EXPERIENCE WRITERS CONFERENCE
Artistic Director
Gary Copeland Lilley
Gary Copeland Lilley is an award-winning poet and educator with a strong background in Southern American culture, blues poetry, and storytelling. He has published several collections of poetry and is renowned for his ability to bring raw emotion and narrative depth to his work. As Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference, Gary selects faculty who challenge and inspire writers to explore the full range of their creative voices.
Faculty
2026 Faculty
Alice Anderson
Morning Workshop FacultyAlice Anderson is the author of the national bestselling memoir, Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away, which was published in fall of 2017 from St. Martin’s Press and was recently optioned for film. Anderson’s second poetry collection, The Watermark, was published in the UK and US simultaneously from Eyewear Publishing. A bestselling first collection of poems, Human Nature, was awarded both the Best First Book Prize from the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Prize from NYU.…
Erica Bauermeister
Morning Workshop Faculty
Erica Bauermeister is the NYT bestselling author of 5 novels, including No Two Persons, The Scent Keeper, and The School of Essential Ingredients, as well as her memoir House Lessons: Renovating a Life.…
Jamie Ford
Morning Workshop Faculty
Jamie Ford is the author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which spent two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list and won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. This multi-cultural tale has been optioned for film and stage and is taught in hundreds of schools nationwide.…
Bryan Fry
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Bryan Fry earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. He is the cofounder of Blood Orange Review and currently teaches at Washington State University. His work has appeared in various publications, including Brevity, Front Porch, The South Dakota Review, and The Blue Mountain Review.
Brian G. Gilmore
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Native of Washington DC, Brian G. Gilmore is the author of four books of poetry—elvis presley is alive and well and living harlem; Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington; We Didn’t Know Any Gangsters, an NAACP Image Award nominee and a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award nominee; and come see about me marvin, a Michigan Notable Book Award recipient.…
Maya Jewell Zeller
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of several books, most recently the memoir Raised by Ferns (Porphyry, March 2026); the lyric exploration of fungi, The Wonder of Mushrooms (AdventureKEEN, September 2025); and the poetry collection out takes/ glove box, chosen by Eduardo Corral as winner of the New American Poetry Prize (November 2023).…
A. Van Jordan
Morning Workshop Faculty
A. Van Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry, including Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001), winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (W.W.…
Kate Lebo
Afternoon 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).…
Samuel Ligon
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Samuel Ligon’s most recent novel—Miller Cane: A True & Exact History—was serialized for a year in Spokane’s weekly newspaper, The Inlander, as well as on Spokane Public Radio, and will be published in book form by Slant Books in 2026.…
Michael McGriff
Morning Workshop Faculty
Michael McGriff is an author, editor, and translator whose work centers on the intersection of surrealism with place, working-class life, and poverty in rural America. He is the co-author, with J. M. Tyree, of the linked story collection Our Secret Life in the Movies, which was selected as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2014.…
Kristen Millares Young
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review and called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post, “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times and “utterly unique and important” by Ms. Magazine.
Matt Morton
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Matt Morton is the author of Improvisation Without Accompaniment (BOA Editions 2020), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, and the chapbook What Passes Here for Mountains (Carnegie Mellon 2022).…
Dawn Pichón Barron
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Dawn Pichón Barron is currently the academic director/faculty of the undergraduate interdisciplinary Native Pathways Program at the Evergreen State College. She writes across borders and genres, while dreaming of ripe lemon sunrays at the southern tip of the Salish Sea–on the lands of the Medicine Creek treaty tribes and bands—with her wingman and Chihuahuas. Her chapbook, ESCAPE GIRL BLUES, was published by Finishing Line Press, 2018.…
Roger Reeves
Morning Workshop Faculty
Roger Reeves is the author three collections: Dark Days: Fugitive Essays, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction and a finalist for the 2024 Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism; Best Barbarian, recipient of the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award; and his debut collection King Me, which won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, a John C.…
Elizabeth Thorpe
Editing Workshop Faculty
Elizabeth Thorpe teaches writing at Drexel University and Olympic College. She earned an MFA in Fiction from Goddard College, and is a literary editor for freelance clients and a proofreader for design company 160over90. Her short fiction collection, Cities, was published by Texture Press in 2015. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Per Contra, escarp, Kahini, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Maine Review, among others.…
Jacinda Townsend
Morning Workshop Faculty
Jacinda Townsend grew up in Kentucky and took her first creative writing classes as an undergraduate at Harvard; after doing time as a broadcast journalist and then an antitrust lawyer, Jacinda got her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before going on to spend a year as a Fulbright fellow.…
Lidia Yuknavitch
Morning Workshop Faculty
Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of four novels: Thrust (Riverhead, 2022); The Book of Joan (Harper, 2017); The Small Backs of Children (Harper, 2015), winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the OBA Reader’s Choice Award; and Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books, 2012).…
Morning Intensive Workshops
Registration for a morning intensive workshop includes a writing workshop from 9:00 to 11:30 a.m. July 13-15th, 17th and 18th (5 sessions with a break day in between on the 16th). Your morning workshop will include the same cohort of up to 14 of your peer writers throughout the week who are all led by a faculty member of your choosing when you register for the Port Townsend Writers Conference. Morning Workshops also include access to all afternoon and evening programming, including craft lectures, afternoon workshops, evening faculty readings, open mics, and social gatherings at Fort Worden State Park.
