Teachers

Matt Gano is a Seattle based poet, MC, and Teaching Artist currently writing, recording, and performing as, "ENTENDRES." He is the author of Suits for the Swarm, a poetry collection from MoonPath Press, co-founder of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Program, and was the principle bricklayer/Program Director of Abbey Arts' NEXT STAGE program—a career training program for emerging artists. He works as a writer-in-residence for Seattle Arts and Lectures: Writers in the Schools program, and as a guest teaching artist for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. Gano made waves nationally as a spoken word poet and Slam champion in the early 2000’s while representing Seattle multiple years at the National Poetry Slam. With a voice rooted in and born of 90’s hiphop, Gano studied and built his craft in a rising era of the Seattle poetry and hiphop scene. Performing and writing alongside poets, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, Tara Hardy, Iyeoka Okoawo, and many others, he completed multiple tours across the United States as a featured artist performing poetry on some of the world’s most legendary stages.

Alma Garcia is the author of All That Rises (University of Arizona Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared as an award-winner in Narrative Magazine, Enizagam, Passages North, and Boulevard; has most recently appeared in phoebe, Kweli Journal, Duende, and Bluestem; and appears in anthologies including Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat Journal of the Arts). She is a past recipient of a fellowship from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She is a fiction instructor and manuscript consultant at Hugo House.

Alma Garcia is the author of All That Rises (University of Arizona Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared as an award-winner in Narrative Magazine, Enizagam, Passages North, and Boulevard; has most recently appeared in phoebe, Kweli Journal, Duende, and Bluestem; and appears in anthologies including Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat Journal of the Arts). She is a past recipient of a fellowship from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She is a fiction instructor and manuscript consultant at Hugo House.

Cass Garison is a poet & artist. Their chapbook, Beauty Exasperated, was recently published through Common Meter Press. They have an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle, and host an annual retreat for poets & artists in Darrington, Washington. Find more about them, their paintings, & their poems at CassGarison.com

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. In 2022, she served as executive editor for Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World. In 2021, her collection of micro essays, Allegiance, received the Bronze IPPY award (Essays). Her poetry chapbook, Other Small Histories, won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award, judged by Patricia Smith. In 2015, she received the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence for her nonfiction book, Writing the Hawaiʻi Memoir. Darien lives with her family on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Websites: dariengee.com and writer-ish.com

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. In 2022, she served as executive editor for Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World. In 2021, her collection of micro essays, Allegiance, received the Bronze IPPY award (Essays). Her poetry chapbook, Other Small Histories, won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award, judged by Patricia Smith. In 2015, she received the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence for her nonfiction book, Writing the Hawaiʻi Memoir. Darien lives with her family on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Websites: dariengee.com and writer-ish.com

Kaelie Giffel, Ph.D., is the author of the academic memoir, University for a Good Woman. She writes about feminism, literature, and travel. You can find her writing published and forthcoming in Public Books, Full Stop, Oh Reader, SOLO Travel, and other places. She currently lives in Helena, MT where you can find her lifting weights and visiting hot springs.

Describe your teaching style.

My classes revolve around discussion: while I prepare mini-lectures, discussion questions, and have destinations in mind, classes are at their best when everyone comes with thoughts about the reading and about their own writing. In that way, what you get out of the class is commensurate with what you put in. We also move between discussing craft and having broader conversations about the content of a work because you cannot separate the two. Finally, I always end class with writing prompts to help generate material related to our discussions that students can work up into more polished pieces.

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020), won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Gastronomica, Crab Creek Review, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper and a 2022 Jack Straw Writer. Her latest work is A Little Bit of Land, published by Oregon State University Press.

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet is the author of The Greenhouse (Frost Place Chapbook Prize) and Tulips, Water, Ash (Morse Poetry Prize). Her poems have appeared in journals including Plume, Zyzzyva, and Kenyon Review and anthologies including Nasty Women Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She holds a BA in contemporary American literature from Yale University and an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where she was a Javits Fellow. Lisa lives in Portland, OR, where she reads, writes, edits, parents, and cohosts the literary reading series Lilla Lit. (lisagluskinstonestreet.com)

Veronica Golos is author of four poetry books: A Bell Buried Deep (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize); Vocabulary of Silence (New Mexico Poetry Prize); Rootwork and GIRL (Naji Naaman Honor Prize for Poetry.) Her work has been extensively translated into Arabic; also Persian and Italian. She lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Laura Gonzalez is an editorial assistant at Catapult Books. Previously, she was a marketing assistant at Catapult, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull Press and a bookseller at The Strand. She lives in Philadelphia, where she likes to bake cookies and play with her cats.

Seattle author Alle C. Hall's debut novel As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back won five prizes prior to publication, including The National League of American Pen Women’s Mary Kennedy Eastham Prize. 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.

Seattle author Alle C. Hall's debut novel As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back won five prizes prior to publication, including The National League of American Pen Women’s Mary Kennedy Eastham Prize. 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 educator living in Seattle on Duwamish and Coast Salish land. Recent work has appeared in Poetry, The Journal, and Poetry Northwest, 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.