Teachers

PATRICK ROSAL currently serves as inaugural Codirector of the Mellon-funded Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers-Camden, where he is a Professor of English. He is the author of five full-length poetry collections including the forthcoming The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems.

He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Research Scholar program. Residencies include Civitella Ranieri, a Lannan Residency in Marfa, TX, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He is co-founding editor of Some Call It Ballin’, a literary sports magazine.

Brooklyn Antediluvian (2016), won the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Prize for best book of poetry and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry. Previously, Boneshepherds (2011) was named a small press highlight by the National Book Critics Circle and a notable book by the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of My American Kundiman (2006), and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (2003). His collections have also been honored with the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, Global Filipino Literary Award and the Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Award.

He has received teaching appointments at Princeton University, Penn State Altoona, Centre College, and the University of Texas, Austin, Drew University’s Low-Residency MFA program and Sarah Lawrence College. He taught creative writing for several years at Bloomfield College where he previously earned his B.A. and twice served on the faculty of Kundiman’s Summer Retreat for Asian American Poets. In addition to conducting workshops in Alabama prisons through Auburn University, he has taught high school workshops through the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Sarah Lawrence College’s Summer Writing Conference for High School Students, Urban Word NYC, and the Volume workshops in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Camden’s MFA program, where he teaches courses on poetry, performance, improvisation, collaboration, and community art.

His poems and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies including The New York Times, Tin House, Drunken Boat, Poetry, New England Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Grantland, Brevity, Breakbeat Poets, and The Best American Poetry. His work has been recognized by the annual Allen Ginsberg Awards, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Arts and Letters Prize, Best of the Net among others. His chapbook Uncommon Denominators won the Palanquin Poetry Series Award from the University of South Carolina, Aiken.

His poems and voiceovers were included in the Argentine feature-length film Anhua: Amanecer which screened at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival. He has also appeared on the Leonard Lopate Show and the BBC Radio’s World Today.

His invited readings and performances include several appearances at the Dodge Poetry Festival, the Stadler Center for Poetry, WordFest in Asheville, the poetry reading series at Georgia Tech, Poetry @ MIT, the Carr Reading Series at the University of Illinois, the Whitney Museum, Lincoln Center, Sarah Lawrence College, where he earned his MFA, and hundreds of other venues that span the United States, London, Buenos Aires, South Africa and the Philippines. 

Mel Ruth is a poet, a professor, a mentor, and a student. Mel is currently a PhD candidate at Georgia State University where they major in Creative Writing with a Concentration in Poetry. Mel obtained their MFA from University of Central Arkansas, and their BFA from Salisbury University. Mel has numerous years of teaching experience, in including, but not limited to, First Year Writing, Dual College Enrollment Composition, Introduction to Creative Writing, Forms & Theory of Poetry, and American Literature. Mel’s chapbook, “A Name Among Bone,” was selected as the winner of the 2021 Cow Creek Chapbook prize, and is forthcoming from Emerald City Press in early 2022. Their chapbook was also listed as a semi-finalist in the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Contest through Black Lawrence Press. Mel was the 2018-2019 Oxford American Magazine Editorial Assistant Fellow, and their work has been selected as a finalist for the Slice Literary’s Bridging the Gap Award. Mel has poems featured in, in forthcoming from, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Emerson Review, Red Earth Review, Sierra Nevada Review and more. Their reviews have been featured in Pleiades, New Pages, Entropy, and The Rumpus. On top of being a poet, Mel is also seeking representation for their LGBTQ+ Young Adult Novel, “Good Intentions.” For more information go to melruth.com or follow Mel on Twitter @_Mel_Ruth_.

Co-owner of Speculatively Queer, Jed Sabin is a jack-of-all-trades with professional experience as an editor, writer, scientist, project coordinator, and logistics manager. They were editor-in-chief of their college student newspaper, and they worked as an editor on the Maze of Games puzzle novel. Their writing has been published by Daily Science Fiction and Wired Magazine. Their hobbies include playing hockey, inventing weird cocktails, and maintaining a spreadsheet of over 600 queer movies.

