Teachers

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.

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).

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).

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. 

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. 

Poet and educator Ellen Bass is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book of poetry, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Previous books include Like a Beggar, a finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize, The Publishers Triangle Award, The Milt Kessler Poetry Award, The Lambda Literary Award, and the Northern California Book Award; The Human Line; and Mules of Love, which won The Lambda Literary Award. Bass has also written works of nonfiction, including, with Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, which has sold over a million copies and has been translated into twelve languages. The New Yorker has published ten of Bass’s poems throughout the years, and two have been chosen for The New Yorker podcast. In 2021, Bass was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University and lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Kaveh Bassiri is a writer and translator. He is the author of 99 Names of Exile, winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and Elementary English, winner of the Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. His poems have been published in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2020, Best New Poets 2020, The Heart of a Stranger, and Somewhere We Are Human. Bassiri is the recipient of the 2022 & 2023 Tulsa Artist Fellowship and a 2019 translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Arkansas and an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He teaches creative writing at the University of Tulsa.

Website: kavehbassiri.com

Natalie Baszile's debut novel Queen Sugar has been adapted into a TV series by the same name, which was recently renewed for its sixth season on Oprah Winfrey's OWN cable network. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Natalie has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The Rumpus.net, Mission at Tenth, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9, and O: The Oprah Magazine. Her second book, a work of nonfiction titled We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy was released just last month by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023). A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist and recipient of support from Artist Trust, her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she helps out at Open Books: A Poem Emporium and—with Luther Hughes and Dujie Tahat—co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. On Twitter (@GabrielleBates).