Teachers

Emma Stockman is a Seattle-based writer and educator with an MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon. In 2023, she moved to Seattle to pursue greater literary opportunities. She writes short fiction and is currently working on a novel.

Cara Stoddard holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and a BA from the College of Wooster. Their work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Terrain, and Ninth Letter, among others, and has been nominated for Pushcart. Learn more at Cara's website.

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 Sugar (she/her) is the editor of That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Settings (New Village Press, 2023). She has taught courses and workshops at the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, NYU, Poetry Foundation, Hugo House, Justice Arts Coalition, and other sites, both in person and online. Her work ap- pears in POETRY, jubilat, Split this Rock, and more. An associate producer for Commonplace, Leigh holds an MFA in poetry from NYU and a Master of Public Administration specializing in Criminal Justice Policy, from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A University of Michigan Hopwood Writing Awardee, Leigh lives in Michigan with her pup.

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of the novel Elita and the forthcoming short story collection Outer Stars, which won the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Her three previous collections of short fiction are What We Do With the Wreckage (2017 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction winner), This Life She’s Chosen, and Swimming With Strangers. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Conjunctions, The Sun, Prairie Schooner, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and One Story, among other publications. Kirsten has been the recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize and fellowships from MacDowell and the Sewanee 

Writers Conference. She teaches creative writing and literature and lives with her family near Seattle, Washington.

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.