Teachers

Wendy N. Wagner is the editor-in-chief of NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE and the managing/senior editor of LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. She is the author of the novella THE SECRET SKIN, the horror novel THE DEER KINGS, and the SF thriller AN OATH OF DOGS.

Kris Waldherr's many books for adults and children include The Book of Goddesses (Abrams), Bad Princess (Scholastic), and Doomed Queens (Crown), which The New Yorker praised as “utterly satisfying." Her debut novel The Lost History of Dreams (Atria) received a starred Kirkus review and was named a CrimeReads best book of the year. Her upcoming books include Unnatural Creatures: A Novel of the Frankenstein Women. Waldherr's fiction has won fellowships from the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, and a works-in-progress reading grant from Poets & Writers. She is also the creator of the Goddess Tarot, which has over a quarter of a million copies in print, and teaches the Tarot to writers and other creatives. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (2022). She has received writing fellowships from Artist Trust, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, Wonju, UNESCO City of Literature, and Inprint. Her work has appeared in Bennington Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A poet with a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Houston, Jeanine is a long-time poetry teacher and most recently taught English at Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, South Korea.

Describe your teaching style.

Positive, fun, and generous, I love to make my students feel welcome and let them know it's important to me that they're there.

Lyzette Wanzer is a San Francisco writer, editor, and writing workshop instructor. Her work appears in over twenty-five literary journals, magazines, books, and newspapers. Library Journal named her book, TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives, a Top 10 Best Social Sciences Book. Her articles have appeared in Essay Daily, The Naked Truth, and the San Francisco University High School Journal. Her research interests include professional development for creative writers, Black feminism, critical race theory, and the lyrical essay form.

Lyzette serves as judge of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition’s Intercultural Essay category and the Women’s National Book Association’s Effie Lee Morris Writing Contest’s Fiction category. She presents her work at conferences across the country, including the American and Popular Culture Association, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), College English Association, Desert Nights, Rising Stars (Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing), Empowering Wom[x]n of Color Conference, Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture Since 1900, Grub Street’s Muse & The Marketplace, San Francisco Writers Conference, The Society for the Study of African American Life and History, and Southern Humanities Council. In August 2021 she produced her own two-day virtual conference, Trauma, Tresses, & Truth: A Natural Hair Conference, featuring panels, workshops, and readings examining the policing, perception, politics, and persecution of Black women’s natural hair.

A National Writers’ Union and Authors Guild member, Lyzette has been awarded writing residencies at Blue Mountain Center (NY), Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts (NE), Playa Summer Lake (OR), Horned Dorset Colony (NY), Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow (AR), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, PlySpace (IN), and The Anderson Center (MN). Her work has been supported with grants from Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Black Artist Foundry, The Awesome Foundation, and California Humanities, a National Endowment for the Humanities partner.

Lisa Wells is the author, most recently, of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, a finalist for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Her debut collection of poetry, The Fix, won the Iowa Poetry Prize. You can find her essays in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, N+1, The New York Times, The Best American Science & Nature Writing, and in Orion Magazine where she writes the column “Abundant Noise.” 

Rachel Werner is a teaching artist for Hugo House, The Loft Literary Center, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in addition to being the founder of The Little Book Project WI. Her literary writing and craft essays have been featured by Off Menu Press, Digging Through The Fat, and Voyage YA Literary Journal. A selection of Rachel's recipes is included in Wisconsin Cocktails (UW-Press, 2020), and her poetry in the anthology Hope Is The Thing: Wisconsinites on Perseverance in a Pandemic (The Wisconsin Historical Society, 2021). She also regularly contributes content to TheKitchn, The Spruce Eats, and Fabulous Wisconsin. Her latest book, Glow and Grow: A Brown Girl's Positive Body Guide (Free Spirit Publishing), is forthcoming in fall 2024.

Joe Wilkins is the author of the novel, Fall Back Down When I Die (Little Brown), a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers (Counterpoint), and three poetry collections, most recently When We Were Birds, winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He directs the creative program at Linfield College. Go to Joe's website https://joewilkins.org or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JoeWilkins.Author.

Describe your teaching style.

I think of all my classes as a focused, dynamic conversation. We explore and learn together.

“Williams demonstrates an astounding technical mastery of poetic forms that goes far beyond form for form’s sake, as he repeats, reconfigures, and recontextualizes words and phrases in order to create continuity and multifaceted meanings.” ―Muzzle Magazine

“Williams sings for the vanished, for the haunted, for the tortured, for the lost, for the place on the horizon where the little boat of the human body disappears in a wingdom of unending grace.” ―The Best American Poetry

“To experience Williams’ poetry is to encounter a lucid, unmitigated humanity, a voice for whom language is inadequate, yet necessarily grasped, shaped, and consumed.” ―Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Phillip B. Williams is the author of Mutiny (Penguin Random House, 2021), and Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books, 2016), winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award. He is also the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc., 2011) and Burn (YesYes Books, 2013).

His forthcoming collection Mutiny is a rebellion, a subversion, an onslaught. In poems that rebuke classical mythos and western canonical figures, and embrace Afro-Diasporanfolk and spiritual imagery, Williams conjures the hell of being erased, exploited, and ill-imagined and then, through a force and generosity of vision, propels himself into life, selfhood, and a path forward. Intimate, bold, and sonically mesmerizing, Mutiny addresses loneliness, desire, doubt, memory, and the borderline between beauty and tragedy.

