Teachers

Kristi Coulter is author of Nothing Good Can Come From This and the forthcoming Exit Interview. Her work appears in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Elle, and elsewhere. She has taught at Hugo House and the University of Washington. Go to www.kristicoulter.com for more information.

Social Media: @KristiCCoulter (Twitter and Instagram) 

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and The Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and the Jack Straw Writers Program. Her first book, Tributaries, won the 2016 American Book Award. Her newest book is Instruments of the True Measure (University of Arizona Press, 2018). Go to www.laurada.com for more information.

Instagram: @lauralouiseda

Twitter @Laura_L_Da

Facebook: www.facebook.com/lauralda

Sarah Dalton is a Latina writer, editor, and teacher. She is an alumna of VONA, Macondo, and San Jose State. Her nonfiction has appeared in [pank], MUTHA Magazine, Reed, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, and The Sun's Readers Write.

Molly Damm is a Writing lecturer at Montana State University, as well as a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in private practice in Bozeman, Montana. Her work has appeared in the Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, Terrain.org, and Western Humanities Review, among other publications. She is the author of the poetry collection Ground-truth (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and was a Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, where she earned her MFA.

Brian Dang (they/them) is a Vietnamese/Chinese playwright/poet/teaching artist based in Duwamish Territory (Seattle). For Brian, writing is an act of envisioning an eventual communing, an opportunity to freeze time as we know it, and a reaching for joy. They really like bread. Website: brianeatswords.com. 

Kimberly Dark is the author of Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old, The Daddies, Love and Errors, and Damaged Like Me. Her essays, stories, and poetry are widely published in academic and popular online publications alike. Visit www.kimberlydark.com for more information.

April Dávila is an award-winning author and certified mindfulness instructor. Writer’s Digest listed her blog (at aprildavila.com) as one of their Best 101 Websites for Writers. She is the co-founder of A Very Important Meeting (averyimportantmeeting.com). She is a practicing Buddhist, half-hearted gardener, and occasional runner.

Lauren Davis is the author of The Milk of Dead Mothers (YesYes Books, forthcoming), and the poetry collections Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press) and When I Drowned (Aldrich Press). She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

Holly Day has worked as a freelance writer for over 30 years, with over 7,000 articles, poems, and short stories published internationally, including in Analog SF, Harvard Review, and Maintenant. She has had several dozen books and chapbooks published by both major and independent publishers, most recently, the nonfiction books, Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Tattoo FAQ, and History Lover’s Guide to Minneapolis; and the poetry books, A Book of Beasts, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, Bound in Ice, and Cross-Referencing a Book of Summer. Her writing has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, a 49th Parallel Prize, an Isaac Asimov Award, multiple Pushcart awards, and a Rhysling Award, and she has received two Midwest Writer’s Grants, a Plainsongs Award, the Sam Ragan Prize for Poetry, and the Dwarf Star Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

Tamara Dean is passionate about helping writers tell their stories. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, The Guardian, Orion, Seneca Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She's also the author of The Human-Powered Home. More at www.tamaradean.media

Claire Dederer is the bestselling author of two critically acclaimed memoirs: Love and Trouble and Poser. Her new nonfiction book, Monsters, is based on her viral Paris Review essay "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" Monsters will be published by Knopf in April 2023. Claire's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Nation, Vogue, Slate, and many other publications. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation residency and is currently on the faculty of the Creative Writing MFA at Pacific University.

Risa Denenberglives on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner and volunteers with End of Life Washington. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, publisher of lesbian/bi/trans poetry and curator of The Poetry Café, an online meeting place where poetry chapbooks are celebrated and reviewed. Her poetry and poetry book reviews have been published widely.

Nicola DeRobertis-Theye’s debut novel The Vietri Project will be published in March 2021 by Harper. She was an Emerging Writing Fellow at the New York Center for Fiction, and her work has been published in Agni, Electric Literature, and LitHub. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she was the fiction editor of its literary magazine Ecotone. She has taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts. A native of Oakland, CA, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Cara Diaconoff is the author of Unmarriageable Daughters: Stories and a novel, I’ll Be a Stranger to You. Her fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, The Adirondack Review, and elsewhere. She teaches writing and literature at Bellevue College. For more information check out Cara's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/caradiaconoff/.

Nicole Dieker teaches writing, freelancing, and publishing classes (including Hugo House online classes) and works one-on-one with authors as a developmental editor and copyeditor. She’s been a full-time freelance writer since 2012, and spent five years as a writer and editor for The Billfold, a personal finance blog where people had honest conversations about money.

