Teachers

Darina (Dasha) Sikmashvili was born in Lubny, Ukraine, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and has been working in film production for over a decade.

Martha Silano is the author of five poetry books, including Gravity Assist, Reckless Lovely, and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, all from Saturnalia Books. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, New England Review, American Poetry Review, and Paris Review, among others, and in four dozen print anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and ?Best American Poetry 2009. She also co-authored, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice. Martha received Yaddo's 2017 Martha Walsh Pulver Residency. She teaches at Bellevue College.

Marcie Sillman is an award-winning radio journalist. For more than three decades, she covered arts for Seattle’s KUOW and NPR. She is now co-host of the arts podcast doublExposure.

Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of the book, Finding the Mother Tree.

She is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; and has been hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers (the Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s Avatar) and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide.

Suzanne is known for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks, which has led to the recognition that forests have hub trees, or Mother Trees, which are large, highly connected trees that play an important role in the flow of information and resources in a forest. Her current research investigates how these complex relationships contribute to forest resiliency, adaptability and recovery and has far-reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impacts, including climate change.

Suzanne has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and presented at conferences around the world. She has communicated her work to a wide audience through interviews, documentary films and her TEDTalk “How trees talk to one another”.

Michele L. Simms-Burton is a writer and a retired university professor living in metro DC. Her recent writings appear in DownBeat, DCMTA, Auburn Avenue, and the Crisis Magazine.

Since 1960 I've worked in Seattle after two years learning my trade on Madison Avenue. By 1975 after writing PR for the Pacific Science Center which gained international publications, understood it was time to work for myself on my poetry, to stay independent and pen my deepest feelings. Later covered the Gulf of Saint Lawrence out of Nova Scotia for a Seafood Journal covering the decline of cod, with international distribution.  

Early on it may be said I earned a Phd in couch surfing, but survived! Many readings followed. Early years in Seattle,including a great moment at the Blue Moon Tavern, prior to its sale, finally working out of Montana for years, integrated with the Salish- Courtney Flathead tribes. 

I came to your door, in the process, because I understand the effect of Theodore Roethke and Seattle's poetry movement and Hugo's contribution in Montana.

When Richard Hugo was appointed Poet Laureate for Montana, I learned from his students the shaping of poetry in the state, mostly from Tom Davis, with whom I shared readings, in Spokane and Western Montana.  

In Montana readings always spoke with kindness for his contribution to the State of Montana, not intruding on copyrights, but on the person. What I hope to bring to your door is an essay on Richard, with a mix of my work, an original script. I'll leave a copy with you. This will be my last public reading, 'cause age that cold hearted thief has wrinkled the spirit within.  

Leonora Simonovis is the author of Study of the Raft, winner of the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Kweli Journal, Diode Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Rumpus, among others. Her poems have also been featured in Verse Daily, Sims Library of Poetry, and CIACLA (Contemporary Irish Center, Los Angeles). She has been the recipient of fellowships from Women Who Submit (WWS), VONA, and the Poetry Foundation. A Venezuelan American poet, Leonora grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and currently lives in San Diego, CA, where she teaches Latin American literature and creative writing in Spanish at the University of San Diego. Website: leonorasimonovis.com Instagram: @leosimonovis Twitter: @lsimonovis

Elsa Sjunneson is a Deafblind author and editor living in Seattle, Washington. Her fiction and nonfiction writing has been praised as "eloquence and activism in lockstep" and has been published in dozens of venues around the world. She has been a Hugo Award finalist seven times and has won Hugo, Aurora, and BFA awards for her editorial work. When she isn't writing, Sjunneson works to dismantle structural ableism and rebuild community support for disabled people everywhere. Her debut memoir, Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism, released in October of 2021 from Tiller Press.

Judith Skillman’s Oscar the Misanthropist, won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, 2021. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She is the recipient of awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, and lead editor of When Home Is Not Safe, Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional, and Physical Abuse, McFarland. Skillman’s new book is Subterranean Address, New & Selected Poems 2014-2022, Deerbrook Editions. Visit www.judithskillman.com for more information.

Ed Skoog is the author of four books of poems, most recently Travelers Leaving for the City (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from The Lannan Foundation and George Washington University, and has served as writer-in-residence at the Richard Hugo House. He lives in Portland, Oregon. 

Beth Slattery moved to Seattle after eighteen years of teaching creative writing and literature at Indiana University East. Since her relocation, she has been writing and editing. Beth is currently working on a collection of personal essays about her mid-life marriage to a Zimbabwean, a move from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, and a reluctant acceptance of the call to adventure. Her most recent publications appear in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and Southern Women’s Review. Beth’s recent editing work includes being a “beta” reader for an author with a multi-book publishing contract, content and copy editing of a personal essay collection, and providing comprehensive editing services on an edited academic volume that was later published by Oxford University Press. She has an M.A. in fiction writing from Miami University and an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine—Stonecoast.

Describe your teaching style.

I'm a firm believer that we learn best when we discuss subjects, ask big questions (that sometimes don't have answers), and then apply that new knowledge (or questions) to our writing. In other words: we talk a lot; we write a lot. Added bonus: we have fun.

Aisha is the author of The Fluency of Light (University of Iowa Press 2013) and Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit (1913 Press 2017), Borealis (Coffee House 2021) and a collaborative book written with her father, Captioning the Archives (McSweeney's Publications 2021). Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit was nominated for the Iowa Essay Prize, chosen by Maggie Nelson as the winner of the 1913 Open Prose Contest, and won CLMP’s Firecracker award for Nonfiction in 2018. Her writing can be found in Ecotone, Ninth Letter, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, Guernica, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, and Gulf Coast, among other journals. She is the recipient of a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2021 National Magazine Award. She holds a dual appointment with LSA English Department's Helen Zell Writers' Program and the Residential College.

Dominic Smith is the author of six novels, including The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, which was a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. His essays, reviews, and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Australian. He is a recipient of the Dobie Paisano Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters, a new works grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.