Please note: Morning workshops are in-person only and capped at 14 people per workshop. If you do not see a workshop listed here available when you register, it is full.
2026 Morning Intensive Workshops - More Information Coming Soon
Craft Lectures
2026 Afternoon Craft Lectures - More Information Coming Soon
Afternoon Workshops
Registering for afternoon workshops includes access to all afternoon and evening programming at the Port Townsend Writers Conference, including craft lectures, afternoon workshops, evening faculty readings, open mics, and social gatherings at Fort Worden State Park. Registering for a morning intensive workshop (see above) also includes access to afternoon and evening programming in addition to the morning intensive workshop. Please note, registering for afternoons only does not include access to a morning intensive workshop.
2026 Afternoon Workshops - More Information Coming Soon
Schedule
Below is a general outline of how you can spend your time during the Port Townsend Writers Conference depending upon what you register to attend.
Registration for a morning intensive workshop also includes access to all afternoon and evening programming, including craft lectures, afternoon workshops, evening faculty readings, open mics, and social gatherings at Fort Worden State Park. Registration for afternoons only includes access to all afternoon and evening programming and does not include access to a morning intensive workshop.
The schedule below includes when morning intensive workshops, afternoon drop-in workshops, craft lectures, open mics, and evening gatherings occur. Specifics, including the titles of workshops and their locations on campus, will be sent after registration and prior to your arrival on campus.
Please note, all times are Pacific Standard Time.
Sunday, July 12
2 p.m. - Centrum Shuttle leaves SeaTac Airport headed to Fort Worden*
4-5 p.m. - Arrival at Fort Worden State Park, Check In, and Welcome Reception
5:15 p.m. - Dinner**
7 p.m. - Welcome Orientation
7:30 p.m. - Faculty Reading
Monday - Wednesday, July 13-15, and Friday-Saturday, July 17-18
7:45 a.m. - Breakfast**
9-11:30 a.m. - Morning Intensive Workshops
11:45 a.m. - Lunch**
1-1:50 p.m. - Afternoon Craft Lectures
2-3:30 p.m. - Afternoon Drop-In Workshops
5:45 p.m. - Dinner**
7 p.m. - Evening faculty readings
Directly following faculty readings - PTWC Open Mic
Thursday, July 16th
7:45 a.m. - Breakfast**
9-11 a.m. Optional Fort Worden Group Hike
11:45 a.m. - Lunch**
5:45 p.m. - Dinner**
7 p.m. - Evening faculty Readings
Directly following faculty reading - Evening social gathering (TBA)
Sunday, July 19th
7:45 a.m. - Breakfast
9 a.m. - Centrum Shuttle Departs Fort Worden headed to SeaTac Airport**
11 a.m. - Fort Worden Checkout***
*For those who register for the Centrum Shuttle from SeaTac International Airport in Seattle to and/or from Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington
**For those who register for meals on campus
***For those who register for lodging on campus
Costs
Centrum has a variety of ways to be able to attend our workshops even if you’re on a budget. If you need financial assistance, Centrum has a robust scholarship program awarded on a first-come, first-served; and as-needed basis.
Please note, housing and meal costs reflect the Conference's extension to seven days in 2026.
Tuition:
Morning Intensive Workshop: TBA
Afternoons Only: TBA
First Impression 1-on-1 Writing Consultation with an Editor: TBA
Those who register for the Morning Intensive Workshop get access to their choice of a morning faculty member as well as access to all drop-in afternoon workshops. Morning faculty classes are limited to 14 people and registration fills quickly.
