Teachers

Seattle author Alle C. Hall's debut novel As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back has been honored sixteen times, most recently: finalist for The Nancy Pearl Book Award for Literary Fiction. Hall’s short work appears in journals including Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review,Tupelo Quarterly,New World Writing,CreativeNonfiction, and Another Chicago. She has a lively passion for bringing writers to an easy understanding of their writing and publishing goals.

Courtenay Hameister is the former host of Live Wire and the author of Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went From Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things—Amazon Bestseller and Thurber Prize for American Humor finalist.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. She is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, a novelette, and a how to write Magical Realism manual. Her new poetry collection City Slicker is out with Bamboo Dart Press. Stephanie currently lives on Whidbey Island where she keeps on trying to walk to coffee.

Shelby Handler is a writer, translator, and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. Recent work has appeared in and or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Redivider, Poetry Northwest, The Journal, Black Warrior Review Online, Four Way Review, among others. 

Tara Hardy is a working class, Queer Femme, Disabled poet whose book, My, My, My, My, My won a Washington State Book Award. Passionate about teaching & social justice, she teaches at Evergreen State College, University Beyond Bars, and more. 

Nicole Hardy is the author of the memoir Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin and the poetry collections This Blonde and Mud Flap Girl's XX Guide to Facial Profiling — a chapbook of pop-culture inspired sonnets.

Marguerite Harrold has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. She is a member of the Community of Writers and an alum of the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writer’s Conference. She is the assistant editor of American Life in Poetry. 

Describe your teaching style.

I try to create an open environments, through balancing discussions, activities, writing time and time for students to share.

Respect and kindness are my most valuable guidelines.

My aim is to form community within the learning environment and to help students build confidence and excitement about their writing practice.

Marguerite Harrold has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. She is a member of the Community of Writers and an alum of the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writer’s Conference. She is the assistant editor of American Life in Poetry. 

Describe your teaching style.

I try to create an open environments, through balancing discussions, activities, writing time and time for students to share.

Respect and kindness are my most valuable guidelines.

My aim is to form community within the learning environment and to help students build confidence and excitement about their writing practice.

Jennifer Haupt is the author of the novels In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills and Come As You Are. She was awarded the 2021 Washington State Book Award for General Nonfiction as the editor of Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19. Her essays and articles have been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, The Rumpus, The Sun, and many other publications. She teaches at Hugo House and elsewhere.  

Website: jenniferhaupt.com

Danielle Hayden is a journalist, writer, and teaching artist. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle Magazine, The Seattle Met, and other outlets.

Ann Hedreen is an author (Her Beautiful Brain), teacher, and documentary filmmaker. Ann has written for 3rd Act Magazine, About Place Journal, The Seattle Times, and other publications, including her award-winning blog, The Restless Nest. She is working on a collection of essays.

A chapter of Christine Hemp’s memoir, Wild Ride Home, was recently published in The New York Times. Her poems and essays have also appeared in Salon.com, Iowa Review, Psychology Today, and on NPR. She believes that to write well, we must live well, not in terms of "professional success" or achieving the "perfect" essay. story, or poem, but in how we embrace the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and the ecstatic. Only then can we offer our readers the truths they thirst for.

Website: https://christinehemp.com/index.html

Facebook: /hemprope

Instagram: @christinehemp

Joel Heng Hartse teaches writing at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. His books include Dancing about Architecture is a Reasonable Thing to Do (2022), and TL;DR: A Very Brief Guide to Reading & Writing in University (UBC Press, 2023).

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Go to josehernandezdiaz.com for more information or follow Jose @josehernandezdz.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Go to josehernandezdiaz.com for more information or follow Jose @josehernandezdz.

Minda Honey's essays have been featured by Longreads, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere, including the anthologies Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger and A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South. www.mindahoney.com

A native New Englander, Elise Hooper spent several years writing for television and online news outlets before getting an MA and teaching high-school literature and history. She now lives in Seattle with her husband and two daughters. Previous novels include The Other Alcott and Learning to See.

Ramón Isao is a recipient of the Tim McGinness Award for Fiction, as well as fellowships from Artist Trust and Jack Straw Cultural Center. His stories appear in such journals as The Iowa Review, Ninth Letter, Moss, and Hobart, and his screen credits include ZMD and Dead Body. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and serves as Fiction Editor at New Orleans Review.

Sonora Jha is the author of four books, including the novel The Laughter, winner of the 2024 Washington State Book Award. Her previous books are the novel Foreign (2013) and the memoir How To Raise A Feminist Son (2021). After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a Ph.D. in media and public affairs. Sonora’s work has been featured in The New York Times, on the BBC, in literary anthologies, and elsewhere. She is a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University and lives in Seattle. Her new novel, Intemperance, will be out from Harper Via in October 2025.

Ruth Joffre is the author of the story collection Night Beast, which was longlisted for The Story Prize. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Lightspeed, Pleiades, khōréō, The Florida Review Online, Reckoning, Wigleaf, Baffling Magazine, and the anthologies Best Microfiction 2021 & 2022, Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness, and Evergreen: Grim Tales & Verses from the Gloomy Northwest. A graduate of Cornell University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Ruth served as the 2020-2022 Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House and co-organized the Fight for Our Lives performance series. In 2023, she will be a visiting writer at University of Washington Bothell. 

Describe your teaching style.

In generative classes, I like to give students a lot of opportunities to try things out and experiment with unfamiliar styles with the help of gentle guidance and examples. Students may be introduced to new concepts but will have lots of time to ask questions and experiment during class time.

M is a visual storyteller. Wired magazine called M a "filmmaker provocateur." She produced Neptune Frost which premiered at Cannes in 2021 and received the Audience Award at Indie Memphis in 2022 for her feature debut, ELEPHANT.

Beth Jusino has more than twenty years of experience helping writers navigate the complicated space between manuscript and final book. A former literary agent and marketing director, she’s now a writer, developmental editor, and publishing consultant for both traditional and self-publishing authors. She’s the author of the award-winning Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino de Santiago and The Author's Guide to Marketing, and she’s ghostwritten and collaborated on half a dozen additional titles for both large and small presses. Beth is a member of The Authors Guild and the Northwest Editors Guild, and has taught at writers’ conferences and book festivals around the world. Visit her online at www.bethjusino.com or on Twitter/Instagram @bethjusino.