Teachers

Warren Dunes plays PNW Tropicalia and is led by keyboardist/vocalist Julia Massey. Their unique style of Beach Rock is born from the cold waters and grey sky beaches of the Salish sea, and is highlighted by Massey's double keyboards and crystalline voice soaring over chiming guitars and thundering drums from husband Jared Cortese and his brother Dominic Cortese. A long-time favorite in Seattle, Massey's newest project has gained broader attention with performances at festivals around the PNW including Treefort Music Fest, and notable performances at Seattle Zoo Tunes and the historic Neptune Theater. Most recently their debut LP "Get Well Soon" was voted KEXP's #20 album of 2021.

Adrian Matejka grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana and is a graduate of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

He is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) which won the New York / New England Award and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His third collection of poems, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), focuses on Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion of the world. The Big Smoke was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His fourth collection, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017. His mixed media collection inspired by Funkadelic, Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain (Third Man Books), and a collection of poems Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin) were both published in 2021. Matejka’s first graphic novel, Last On His Feet, completes his project about Jack Johnson and will be published by Liveright in 2022.

Among Matejka’s other honors are the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He is the Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University Bloomington and served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19.

Adrienne Matthews is a Los Angeles-born, Seattle-based visual artist, writer, and designer. Her multidisciplinary practice is inspired by ancestral stories, intersectional identities, and the interior lives of people of color. She is currently developing a collection of visual art and creative nonfiction inspired by Black women at work.

Go to elizabethmayorca.com for more information about Elizabeth.

In her writing, Nancy Mburu amplifies the experiences and stories of East African immigrants in an authentic way that also encompasses the complex relationship with culture, traditions, language, gender dynamics, and race as black diasporans. Nancy incorporates her native language, Swahili, rooting her stories in its cultural and political context which continues to influence her, and how she interacts with different tribes and countries herein the diaspora. As a poet, she continues to be a voice that speaks up against injustice by drawing attention to incidences of hypocrisy and inequality regardless of who commits them or how uncomfortable the topic is. Nancy's purpose is to tell her story as a Kenyan African and immigrant through her own lens, to help others understand her culture's experience while striving for social justice. 

Lish McBride is the author of funny and creepy young adult books such as Hold Me Closer, Necromancer; Necromancing the Stone; Firebug; Pyromantic; and the upcoming Curses. She has a BFA in creative writing from Seattle University and an MFA from the University of New Orleans.

NICOLE MCCARTHY is an experimental writer and artist based outside of Tacoma. Her work has appeared in [PANK], The Offing, Redivider, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Best American Experimental Writing, and others. A Summoning is her first nonfiction collection, published by Heavy Feather Review. Find Nicole at nicolemccarthypoet.com.

ERIN L MCCOY holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in Hispanic studies from the University of Washington. Her work has appeared in the Best New Poets anthology twice, selected by Natalie Diaz and Kaveh Akbar. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Narrative, Bennington Review, Conjunctions, and other publications. She was a finalist for the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize. Erin is acquisitions editor for Seattle-based independent publisher Entre Ríos Books. She is from Louisville, Kentucky. Her website is erinlmccoy.com and she can be found on Twitter at @erinlmccoy.

Frances McCue is a poet and prose writer. For a decade, she was the Founding Director of Richard Hugo House in Seattle. She has published six books, including a book of essays about poet Richard Hugo, The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, and another that describes the portraits of photographer Mary Randlett. Her 2017 book of poems, Timber Curtain, is an exploration of lost places in our fast-developing city and arose from work on “Where the House Was,” a documentary film that tells one story about the arts and gentrification in Seattle. In 2018, she won the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Her chapbook called I Almost Read the Books Whole is out from Factory Hollow Press. Frances also writes about why tech folk might engage with poetry and recent articles appear in Geekwire and The Smart Set. 

Joy McCullough’s debut young adult novel, Blood Water Paint, won the Washington State and Pacific Northwest book awards, as well as honors including the National Book Award longlist, finalist for the ALA Morris Award, a Publishers Weekly Flying Start and four starred reviews. She has since written picture books and young adult and middle grade novels that have been Junior Library Guild Selections, Indie Next Selections, finalists for the Washington State Book Award, and a New York Time bestseller. Her most recent novel, Enter the Body, received six starred reviews. She writes books and plays from her home in the Seattle area, where she lives with her husband and two children. She studied theater at Northwestern University, fell in love with her husband atop a Guatemalan volcano, and now spends her days with kids and dogs and books.

Sheleen McElhinney is the author of Every Little Vanishing, a Write Bloody book. Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Abandon Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Bayou Magazine, Slant, Laurel Review, and elsewhere. She is from Bucks County, Pa where she currently lives with her three children.

Jennifer McGaha is the author of Flat Broke with Two Goats, Bushwhacking: How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out, and The Joy Document (Broadleaf Books, 2024). She currently coordinates UNC-Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program.

Describe your teaching style.

My teaching practice is deeply rooted in this belief in the power of writing to be both radical and revelatory. I encourage my students to approach memoir writing with more questions than answers, more curiosity than certitude, and I invite them to appreciate and even enjoy writing as a process that involves multiple drafts, multiple attempts at reaching for the truth. For me, this hope of gaining new insights into the experiences that have shaped me brings me to the page time and time again, and I encourage my students to approach their craft with an openness to what might be versus what is. My teaching, like my writing, is accessible, joyful, celebratory, and I value the unique insights each writer brings to the classroom with the ultimate goal of helping students discover the stories they most want to tell.

Elise McHugh is a senior acquisitions editor for the University of New Mexico Press. She holds an MA in creative writing and has taught English 101, poetry, and publishing classes and workshops in a variety of settings.

Robin McLean was a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first short fiction collection Reptile House won the BOA Fiction Prize, was twice a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize, and was named a best book of 2015 in Paris Review. Her debut novel Pity the Beast, published in November of 2022, was noted as "a work of crazy brilliance" and a best book of fiction in 2021 in The Guardian, "stunning debut novel" in New York Review of Books, as well as a best book of the year in the Wall Street Journal. Her second collection of short fiction Get' em Young, Treat' em Tough, Tell 'em Nothing is forthcoming from And Other Stories on October 18, 2022. She lives in the high plains desert of central Nevada.