Teachers

Molly Tenenbaum is the author of five books of poems, most recently The Arborists (MoonPath, 2023); Mytheria (Two Sylvias, 2017); and The Cupboard Artist (Floating Bridge, 2012). Her chapbook/artist book, Exercises to Free the Tongue (2014), a collaboration with artist Ellen Ziegler, combines poems with archival materials about her vaudeville ventriloquist grandparents. Her recordings of old-time Appalachian banjo are Instead of a Pony and Goose & Gander. She lives in Seattle, having taught English at North Seattle College for 30+ years, currently teaching music in the backyard and at Dusty Strings Music School. Find her at www.mollytenenbaum.com. 

Ann Teplick is a poet, playwright, and prose writer with an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For twenty-three years, she’s been a teaching artist in Seattle public schools; Hugo House; Coyote Central; and Pongo Teen Writing, at King Co. juvenile detention and the Washington State psychiatric hospital. She has received funding from Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4 Culture, Artist Trust, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She is also a Hedgebrook and Jack Straw alumna.

Jay Aquinas Thompson (he/they) is a poet, essayist, and teacher with recent or forthcoming work in Interim, Pacifica Literary Review, Passages North, COAST | NoCOAST, and Poetry Northwest, where they're a contributing editor. Their poem "Poor and Carefree Strangers," published in FIVES: a Companion to Denver Quarterly, was a 2021–2022 Best of the Net nominee, and they're a 2021 Tin House Workshop alum. They've been awarded grants and fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, the Community of Writers, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and King County 4Culture. They live with their child in Washington state, where they teach creative writing to public school students and incarcerated women. Twitter @jayaquinas; Instagram @freshwater_merman

Disabled writer, Jason M. Thornberry’s work appears in The Stranger, Los Angeles Review of Books, Letters Journal, and elsewhere. He overcame a traumatic brain injury. Relearning to walk and speak, Jason earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. Go to https://jmthornberry.wordpress.com/ for more information. Or check out Jason's Twitter @thornberryjm.

L. Timmel Duchamp is the publisher of Aqueduct Press, which she founded in 2004. Her work has been on the Otherwise Honor list multiple times and a finalist for the Sturgeon, Nebula, Homer, and Sidewise awards. The five-volume Marq’ssan Cycle won a special Otherwise Award honor in 2009. In 2008 she appeared as a Guest of Honor at Wis­Con. In 2009-2010 she was awarded the Neil Clark Spe­cial Achievement Award (“recognizing individuals who are proactive behind the scenes but whose efforts often don’t receive the measure of public recognition they deserve”). In 2015 she was the Editor Guest at Arma­dillocon. She has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award twice, for her work as a publisher and editor. She has taught at the Clarion West Writers Workshop as well as one-day Clarion West workshops. She lives in Seattle.

Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her novel The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley was a national bestseller, finalist for the Edgar Award and New England Book Award for Best Novel of the Year, and has been optioned for television. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, and the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program, cofounded the Sirenland Writers Conference, and from 2010–2013 was the literary commentator on Selected Shorts.

Miriam BC Tobin (she|her) is a Seattle-based playwright, theatre artist, and writing instructor. She has performed on stages across the US and Europe and has taught drama to youth in Seattle, NYC, Denver, and on a farm in the Czech Republic. She founded MBCT; Modern But Classical Theatre in NYC to de- and re-construct classic plays into highly physical adaptations. Her play The War of Women received a roundtable reading at The Lark and several of her plays premiered at Goddard College’s Ten-Minute Play festival. Honors & awards include a Hedgebrook residency, PEN Writing Scholarship, Newington-Cropsey Fellowship, the London Dramatic Academy Fellowship, and she was a Pipeline Theatre PlayLab semi-finalist. Miriam was the fall 2020 Editor-in-Chief of The Pitkin Review and is currently a dramatic writing editor with The Clockhouse. Her work appears in multiple issues of The Pitkin and Smith & Kraus. Miriam also runs SCRiB LAB, a writing organization aimed at creating community through experimentation.

Describe your teaching style.

I'm all about interaction, collaboration, and discussion. My teaching style is very open, and I welcome all ideas and questions in the classroom. Each class is a mixture of different learning styles, including presented lessons, reading and writing exercises, and open discussions.

