Teachers

Hailey Spencer is, in the words of her wife Elizabeth, an absolute cloud of a girl. She is the author of the poetry collection Stories for When the Wolves Arrive. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.

Katherine E. Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life (Little, Brown Spark 2020), which was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, an NYT Book Review Editor’s Choice, and shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Lightning Flowers was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, on the goop podcast, and in O, The Oprah Magazine, and People Magazine. Standefer earned her MFA at the University of Arizona. Her writing appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 and won the 2015 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. Standefer was a 2018 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and a 2017 Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at the Mesa Refuge. She currently lives in the Tetons. 

Website: www.KatherineStandefer.com

Social Media: @girlmakesfire

Emma Stockman is a Seattle-based writer and educator with an MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon. In 2023, she moved to Seattle to pursue greater literary opportunities. She writes short fiction and is currently working on a novel.

Describe your teaching style.

I believe the best teachers are the ones who create the most spacious, curious, and playful containers out of their classrooms, no matter the subject. I strive to bring this philosophy to every class I teach, no matter the age or experience-level of my students. I do this by setting clear community guidelines at the beginning of class, and by fostering connections between students, so there's a collective sense of exploration and acceptance.

When it comes to teaching fiction more technically, I believe there is no one or best way to tell a story; the most successful art will be made out of spiritual and emotional alignment between the writer and the piece. Concepts of craft are often taught from an overly intellectualized and (predominantly white) academic perspective, but I aim to make literature feel approachable and accessible. It’s important to me that students learn to recognize elements of craft by their own reading experience, rather than by some external assessment of what’s “good.” If you can read by feel, you can learn to write that way, too.

Cara Stoddard holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and a BA from the College of Wooster. Their work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Terrain, and Ninth Letter, among others, and has been nominated for Pushcart. Learn more at Cara's website.

Describe your teaching style.

I promote and celebrate growth mindset in my students – that is students who see their own writing practice as one they are in the process of honing. I do not believe a good creative writer is someone with innate raw talent.

Greg Stump has been a regular contributor to The Stranger for more than a decade. He is the co-creator of the comic book series Urban Hipster, a former writer and editor for The Comics Journal, and the creator of the weekly alternative-newspaper comic Dwarf Attack. He teaches comics through a variety of schools and organizations in the Seattle area and recently completed his first graphic novel, Disillusioned Illusions.

Greg Stump is a longtime contributor to The Stranger and a former writer and editor for The Comics Journal. His work in comics includes the graphic novel Disillusioned Illusions, the cartoon collection Lovebunnies, and the comic book series Urban Hipster.

Leigh Sugar (she/her) is the editor of That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Settings (New Village Press, 2023). She has taught courses and workshops at the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, NYU, Poetry Foundation, Hugo House, Justice Arts Coalition, and other sites, both in person and online. Her work ap- pears in POETRY, jubilat, Split this Rock, and more. An associate producer for Commonplace, Leigh holds an MFA in poetry from NYU and a Master of Public Administration specializing in Criminal Justice Policy, from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A University of Michigan Hopwood Writing Awardee, Leigh lives in Michigan with her pup.

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and performer based in Oakland, CA whose mission is to create, and help others create, poetic and theatrical writing about race, gender, and the body to provoke dialogue and social change. Her debut poetry book, Souvenir (WordTech Editions 2014) was a finalist for the WILLA Award 2015, and her plays A History of the Body and Tiny Fires were finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2015 and 2016. A YBCAway awardee and Spirited Woman Fellow (AROHO), her theater and performance work has been presented nationally and staged at Berkeley Repertory Theater, CounterPULSE, the World Theater, and Bindlestiff Studio and selected for PlayGround, United States of Asian America Festival, Emerging Performance Festival, The National One-Minute Play Festival, Utah Arts Festival, and APAture; she collaborated as a writer-performer with Deep Waters Dance Theater in 2007–2011 and with other groups such as the San Francisco State University University Dance Theater. She is a 4th season member of the Playground SF Writer's Pool at Berkeley Repertory Theater. An advocate for arts education, she has taught composition at Bay Area Colleges and Universities since 2006 and has offered workshops and coaching in creative writing since 2003. Visit www.aimeesuzara.net for more information.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aimeesuzarapoet/

Instagram: @aimeesuzara.artist

Anca L. Szilágyi is the author of Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness called “a striking debut ,” and Dreams under Glass, which Buzzfeed Books called "a novel for our modern times." Her writing appears in Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion Magazine, and Lilith Magazine, among other publications. She is the recipient of awards from Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, Hugo House, Jack Straw, 4Culture, and elsewhere. Originally from Brooklyn, she has lived in Montreal, Seattle, and now Chicago.

