Teachers

Dedi Felman is a writer/director born and raised in the wilds of NJ. A member of the inaugural class of the HBO Access Writing Fellowship, she attended the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting and teaches TV writing for Script Anatomy. Previously, Dedi worked in publishing as a senior editor at Simon & Schuster and an executive editor at Oxford University Press. Titles she’s developed have been The New York Times and The Washington Post bestsellers and have won the Bancroft Prize, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, and the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism prize, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She continues to freelance consult on book projects at Book Doctor West. Her espionage drama short, "Allegiance", was a finalist at the USA Film Festival and voted a Kickstarter "Project We Love." She is currently working on two features, American Holler, a heist movie, and a contained sci-fi drama, The Immortalists.

Melanie Figg is a poet and essayist, currently working on a hybrid memoir. Her award-winning poetry collection, Trace, was named one of the year’s "Best Indie Books" by Kirkus Reviews. She's received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and others, and has had work published in dozens of literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Nimrod, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, and the American Journal of Poetry. As a certified professional coach, Melanie offers women’s writing retreats and works remotely with writers on their manuscripts as well as their creative process.

Website: melaniefigg.net

Karen Finneyfrock is a poet and novelist. She is the author of two young adult novels: The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door and Starbird Murphy and the World Outside, both published by Viking Children’s Books. She is one of the editors of the anthology Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls, and the author of Ceremony for the Choking Ghost, both released on Write Bloody press. She is a former Writer-in Residence at Hugo House. Learn more on her website: http://www.karenfinneyfrock.com.

Amber Flame is an artist and performer, whose work has garnered artistic merit residencies with Hedgebrook, The Watering Hole, Wa Na Wari, Vermont Studio Center, and Yefe Nof. Flame served as the 2017-2019 poetry Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House in Seattle, and is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks. 

Marissa Flaxbart is a writer, filmmaker, and podcaster based in Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Screenwriting from Chapman University. Early in her professional life, she produced and directed a feature-length documentary, SHOW/CHOIR, while leading a team of technology lecturers at one of the first flagship Apple stores. Since relocating to Los Angeles, she has worked as a writer and developer for film and television. She is the host of the culture podcast Sweet Valley Diaries and a writer/producer for Twenty Thousand Hertz. Her first narrative feature will be released in 2021.

Gail Folkins often writes about her deep roots in the American West. She is the author of two creative nonfiction books from Texas Tech University Press: a Pacific Northwest memoir titled Light in the Trees (2016), and Texas Dance Halls: A Two-Step Circuit (2007), which was a popular culture finalist in ForeWord Review’s 2007 Book of the Year Awards. Folkins’ essay “A Palouse Horse” was a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2010. Her essays and poetry have appeared in publications such as River Teeth Journal – Beautiful Things, North Dakota Quarterly, Wisconsin Life, Texas Highways, and Wildflower Magazine. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, St. Edward’s University (Austin), and Austin Community College. Teaching philosophy: My goal is to further understanding of craft while also encouraging expression of students’ unique voices. Students have praised my workshop format and student-centered approach. Students learn to not only share a narrative, but to also explore their experiences and discoveries. I encourage students to read as writers, meaning focusing on elements of craft in addition to literary themes. Writers I return to: Edward Abbey, Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Kim Barnes, Rick Bass, Dennis Covington, Louise Erdrich, Ernest Hemingway, Pico Iyer, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Favorite writing advice: Find the extraordinary in the everyday.

Teré Fowler-Chapman (he/they) is a poet, cultural worker, and youth advocate whose work focuses on mental health and their experience as a black, transgendered man. He is a Marsha P. Johnson Fellow, National Arts Strategies’ Creative Community Fellow, and Rocky Mountain Regional Emmy Award nominee. His first full-length poetry book, "M O O N S H i N E," was released by R&R Press in October. You can find Teré’s work in the Huffington Post, the University of Arizona’s VOCA, TEDxTucson, Tucson Weekly, Arizona Public Media’s PBS & NPR, AutoStraddle, and more. Website: terethepoet.com | Photo Credit: Zach Oren.

Gabriela Denise Frank is a Pacific Northwest writer, editor, and creative writing instructor. Her essays, interviews, and fiction, explore identity, feminism, aging, belonging, creative practice, and ancestors. Her work appears in True Story, HAD, Poetry Northwest, Pembroke, DIAGRAM, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, Baltimore Review, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her essay “BAD DATE” was named a Notable Essay of 2020 by Best American Essays. Gabriela’s work is supported by grants, fellowships, and residencies from 4Culture, Artist Trust, The Civita Institute, Centrum, Invoking the Pause, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Marble House, Mineral School, Vermont Studio Center, and Willapa Bay. In 2009, she enrolled in her first Hugo House class, which reignited her writing life. Off the page, her literary art installations and performances transform stories into multisensory experiences. Her writing is rooted in place and landscape, a result of her career in architecture and urban design in the western United States. An advocate for public arts and artists, she serves as an arts commissioner for the City of Burien, on the arts advisory committee of 4Culture, and as creative nonfiction editor for Crab Creek Review. For more information go to gabrieladenisefrank.com.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/civitaveritas/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CivitaVeritas

Melissa Freeman is a writer, lawyer, mindfulness teacher, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of The Container Community, a guided journaling community based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her ability to facilitate grounding spaces for reflection and connection, her unique approach to mindful growth, and her warm, belly laugh.

Melissa founded The Container Community in 2020 as an antidote to the isolation of lockdown and to respond to the eternal need to find authentic and meaningful connection, both with ourselves and others. She had previously left her career in law after her own self-discovery journey left her wanting something more.

Over the past two years, Melissa has guided dozens of groups and teams through her unique self-reflection process. She’s a big believer in the wisdom and insight contained within each individual, and the power of growing together in community.

Melissa graduated with highest honors from the University of California, Davis with a B.A. in English, and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Leora Fridman is author of My Fault, in addition to other books of prose, poetry, and translation. Work appears in the New York Times, the Rumpus, and the Believer, among others. She is currently faculty associate in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University, and Curator in Residence at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. For more information check out Leora's website: www.leorafridman.com

Kate Gale is the co-founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press. She is the author of several books of poetry and of the libretto Rio de Sangre which was performed at the Florentine Opera.

Matt Gano is a Seattle based poet, MC, and Teaching Artist currently writing, recording, and performing as, "ENTENDRES." He is the author of Suits for the Swarm, a poetry collection from MoonPath Press, co-founder of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Program, and was the principle bricklayer/Program Director of Abbey Arts' NEXT STAGE program—a career training program for emerging artists. He works as a writer-in-residence for Seattle Arts and Lectures: Writers in the Schools program, and as a guest teaching artist for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. Gano made waves nationally as a spoken word poet and Slam champion in the early 2000’s while representing Seattle multiple years at the National Poetry Slam. With a voice rooted in and born of 90’s hiphop, Gano studied and built his craft in a rising era of the Seattle poetry and hiphop scene. Performing and writing alongside poets, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, Tara Hardy, Iyeoka Okoawo, and many others, he completed multiple tours across the United States as a featured artist performing poetry on some of the world’s most legendary stages.

Alma García’s debut novel, All That Rises, is forthcoming from University of Arizona Press in October of 2023. Her short fiction has appeared as an award-winner in Narrative Magazine, Enizagam, Passages North, and Boulevard; has most recently appeared in phoebe, Kweli Journal, Duende, and Bluestem; and appears in anthologies including Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat Journal of the Arts). She is a past recipient of a fellowship from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She is a fiction instructor and manuscript consultant at Hugo House.

Cass Garison is a poet & artist with an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle. Their first chapbook, Beauty Exasperated, is coming out through Common Meter Press in April, 2024. They have work published at Poets.org, in Gulf Coast, Foglifter, Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, and others. They run the annual Hamster Rave Retreat for poets & artists.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.

Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. In 2022, she served as executive editor for Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World. In 2021, her collection of micro essays, Allegiance, received the Bronze IPPY award (Essays). Her poetry chapbook, Other Small Histories, won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award, judged by Patricia Smith. In 2015, she received the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence for her nonfiction book, Writing the Hawaiʻi Memoir. Darien lives with her family on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Websites: dariengee.com and writer-ish.com

Kaelie Giffel, Ph.D., formerly of Seattle, now writes and does violence prevention work in Durham, NC. Her writing focuses on feminism, education, and the joys of intellectual work for activists. Her work has appeared in academic journals and elsewhere.

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020), won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Gastronomica, Crab Creek Review, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper and a 2022 Jack Straw Writer. Her latest work is A Little Bit of Land, published by Oregon State University Press.

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet is the author of The Greenhouse (Frost Place Chapbook Prize) and Tulips, Water, Ash (Morse Poetry Prize). Her poems have appeared in journals including Plume, Zyzzyva, and Kenyon Review and anthologies including Nasty Women Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She holds a BA in contemporary American literature from Yale University and an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where she was a Javits Fellow. Lisa lives in Portland, OR, where she reads, writes, edits, parents, and cohosts the literary reading series Lilla Lit. (lisagluskinstonestreet.com)

Veronica Golos is author of four poetry books: A Bell Buried Deep (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize); Vocabulary of Silence (New Mexico Poetry Prize); Rootwork and GIRL (Naji Naaman Honor Prize for Poetry.) Her work has been extensively translated into Arabic; also Persian and Italian. She lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Edgar Gomez is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, he is a recipient of the 2019 Marcia McQuern Award for nonfiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in This American Life, POPSUGAR, Narratively, Longreads, Catapult, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Lamda Literary, and elsewhere online and in print. His first book, a memoir titled High-Risk Homosexual, is forthcoming in January 2022 with Soft Skull Press. He currently lives in New York, where he is saving up for good lotion. For more, visit EdgarGomez.net.