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee. As a writer for both children and adults, her work has appeared in kiddie magazines, such as Highlights, Cricket, Humpty Dumpty, AppleSeeds, and Odyssey, and in literary journals, including New Ohio Review, River Styx, Sou’wester, Roanoke Review, Potomac Review, Portland Review, and Italian Americana. Her children’s poetry collection, The Hungry Snowman and Other Poems, was released by Kelsay Books in 2019; her grown-up work was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press, 2019), Best Nonfiction Food (Woodhall Press, 2020), and other anthologies. A recipient of multiple awards, Tina was a runner-up for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator’s Work-in-Progress Grant and a finalist in CALYX’s Flash Fiction Contest. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. Tina has taught for GrubStreet, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Arts Escape, Kids Short Story Connection, and other organizations.

Describe your teaching style.

Very relaxed. Very positive.

R.E. Toledo ("Rossy"): Narradora y poeta, escribe y aboga por los derechos de los inmigrantes. Cursó la Maestría en Letras Hispánicas en la Universidad de Tennessee y la Maestría en Escritura Creativa en Español de la Universidad de Nueva York. Sus colecciones de poesía Pregonero despertar de voces (Abismos, 2013) y Azules sueños naranjas (miCielo, 2013) fueron publicadas en el 2013 y presentadas durante la Feria del Libro del Zócalo, en la Ciudad de México, 2013. Sus poemas y cuentos han sido publicados en Letras Femeninas, Label me Latino/a, Revista Esperanza, para personas invidentes y con problemas de visión y la revista de estudios generales del ITAM. Fue coeditora de la revista del programa de Literatura Creativa en Español, Imanhattan, No. 3 (2012). Coeditó la antología de textos transfronterizos, bilingües/biculturales Nos pasamos de la Raya/We Crossed The Line (Abismos, 2016). Actualmente se encuentra trabajando en el segundo volumen de Nos pasamos de la raya/We Crossed The Line, y su tercera colección de poesía, Vacíos. Trabaja como voluntaria para HoLa Hora Latina, dirigiendo el comité artístico de esta organización sin fines de lucro. Así mismo, es parte de Knoxville Immigrant Transit Assistance (KITA), donde participa dos veces por semana ayudando a inmigrantes en tránsito. En su tiempo libre es probable encontrarla haciendo trabajo voluntario, practicando senderismo en las bellas Montañas Humeantes, o haciendo yoga. 

R.E. Toledo  (“Rossy”):  graduated with an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Tennessee and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from NYU. Her first two collections of poetry Pregonero despertar de voces (Abismos, 2013) and Azules sueños naranjas (miCielo, 2013) were published and presented in Mexico City during the International Book Fair, Mexico City, 2013. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Letras Femeninas, Label me Latino/a, Revista Esperanza, for the visually challenged and impaired and ITAM’s magazine for General Studies. She was co-editor of Imanhattan, the literary magazine of NYU’s Creative Writing Program in Spanish. She coedited the anthology of bilingual/bicultural transborder texts, Nos pasamos de la Raya/We Crossed the Line (Abismos, 2016). She is currently working in the second volume of Nos pasamos de la raya/We Crossed the Line, and her third poetry collection, Vacíos. She is the Art Committee Chair and Art Director for HoLa Hora Latina a local 501(c 3). Additionally, she volunteers with Knoxville Immigrant Transit Assistance (KITA), helping immigrants in transit. During her free time, you might find her volunteering, hiking the beautiful Smoky Mountains,  or practicing yoga.

Eugenia Toledo was born in Temuco, Chile, grew up in the same neighborhood as Pablo Neruda, and came to Seattle after the 1973 military coup. Her bilingual volume, Trazas de mapa, trazas de sangre/Map Traces, Blood Traces (Mayapple Press, 2017), was a Washington State Book Award and PEN Los Angeles Award in Translation Finalist. 

John Whittier Treat, a resident of Seattle since 1983, has published many short stories—one was a winner of the Christopher Hewitt Prize and another was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the author of a novel, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE YELLOW HOUSE, which was a finalist was the 2016 Lambda Literary Foundation Prize for Best Gay Fiction, and a 2020 novella, MAID SERVICE. His opinion pieces have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, HUFFINGTON POST, LITHUB and OUT magazine.

Nicole Treska is the author of the debut memoir Wonderland. Her short fiction has appeared in New York Tyrant magazine, Epiphany literary journal, and Egress: New Openings in Literary Art. Her interviews and reviews are up at Electric Literature, Guernica, The Millions, BOMB, The Rumpus, and then some. She lives in Harlem with her husband, James, and their three-legged dog, Nadine.

Sergio Troncoso is the author of Nobody’s Pilgrims, an adventure story about three teenagers, Turi, Molly, and Arnulfo, on the run from evil and unwittingly carrying even a greater menace in their stolen truck. Troncoso also wrote A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son and edited Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in Between Worlds, which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. A Fulbright scholar and past president of the Texas Institute of Letters, Troncoso teaches at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.