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Teachers

Meet Our 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.

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    Roberto Ascalon

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    Ari Laurel

  • Headshot of Sally Ashton

    Sally Ashton

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    Tara Atkinson

  • Headshot of Jami Attenberg

    Jami Attenberg

  • Headshot of Rachel Attias

    Rachel Attias

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    Elizabeth Austen

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    Zach Ayers

  • Headshot of Peter Bacho

    Peter Bacho

  • Headshot of Nazry Bahrawi

    Nazry Bahrawi

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    Blake Bailey

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    librecht baker

  • Headshot of Quenton Baker

    Quenton Baker

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    Jamaica Baldwin

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    Anna BĂĄlint

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    Leah Baltus

  • Headshot of Taneum Bambrick

    Taneum Bambrick

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    Russell Banks

  • Headshot of Zaira Bardos

    Zaira Bardos

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    Melinda Bargreen

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    Elan Barnehama

  • Headshot of Christy Lee Barnes

    Christy Lee Barnes

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    Catherine Barnett

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    Rick Barot

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Roberto Ascalon

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Ari Laurel

Ari Laurel is a fiction writer in Seattle who writes about decolonial futures, climate, and the Pacific Northwest. She primarily draws from her experience as a racial justice community organizer in Missoula and a labor organizer in Seattle. Her stories are politically motivated, reflecting a strong current of international solidarity, food sovereignty, land return, and ecological restoration. She is a 2022 Hugo House fellow, a 2022 Fernland Studios artist in residence, and a 2023 June Dodge fellow at the Mineral School.

Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Passages North, Blue Mesa Review, The Conium Review, The Toast, Duende, and more. Her short story “Farewell Address to the Last Mango in the Pacific Northwest” won first place in Blue Mesa Review’s 2021 Summer Fiction contest. This story is currently part of a larger project.

Headshot of Sally Ashton

Sally Ashton

Pronouns: she/her

Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, teacher, and editor-in-chief of DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. Publishing in three genres, she is the author of five books of poems including the just-released Listening to Mars (Cornerstone Press, 2024) and The Behaviour of Clocks (WordFarm, 2019). She lives in California where she taught writing at San JosĂ© State University for ten years and continues to teach workshops locally, Zoom, and currently online through Hugo House. Her prose poem “4.6 Billion Years” will go to the Moon as part of the Lunar Codex project via the Griffin/VIPER mission in 2024. Learn more at www.sallyashton.com. 

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Tara Atkinson

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Jami Attenberg

Jami Attenberg is the author of seven books of fiction, including: Instant Love, The Kept Man, The Melting Season, The Middlesteins, Saint Mazie, and All Grown Up. Her most recent novel is All This Could Be Yours (2019), which was included on the Best of Fall lists from People, Vogue, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, New York, Observer, Bust, Nylon, New York Post, Pop Sugar, and more.

Attenberg is also the author of the memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (2022). In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Attenberg—described as a “master of modern fiction” by Entertainment Weekly and the “poet laureate of difficult families” by Kirkus Reviews—reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one’s ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it? Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

About All This Could Be Yours, Emma Cline, author of The Girls, says, “Jami Attenberg’s work is so deeply attuned to humans and our imperfect attempts to love each other. All This Could Be Yours is populated by Attenberg’s pitch-perfect characters; flawed, recognizable people dealing with big topics–death, family, sex, love–and Attenberg handles it all with an expert touch and a keen sense of what, despite all the sadness and secrets, keeps people connected, striving for moments of beauty and tenderness in a dark world.”

Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, Slate, and others. Her work has been published in a total of sixteen languages.

She lives in New Orleans, LA.

Headshot of Rachel Attias

Rachel Attias

Pronouns: she/her

Rachel is a writer, educator, and editor based in Portland, OR. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Porter House Review, X-R-A-Y and more. She is a prose reader for The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA from Oregon State University.

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Elizabeth Austen

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Zach Ayers

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Peter Bacho

Pronouns: he/him

Peter Bacho is the author of seven books: Cebu, Dark Blue Suit, Boxing in Black and White, Nelson’s Run, Entrys, and Leaving Yesler. His latest book, Uncle Rico's Encore, was released earlier this year. His books have received several awards, including the 1992 American Book Award. He is an adjunct professor at The Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus. Bacho was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Seattle’s Central District.

Headshot of Nazry Bahrawi

Nazry Bahrawi

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).

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Blake Bailey

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librecht baker

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Quenton Baker

Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Vinyl, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 NEA Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023).

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Jamaica Baldwin

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Anna BĂĄlint

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Leah Baltus

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Taneum Bambrick

Pronouns: she/they

Taneum Bambrick is the author of Intimacies, Received (Copper Canyon Press, Sept 27th 2022) and Vantage, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award (American Poetry Review 2019). She received support from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Vermont Studio Center. A 2020 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is currently a Dornsife Fellow in the PhD program at the University of Southern California. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, Academy of American Poets, PEN, and elsewhere. 

Describe your teaching style.

I veer on the side of giving students more to say and do rather than trying to create limits. My hope is that students leave my classes feeling inspired to work on book-length projects, knowing our relationship is not limited to the classroom and that we can meet again later if they need to run ideas by someone.

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Russell Banks

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Zaira Bardos

ZAIRA BARDOS is a Twenty-year-old Filipino American writer & filmmaker currently attending the University of Washington in Seattle majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing. She enjoys writing coming of age stories and essays. Zaira has written and directed 3 films titled, "I Remember Everything", "All the Things We Can't Say", and "Calum". Currently she is working on a magical realist novel that explores the growing pains of being a young adult as a Filipina American. 

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Melinda Bargreen

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Elan Barnehama

Headshot of Christy Lee Barnes

Christy Lee Barnes

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Catherine Barnett

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Rick Barot