Twitter: @ancawrites

Instagram: @anca_szilagyi

Website: ancawrites.com

Yuki Tanaka was born and raised in Yamaguchi, Japan. He is the author of the debut poetry collection, Chronicle of Drifting (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has also co-translated, with Mary Jo Bang, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi, published by Princeton University Press. He lives in Tokyo and teaches at Hosei University.

L. Timmel Duchamp is the publisher of Aqueduct Press, which she founded in 2004. Her work has been on the Otherwise Honor list multiple times and a finalist for the Sturgeon, Nebula, Homer, and Sidewise awards. The five-volume Marq’ssan Cycle won a special Otherwise Award honor in 2009. In 2008 she appeared as a Guest of Honor at Wis­Con. In 2009-2010 she was awarded the Neil Clark Spe­cial Achievement Award (“recognizing individuals who are proactive behind the scenes but whose efforts often don’t receive the measure of public recognition they deserve”). In 2015 she was the Editor Guest at Arma­dillocon. She has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award twice, for her work as a publisher and editor. She has taught at the Clarion West Writers Workshop as well as one-day Clarion West workshops. She lives in Seattle.

Miriam BC Tobin (she|her) is a Seattle-based playwright, theatre artist, and writing instructor. She has performed on stages across the US and Europe and has taught drama to youth in Seattle, NYC, Denver, and on a farm in the Czech Republic. She founded MBCT; Modern But Classical Theatre in NYC to de- and re-construct classic plays into highly physical adaptations. Her play The War of Women received a roundtable reading at The Lark and several of her plays premiered at Goddard College’s Ten-Minute Play festival. Honors & awards include a Hedgebrook residency, PEN Writing Scholarship, Newington-Cropsey Fellowship, the London Dramatic Academy Fellowship, and she was a Pipeline Theatre PlayLab semi-finalist. Miriam was the fall 2020 Editor-in-Chief of The Pitkin Review and is currently a dramatic writing editor with The Clockhouse. Her work appears in multiple issues of The Pitkin and Smith & Kraus. Miriam also runs SCRiB LAB, a writing organization aimed at creating community through experimentation.

Describe your teaching style.

I'm all about interaction, collaboration, and discussion. My teaching style is very open, and I welcome all ideas and questions in the classroom. Each class is a mixture of different learning styles, including presented lessons, reading and writing exercises, and open discussions.

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee. As a writer for both children and adults, her work has appeared in kiddie magazines, such as Highlights, Cricket, Humpty Dumpty, AppleSeeds, and Odyssey, and in literary journals, including New Ohio Review, River Styx, Sou’wester, Roanoke Review, Potomac Review, Portland Review, and Italian Americana. Her children’s poetry collection, The Hungry Snowman and Other Poems, was released by Kelsay Books in 2019; her grown-up work was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press, 2019), Best Nonfiction Food (Woodhall Press, 2020), and other anthologies. A recipient of multiple awards, Tina was a runner-up for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator’s Work-in-Progress Grant and a finalist in CALYX’s Flash Fiction Contest. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. Tina has taught for GrubStreet, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Arts Escape, Kids Short Story Connection, and other organizations.

Describe your teaching style.

Very relaxed. Very positive.

Nicole Treska is the author of the debut memoir Wonderland. Her short fiction has appeared in New York Tyrant magazine, Epiphany literary journal, and Egress: New Openings in Literary Art. Her interviews and reviews are up at Electric Literature, Guernica, The Millions, BOMB, The Rumpus, and then some. She lives in Harlem with her husband, James, and their three-legged dog, Nadine.

Brian Turner is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently: The Wild Delight of Wild Things (2023), The Goodbye World Poem (2023), and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook (2023), all forthcoming with Alice James Books. His other collections include Here, Bullet to Phantom Noise, and the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country. He is the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres anthologies. A musician, he has also written and recorded several albums with The Interplanetary Acoustic Team, including 11 11 (Me Smiling) and The Retro Legion’s American Undertow. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was nominated for an Academy Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando, Florida, with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.