In his debut collection Thief in the Interior, Williams investigates the dangers of desire, balancing narratives of addiction, murders, and hate crimes with passionate, uncompromising depth. Formal poems entrenched in urban landscapes crack open dialogues of racism and homophobia rampant in our culture. Multitudinous voices explore one’s ability to harm and be harmed, which uniquely juxtaposes the capacity to revel in both experiences.

Of Thief in the Interior, Los Angeles Book Review noted, “The seasoned reader of poetry will be impressed that Thief in the Interior is Phillip B. Williams’s first collection. His control of the line is masterful, and his syntax eschews, for the most part, direct or simple delivery of language, creating a formal and solemn tone that scores the emotional pitches of the book.” Author Adrian Matejka notes, “Williams’s poems embody balance: uncompromising and magnetic, surprising and intuitive. Need is everywhere―in the unforgiving images, in lines so delicate they seem to break apart in the hands, and in the reader who will enter these poems and never want to leave.”

Williams’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and others. He is the recipient of a 2020 creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2017 Whiting Award, and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He serves as a faculty member at Bennington College and Randolph College low-res MFA.

Emily Wolahan (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection Hinge (NPRP 2015). Her poems have appeared in Puerto del Sol, Sixth Finch, Georgia Review, and Oversound, among other places. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Social Change (CIIS). She has been an editor at Two Lines Press and Jerry Magazine and is currently a Poetry Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal. www.emilywolahan.com

Simon Wolf has his MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington Bothell. His work has been published with Leveler Poetry, featured in 'Coastal Poets – A Reading and Film Festival,' Clamor Journal, and is forthcoming in Inkwell. Check out more of Simon on Instagram @simon_sayspoems.

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."

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

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.

John Yunker writes plays, short stories, and novels. He is the author of the novel The Tourist Trail; editor of the Among Animals fiction series and a nonfiction anthology, Writing for Animals; and his plays have been produced or staged at such venues as the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, the Source Festival, the Centre Stage New Play Festival, and Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference. His teleplay Sanctuary was performed at the 2017 Compassion Arts Festival in New York, and his short stories have been published in Phoebe, Qu, Flyway, Antennae, and other journals. He is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the mystery novel Devils Island.

I am a nonbinary writer and musician from Chicago. I have an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. I was the recipient of the 2022 Elieen Lannan Academy of American Poets Prize. I'm trying not to miss it all.

Website: noahpzanella.wixsite.com/my-site

LinkedIn: Noah Zanella

Describe your teaching style!

My focus is always on generating work. No matter how far we get into the intellectual or the abstract, my approach is primarily concerned with the development of writing practices (what actually happens, day to day, as we show up to the page—how does the work get made?). There is also an emphasis on the training of one’s attention as being a part of the craft of writing. Henry James’s advice to writers: try to become one of those upon whom nothing is lost.

A 2015-16 Howard Foundation Fellow in Poetry, Andrew Zawacki is the author of five poetry books: Unsun : f/11 (Coach House, 2019); Videotape (Counterpath, 2013); Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House,
2009); Anabranch (Wesleyan, 2004); and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia,
2002). A former Rhodes Scholar and Fulbright Scholar, he earned his doctorate from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Zawacki has also published four books in France: Sonnetssonnants, translated by Anne Portugal; Georgia and Carnet Bartleby, both translated by Sika Fakambi; and Par Raison de brisants, translated by Antoine Cazé and a finalist for the Prix Nelly Sachs. Anabranche, translated by Sika Fakambi, is forthcoming from Éditions Grèges.
His chapbook Georgia was co-winner of the 1913 Prize, while Masquerade won the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. Arrow’s shadow was issued by Equipage in the UK, and Kaeshi-waza was published in Canada by The Elephants. More recently, Sonnensonnets appeared from Tammy, Waterfall plot from Greying Ghost.
His work has appeared in Poems for Political Disaster, Legitimate Dangers:
American Poets of the New Century, The Iowa Anthology of New American
Poetries, Great American Prose Poems, The Eloquent Poem, and other
anthologies, as well as magazines such as The New Yorker, The Nation,
and The New Republic.
A past fellow of the Slovenian Writers’ Association, Zawacki edited Afterwards (White Pine, 1999), an anthology of postwar Slovenian poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, in addition to editing and co-translating Aleš Debeljak’s new and selected poems, Without Anesthesia (Persea, 2011), assisted by a Slovenian Ministry of Culture Translation Grant. His translations of two poetry books by Sébastien Smirou, See About (La Presse / Fence, 2017) and My Lorenzo (Burning Deck, 2012), have earned him a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a French Voices Grant, and a grant from the Centre National du Livre.
He coedited the late expatriate writer Gustaf Sobin’s collected poems and serves as co-executor of Sobin’s literary estate. Zawacki has published criticism in the TLS, Boston Review, Chicago Review, How2, Jacket2, New German Critique, and elsewhere. He has held fellowships from the Salzburg Seminar, the Bogliasco Foundation, la Résidence Internationale aux Récollets, le Collège International des Traducteurs Littéraires, Hawthornden Castle, Le Château de Lavigny, and the Millay Colony, Saltonstall Foundation, and Bread Loaf.

Amy Zhang is the author of Falling Into Place, This Is Where The World Ends, and The Cartographers (HarperCollins). Her fiction has been recognized by the Indies Next List and received starred reviews from Booklist and VOYA, among other honors, and translated into five languages. Her poetry collection, Small Birds, Blue Bellies, was the recipient of the Rosenfeld Chapbook prize; select poems won the Hansmann Poetry Prize through the American Academy of Poets.