Housing:
Private Dorm Room (7 nights): TBA
Private Dorm Room with a View (7 nights): TBA
Shared Apartment (7 nights): TBA
Meals:
All meals: TBA
Transportation:
Shuttle from Seatac 7/12: TBA
Shuttle to Seatac 7/19: TBA
Scholarships
Apply online as you register. Please note that except in rare cases, scholarships are available for tuition only, not housing and meals. Centrum requires a $50 deposit of scholarship applicants, which is fully refundable if you do not receive a scholarship and choose not to attend the conference.
If we haven’t answered all of the questions you may have, please contact Eric Greenwell at 360-385-3102, x131, or egreenwell@centrum (dot) org.
FAQ
Is financial assistance available to attend the Port Townsend Writers Conference?
Yes! Centrum is proud to offer a limited number of scholarships. We accept scholarship applications when registration for the Port Townsend Writers Conference opens on January 2 through April 15, prior to the Conference in July. Applications are evaluated by an anonymous scholarship judge on a first come, first served bases and on a rolling schedule throughout the application period. Should Centrum not exhaust our scholarship funding by April 15, the application period will remain open until all funds are committed. Apply online as you register.
Please note that except in rare cases, scholarships are available for tuition only. This does not include travel, housing, and meals. Applicants should be prepared to cover these expenses. Centrum requires a $50 deposit of scholarship applicants at the time of application, which is fully refundable if you do not receive a scholarship and choose not to attend the Conference.
I registered for a morning intensive workshop. Can I attend a craft lecture or afternoon workshop? What about a faculty reading?
Yes! Registration for a morning intensive workshop includes access to all afternoon and evening programming as well, including craft lectures, afternoon workshops, evening faculty readings, open mics, and social gatherings through the week. In short, if you register for a morning intensive workshop, you have access to everything on the schedule for the Conference.
I registered for afternoons only. Can I attend a morning workshop too?
Not unless you change your registration to a morning intensive workshop. Morning intensives are limited to 14 writers who meet daily throughout the week with the same faculty member. To attend a morning intensive workshop, you must register for that workshop, which includes access to all afternoon and evening programming during the Conference as well. As an afternoon participant, you still have access to all the great programming in the afternoons and evenings, including craft lectures, afternoon workshops, evening faculty readings, open mics, and social gatherings. If you would like to change your registration to a morning workshop - and spots are still available in that workshop - you do so through the registration confirmation email you received or you can contact Centrum's Registrar at (360) 385-3102.
I want to share my work at the Conference. How can I do that?
We're so glad you asked! At the Port Townsend Writers Conference, one of our goals is to foster a community of writers. While writing can often be solitary in practice - as in, the act itself - there's a whole community of people out there experiencing similar challenges. At the Conference, we have open mics every evening, and anyone who registers (morning and afternoons) can come and sign up. Workshops are often generative as well and include many opportunities to share your work with the work of your peers. If you have books, we have a pop-up bookstore every year where you can sell them, and you will receive more information after you register about how to include your books for sale. Finally, Fort Worden is a big campus with lots of open spaces to walk with the writers you meet and share thoughts, experiences, and ideas while passing through Pacific madrone forests or looking across the Salish Sea.
Do I have to register for meals and lodging at Fort Worden for the Conference too?
In short, no. You can register for a morning intensive workshop or afternoon programming only without registering for meals and lodging. However, there are important things to consider. Grocery stores and restaurants are not easily accessible from Fort Worden if you do not have a personal vehicle on campus. Downtown Port Townsend and most grocery stores, hotels, and short-term rentals are a 10-minute drive from our campus at Fort Worden State Park, and Centrum is not staffed to provide shuttle service for individual participants to and from town during the Conference. If you choose to stay off campus and/or prepare your own meals, you will want to plan accordingly. Also note, many deep connections and inspiring conversations happen over meals or walking around campus, and participants often sign up for meals because they are conveniently located on campus, just a quick walk from workshops, and because they eat with their peers and faculty, forming stronger bonds as the week progresses. Also note, Fort Worden sits right on the shore of the Salish Sea, and lodging on campus is not only a quick walk from workshops, but also located in an inspiring place with stunning views of the open water, Mount Baker, and Mount Rainier, and campus grounds include about 12 miles of hiking trails.
I want to sign up for a First Impressions Writing Sample Consultation. What can I expect?
