Teachers

Ray Stoeve is the author of the young adult novels Between Perfect and Real (2021) and Arden Grey (2022), both Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections. They also contributed to the young adult anthology Take The Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance. They received a 2016-2017 Made at Hugo House Fellowship and created the YA/MG Trans and Nonbinary Voices Masterlist, a database that tracks all books in those age categories written by trans authors about trans characters. When they’re not writing, they can be found gardening, making art in other mediums, or hiking their beloved Pacific Northwest.

They enjoy fiction of all age categories and genres, especially historical and contemporary realist works about queer and trans characters. They are best equipped to provide sensitivity reads and consult on young adult novels. In addition to being a full-time writer, they also work with authors and publishers seeking sensitivity reads for queer and trans characters.

J. Ryan Stradal is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest, the national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota, and the forthcoming novel Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. He lives in California. 

J. Ryan Stradal is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest, the national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota, and the forthcoming novel Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. He lives in California. 

Katharine Strange specializes in questioning received wisdom with a wink and a smirk. She writes personal essays, short stories, novels, and now, memoir! Her work has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Stranger, OC87 Diaries, Literary Yard, ScaryMommy, and anthology The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink. She was a 2021 Mainstage Storyteller for The Moth. Formerly she wrote a column for Fundamentally Free, a blog for Exvangelicals and heretics. She lives in south Seattle with her family and is represented by Savannah Brooks of Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. As a rule, she never turns down champagne.

Greg Stump has been a regular contributor to The Stranger for more than a decade. He is the co-creator of the comic book series Urban Hipster, a former writer and editor for The Comics Journal, and the creator of the weekly alternative-newspaper comic Dwarf Attack. He teaches comics through a variety of schools and organizations in the Seattle area and recently completed his first graphic novel, Disillusioned Illusions.

Leigh holds an MFA from NYU. She has taught at CUNY, NYU, Poetry Foundation, and more. Leigh’s debut collection is FREELAND (Alice James, 2025), and she edited "That's a Pretty Thing to Call It: Artists teaching in prisons" (NVP, 2023).

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of three collections of short fiction, most recently What We Do With the Wreckage, which won the 2017 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published by UGA Press in 2018. Her earlier collections are Swimming With Strangers (Chronicle, 2008) and This Life She's Chosen (Chronicle, 2005). Her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, McSweeney's, One Story, and North American Review, among other journals, and she has been the recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize. Kirsten teaches fiction writing at Hugo House and 9th–12th grade English at a small independent school near Seattle.

Nicole (Nikki) Suyama is an accomplished singer, actress, teaching artist, and currently serves as Artistic Director for Red Eagle Soaring (RES) Native youth Theatre Program. RES is a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that exists to empower Indigenous youth to express themselves with confidence and clarity through cultural & contemporary performing arts; a group which Nikki has been part of for the last 20 years, beginning as a student herself in the program. Inupaiq on her mother’s side, RES provided her a space to connect with other urban Indigenous youth, many of whom work in the Seattle Native community today. A graduate from Central Washington University with her BA in Communication Studies and Minor in Business, Nikki feels blessed to work in the arts for a living, even outside of her work with RES. Nikki is the reigning World Karaoke Tour North American Champion since 2019, sings back-up for Seattle-based soul band Eric Blu & The Soul Revue, works as a Karaoke Host part-time (The Cove & Who’s On First) and performs acoustic shows with her partner, Logan Ulavale. She has starred in a variety of Theatre Productions and films in the Seattle area, dating back to Longhouse Media's 2007 short film “FISH”, written by co-creator of Reservation Dogs, Sterlin Harjo. More recently, she starred in “Master Control”, winner of Best Film In City for the 2018 Seattle 48 hour horror film project. A lover of Seattle Theatre, she also serves as a board member for both Copious Love, and Intiman Theatre.