Nicole’s debut novel, The Biographies of Ordinary People: Volume 1: 1989–2000, published in May 2017; The Biographies of Ordinary People: Volume 2: 2004–2016 followed in May 2018. The two books are a Millennial-era Little Women that follow three sisters from childhood to adulthood.

Visit NicoleDieker.com to learn more — including Nicole’s thoughts on writing, money, teaching and the process of taking your work from good to excellent.

Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (April 2015), Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award, and My Alexandria, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize in the UK. He is also the author of four memoirs: the New York Times-bestselling What Is the Grass, Dog Years, Firebird, and Heaven’s Coast, as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World Into Word. Doty has received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize.

Scott Driscoll is an award-winning instructor (UW, Educational Outreach Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Arts and Humanities 2006), and his debut novel, Better You Go Home, was selected as the Foreword Reviews First Book Contest winner. He was the 1989 winner of the University of Washington’s Milliman Award for Fiction.

Zoser is a singer/songwriter and music bender whose music has no boundaries.  With a soulful voice, thoughtful lyrics, and a guitar, his music shifts seamlessly between pop, hip-hop, R&B, and folk.  The writing is personal, the music idiosyncratic, all to capture the feelings and mood of each song. With influences ranging from Ed Sheeran to Childish Gambino, a simple six-string, and mic, Zoser transforms into a “beat box,” lending percussive bass to funky and melodious rhymes.  He made his recording debut in 2019 with the EP release “Genesis” followed by the EP “Evolve” in 2020,  independently recorded and released.  Zoser is currently the Co-Chair of the Totem Star Leadership Collective, a non-profit music and mentorship program for underserved youths.

As an emerging Seattle artist, Zoser began playing guitar when he was just 10-years-old. By the age of 12, he began penning his own lyrics and performing to local audiences in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia. 2 years later, as a mentee of the 100 Black Men of America, he represented the August chapter and performed at the National Convention. Zoser remained a fixture on the local musical scene until relocating to Seattle where he graduated from West Seattle High School. 

While in high school, Zoser was a gold medalist in the Seattle King County NAACP ACTSO competition where he went on to represent the branch at the National convention and was later inducted into the Washington Young Laureates program. Shortly after adjusting to the Seattle music scene, he went on to be a semi-finalist for” SoundOff! 2019”, PNW local music competition, and selected to participate in the More Music at The Moore, a Musician in Residency and Young Emerging Artists program.

By culling and synthesizing seemingly disparate musical forms and influences, Zoser has crafted a sound that is wholly and undeniably his own. The result is something spectacular to behold: a voice that conveys a world-weary ache and a bright optimism, and a sense of musicality that is both rhythmic and infectiously melodic. He is a singer, a storyteller and something of a revelation – not necessarily a soul singer but something rarer and more precious – a singer with soul.

Andrea Dunlop is an author and consultant based out of Seattle, WA with over a decade of experience in book publishing.

She began her career as an in-house publicist for Doubleday (Random House) where she worked with bestselling authors such as Tina Brown, Jonathan Lethem, Linda Fairstein, and many others.

After moving back to Seattle in 2009, she took over as publicity manager for Kim Ricketts Book Events promoting a wide range of cookbook and literary events with authors such as Laurie David, Rene Redzepi, and Steven Johnson. Next, she spent five years with an editorial and book production firm as their executive director of social media and marketing, working with both traditionally and self-published clients and spearheading the company’s marketing efforts.

Andrea is the author of three novels including Losing the Light (February 2016), She Regrets Nothing (February 2018), and the forthcoming We Came Here to Forget (July 2019) all from Atria/Simon&Schuster. Her books have been featured in Town & Country, Bustle, InStyle, US Weekly, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. In addition to her writing and social media work, Andrea is an accomplished speaker and has presented at book and publishing conferences nationwide including The San Francisco Writers Conference, The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Conference, The Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference, and many others.

She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and daughter.Andrea is the author of three novels including Losing the Light (February 2016), She Regrets Nothing (February 2018), and the forthcoming We Came Here to Forget (July 2019) all from Atria/Simon&Schuster. Her books have been featured in Town & Country, Bustle, InStyle, US Weekly, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. In addition to her writing and social media work, Andrea is an accomplished speaker and has presented at book and publishing conferences nationwide including The San Francisco Writers Conference, The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Conference, The Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference, and many others.

She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and daughter.