleasure. Outside of her many jobs, Naomi spends her time playing sports, baking cookies, and traveling around the world. Follow her @Super_Clit

Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the incumbent Washington State Poet Laureate and Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. Priest is also the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Nia Tero, The Vadon Foundation, and Indigenous Nations Poets. She has authored three books and edited two anthologies. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Learn more at renapriest.com. 

Kamala Puligandla is a writer and editor in LA, who writes autobiographical fiction and essays on queer love and futures. She is well-known for her contagious laughter, her iconic hairstyle, and her easily undone heart. Her first novel, Zigzags, came out from Not A Cult in October 2020 and her novella You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone was released from Co-Conspirator Press in 2021. Find her at kamalapuligandla.com, and follow her on Instagram @thatkamala.

Brontez Purnell is a writer, musician, dancer, filmmaker, and performance artist. He is the author of a graphic novel, a novella, a children’s book, and the novels Since I Laid My Burden Down and 100 Boyfriends. He is the recipient of a 2022 award from the Rauschenberg Foundation for risk-taking in art, and 2018 Whiting Award for Fiction, as well as named one of ‘32 Black Male Writers for Our Time’ by T: New York Times Style Magazine. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers.

Kate Pyontek holds an MFA from Ohio State University. Kate’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Ecotone, the lickety~split, Four Way Review, and New Ohio Review. Kate is originally from New Jersey. For more information check out katepyontek.com. Or follow Kate on Instagram @kapyontek or on Twitter @pyontek.

Bel-Quiaoit Quarless is inclined to break through western ideals of art and transform it into its beginning form: art for human’s sake. Peddling poems and novellas from underneath a secret burrow, their sublimity concerns the dark corners of human existence, in an erotic, dismal, pathetic rain-mundane way. They invite you to break apart their work and toss a follow to their instagram @kaocountry.