A First Impression is yet another opportunity to share your work and receive 1-on-1 feedback from an experienced editor and writing teacher during the Conference. Here's how it works: After you sign up for a First Impression, you will receive information prior to the Conference to schedule your time with our Editing Faculty member, Elizabeth Thorpe. You and Elizabeth will have an hour to work together. You can look at whatever sample of your writing you bring to her during that hour. Elizabeth will often ask about your goals and intentions, read your sample with your goals in mind, and then discuss the sample with you. How does this help you? Editors and agents often look at work quickly and make snap decisions in a matter of pages. For example, in the initial stages of selecting a poetry manuscript for publication, editors often read the first five and last five poems before deciding whether to advance or reject it. It can be helpful for you to have insight into how your work might impact a reader quickly, like an editor or agent, who knows very little about you or your work. Previous participants have found this “mirror” - truly a first impression - very useful. But the goal is always to meet each writer where they are and try to be as productive as possible within the one-hour session. You might want to ask questions about the editing and publishing landscape more than talk about your writing, for example, or you may want a more in-depth critique of your writing sample. It's your hour of Elizabeth's time and attention. If you do want an in-depth critique, you should plan to give Elizabeth a brief sample of your work so you can spend time really discussing what's happening in that sample.
Do I have to go to everything during the Conference week?
The short answer is, no. In fact, we've often seen writers become overwhelmed when they try to attend everything during the Conference. We recommend thinking about your goals. What do you want to get out of the experience? For example, if your goal is to meet as many writers as possible, including faculty and peers, you might want to plan to attend as many workshops, lectures, evening readings, and open mics as you can, and if you are naturally introverted or drained by extended social interaction, you might consider how much energy such a level of activity might require. If your goal is to advance a piece of writing, on the other hand, you might want to build in time to write and balance that writing time with other activities and programming during the week. Maybe you also want to see Port Townsend and spend time hiking Fort Worden. In 2025, we are returning to a seven-day schedule (as compared to a six-day schedule in recent years). The additional day will allow us to build in time for you to experience Fort Worden's unique and naturally-rich campus and each other's company. As Centrum's mission states, our goal is creativity and community. We have learned after organizing arts programs for over 50 years, finding the harmony between creativity and community means connecting writers with writers and writers with themselves, and we encourage our writing community to do so for the brief and indelible time we are all together in a beautiful place.
Can I register for the 2025 Port Townsend Writers Conference remotely and attend online?
The Covid-19 Pandemic challenged our writing community in many ways, and providing the opportunity to attend the Conference online was one way we were able to meet and share our work and continue our legacy of creative and community. Our production crew here at Centrum has done a remarkable job providing a platform for online engagement. In the years since the Pandemic, however, as we have returned to hosting the Conference in person at Fort Worden, we have seen interest in attending online decline significantly, from about 40 participants in 2022 to just 3 in 2024, when we cancelled the online option. There are no plans to offer online remote attendance in 2025. Thank you for supporting our community and engaging each other through the Pandemic, which was a challenge our community rose to and remains a testament to its import and strength.
For questions about how to get to Fort Worden State Park, food service for on-campus meals, what to bring, and what to expect of Port Townsend and the area, you can also visit Centrum's general FAQ page by clicking here.
If we haven’t answered all of the questions you may have, please contact Eric Greenwell at 360-385-3102, x131, or egreenwell@centrum (dot) org.
Past Faculty
Kim Addonizio
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Kim Addonizio is the author of seven poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry: The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius.
Rion Amilcar Scott
Morning Workshop Faculty
Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collections The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 and McSweeney’s Quarterly, among other publications.
Alice Anderson
Morning Workshop Faculty
Alice Anderson is the author of the national bestselling memoir, Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away, which was published in fall of 2017 from St. Martin’s Press and was recently optioned for film. Anderson’s second poetry collection, The Watermark, was published in the UK and US simultaneously from Eyewear Publishing. A bestselling first collection of poems, Human Nature, was awarded both the Best First Book Prize from the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Prize from NYU.…
Bryce Andrews
Morning Workshop Faculty
Bryce Andrews is a rancher, conservationist, and co-owner of Thunder Road Farm. His award-winning books Badluck Way (2014), Down from the Mountain (2019), and Holding Fire (2023) describe the complex realities of living and working in the wild landscapes of the contemporary American West. He lives with his family on the Flathead Indian Reservation, in Montana.
Quenton Baker
Morning Intensive Faculty
Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Vinyl, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 NEA Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023).
