Teachers

Jaimie Li is a contributing writer at Poetry Northwest and Darling Magazine and the Editor-in-chief of the Spring 2020 issue of The Pitkin Review. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College in 2022 and is the recipient of the 2019 Goddard/PEN North American Centers Scholarship for her work in fiction and memoir. In 2011, she received her BA in Law at Balliol College, Oxford University. She grew up in Los Angeles County and currently lives on the Cedar River in Maple Valley, WA. To learn more about Jaimie go to www.jaimiezongli.com.

Jenny Harrington Lill is a writer, researcher, and advocate living on Mercer Island. She is an MFA candidate in nonfiction and literature at the Bennington Writing Seminars. Jenny is currently working on her debut collection of essays on love, loss, and mothering.

Gary Copeland Lilley is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being The Bushman’s Medicine Show, from Lost Horse Press (2017); a chapbook, The Hog Killing, from Blue Horse Press (2018); and High Water Everywhere (Willow Books, second edition 2022). Earlier poetry collections include Alpha Zulu (Ausable Press, 2008), The Reprehensibles (Fractal Edge Press, 2004), and The Subsequent Blues (Four Way Books, 2004). Originally from Sandy Cross, North Carolina, Gary Copeland Lilley was a longtime resident of Washington, D.C., where he was a founding member of the Black Rooster Collective. He received the D.C. Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry in 1996 and again in 2000, and he earned a MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2002. He now lives, writes, teaches, curates faculty for the Port Townsend Writers Conference, and plays blues guitar in the Pacific Northwest. He is published in numerous anthologies and journals, and is a Cave Canem Fellow.

http://www.losthorsepress.org/catalog/the-bushmans-medicine-show/

Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is out now from Milkweed Editions. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States.

Esther Lin's first book, Cold Thief Place, won the 2023 Alice James Award. She co-organizes the Undocupoets, which promotes the work of undocumented poets and raises consciousness about the structural barriers that they face in the literary community. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and 2024 Pushcart Prize winner. 

In 2015, Aaron Lindstrom formed the acoustic trio, Lindstrom and The Limit. As the band grew in popularity, they also grew in size. Over the past 6 years, The Limit has morphed into an 8 piece soul-folk-rock powerhouse that puts on a live show like you've never seen before. Fusing elements of folk, funk, soul, blues and rock – The Limit's sound is truly unique and the energy from their live shows has helped them pack some of Seattle's most legendary stages. 

Writer and actor Beth Lisick is the author of six books, including the New York Times Bestselling comic memoir Everybody into the Pool and the recent novel Edie on the Green Screen. Her recent projects are the feature film Mirror Moves and the serial opera podcast The Electronic Lover, for which she and composer Lisa Mezzacappa received a grant from the Gerbode foundation. Lisick has also worked as a promotional banana mascot, a baker, and an aide to people with developmental disabilities. 

Residing in Seattle with wife Veronique and their daughter Gisele, Chris Littlefield has been a fixture in the Seattle Music Community as a professional trumpet player for over 10 years. Having played in many venues & clubs throughout the NW region, the US, and other parts of the world, Chris has come to be known & well respected as a trumpet player, bandleader & composer.  

Throughout all of his career as a musician, Chris has sought one thing primarily in performance and creation of music, and that is happiness. It is this pursuit of happiness in life through music that has led to a great amount of experience and knowledge. It is this cumulative knowledge he brings to bear and hopes to convey in teaching his students. 

Anne Liu Kellor is a mixed-race Chinese American writer, editor, and teacher. Her memoir, Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging, is a 2021 Independent Publisher’s Book Award Winner and a Foreword Indie Book of the Year Finalist in multicultural nonfiction. Anne teaches writing workshops and facilitates a year-long creative nonfiction program for women and nonbinary writers. www.anneliukellor.com 

Deirdre Lockwood is a Seattle-based poet, fiction writer, and journalist. Her debut poetry collection, An Introduction to Error, was recently published by Cornerstone Press. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington.

Layli Long Soldier holds a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an M.F.A. from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in  POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Rosario López es escritora, periodista, editora y profesora. Autora de Los besos secos (Bala Perdida, 2020), finalista del Certamen Internacional de Novela Ciudad de Barbastro, 2019. Enseña escritura creativa en Escuela de Escritores, Madrid (España).

Rosario López is the author of Los besos secos (Bala Perdida, 2020), finalist of the International Novel Award City of Barbastro, 2019. She is a writer, journalist, editor and teacher. She has lived and worked in Spain, the Czech Republic, Africa and The Balkans. She was a european volunteer in North Macedonia. Currently, she lives in Madrid and teaches creative writing at Escuela de Escritores. She writes fiction, poetry, articles and books reviews. Her work has been published in several magazines and anthologies: Librújula, Turia, Malos Hábitos, Archiletras, Frontera Magazine, Mujeres Viajeras and others. She was a finalist for the Energheia Award in 2020, a competition of short stories written by young writers. She is always writing: even if she´s in the shower, washing the plates, sleeping or walking, she is always writing.

Describe your teaching style:

I am a friendly person, because I am interested not only in arts but in human beings. It will be a dynamic class.

Lisa Lucas is a senior vice president at Penguin Random House, overseeing Pantheon and Schocken. From 2016-2020, she was the executive director of the National Book Foundation, the organization that runs the National Book Awards and promotes reading and writing. Prior to that, Lucas was the publisher of the beloved literary magazine Guernica. 

Linera Lucas is the co-editor of When Home is Not Safe: Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional, and Physical Abuse, published by McFarland. Her poetry has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Briar Cliff Review, Clover, Eclectica, PageBoy, Quartet, Redactions, River Mouth Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. She won the Crucible Fiction Prize. Lucas has a BA from Reed College, an MFA from Queens University, and has taught at The University of Washington Women’s Center and Hugo House. www.lineralucas.com