Edward Sambrano III is a Latinx poet, critic, and educator from San Antonio, Texas. They received their MFA from the University of Florida, and have received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Their writing has appeared in Pleiades, Waxwing, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. They can be found on Twitter @SambranoPoet

RAKESH SATYAL is an Executive Editor who specializes in serious narrative nonfiction, as well as literary fiction and fiction in translation. He acquires across all the HarperOne lists — HarperOne, Amistad, HarperVia, and HarperCollins Español. He held previous editorial positions at Atria/Simon & Schuster, Harper/HarperCollins, and Doubleday/Random House. He has acquired and edited many New York Times bestsellers, including Let Love Have the Last Word by Common, Resistance by Tori Amos, I Have Something to Tell You by Chasten Buttigieg, the Children of Eden series by Joey Graceffa, I Can’t Date Jesus by Michael Arceneaux, Holding by Graham Norton, and Furious Love by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. Other authors with whom he has worked include Michael Ausiello, Guy Branum, Terry Castle, Paolo Cognetti, Marcia Gay Harden, Daniel Lavery, Armistead Maupin, Janet Mock, and Jake Shears.

An award-winning novelist (No One Can Pronounce my Name and Blue Boy), Rakesh has taught in the publishing program at New York University and currently serves as Vice President of the board of Lambda Literary, the world’s leading LGBTQ+ literary organization. He is based in New York.

Molly Schaeffer’s writing has appeared in The Recluse, Tagvverk, Prelude, and The Poetry Project Newsletter; her chapbook STATE ZAP* is published by MO(0)ON/IO. She works in writing and visual art, and teaches in Bard College's Language and Thinking Program and the Summer @Brown Pre-College Program. She holds an MFA in poetry from Brown University. For more information go to mollyschaeffer.com.

Describe your teaching style.

My teaching style is very discussion-focused and generative. We work together as a group (sometimes in partners/breakout rooms) to parse out meaning. I tend to pair readings with generative prompts. Oftentimes there will also be shorter in-class writing work, as well.

Hannah Schoettmer's poetry has appeared in venues like The Louisville Review, SOFTBLOW, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, ONE ART, and elsewhere. She's received a fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. Her debut chapbook, Body Panopticon (Bottlecap Features), was released in 2022.

Heidi Seaborn thought she’d grow up to be a writer. And eventually, she did. But first, she had a long global business career, raised three children, divorced, remarried, and then finally, in her late 50’s took a class at the Hugo House that helped launch her second act as a poet, essayist, and editor. Since 2016, Heidi’s authored two full-length collections of poetry, including PANK Books 2020 Poetry Award winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (2021), Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press, 2019), and three chapbooks of poetry including the 2020 Comstock Review Prize Chapbook, Bite Marks (2021), as well as Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Once a Diva (dancing girl press, 2021), as well as a poetic political pamphlet Body Politic (Mount Analogue Press, 2017). She’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared in American Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Brevity, Copper Nickel, The Cortland Review, The Financial Times, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The Slowdown, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Stanford University. After living all over the world, she now resides in her hometown of Seattle.

Monika Sengul-Jones (she/her), PhD, is an independent writer and scholar based in Seattle, WA, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. She has a doctorate in Communication and Science & Technology Studies and an MA in Gender Studies. She has taught at University of Washington, UC San Diego, and Central European University; she was the inaugural co-managing editor of Catalyst, a feminist technoscience journal. Her research and original reporting on technologies, civic media, and intersectional feminism have been supported by Art+Feminism, European Journalism Centre, OCLC, Knight Foundation, WikiCred, and Wikimedia Foundation. She is at work on a debut novel that takes on the geographies of pollution and inheritance of trauma. As an instructor, she encourages students to take risks by listening, following ideas, and naming the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Natalie Serianni is a Seattle-based writer and instructor with work at HuffPost, Insider, Motherwell, MSN/SheKnows, The Manifest-Station, Seattle's ParentMap, Today's Parent, and MuthaMagazine, among others. Her essay, "Subtle Shifts," was included in the 2021 anthology, "The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink." She writes about grief and parenting (sometimes together), and has taught college writing for over twenty years. Connect with her on instagram @natserianni or at natalieserianni.com. 

Emily Sernaker is a writer and human-rights professional based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the Sun, New York Times, Ms. Magazine, McSweeney’s, Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Rumpus, New Ohio Review and more. Over the last few years she has teamed up with Brooklyn Public Library to organize free, intergenerational, human-rights poetry programming, including Holding Space for Grief events, an Interfaith Poetry Reading, and Global Citizen poetry classes. She has worked as a staff member at the International Rescue Committee and New York Peace Institute and is currently an adjunct professor at the New School. Go to www.emilysernaker.com for more information or follow on social media @Emilysernaker.

