Teachers

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 writes funny, off-beat, occasionally creepy, and sometimes swoony books for teens and adults. She has short stories published short stories in the Normal School, and the anthologies Cornered, What to Read in the Rain, and Kisses & Curses and is currently writing for Reactormag.com. She got her BFA in creative writing from Seattle University and her MFA from University of New Orleans. Lish is also a former bookseller and event host at Third Place Books, a giant thriving indie bookstore just outside of Seattle. Her first book, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults title, Morris Award finalist, and won the Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award.

While she has no long-term goals for world domination, she would like her own castle.

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 M. McHugh is a writer, teacher, and editor based in Washington State. Originally from New Mexico, she is a senior acquisitions editor for the University of New Mexico Press. McHugh has published poetry and nonfiction in numerous venues, including New Mexico Magazine and ABQ InPrint and has taught poetry and publishing classes and workshops in a variety of settings. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.

Describe your teaching style.

I’m a lifelong learner, and I learn all the time in workshops and on panels. It’s one of the many reasons I enjoy teaching. The energy generated by people as they share experiences and questions and ideas feeds part of me that always needs replenishing. My approach as an instructor is to use examples and humor to demystify the process as much as possible in a supportive environment where everyone takes away something that will replenish them and get them once step closer to their goals as writers and as human beings.

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.

Shaun Anthony McMichael is the author of the novel WHISTLE PUNK FALLS (Alternative Book Press, 2025), THE WILD FAMILIAR short stories (CJ Press, 2024) and the poetry collection JACK OF ALL…(New Meridian Arts, 2024). Since 2007, he has taught writing to students from around the world, in classrooms, juvenile detention halls, mental health treatment centers, and homeless youth drop-ins throughout the Puget Sound region. Over 120 of his poems, short stories, and reviews have appeared in literary magazines, online, and in print. He lives with his wife and son in Seattle where he attends church most Sundays. In addition to teaching English to immigrants and refugees at a public high school, he hosts an annual literary arts reading series, Shadow Work Writers. Visit him at his website shaunanthonymcmichael.com.

Kelly McWilliams is the author of the YA novels Agnes at the End of the World (2020), Mirror Girls (2022), and the forthcoming Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay (Spring 2023, Little, Brown Young Readers). She lives in Seattle.