Hugo House teachers are at the core of our goal to help writers become better writers. Our teachers are writers; they are selected on the basis of their active engagement in the literary world as well as their love of teaching.
Teachers

Hugo House teachers are at the core of our goal to help writers become better writers. Our teachers are writers; they are selected on the basis of their active engagement in the literary world as well as their love of teaching.
Kim Kogane is a multi-passionate artist who aspires to write the kind of book you might like to buy at the airport. She dives deeply inward, exploring the depths of self through her work. When sheâs not writing, you can find her developing conscious marketing strategies for brands, teaching barre, or exploring with her dog, Cauchy.
E. J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2020), Washington State Book Award Winner, Pacific Northwest Book Award Winner, Association of Asian American Studies Book Award Winner, and PEN Open Book Award Longlist. Koh is the author of the poetry collection A Lesser Love (Louisiana State U. Press, 2017), Pleiades Editors Prize for Poetry Winner. She is the co-translator of Yi Wonâs poetry collection The Worldâs Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021) and the librettist for the opera adaptation of Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden supported by Opera America. Koh is the recipient of the 2022 Artistic Achievement Award from the Korean American Coalition. Koh has received fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, MacDowell, and Kundiman. Her poems, stories, and translations have appeared in AGNI, The Atlantic, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, Slate, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Creative Writing and Literary Translation. Koh is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington in English Literature studying Korean American literature, history, and film. Her debut novel The Liberators is forthcoming fall 2023.Â
Janine Kovac writes about power dynamics and womenâs bodies. Since 2014 Janine has taught introductory and advanced classes in Scrivener for organizations such as The Writers Grotto in San Francisco, Page Street, The Unicorn Author Club and through private consultations.
Christine Kwon is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue (Southeast Missouri State University Press 2023), which won the Cowles Poetry Prize. She is literary editor of Tilted House and lives in New Orleans. Read more on christinekwonwrites.com.
Catherine Kyle is the author of Fulgurite (Cornerstone Press, forthcoming), Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and other collections. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She was the winner of the 2019-2020 COG Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize in poetry. She is an assistant professor at DigiPen Institute of Technology, where she teaches creative writing and literature.
Samantha Ladwig is an essayist, creative writing instructor, and book reviewer based on a small island in the Salish Sea. Her work has been published by The Cut, Literary Hub, Vulture, Bustle, Vice, Real Simple, HuffPost, and Vox, among many others. Find her at samanthaladwig.com.
USAMA LALI is a Pakistani writer working with English, Urdu and Punjabi, currently finishing his second year at the UW MFA program on the prose track. He is a recipient of the David Guterson Award 2023 and a Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlistee whose Punjabi poetry translations have appeared in Pancham and fiction is forthcoming in Addastories. You can find him on instagram @usamalali and twitter @usamalali_
Meghan Lamb is the author of COWARD, Failure to Thrive, All of Your Most Private Places, and Silk Flowers. She is a lecturer at the University of Chicago and the nonfiction editor of Nat. Brut, a Whiting Award-winning journal. Go to http://meghanlamb.com/ for more information.
Susan Landgraf was awarded an Academy of American Poetsâ Laureate award in 2020. Books include The Inspired Poet from Two Sylvias Press, What We Bury Changes the Ground, and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have been published in journals and magazines, most recently Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Calyx, The Meadow, and Tar River. Sheâs given more than 150 writing workshops and served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020.