Teachers

Michael Schmeltzer is a biracial author originally from Japan. He currently lives in Seattle where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Floating Bridge Press. His poetry book Empire of Surrender (2022) is the winner of the 2021 Wandering Aengus Book Award. Along with Meghan McClure, he is the co-author of the nonfiction book A Single Throat Opens, a lyric exploration of addiction and family. His debut full-length Blood Song was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry, the Julie Suk Award, and the Coil Book Award. His honors include a 2019 Jack Straw Fellowship, the Gulf Stream Award for Poetry, and Blue Earth Review’s Flash Fiction Prize. He has been a finalist for the Four Way Books Intro and Levis Prizes, the Zone 3 Press First Book Prize, the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry from BkMk Press, the OSU Press/The Journal Award in Poetry, and most recently the Jake Adam York Prize.

Hannah Schoettmer's poetry has appeared in venues like The Louisville Review, SOFTBLOW, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, ONE ART, and elsewhere. She's received a fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. Her debut chapbook, Body Panopticon (Bottlecap Features), was released in 2022.

Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at  The New Yorker and the author of  Being Wrong. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize for “The Really Big One,” her article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Lost & Found grew out of “Losing Streak,” a New Yorker story that was anthologized in The Best American Essays. Her work has also appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Food Writing. A native of Ohio, she lives with her family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Laura Lampton Scott’s work has appeared publications including Michigan Quarterly Review, Tin House online, and Notre Dame Review. She served as senior associate editor for the oral history Lavil: Life, Love and Death in Port-au-Prince. She’s a MacDowell Colony fellow.

Willow & Wood are a hypnotic duo that get high marks for their melodic sensibilities, melancholy notes, and genuine folk Americana style. Gathering raw energy like lightning rods in an electrical storm, the music of Willow & Wood is a kind of folk-noir that's as eerie as it is soothing. Their most recent release, Tornadoes in My Head, introduces the listener to a world of mysterious beauty and suspense.

Heidi Seaborn thought she’d grow up to be a writer. And eventually, she did. But first, she had a long global business career, raised three children, divorced, remarried, and then finally, in her late 50’s took a class at the Hugo House that helped launch her second act as a poet, essayist, and editor. Since 2016, Heidi’s authored two full-length collections of poetry, including PANK Books 2020 Poetry Award winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (2021), Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press, 2019), and three chapbooks of poetry including the 2020 Comstock Review Prize Chapbook, Bite Marks (2021), as well as Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Once a Diva (dancing girl press, 2021), as well as a poetic political pamphlet Body Politic (Mount Analogue Press, 2017). She’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared in American Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Brevity, Copper Nickel, The Cortland Review, The Financial Times, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The Slowdown, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Stanford University. After living all over the world, she now resides in her hometown of Seattle.

Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She earned an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. Sealey is the author of the collections Ordinary Beast (2017), a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named (2016), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors and awards include a 2019 Rome Prize, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, a Daniel Varoujan Award, and a Poetry International Prize. She has been a fellow at Cave Canem, the Poetry Project, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, and the MacDowell Colony. She is currently the executive director at Cave Canem, the 2018-2019 Doris Lippman Visiting Poet at The City College of New York, a visiting professor at Boston University, and a 2019-2020 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.

Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. Greer has taught at a number of universities, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, been a TODAY show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He is the recipient of a NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in San Francisco.

Matt Sedillo has been hailed as "the best political poet in America" and "the poet laureate of the struggle" by journalists and historians alike. He has appeared on CSPAN, the Los Angeles Times, Axios, the Associated Press, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and upon many other platforms and outlets. He has spoken in 5 countries on 3 continents. He is the author of Mowing Leaves of Grass (FlowerSong Press) and City on the Second Floor (FlowerSong Press).

Sondra Segundo-Cunningham is a multi-faceted Haida Language Warrior/Preserver. She is the author and illustrator of “Killer Whale Eyes” and “Lovebirds – the True Story of Raven and Eagle”.

She is the Lead Female Vocalist of the Tribal Funk Band, Khu’éex’ which is based in Seattle and sings in the Tlingit and Haida Languages. Sondra also composes, sings and produces music with her husband Eric, and also solo. She grew up singing in the church choir and also singing Haida songs.

In 2018 she founded Haida Roots, an organization created specifically to preserve the Haida language. Haida Roots enables Sondra to teach Haida – thus honoring the elders and uplifting the youth.

Sondra makes regular visits to Hydaburg Alaska, the village her ancestors come from. In Hydaburg she is able to practice Indigenous Food Sovereignty which is vital to preserving the Haida people. She plans to retire there.

She currently lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband Eric, stepson Mo, and mischievous Huskita Pup Kundláan.

Stephanie Segura is a poet from Fontana, CA (Tongva Land) and daughter of Central American immigrants. Her poetry explores a lineage of displacement through speculative testimony, audio transcriptions, and written recollections. Stephanie has been working on her first multimedia poetry manuscript, Open Door Behind You, a genealogy of generational trauma, memory, and dysfunctionality. She is a former Hugo House Fellow and LitFuse Scholar. Stephanie holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington, Bothell. 

Kascha Semonovitch’s poems and essays have appeared in journals including Quarterly West, The Bellingham Review, Zyzzyva, The Kenyon Review and others, and in the chapbook Genesis by Dancing Girl Press. She has a PhD in philosophy from Boston College, an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. She has fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation, and her creative nonfiction was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Kascha has edited two collections of philosophical essays on early twentieth century European thought, and published academic essays, mostly recently Attention and Expression in Simone Weil. She has taught philosophy at Boston College, Seattle University, and Hugo House in Seattle. She runs an art gallery in Seattle. Teaching Philosophy: I believe that we learn by reading – whether the work of our classmates, contemporary authors or canonical works. The work of a teacher lies in asking –and re-asking –questions that motivate us to pay attention to these texts. In class, we think together by articulating our interpretations. When we reach a conflict of interpretation – “Oh, I thought Robert Hass was talking about beauty” or “I thought Descartes meant his elbow”– then we inquire into the reasons for the conflict. After such careful reading, we are ready to re-read our own writing. We are better at paying attention to what is happening in syntax and semantics. As a faculty member at Seattle University for over seven years, I taught the history of philosophy, critical thinking, and ethics. Philosophers pay attention to the history and internal consistency of systems and concepts. This type of paying attention is also invaluable to writers. For example, we might ask whether poet thought through the connections between the terms in a text and the deep history of texts that precede it? Does a fictional or poetic world hold together consistently? I love learning by reading with students.

Website: kaschasemonovitch.com

Maria Semple is the author of the best-selling novels Today Will Be Different and Where’d You Go, Bernadette. She wrote for the TV shows Arrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the New Yorker. Where’d You Go, Bernadette has been translated into 30 languages. It spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and made over a dozen yearend best lists. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and received the Alex Award from the American Library Association. The film version of the book, starring Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, and Billy Crudup, will premiere in March 2019. Today Will Be Different was featured on the cover of the New York Times book review. It made over a dozen year-end best lists and is currently in development as a limited TV series.