Zain Shamoon is a professor of couple and family therapy at Antioch University Seattle. He hold his PhD in Human Development and Family Studies. He is the host and founder of the Narratives of Pain storytelling showcase.

Shama Shams is a Seattle writer, speaker, and nonprofit executive with an MA from Florida State University. Her memoir, She Called Me Throwaway (March 2024), details her journey from a challenging childhood to healing, and she is currently working on The Dreamers, a collection of immigrant stories about the American Dream. Shama also teaches at North Seattle College and Edmonds College while leading storytelling and nonprofit development workshops.

Radhika Sharma is the author of Parikrama: A Collection of Short Stories and Mangoes for Monkeys: A Novel. Radhika received her MFA from the San Francisco State University. Her byline has appeared in several newspapers and magazines including The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, India Currents, Tri City Voice, and others. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of essays.

Nisi Shawl (they/them) is the multiple award-winning author and editor of over a dozen books of speculative fiction and related nonfiction, including the Nebula Award finalist novel Everfair; the standard text on inclusive representation, Writing the Other; and the first two volumes of the New Suns anthology series. Their most recent publication is the middle grade historical fantasy novel Speculation, which Lee & Low published in January 2023. They’ve taught and spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Stanford University, Sarah Lawrence College, and many other institutions. Once upon a time, they conducted a filmed, onstage interview with Octavia E. Butler.

Gina Siciliano is an artist, writer, historian, and bookseller living in Seattle, WA. Her award-winning graphic novel I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi was published by Fantagraphics in 2019.

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including All This Time (Wave Books, 2021), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Press, 2003 and 2005) and most recently the Bagley Wright Lecture Series book Guard the Mysteries (Wave Books, 2021). He has taught workshops at St. Mary’s College, Naropa University and University Press Books. He is currently a mentor in the low residency MFA program at The Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Lofall, Washington.

Darina (Dasha) Sikmashvili was born in Lubny, Ukraine, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and has been working in film production for over a decade.

Michele L. Simms-Burton is a writer and a retired university professor living in metro DC. Her recent writings appear in DownBeat, DCMTA, Auburn Avenue, and the Crisis Magazine.

Ed Skoog is the author of four books of poems, most recently Travelers Leaving for the City (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from The Lannan Foundation and George Washington University, and has served as writer-in-residence at the Richard Hugo House. He lives in Portland, Oregon. 

Beth Slattery moved to Seattle after eighteen years of teaching creative writing and literature at Indiana University East. Since her relocation, she has been writing and editing. Beth is currently working on a collection of personal essays about her mid-life marriage to a Zimbabwean, a move from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, and a reluctant acceptance of the call to adventure. Her most recent publications appear in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and Southern Women’s Review. Beth’s recent editing work includes being a “beta” reader for an author with a multi-book publishing contract, content and copy editing of a personal essay collection, and providing comprehensive editing services on an edited academic volume that was later published by Oxford University Press. She has an M.A. in fiction writing from Miami University and an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine—Stonecoast.

Describe your teaching style.

I'm a firm believer that we learn best when we discuss subjects, ask big questions (that sometimes don't have answers), and then apply that new knowledge (or questions) to our writing. In other words: we talk a lot; we write a lot. Added bonus: we have fun.

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Homie, (Graywolf Press, 2020), winner of the Minnesota Book Award, the Heartland Bookseller Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award; and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

Nat Oleander Smith studied playwriting at Amherst College and completed their MFA at Ohio University. They are the recipient of the Denis Johnston Playwriting Prize, and have taught fiction and screenwriting in Kenya and playwriting around the US.

Rachel Sobel is a writer of speculative and literary fiction about dykes and other queer people. She is the founding editor of boutique small press Homeward Books, and has an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College.

Describe your teaching style.

My classes are expansive and specific, aimed at giving concrete tools to address the writing pitfalls students face. I'm big on asking questions, interrogating your own process, and recognizing that what works for someone else might not work for you. I endorse reading absolutely everything, from silly fluff to pretentious works of enormous philosophical seriousness, and from poetry to nonfiction.