Christie Valentin-Bati is a poetry teaching artist based in Chicago. Her work received honorable mention from the Academy of American Poets, was commissioned by the ACLU, and her micro-chapbook "Journal" was showcased in Porous Gallery. She loves plants and shadows.

Describe your teaching style.

My main goal as an instructor is to bring out the language that exists in all of us and to refine it. We all carry unique life experiences, stories, and idiosyncrasies— often writers think they need to strip themselves of these traits to be a “good writer,” but good writing is just about one's ability to elicit a sense of aliveness in the reader by the honing in on the substantial center of subjectivity.

María de Lourdes Victoria is an award-winning, bilingual author, born and raised in Mexico and living in the US. She is the author of novels, short stories and children's books. Maria is the founder of Seattle Escribe.

Elizabeth Villamán grew up on an island near the sea and uncertainty. Her interest in art began with poetry and painting and, from then on, the fusion of the arts became the hallmark of her creative processes. She was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Writer, screenwriter, teacher, and actress. Graduated in the VIII promotion of the Master’s Degree in Narrative and Intensive in Film Scripts, (Escuela de Escritores, Madrid, Spain), Master’s Degree in People-Oriented Creativity Strategies, (Miguel de Cervantes European University). And a Specialization in the Teaching of Creative Writing (Escuela de Escritores, Madrid, Spain). Founder of Escribir es HOY. She has given creative workshops in Europe as well as in the United States, and has won various awards, with anthology publication with other authors, nationally and internationally. In 2019, she was the first winner of the Literary Residency scholarship in Coruña, through the René del Risco Bermúdez Foundation. In 2020 and 2022 she was selected for the Catapult Carribean Creative Online Grant, and in 2021 she won the second place Young Story Award in the Dominican Republic, among other awards Las Islas Rotas is one of her most recent book of stories.

Elizabeth Villamán grew up on an island near the sea and uncertainty. Her interest in art began with poetry and painting and, from then on, the fusion of the arts became the hallmark of her creative processes. She was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Writer, screenwriter, teacher, and actress. Graduated in the VIII promotion of the Master's Degree in Narrative and Intensive in Film Scripts, (Escuela de Escritores, Madrid, Spain), Master's Degree in People-Oriented Creativity Strategies, (Miguel de Cervantes European University). And a Specialization in the Teaching of Creative Writing (Escuela de Escritores, Madrid, Spain). Founder of Escribir es HOY. She has given creative workshops in Europe as well as in the United States, and has won various awards, with anthology publication with other authors, nationally and internationally. In 2019, she was the first winner of the Literary Residency scholarship in Coruña, through the René del Risco Bermúdez Foundation. In 2020 and 2022 she was selected for the Catapult Carribean Creative Online Grant, and in 2021 she won the second place Young Story Award in the Dominican Republic, among other awards Las Islas Rotas is one of her most recent book of stories.

Jaye Viner lives with a tall human and two fur bombs. She knows just enough about a variety of things to embarrass herself at parties she never attends. Her novel, Jane of Battery Park, is available from Red Hen Press.

Olivia Waite writes queer historical romance, fantasy, science fiction, and essays. She is the romance fiction columnist for the New York Times Book Review.

Kris Waldherr's many books for adults and children include The Book of Goddesses (Abrams), Bad Princess (Scholastic), and Doomed Queens (Crown), which The New Yorker praised as “utterly satisfying." Her debut novel The Lost History of Dreams (Atria) received a starred Kirkus review and was named a CrimeReads best book of the year. Her upcoming books include Unnatural Creatures: A Novel of the Frankenstein Women. Waldherr's fiction has won fellowships from the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, and a works-in-progress reading grant from Poets & Writers. She is also the creator of the Goddess Tarot, which has over a quarter of a million copies in print, and teaches the Tarot to writers and other creatives. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2023) and the recipient of a 2025 microgrant for Korean poetry translation from Seattle City of Literature. Her poems and translations have found homes in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She is the former host of Cheap Wine & Poetry and Cheap Beer & Prose and loves to make an audience feel welcomed. She teaches poetry at Hugo House. 

Describe your teaching style.

Positive, fun, and generous, I love to make my students feel welcome and let them know it's important to me that they're there.