Teachers

JESSICA RAE BERGAMINO is the author of UNMANNED, winner of Noemi Press' Poetry Prize, as well as chapbooks from dancing girl press and Sundress Publications. Once she files some paperwork, she'll hold a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah. These days, she calls Seattle home. 

Christina Berke is a Chilean-American writer and educator with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She’s been supported by Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Hedgebrook, and Storyknife. Her work is in Edible, Pithead Chapel, Teen Vogue and elsewhere.

Kate Berreth is a lifelong prolific songstress and natural mystic of Music.

Misha Berson is a freelance writer and teacher. From 1991-2016 she was the drama critic for the Seattle Times, after 10 years writing for the SF Bay Guardian. She has written four books on theater, including "Between Worlds: Asian American Playwrights" and "Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination." Her work has also appeared in American Theatre, crosscut.com, oregonartswatch.com, Variety, the SF Chronicle and many other publications. She has been a Pulitzer Prize juror several times, most recently in 2019 when she was chair of the drama committee, and she is a juror for the annual Steinberg/ATCA playwriting award. She has taught arts and journalism courses at UW, Seattle University, SF State University, UC Davis, Richard Hugo House and The Eugene O'Neill Center Theatre Critics Conference.

Carrie Beyer is a poet and essayist. A mother of three school-aged children, she grew up in rural Kansas and now lives in the Pacific Northwest where she works as a bookseller at Eagle Harbor Book Company. Carrie holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University. Her poems have been published in Prairie Schooner, Apeiron Review, and as a contest finalist in Iron Horse Literary Review.

Grace Bialecki is a writer, spoken word poet, and workshop facilitator. She has performed at KGB Bar and as the featured poet at Paris Lit Up, and her work has appeared in various publications including Catapult and Epiphany Magazine. Bialecki is the co-founder of the storytelling series Thirst, and the author of the novel Purple Gold (ANTIBOOKCLUB). 

For more information check out Grace's website (www.graciebialecki.com) or Twitter (www.twitter.com/graciebialecki).

Describe your teaching style.

I feel myself as a facilitator more than a teacher. Although I'll be discussing my practice, I'll also be engaging with the students and asking about their process. My goal is to empower attendees to try new techniques they can then adapt to their own needs.

Born in New Jersey, Courtney holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana and a BA in Art History from Princeton. Her work has appeared in The Fairy Tale Review, The Masters Review, The Indiana Review, Barrelhouse, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. When Courtney's not writing, she can be found coaching lacrosse, hiking with her baby on her back, or looking for weird little pockets of wonder in the world. Courtney lives in Seattle, where she was a Hugo House Fellow in 2018-2019.

2005 Texas Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach is a Texas native and 4th generation German-American. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Western Writers of America, National Park Foundation, and The Academy of American Poets.

He is a Spur Award Winner, two-time international Indie Book Award Finalist, winner of North Texas Book Festival Award, Pushcart Prize Nominee, editor for several editions of the TCU Press Texas Poet Laureate Series, winner of the Pat Stodghill Book Publication Award and winner of the Edwin M. Eakin Memorial Book Publication Award.

One of eight co-authors (all from the Southwest) of the anthology book 8 Voices: Contemporary Poetry from the American Southwest from Baskerville Publishers, Inc. This book is now part of the teaching curriculum for SMU University, Dallas, Texas. 

His twelfth book, “The National Parks: A Century of Grace”, with fellow Texas Poet Laureate Karla K. Morton, is from TCU Press. The poets visited all 62 National Parks, wrote poetry and took photos, with a percentage of the sales from the book going back to the Parks System. This is to help culturally preserve our greatest treasures – our National Parks for the next 100 years. 

Alan Birkelbach currently lives in Raton, New Mexico in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. 

Liza Birnbaum's writing has appeared in Web Conjunctions, jubilat, Tammy, Open Letters Monthly, and other publications. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and teaches at Hugo House, Cornish College of the Arts, and the University of Washington's Robinson Center. She's been awarded residencies from Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture and Fishtrap. For more of Liza go to lizabirnbaum.com

Doctora en literatura europea, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, Spain

Margarita Borrero es novelista, premiada y publicada en España, y escritora de relatos, género en el que ha ganado media docena de primeros lugares en distintos certámenes en España, Estados Unidos y Canadá. Durante más de una década se ha desempeñado como docente de Escuela de escritores, una de las instituciones privadas de escritura creativa más grandes del mundo hispanohablante, miembro de la Asociación Europea de programas de escritura creativa. También ha trabajado como profesora asociada en Mount Saint Mary University, en Los Ángeles.

PhD European Literature, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, Spain

Margarita Borrero is an award-winning novelist from Colombia. She has received numerous short story awards in Spain, Canada and the United States. She teaches at Madrid’s Escuela de Escritores, one of the top private creative writing institutions of the Hispanic world and a member of the European Association of Creative Writing Programs. She has also worked as an associate professor at Mount Saint Mary University in Los Angeles.