Teachers

Emily Sernaker is a writer and human-rights professional based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the Sun, New York Times, Ms. Magazine, McSweeney’s, Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Rumpus, New Ohio Review and more. Over the last few years she has teamed up with Brooklyn Public Library to organize free, intergenerational, human-rights poetry programming, including Holding Space for Grief events, an Interfaith Poetry Reading, and Global Citizen poetry classes. She has worked as a staff member at the International Rescue Committee and New York Peace Institute and is currently an adjunct professor at the New School. Go to www.emilysernaker.com for more information or follow on social media @Emilysernaker.

Zain Shamoon is a professor of couple and family therapy at Antioch University Seattle. He hold his PhD in Human Development and Family Studies. He is the host and founder of the Narratives of Pain storytelling showcase.

Shama Shams is a Seattle writer, speaker, and nonprofit executive with an MA from Florida State University. Her memoir, She Called Me Throwaway (March 2024), details her journey from a challenging childhood to healing, and she is currently working on The Dreamers, a collection of immigrant stories about the American Dream. Shama also teaches at North Seattle College and Edmonds College while leading storytelling and nonprofit development workshops.

Shama Shams (Sanjukta) (is an author who lives in Dallas and Seattle. She plans to fully relocate to Seattle in May 2022 after her daughter graduates from High School. She holds a Master’s in Religion with an emphasis on Islam from Florida State University. Excerpts of her memoir were published in Palooka, A Journal of Underdog Excellence; Transformation, A Journal of Literature, Ideas & the Arts; Fiction Fix; and Mandala Literary Journal. She was a finalist for Black Warrior Review and her book proposal, as well as four of her essays, were selected by Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference hosted by University of North Texas. In front of a live sold-out audience at the Dallas Museum of Arts and the AT&T Performing Arts Center, she read excerpts from her memoir which can be found on the YouTube channel titled: Oral Fixation (An Obsession with True Life Tales)’s Lost in Translation, Elephant in the Room, and Old School. In addition, she read excerpts from her memoir at Truth in Comedy, a show featuring nonfiction writers. Shama works as the Director of Philanthropy and Marketing for Real Escape from the Sex Trade (REST), a Seattle-based nonprofit serving victims and survivors of sex trade and sex trafficking. During her spare time, she loves to write, paint, hike, and travel.

Radhika Sharma is the author of Parikrama: A Collection of Short Stories and Mangoes for Monkeys: A Novel. Radhika received her MFA from the San Francisco State University. Her byline has appeared in several newspapers and magazines including The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, India Currents, Tri City Voice, and others. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of essays.

Nisi Shawl (they/them) is the multiple award-winning author and editor of over a dozen books of speculative fiction and related nonfiction, including the Nebula Award finalist novel Everfair; the standard text on inclusive representation, Writing the Other; and the first two volumes of the New Suns anthology series. Their most recent publication is the middle grade historical fantasy novel Speculation, which Lee & Low published in January 2023. They’ve taught and spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Stanford University, Sarah Lawrence College, and many other institutions. Once upon a time, they conducted a filmed, onstage interview with Octavia E. Butler.

Gina Siciliano is an artist, writer, historian, and bookseller living in Seattle, WA. Her award-winning graphic novel I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi was published by Fantagraphics in 2019.

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including All This Time (Wave Books, 2021), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Press, 2003 and 2005) and most recently the Bagley Wright Lecture Series book Guard the Mysteries (Wave Books, 2021). He has taught workshops at St. Mary’s College, Naropa University and University Press Books. He is currently a mentor in the low residency MFA program at The Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Lofall, Washington.

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.

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.

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

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.

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Homie, (Graywolf Press, 2020), winner of the Minnesota Book Award, the Heartland Bookseller Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award; and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

Nat Oleander Smith studied playwriting at Amherst College and completed their MFA at Ohio University. They are the recipient of the Denis Johnston Playwriting Prize, and have taught fiction and screenwriting in Kenya and playwriting around the US.

Rachel Sobel is a writer of speculative and literary fiction about dykes and other queer people. A graduate of the Hunter MFA in Fiction, she has lived in NYC and Seattle.

Describe your teaching style.

My classes are expansive and specific, aimed at giving concrete tools to address the writing pitfalls students face. I'm big on asking questions, interrogating your own process, and recognizing that what works for someone else might not work for you. I endorse reading absolutely everything, from silly fluff to pretentious works of enormous philosophical seriousness, and from poetry to nonfiction.

Jen Soriano (she~they) is a Filipinx writer and movement builder who has long worked at the intersection of grassroots organizing, narrative strategy, and art-driven social change. Jen has won the International Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Fugue Prose Prize, and fellowships from Hugo House, Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, and the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. Jen is also an independent scholar and performer, and has served as poet in residence with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. Jen is author of the chapbook “Making the Tongue Dry,” and co-editor of Closer to Liberation: A Pina/xy Activist Anthology. She received a BA in History and Science from Harvard and an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Originally from a landlocked part of the Chicago area, Jen now lives with her family in Seattle, near the Duwamish River and the Salish Sea. Her debut book, Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing, is now available from Amistad/HarperCollins.

Hailey Spencer is, in the words of her wife Elizabeth, an absolute cloud of a girl. She is the author of the poetry collection Stories for When the Wolves Arrive. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.

Katherine E. Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life (Little, Brown Spark 2020), which was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, an NYT Book Review Editor’s Choice, and shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Lightning Flowers was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, on the goop podcast, and in O, The Oprah Magazine, and People Magazine. Standefer earned her MFA at the University of Arizona. Her writing appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 and won the 2015 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. Standefer was a 2018 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and a 2017 Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at the Mesa Refuge. She currently lives in the Tetons. 

Website: www.KatherineStandefer.com

Social Media: @girlmakesfire

Emma Stockman is a Seattle-based writer and educator with an MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon. In 2023, she moved to Seattle to pursue greater literary opportunities. She writes short fiction and is currently working on a novel.

Cara Stoddard holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and a BA from the College of Wooster. Their work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Terrain, and Ninth Letter, among others, and has been nominated for Pushcart. Learn more at Cara's website.