Teachers

Ana Maria Caballero is a first-generation Colombian-American poet and writer. Her work has won multiple awards, including the Beverly International Prize for Literature and Colombia’s 2014 José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize. She’s been a finalist for the Academy of American Poets Prize, Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, the Essay Press Book Prize and the Tarpaulin Sky Book Award, among others. Her writing has appeared in numerous outlets, including L.A. Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly, Sundog Lit, The Southeast Review, SWWIM and Jai-Alai Magazine. She believes poems should be valued as works of art and is excited about making this value manifest via blockchain technology.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She and E.J. Koh co-translated Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021). Cancio-Bello has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, the Knight Foundation, and the American Literary Translators Association, and her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, and more. She is co-director for the Adoptee Literary Festival and PEN America Miami/South Florida Chapter, and a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair. www.marcicalabretta.com

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn't Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice.

Lauren Camp is the author of five books, recently Took House (Tupelo Press). Honors include the Dorset Prize and finalist for the Arab American Book Award. Her poems appear in Poem-a-Day, Witness, Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, and Kenyon Review.

With a BA in English, an MA in German, and an MFA in Creative Writing, Tara Campbell has a demonstrated aversion to money and power. Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, she has also lived in Washington DC, Oregon, Ohio, New York, Germany and Austria. She currently lives in Seattle, WA.

She's proud to be on the current roster for the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau, and is a mentor the the 19th season of AWP's Writer to Writer Mentorship Program. She's the recipient of the following awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities: the 2016 Larry Neal Writers' Award in Adult Fiction, the 2016 Mayor's Arts Award for Outstanding New Artist, and Arts and Humanities Fellowships for 2018 – 2022. She is also a 2017 Kimbilio Fellow and winner of the 2018 Robert Gover Story Prize.

Tara earned her MFA from American University in 2019, and is a fiction editor at Barrelhouse. She teaches creative writing with venues such as American University, Johns Hopkins University, Hugo House, Clarion West, the Writer's Center, Politics and Prose, Catapult, and the National Gallery of Art's Virtual Studio.

Follow her on: Twitter: @TaraCampbellCom or Instagram: @thetreevolution or Bluesky: @taracampbell.bsky.social or Mastodon: @TaraCampbell@writing.exchange or Facebook: CampbellTaraP

Sarah Campbell is a content curator who leads exploratory workshops anchored in humanities artifacts. She has worked for PwC, Microsoft, McKinsey, and ?What If!, and taught at the University of Luxembourg and SUNY Buffalo, where she earned her English Ph.D.

Katerina Canyon is a 2020 and 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her stories have been published in New York Times and Huffington Post. From 2000 to 2003, she served as the Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. During that time, she started a poetry festival and ran several poetry readings. She was featured in the Los Angeles Times and was awarded the Montesi Award from Saint Louis University in 2011, 2012, and 2013. She has published multiple chapbooks and an album. 

Kate Carmody is a recipient of a CINTAS Foundations grant supporting artists born in Cuba or of Cuban descent. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Potomac Review, Essay Daily, No Contact, Los Angeles Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Lunch Ticket, among others. She received her MFA from Antioch University in Los Angeles. While pursuing her MFA in creative nonfiction, she worked as a blogger, assistant blog editor, and the assistant lead editor for the youth spotlight series at Lunch Ticket. In addition to teaching at Hugo House, she teaches writing through the Loft Literary Center, Austin Bat Cave, and Antioch’s Continuing Education Program. In 2012, she received the Facing History and Ourselves Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award and in 2017, was selected by Facing History and Ourselves to participate in a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant-funded study to assess if peer-led professional development can improve teachers’ instruction of literacy standards. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband and dog. The three of them are in a band called Dadafacer.

Katrina Carrasco writes novels, short stories, and essays. Her debut novel, The Best Bad Things (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), was a finalist in the Lambda Literary Awards and Washington State Book Awards, and won the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel. Her essays and short stories have appeared in publications and websites including Witness Magazine, Post Road Magazine, and Literary Hub. She has received support from the Corporation of Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Jentel, Artist Trust, and other residencies and arts organizations. Katrina is a former mentor with Latinx in Publishing. Her new book, Rough Trade (MCD/FSG), will be out this April.

Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books, 2019), which was long-listed for The Believer Book Award, and We Sailed on the Lake, published by Bunny Presse/Fonograf Editions in 2023. He has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw Cultural Center. He was awarded the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his poems have appeared in the jubilat, Best American Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Iterant, Paperbag, The Kenyon Review, 32 Poems, and other journals. Originally from Maine, Bill now lives in Seattle, where he is Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest. He teaches at Hugo House, the UW Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and Edmonds College.

The author is an accomplished international cabaret and jazz singer, celebrated for her flamboyant style, witty patter, and husky contralto

voice. Born in Seattle, she inherited from her SicilianNorwegian heritage an audacious spirit and a deep love of music. Upon returning to Seattle from Paris, she became a cherished fixture in the Pacific Northwest art scene, starring in "The Julie Cascioppo Experience" at clubs, events and television.

Elaine Castillo is the author of the widely acclaimed debut novel, America is Not the Heart (Viking, 2018), named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, the New York Public Library, and many others. In August 2022, Viking will publish her first work of nonfiction, How to Read Now, on the politics and ethics of our reading culture. Her writing has appeared in Freeman’s, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, Taste Magazine, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Her short film, A Mukkbang, was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space. She is a VONA Foundation Fellow, and was a three-time recipient of the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for prose while at UC Berkeley. She has also been nominated for the Pat Kavanagh Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Gatewood Prize.