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and performer based in Oakland, CA whose mission is to create, and help others create, poetic and theatrical writing about race, gender, and the body to provoke dialogue and social change. Her debut poetry book, Souvenir (WordTech Editions 2014) was a finalist for the WILLA Award 2015, and her plays A History of the Body and Tiny Fires were finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2015 and 2016. A YBCAway awardee and Spirited Woman Fellow (AROHO), her theater and performance work has been presented nationally and staged at Berkeley Repertory Theater, CounterPULSE, the World Theater, and Bindlestiff Studio and selected for PlayGround, United States of Asian America Festival, Emerging Performance Festival, The National One-Minute Play Festival, Utah Arts Festival, and APAture; she collaborated as a writer-performer with Deep Waters Dance Theater in 2007–2011 and with other groups such as the San Francisco State University University Dance Theater. She is a 4th season member of the Playground SF Writer's Pool at Berkeley Repertory Theater. An advocate for arts education, she has taught composition at Bay Area Colleges and Universities since 2006 and has offered workshops and coaching in creative writing since 2003. Visit www.aimeesuzara.net for more information.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aimeesuzarapoet/

Instagram: @aimeesuzara.artist

Mathias Svalina is the author of seven books, most recently America at Play, a collection of absurdist instructions for children's games published by Trident Books. His latest poetry collection, Thank You Terror, is forthcoming in winter of 2024, & his first short story collection, Comedy, will be published later in 2024. Svalina was a founding editor of Octopus Books & has led writing workshops in universities, libraries, community spaces, & in prison. Since 2014 he has run a dream delivery service, traveling around the country to write & deliver dreams to subscribers. With the Dream Delivery Service, he has worked with the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, the Poetry Foundation, & the University of Arizona Poetry Center, & has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition & the BBC World News. 

Anca L. Szilágyi is the author of Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness called “a striking debut ,” and Dreams under Glass, which Buzzfeed Books called "a novel for our modern times." Her writing appears in Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion Magazine, and Lilith Magazine, among other publications. She is the recipient of awards from Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, Hugo House, Jack Straw, 4Culture, and elsewhere. Originally from Brooklyn, she has lived in Montreal, Seattle, and now Chicago.

Twitter: @ancawrites

Instagram: @anca_szilagyi

Website: ancawrites.com

Kari Tai is founder of the artistic collective Home Ground. Her poetry and dancing inform the group’s artistic response. Kari grew up in Kalispell, Montana in a unique octagon house designed and built by her father. Her childhood experiences living on a rural, forested 20-acre lot under the Big Sky influence both her movement style and writing focus. “Choreopoetry” is how she likes to think of interplay between dancing and writing. Kari holds dual BA degrees in journalism and anthropology and a master’s degree in medical anthropology. Her dance experience ranges from her time as a professional dancer with the Spokane Ballet Company to sharing the joy of movement as a dance instructor with people with Parkinson’s Disease. Kari’s writing includes dance and book reviews for Flagstaff Live!, articles and essays in the Plateau Journal and the book The View from Here, and poetry in Spindrift as well as academic and professional writing. A proud mother of two young men, Kari lives near Lake Sammamish and has served as an art docent chair and on the Redmond Arts and Culture Commission. Connect with Kari at karimorehouse@hotmail.com, on Instagram @kari.tai, or www.taikari.com. 

Melissa Takai is an actor and artist based in Seattle. During the day, she works as a visual designer and by night, she studies acting at Freehold Theatre. Melissa is thrilled to be part of THE KINGS GO SOUTH cast!

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial essayist and author of the short story collection What Never Leaves. His writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, The Huffington Post, The Seventh Wave, and elsewhere. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, he has also received fellowships and awards from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Kundiman, Writing By Writers, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, and others. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. 

Lucy Tan is the author of the novel What We Were Promised, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and named a Best Book of 2018 by The Washington Post, Refinery 29, and Amazon. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Lucy is originally from New Jersey. She currently lives and writes in Seattle.