Teachers

Harmony Hazard received her MFA from Stony Brook and has writing published in The Rumpus, Catapult, River Teeth, Hippocampus, Essay Daily, and the anthology Rebellious Mourning. She is a nonfiction editor with The Vida Review and teaches writing in Tucson.

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.

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 the novels The Laughter (2023) and Foreign (2013) and the memoir How To Raise A Feminist Son: A Memoir and Manifesto (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 OpEds, essays, and public appearances have featured in The New York Times, on BBC, and elsewhere. She is a professor of journalism and lives in Seattle. She teaches fiction and essay writing for Hugo House, Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, and Seattle Public Library. 

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.

In 1992, Megan Kelso was the first woman to receive funding from the Xeric Foundation to self-publish her comic, Girlhero. In 2007, she was invited by the New York Times to serialize her Watergate Sue comic in the magazine. In November 2022, Fantagraphics published Kelso's fourth book, a collection of graphic short stories called, Who Will Make the Pancakes. 

The result of Wendy Kendall's passion for purses, mystery and romance is an intriguing In Purse-Suit mysteries series. Kat Out of the Bag introduces Katherine Watson purse designer/sleuth, investigating murder as she moves from designer bags to body bags. The prequel, Purse-Stachio Makes A Splash delves into a chilling cold case. The romantic suspense, Snow Kiss Cookies To Die For creates an intriguing tangle of mystery and love. Her 2022 release, Cherry Shakes In The Park blends danger, divas, and frothy summer delights. Wendy enjoys the Pacific Northwest life and time with her two adult sons. She's a blogger, YouTube podcaster, speaker, project manager, and syndicated columnist. Just wait until you see what Katherine Watson and her friends in Bayside face next in the series.

Website – WendyWritesBooks.com

Facebook – WendyKendallMysteries

Twitter – @wendywrites1

Instagram – wendyekendall

Saba Keramati is a poet, editor, and educator from California. Her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Margins, and other publications. She is the poetry editor for Sundog Lit. Go to www.sabakeramati.com for more information.

Twitter: @sabzi_k

Kamal E. Kimball is a queer Ohio poet. On the editorial team for Muzzle, her work has been published in Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, New South, and elsewhere. She is the author of "The Mouth That Sucks the Bone" (Pitymilk, 2022).

KIMBERLY KING PARSONS is the author of the debut novel We Were the Universe. She won the 2020 National Magazine Award for Fiction, and her short story collection, Black Light, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. Her fiction has been published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children.

Parsons is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia University, Yaddo, Hermitage Artist Retreat, the Oregon Arts Commission, Regional Arts and Culture Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation; her fiction has been published in New York Tyrant, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Parsons’ collection Black Light was a finalist for the 2020 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, the 2020 Texas Institute of Letters Best Work of First Fiction Award, and the 2020 Oregon Book Award.

Born in Lubbock, Texas, Parsons earned a BA in English and an MA in Literary Studies (emphasis on the works of William Faulkner) from the University of Texas at Dallas. She later moved to New York, where she earned an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and served as the editor-in-chief of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. Parsons’s book reviews and interviews have appeared in Bookforum, BOMB, Time Out New York, The Millions, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residencies from Yaddo, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Tasajillo Writers Residency, Dairy Hollow, Baltic Writing Residencies, San Ysidro Ranch, the Gullkistan Center for Creativity, the Lillian E. Smith Center, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and PLAYA. She received the Indiana Review Fiction Prize, placed second in the Joyland Open Border Fiction Prize, and was runner-up in both the Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest and the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest. 

Award-winning Bharti Kirchner has published nine critically acclaimed novels (historical, literary, and mystery), four nonfiction books, and hundreds of articles and short stories. Most recent novel: Murder at Jaipur: A Maya Mallick Mystery (Book 3) has been published in 2023. 

Greta Kline is a professional musician known as Frankie Cosmos. She has spent the majority of the past decade playing music all over the world, as well as writing and recording.

Alyse Knorr is a queer poet, associate professor of English at Regis University, co-editor of Switchback Books, and co-producer of the Sweetbitter podcast. She is the author of three poetry collections, two nonfiction books, and four poetry chapbooks.

Christine Kwon is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue (Southeast Missouri State University Press 2023), which won the Cowles Poetry Prize. She is literary editor of Tilted House and lives in New Orleans. Read more on christinekwonwrites.com.

Samantha Ladwig is an essayist, creative writing instructor, and book reviewer based on a small island in the Salish Sea. Her work has been published by The Cut, Literary Hub, Vulture, Bustle, Vice, Real Simple, HuffPost, and Vox, among many others. Find her at samanthaladwig.com.