Teachers

Deborah Woodard holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a PhD from the University of Washington. She is the author of Plato’s Bad Horse (Bear Star Press, 2006), Borrowed Tales (Stockport Flats, 2012), and No Finis: Triangle Testimonies, 1911 (Ravenna Press, 2018). Her chapbook Hunter Mnemonics (hemel press, 2008) was illustrated by artist Heide Hinrichs. She has translated Amelia Rosselli with Giuseppe Leporace in The Dragonfly: A Selection of Poems: 1953 – 1981 (Chelsea Editions, 2009) and with Roberta Antognini in Hospital Series (New Directions, 2015) and Obtuse Diary (Entre Ríos Books, 2018). Woodard teaches at Hugo House in Seattle and co-curates the reading series Margin Shift.

I’m the author of a stack of grammar books (English Grammar For Dummies, Webster’s New World Punctuation: Simplified and Applied, and more) and an educator with four decades of experience teaching every level of English from 5th grade through AP. My most recent books, 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way (Norton, 2020) and Sentence. A Period-to-Period Guide to Building Better Readers and Writers (Norton, 2021), explore the techniques authors use to make their writing more effective. My only remotely cool moment came when I was interviewed by a reporter from MTV about the decision by “Panic! At the Disco” to drop their exclamation point.

Carolyne Wright’s new book is Masquerade, a memoir in poetry (Lost Horse Press, 2021). Previous books include This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems (Lost Horse, 2017), whose title poem won a Pushcart Prize and also appeared in The Best American Poetry 2009; and the anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse, 2015), which received ten Pushcart Prize nominations. Carolyne has also received NEA and 4Culture grants, and a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award. Visit https://carolynewright.wordpress.com for more information.

Quetzalli brings over a decade of tech and writing expertise. Dedicated to creating educational content that demystifies technology, she's also the published author of "Docs-as-Ecosystem: The Community Approach to Engineering Documentation."

Valentine Wulf is a seventeen-year-old artist, writer, and puppeteer whose work combines the pastel kitsch of Americana with the comically macabre.

Becca Yenser is author of Bang the Dream (Selcouth Station Press, 2021), The Grief Lottery (forthcoming, ELJ Editions, 2022), and A Constellation of Wounds (forthcoming, Bone and Ink Press, 2022). Their semi-autobiographical novella, The Ms. Pac Man Chronicles, won the Daily Drunk Mag’s 2021 novella chapbook contest. More fiction, poetry, and nonfiction appear in Hobart, Bending Genres, Tiny Molecules, Heavy Feather Review, Susan, Ink Node, Fanzine, Superfroot Magazine, and X-Ray Literary Journal. Yenser is the recipient of the 2021 Reflex International Flash Fiction Contest. They were awarded Honorable Mention for the Masters Review 2021 Chapbook Contest, the Toasted Cheese Dead of Winter Horror Fiction Contest (2021), and the Waxing and Waning Prose Award (2021). Yenser earned an MFA at Wichita State University, where they studied fiction and poetry and were named Fiction Fellow. They worked as an award-winning reporter and arts and culture writer for WSU’s student-run paper, The Sunflower. Yenser also served as fiction editor and co-Editor-in-Chief of Mikrokosmos Literary Journal. The poet Jessica Q. Stark (author of Savage Pageant and editor of AGNI), commented, "Becca Yenser’s Bang the Dream is a revving engine, a clandestine swig under black sky, a series of torn portraits in which everyone feels a little bit haunted." The writer Kevin Maloney (Cult of Loretta), reviewing Bang the Dream, remarks, "Like the best of Lucia Berlin or Denis Johnson, Becca Yenser paints broken people against ecstatic landscapes: grievers moon-gazing in Ireland, junkies nodding off next to a Kansas River, an Albuquerque drug dealer fly fishing with the pink Sandias looming in the distance." Yenser was born in Iowa, raised in Oregon, and currently resides in New Mexico.

Website: www.inknode.com/beccayenser

Twitter: @beccayenser

Instagram: @beccayenser

Kristen Millares Young is a journalist, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by the Paris Review and called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post, “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times, and “utterly unique and important” by Ms. Magazine. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and named a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year in 2020. Her essays, book reviews, and investigations appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, and the anthologies Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders, and Alone Together, winner of a 2021 Washington State Book Award. A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she is the editor of Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature, a finalist for a 2021 Washington State Book Award. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. She was the 2023 Distinguished Visiting Writer for Seattle University and the University of Washington Bothell Master of Fine Arts program. 

Website and Social Media Handles:

www.kristenmyoung.com

@kristenmillares

www.instagram.com/kristenmillares ​

www.facebook.com/kristen.young.14019

www.twitter.com/kristenmillares

www.linkedin.com/in/kristenmyoung

Tanya L. Young is a BIPOC writer, visual artist and PhD student. Her work has been featured in publications such as Salt Hill Journal, The Amistad, New York Quarterly and others.

Wancy Young Cho is a Pushcart Prize nominee and appears in the New Orleans Review, NBC’s THINK, The Stranger, and Salon. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Circle Award, and Written Image Screenwriting Award.