Teachers

Michael Dylan Welch has had his haiku read for the Empress of Japan and at the Baseball Hall of Fame, chiseled in stone in New Zealand, and printed on balloons in Los Angeles. One of his translations from the Japanese appeared on the back of 150 million U.S. postage stamps in 2012. Michael also directs the annual Seabeck Haiku Getaway, cofounded the biennial Haiku North America conference, founded the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library, founded the Tanka Society of America, and founded National Haiku Writing Month. Michael has published his haiku, senryu, tanka and related poetry in hundreds of journals in more than 20 languages. He has published 75 books, mostly haiku-related, including several translations from the Japanese. Aside from Japanese forms, Michael served two terms as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, where for many years he has been president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword and curator of the monthly SoulFood Poetry Night. Michael is originally from England, lived there and in Ghana and Australia, became a Canadian as a teenager, and in 2022 he and his Japanese wife became U.S. citizens. He also has a day job and lives with his family in Sammamish, Washington. You can visit his main website at www.graceguts.com.

Lisa Wells is the author, most recently, of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, a finalist for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Her debut collection of poetry, The Fix, won the Iowa Poetry Prize. You can find her essays in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, N+1, The New York Times, The Best American Science & Nature Writing, and in Orion Magazine where she writes the column “Abundant Noise.” 

Rachel Werner is a teaching artist for Hugo House, The Loft Literary Center, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in addition to being the founder of The Little Book Project WI. Her literary writing and craft essays have been featured by Off Menu Press, Digging Through The Fat, and Voyage YA Literary Journal. A selection of Rachel's recipes is included in Wisconsin Cocktails (UW-Press, 2020), and her poetry in the anthology Hope Is The Thing: Wisconsinites on Perseverance in a Pandemic (The Wisconsin Historical Society, 2021). She also regularly contributes content to TheKitchn, The Spruce Eats, and Fabulous Wisconsin. Her latest book, Glow and Grow: A Brown Girl's Positive Body Guide (Free Spirit Publishing), is forthcoming in fall 2024.

Monica West is the author of Revival Season, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Barnes and Noble Discover selection, and short listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She received her B.A. from Duke University, her M.A. from New York University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow. She has received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco.

Lesley Wheeler is the author of the essay collection Poetry’s Possible Worlds and Poetry Editor of Shenandoah. Her previous books include The State She’s In, her fifth poetry collection, and Unbecoming, her first novel. Her work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee Writers Workshop, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wheeler’s poems and essays appear in Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, Ecotone, and Massachusetts Review, and other journals. @LesleyMWheeler

SARAH WHEELER is a writer who trekked her way from Rhode Island to Washington, where she is a nontraditional English undergraduate at the University of Washington, with intentions of joining the Creative Writing option. Once finished with her degree, she will pursue MFA candidacy in prose. Her focus tends toward the visceral and the internal, with emphasis on familial relationships as seen through the lens of the body itself.

Ben Wheeler is Seattle-born and started playing classical guitar at age 10. Alongside a 40-year career as a classroom teacher, school administrator, curriculum developer, and wilderness guide, Ben has played both classical and jazz guitar professionally in a wide range of venues in California and Washington. He is a regular with the eclectic Seattle group Jazz Hands, featuring original adaptations of Romani hot swing jazz, French musette, bossa nova, blues, Latin jazz, and standards. Ben also performs in unique and enchanting jazz duos and trios, incorporating guitar, voice, accordion, bass, piano and vibraphone. During the pandemic, Ben played a series of six live-streamed classical guitar concerts, each benefitting a different non-profit organization. He is a volunteer musician offering special classical guitar performances for seniors and hospice patients. Ben lives and performs in Seattle and Washington’s Methow Valley. 

Isadore "Iz" White (he/him) is an enrolled member of the Snoqualmie Tribe in King County. He grew up homeless in Seattle, well below the poverty line, in the 90’s. His tribe was federally recognized in 1999 and has continued to strengthen their efficiency and stability in financial development. His circumstances have given him both a unique perspective and breathing room to pursue his craft of writing. He is an up-and-coming poet who escaped the cycle of addiction. He speaks on social issues not only for his people, but all people. Iz White is committed to creating relationships between Native communities and non-native communities in an ever-changing demographic in and around the greater Seattle area.

Peter White comes from the Yaqan Nukiy tribe (Creston, BC) which is a part of the Ktunaxa Nation (kootenay). As a little boy, Peter started out dancing Grass, but due many obstacles, including moving away from his home community, he stopped dancing after 3 years. When Peter was diagnosed with cancer in May of 2016, he knew this was a sign that he needed a change in his life. This was his push off the ledge that started to make everything fall into place. Now Peter is a Men’s Traditional dancer, the dance originates from the Sioux people. Traditional is one of the oldest known dances to Turtle island—a war dance. As a survivor of cancer, homelessness, alcoholism and depression—Peter contends that this dance has manifested his own inner warrior. 

As one listener put it, Carrie Wicks sings like a “lazy angel.” With a rich timbre and deep musicality, her voice is both viscerally compelling and relaxing, whether she’s exploring the jazz repertoire or her own collaborative compositions. Her debut CD on OA2 Records, I’ll Get Around to It, catapulted her to national acclaim in 2010. She followed that with Barely There in 2012 and Maybe in October 2015. A three-time nominee for the Earshot Jazz Vocalist of the Year Award, she released her fourth Origin OA2 album, Reverie, in October 2019.

Joe Wilkins is the author of the novel, Fall Back Down When I Die (Little Brown), a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers (Counterpoint), and three poetry collections, most recently When We Were Birds, winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He directs the creative program at Linfield College. Go to Joe's website https://joewilkins.org or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JoeWilkins.Author.

Describe your teaching style.

I think of all my classes as a focused, dynamic conversation. We explore and learn together.

Castalia is a monthly reading series at Richard Hugo House featuring graduate students, faculty, and alumni from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author or editor of thirteen books. Born and raised in Seattle, he's on the English faculty at Seattle University.