Teachers

Nazry Bahrawi is an academic and translator from Singapore currently residing in Seattle. He teaches modules on Southeast Asian science and speculative fiction as well as racial narratives from the region at the University of Washington-Seattle, where he is an assistant professor. Nazry is the editor and translator of Singa-Pura-Pura, a short story anthology of Malay speculative fiction. He has translated Lost Nostalgia and Lorong Buang Kok, The Musical from Malay to English. He is an editor-at-large at Wasafiri magazine and the essay & research editor for the Journal of Practice, Research and Tangential Activities (PR&TA).

Jeff Bender is a graduate of Columbia's MFA program and winner of Hugo House's New Works Competition. His fiction and humor have appeared in McSweeney's, Electric Literature, The Iowa Review, Guernica, Points in Case, Slackjaw, and Little Old Lady Comedy.

Misha Berson is a freelance writer and teacher. From 1991-2016 she was the drama critic for the Seattle Times, after 10 years writing for the SF Bay Guardian. She has written four books on theater, including "Between Worlds: Asian American Playwrights" and "Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination." Her work has also appeared in American Theatre, crosscut.com, oregonartswatch.com, Variety, the SF Chronicle and many other publications. She has been a Pulitzer Prize juror several times, most recently in 2019 when she was chair of the drama committee, and she is a juror for the annual Steinberg/ATCA playwriting award. She has taught arts and journalism courses at UW, Seattle University, SF State University, UC Davis, Richard Hugo House and The Eugene O'Neill Center Theatre Critics Conference.

Gracie Bialecki is a writer and literary coach who lives in Paris, France. Her fiction, essays, and video poems have appeared in various publications including Epiphany Magazine where she was a monthly columnist. Bialecki is the co-founder of Thirst, a gallery and storytelling series; a poetry editor at Paris Lit Up; and the author of Youth, a collection of poetry. Her novel, Purple Gold, was published by ANTIBOOKCLUB in 2020.

Born in New Jersey, Courtney holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana and a BA in Art History from Princeton. Her work has appeared in The Fairy Tale Review, The Masters Review, The Indiana Review, Barrelhouse, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. When Courtney's not writing, she can be found coaching lacrosse, hiking with her baby on her back, or looking for weird little pockets of wonder in the world. Courtney lives in Seattle, where she was a Hugo House Fellow in 2018-2019.

Liza Birnbaum's fiction and essays have appeared in Web Conjunctions, jubilat, Open Letters Monthly, and other publications. She is a founding editor of Big Big Wednesday, an annual print journal of literature and visual art, and has taught creative writing in a number of settings, most recently at an alternative school for young women who are pregnant or parenting. In 2019, she will be a funded resident at the Lillian E. Smith Center at Piedmont College. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Doctora en literatura europea, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, Spain

Margarita Borrero es novelista, premiada y publicada en España, y escritora de relatos, género en el que ha ganado media docena de primeros lugares en distintos certámenes en España, Estados Unidos y Canadá. Durante más de una década se ha desempeñado como docente de Escuela de escritores, una de las instituciones privadas de escritura creativa más grandes del mundo hispanohablante, miembro de la Asociación Europea de programas de escritura creativa. También ha trabajado como profesora asociada en Mount Saint Mary University, en Los Ángeles.

PhD European Literature, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, Spain

Margarita Borrero is an award-winning novelist from Colombia. She has received numerous short story awards in Spain, Canada and the United States. She teaches at Madrid’s Escuela de Escritores, one of the top private creative writing institutions of the Hispanic world and a member of the European Association of Creative Writing Programs. She has also worked as an associate professor at Mount Saint Mary University in Los Angeles.

Sabra is a freelance writer, public speaker, former healthcare administrator, and “retired” child actor. Her personal essays and journalism have been featured in the Washington Post, Vice, Psychology Today, HuffPost, Eater, Seattle Times, and more. Sabra writes about food, beauty, healthcare, homelessness, exploitation, and tech. Having grown up all over the west coast, writing about place as character is central to much of her work. Sabra strives to be a writer’s writer, dedicated to helping others build their own successful writing careers.

Lynn Breedlove, creator of Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak show. Too many props for comedy, too many punchlines for theater! He’s a novelist, poet, punk, memoirist, and as frontman for Tribe8, The Homobiles, and COMMANDO.

Michelle Brower has spent over fifteen years as an agent, first at Wendy Sherman Associates and most recently as a partner at Aevitas Creative Management. She co-founded Trellis Literary Management in 2021 in order to better serve and support her authors and create an agency with a lasting positive impact in the world of publishing.

Her list spans the spectrum of literary and commercial fiction, from thought-provoking story collections to page-turning thrillers. She is primarily interested in work that focuses on storytelling and emotional connection, rather than formal experimentation, and believes that the best reading experience engages both the heart and the head. She is looking for book club novels (a commercial idea with a literary execution), literary fiction, literary suspense, genre fiction for a non-genre audience, and upmarket women’s fiction. In non-fiction, she is looking for a personal story that illuminates a greater subject. Michelle also very selectively represents literary Young Adult fiction. In all of these areas, she is looking to support underrepresented voices.

Michelle is honored to work with books that have received a variety of accolades, including NY Times Bestsellers, National Book Award finalists, and Read with Jenna, Target, and Barnes and Noble book club selections. Her authors have received recognition from the Whiting Awards, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, MacDowell, the Steinbeck Fellow Program, the Sewanee Writers Conference as well as from many other organizations.

Michelle received her Masters degree in British and American Literature from New York University. Originally from New Jersey, she now lives in Seattle with her family.

Michelle’s favorite non-client authors (if your work is similar, feel free to get in touch!): Maggie Shipstead, Lily King, Louise Erdrich, Deesha Philyaw, Kiley Reid, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Yaa Gyasi, Celeste Ng, Jennifer Egan, Shirley Jackson, Ann Patchett, Sarah Waters.