Erica Bauermeister
Morning Workshop Faculty
Erica Bauermeister is the NYT bestselling author of 5 novels, including No Two Persons, The Scent Keeper, and The School of Essential Ingredients, as well as her memoir House Lessons: Renovating a Life.…
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Morning Workshop Faculty
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and the Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform access to literature in prisons. The author of a memoir and three collections of poetry, he has transformed his latest collection of poetry, the American Book Award Winning FELON, into a solo theater show that explores the post incarceration experience and lingering consequences of a criminal record through poetry, stories, and engaging with the timeless and transcendental art of papermaking.…
Arna Bontemps Hemenway
Past Faculty
Arna Bontemps Hemenway is the author of Elegy on Kinderklavier (Sarabande Books), winner of the PEN/Hemingway Prize, finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize.
Claudia Castro Luna
Morning Workshop Faculty
Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). She is the author of Cipota Under the Moon (Tia Chucha Press, 2022) and Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press, 2017) both shortlisted for the WA State Book Award in poetry, 2023 and 2018 respectively.…
Elizabeth Colen
Past Faculty
EJ Colen is a PNW-based educator, writer, and editor interested in long-form poetry, the lyric essay, literary and visual collage, and research-based approaches to storytelling and memoir.
Gary Copeland Lilley
Gary Copeland Lilley is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being The Bushman’s Medicine Show (Lost Horse Press, 2017), and a chapbook, The Hog Killing (Blue Horse Press, 2018). He is originally from North Carolina and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. He has received the DC Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and is published in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Best American Poetry 2014, Willow Springs, The Swamp, Waxwing, Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, and African American Review.…
Alice Derry
Past Faculty
Alice Derry is the author of five volumes of poetry, most recently Hunger (MoonPath 2018) along with three chapbooks, including translations of poems by Rainer Rilke.
Ryler Dustin
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Ryler Dustin began his poetry career by performing spoken word; he placed eighth while representing Seattle in the Individual World Poetry Slam, headlined at spoken word venues across the country, and was featured in The Best of Button Poetry. He is the author of Heavy Lead Birdsong from Write Bloody Publishing and Trailer Park Psalms, winner of the University of Pittsburgh’s Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize.…
Jonathan Evison
Jonathan Evison is an award-winning full-time novelist. He has published ten bestselling novels: All About Lulu, West of Here, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, Lawn Boy, Legends of the North Cascades, Small World, Again and Again, and The Heart of Winter.…
Melissa Febos
Past Faculty
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart; and three essay collections: Abandon Me, a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist and Publishing Triangle Award finalist; Girlhood, a national bestseller; and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative.
Bryan Fry
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Bryan Fry earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. He is the cofounder of Blood Orange Review and currently teaches at Washington State University. His work has appeared in various publications, including Brevity, Front Porch, The South Dakota Review, and The Blue Mountain Review.
CMarie Fuhrman
Past Faculty
CMarie Fuhrman is the author of Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems (Floodgate 2020) and co-editor of Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations (Tupelo 2019).
Tess Gallagher
Morning Workshop Faculty
Tess Gallagher, the author of eleven books of poetry, lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington, and in her cottage in Co. Sligo, Ireland. She is the only American to have been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her poetry from the Foundation of Rome, which she received in 2023. Her most recent poetry collection Is, Is Not, published by Graywolf press, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. …
Jennifer Givhan
Morning Workshop Faculty
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices.
She is the author of five full-length poetry collections and three novels, most recently Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press) and novel River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Publishing) which draw from her practice of brujería.…
Derrick Harriell
Past Faculty
Derrick Harriell is the Ottilie Schillig Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi.
Terrance Hayes
Morning Workshop Faculty
Terrance Hayes’ publications, So To Speak, a collection of poems, and Watch Your Language, a collection of visual and lyric essays, were concurrently released in 2023. His honors include the National Book Award for poetry, the Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. He is a distinguished Silver Professor at New York University.
