Teachers

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.

LAUREL WILKINSON is a poet from Davis, California. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Washington, Seattle and a recipient of the Grace Milliman Pollock Scholarship and Nelson Bentley MFA Award in Creative Writing. Her recent work explores the subject of indeterminacy by drawing upon traditions of ecopoetry and the Asian American avant-garde. When not teaching or writing, she enjoys dancing, hiking, and drinking tea. You can find her on instagram @laurel__wilkinson

“Williams demonstrates an astounding technical mastery of poetic forms that goes far beyond form for form’s sake, as he repeats, reconfigures, and recontextualizes words and phrases in order to create continuity and multifaceted meanings.” ―Muzzle Magazine

“Williams sings for the vanished, for the haunted, for the tortured, for the lost, for the place on the horizon where the little boat of the human body disappears in a wingdom of unending grace.” ―The Best American Poetry

“To experience Williams’ poetry is to encounter a lucid, unmitigated humanity, a voice for whom language is inadequate, yet necessarily grasped, shaped, and consumed.” ―Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Phillip B. Williams is the author of Mutiny (Penguin Random House, 2021), and Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books, 2016), winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award. He is also the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc., 2011) and Burn (YesYes Books, 2013).

His forthcoming collection Mutiny is a rebellion, a subversion, an onslaught. In poems that rebuke classical mythos and western canonical figures, and embrace Afro-Diasporanfolk and spiritual imagery, Williams conjures the hell of being erased, exploited, and ill-imagined and then, through a force and generosity of vision, propels himself into life, selfhood, and a path forward. Intimate, bold, and sonically mesmerizing, Mutiny addresses loneliness, desire, doubt, memory, and the borderline between beauty and tragedy.

In his debut collection Thief in the Interior, Williams investigates the dangers of desire, balancing narratives of addiction, murders, and hate crimes with passionate, uncompromising depth. Formal poems entrenched in urban landscapes crack open dialogues of racism and homophobia rampant in our culture. Multitudinous voices explore one’s ability to harm and be harmed, which uniquely juxtaposes the capacity to revel in both experiences.

Of Thief in the Interior, Los Angeles Book Review noted, “The seasoned reader of poetry will be impressed that Thief in the Interior is Phillip B. Williams’s first collection. His control of the line is masterful, and his syntax eschews, for the most part, direct or simple delivery of language, creating a formal and solemn tone that scores the emotional pitches of the book.” Author Adrian Matejka notes, “Williams’s poems embody balance: uncompromising and magnetic, surprising and intuitive. Need is everywhere―in the unforgiving images, in lines so delicate they seem to break apart in the hands, and in the reader who will enter these poems and never want to leave.”

Williams’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and others. He is the recipient of a 2020 creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2017 Whiting Award, and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He serves as a faculty member at Bennington College and Randolph College low-res MFA.

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez is a poet, playwright, producer, educator and artistic collaborator. She is the author of three poetry collections and five produced plays. Her awards include: 2025 Humanities Washington Award for K-12 Education, 2018 Willow Books Editor’s Choice Poetry Selection, 2017 Oregon Book Award for Drama, 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship, 2015 International Latino Book Awards Finalist and 2014 Poets & Writers Magazine Notable Debut Poet. Cindy’s poems have appeared in Harvard’s Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, UNAM’s (the National University of Mexico’s) Periódico de Poesía, Portland State University’s Portland Review, and Benedictine University’s Quiddity, among others. Cindy is inspired by the silent and silenced voices of history, herstory and her own story. A former Seattle resident, Cindy enjoys being an active part of the artist communities in Portland, Oregon and Washington’s Methow Valley.

L. Lamar Wilson is the author of Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013), a Thom Gunn Award finalist; co-author of Prime: Poetry and Conversation (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014); and associate producer of The Changing Same (POV Shorts, 2019), which streams at American Documentary and airs on PBS. Recent poems and essays have been have appeared at Callaloo, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The New York Times, Interim, TriQuarterly, NPR, Oxford American, The Root, south, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Wilson, who spent nearly two decades in the nation’s top newsrooms, including the Times and the Post, has received fellowships from the Cave Canem, Civitella Ranieri, Ragdale, and Hurston-Wright foundations, is an Affrilachian Poet, and teaches creative writing, African American poetics, and film studies at Florida State University and The Mississippi University for Women..

Melody Wilson's work appears in The Shore, Quartet, and Briar Cliff Review. New work will appear in Sugar House Review, Re Dactions, Nimrod and The Fiddlehead. She received the 2021 Kay Snow Award and Semi-Finalist for the Pablo Neruda Award. For more information go to melodywilson.com.

Rita Wirkala is an award-winning Argentine writer and educator living in Seattle. After years of academic writing and teaching at the University of Washington, she now writes novels, short stories, children's poetry, and literary reviews, and works with emerging writers teaching classes and creative writing workshops. Her work has been published in Spain, Argentina, and the United States and has won praise from major Spanish-language newspapers. She holds a PhD in Spanish Literature.

Elwin L. Wirkala grew up in Naselle, Washington, where he developed an early passion for poetry inspired by Henley’s Invictus and his parents’ readings of the Bible. While studying English at the University of Washington, he joined the Peace Corps and spent 21 years in Brazil, becoming fluent in Portuguese and Spanish. During that time, he taught English privately, including to former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek, and started a family. Returning to Seattle, he completed his master’s degree and became a language instructor at the University of Washington. A lifelong writer and translator of poetry, his first book focuses on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Primero Sueño (First Dream).

Elwin L. Wirkala grew up in Naselle, Washington, where he developed an early passion for poetry inspired by Henley’s Invictus and his parents’ readings of the Bible. While studying English at the University of Washington, he joined the Peace Corps and spent 21 years in Brazil, becoming fluent in Portuguese and Spanish. During that time, he taught English privately, including to former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek, and started a family. Returning to Seattle, he completed his master’s degree and became a language instructor at the University of Washington. A lifelong writer and translator of poetry, his first book focuses on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Primero Sueño (First Dream).

Emily Wolahan (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection Hinge (NPRP 2015). Her poems have appeared in Puerto del Sol, Sixth Finch, Georgia Review, and Oversound, among other places. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Social Change (CIIS). She has been an editor at Two Lines Press and Jerry Magazine and is currently a Poetry Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal. www.emilywolahan.com

Simon Wolf has his MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington Bothell. His work has been published with Leveler Poetry, featured in 'Coastal Poets – A Reading and Film Festival,' Clamor Journal, and is forthcoming in Inkwell. Check out more of Simon on Instagram @simon_sayspoems.

Shawn Wong is the author of the novels Homebase and American Knees and an editor of several anthologies of Asian American literature, including Aiiieeeee! (all available from the University of Washington Press). He is a professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. Peter Bacho's memoir is the third book in the Shawn Wong Books/University of Washington Press series that includes Eat a Bowl of Tea by Louis Chu and Awake in the River and Shedding Silence by Janice Mirikitani.

Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023). She also wrote two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). Her poetry installations which engage haunting and nourishment have been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, the Richmond Art Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum.