Faculty

Centrum Faculty

This skilled creative collective could wrap their arms around the globe. Much respect, big hugs.

Photo of Victoria Kolasinski

Victoria Kolasinski

Victoria “Viggy” Kolasinski is a fingerstyle ukulele player/teacher born and raised on Long Island, New York. Under the username @jiggywithviggy, Viggy makes fun and kinetic ukulele tutorials on her social media pages and has grown a cumulative audience of over 300k followers! She’s been playing the uke for 10 years and teaching private lessons, workshops, live shows, and online for four of those years, bringing with her a youthful energy and her silly stage presence.…

Photo of Samantha Ladwig

Samantha Ladwig

Afternoon Workshop Faculty

Samantha Ladwig is an essayist and writing instructor. Her work has been published by The Cut, Literary Hub, Vulture, Bustle, Vice, HuffPost, Real Simple, Vox, The Ex-Puritan, CrimeReads, Brevity, and The Kitchn, among many others. She is a former book reviewer for BUST magazine, as well as a former bookshop owner.…

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Abe Lagrimas, Jr.

Past Faculty

Abe Lagrimas, Jr. is a musician, composer, educator, and author who plays the drums, vibraphone, ukulele, and studied at Berklee College of Music. He competed in the highly prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Drums Competition and has worked with many different artists such as Eric Marienthal, Eric Reed, Kamasi Washington, Katisse Buckingham, Lalo Schifrin, Barbara Morrison, Michelle Coltrane, Jake Shimabukuro, Kenny Endo, and continues to be an in-demand session musician.…

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Stephanie Land

Afternoon Workshop Faculty

Stephanie Land is the New York Times bestselling author of “MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” called “a testimony…worth listening to,” by the New York Times and inspiration for the Netflix series “Maid,” and its sequel “CLASS: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education.” Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and many other outlets.…

Photo of Susan Landgraf

Susan Landgraf

Afternoon Workshop Faculty

Susan Landgraf is a poet and journalist. She has published more than 400 poems, essays, and articles in numerous journals and magazines. Most recently her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Nimrod, Calyx, The Bellingham Review, Literary Mama, Kestrel, Margie, and The Sow’s Ear. She is the author of What We Bury Changes the Ground (Tebot Bach, 2017) as well as The Inspired Poet (Two Sylvias Press, 2019), a book of writing exercises.…

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Sasha LaPointe

Morning Workshop Faculty

Sasha LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city.

Photo of Judy LaPrade

Judy LaPrade

Piano

Judy LaPrade is a life-long musician and teacher. She grew up in West Virginia where she played and sang in church. By junior high school she led and accompanied the patient choir at the local state mental hospital, then as an adult took the Blues into schools and music therapy groups for people with developmental challenges.…

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John Largess

Viola, Miró Quartet

Violist John Largess began his studies in Boston at age 12 in the public schools, studying with Michael Zaretsky of the Boston Symphony, and later as a student of Michael Tree at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In 1995, he graduated from Yale University to join the Colorado String Quartet as interim violist with whom he toured the United States and Canada teaching and concertizing.…

Photo of Chaz Leary

Chaz Leary

Washboard

Though comfortable in all forms of our diverse American musical heritage, Washboard Chaz Leary has achieved dominance and international recognition in acoustic country blues.

Photo of Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo

Morning Workshop Faculty

Kate Lebo’s first collection of nonfiction, The Book of Difficult Fruit (FSG), won the 2022 Washington State Book Award and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Atlantic, New York magazine, Electric Literature, and The Globe and Mail. She is the author of the cookbook Pie School (Sasquatch Books), the poetry chapbook Seven Prayers to Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Entre Rios Books), and co-editor with Samuel Ligon of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze (Sasquatch Books).…