Ravi Howard
Past Faculty
Ravi Howard is the author of two novels, Like, Trees, Walking and Driving the King (HarperCollins). In addition to being selected as a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Like, Trees, Walking won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
Tessa Hulls
Morning Workshop Faculty
Tessa Hulls is an artist, writer, and adventurer who is equally likely to disappear into the backcountry or a research library. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, Adventure Journal, and others, and she received the 2021 Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. Her debut graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, traces three generations of women in her family against a backdrop of Chinese history and diaspora to explore the complex ways that mothers and daughters both damage and save one another.…
Kathryn Hunt
Artistic Curator
Kathryn Hunt is a poet and nonfiction writer and makes her home on the coast of the Salish Sea. She is author of two poetry collections, Long Way Through Ruin and Seed Wheel and two chapbooks, The Country I Come From and She Who Walks the Earth.…
Jourdan Imani Keith
Past Faculty
Jourdan Imani Keith is Seattle’s 2019- 2022 Civic Poet. Featured in Forbes and on NPR, her Orion Magazine essays, Desegregating Wilderness and At Risk appear in the Best American Science and Nature Writing Anthology, as well as text books.…
Toni Jensen
Morning Workshop Faculty
Toni Jensen is the author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, a Dayton Peace Prize finalist and a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. Jensen’s essays have appeared in journals and magazines such as Orion, Catapult and Ecotone. She also is the author of the story collection From the Hilltop.…
Bettina Judd
Morning Workshop Faculty
Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women’s creative production and use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her book Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought (Northwestern University Press, December 2022) argues that Black women’s creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.…
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.…
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.…
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.
Kate Lebo
Afternoon 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).…
Sam Ligon
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Sam Ligon’s most recent novel — Miller Cane: A True & Exact History — was serialized for a year in Spokane’s weekly newspaper, The Inlander, as well as on Spokane Public Radio.
Debra Magpie Earling
Morning Workshop Faculty
Debra Magpie Earling is the author of the novels Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea and is currently working on a novel about witches. She is the recipient of the Montana Governor’s Arts Award and has received both a Guggenheim and NEA fellowship. Other awards include the American Book Award, the WILLA Award, the Mountains and Plains Bookseller Association Award, the Spur Award, Montana Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award.…
Sebastian Matthews
Past Faculty
Sebastian Matthews’ latest books are a memoir in essays, Beyond Repair: Living in a Fractured State (Red Hen Press), and a hybrid collection of poetry and prose, Beginner’s Guide to a Head-on Collision (Red Hen Press), an Independent Publisher’s Book Award winner.
Kristen Millares Young
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review and called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post, “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times and “utterly unique and important” by Ms. Magazine.
Valerie Miner
Morning Workshop Faculty
Valerie Miner is the award winning writer of 9 novels, 5 story collections and 2 books of non-fiction. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, over 60 anthologies, and on BBC Radio 4. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she been on the faculty at Stanford University, U.C.…
Nhatt Nichols
Morning Workshop Faculty
Nhatt Nichols (she/her) is a multidisciplinary cartoonist, journalist, poet, and artist whose work focuses on the intersections of humans, animals, and their environment. A graduate of The Royal Drawing School in London, she uses words and images to cover food and environmental issues using solutions journalism practices for High Country News, Edible Magazine, Civil Eats, Modern Farmer, and The Daily Yonder.…
Matthew Olzmann
Morning Workshop Faculty
Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Olzmann’s poems have appeared in the New York Times, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prizes, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Nicole Persun
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Nicole J. Persun is an award-winning and internationally bestselling novelist with a master’s degree in creative writing and instruction. She writes in many genres, most notably contemporary fiction under the pen name Jennifer Gold. Nicole has taught writers as a keynote speaker, in large-scale class settings, intimate workshops, and one-on-one coaching for over twelve years. For more information, visit nicolejpersun.com or jennifergoldauthor.com.
Dawn Pichón Barron
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Dawn Pichón Barron is currently the academic director/faculty of the undergraduate interdisciplinary Native Pathways Program at the Evergreen State College. She writes across borders and genres, while dreaming of ripe lemon sunrays at the southern tip of the Salish Sea–on the lands of the Medicine Creek treaty tribes and bands—with her wingman and Chihuahuas. Her chapbook, ESCAPE GIRL BLUES, was published by Finishing Line Press, 2018.…
Rena Priest
Morning Workshop Faculty
Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the incumbent Washington State Poet Laureate and Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. Priest is also the recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award and fellowships from Indigenous Nations Poets and the Vadon Foundation.
Anna Quinn
Morning Workshop Faculty
Anna Quinn is the author of two novels, The Night Child (Blackstone, 2018) listed as #1 Best Real Psychological Fiction on Goodreads, and Angeline (Blackstone 2023), a Foreword Review Winner and nominated for a Washington State Book Award. Her work has garnered praise from Luis Alberto Urrea, Dorothy Allison, Bill Ransom, Pam Houston, Melissa Febos, Lidia Yuknavitch, Library Journal, and more.…
Peter Quinn
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
A graduate of Lewis and Clark College, Peter studied with poets Vern Rutsala, Tony Ostroff and William Stafford. In 1976 he received an Academy of American Poets Award. His first book of poetry, Painting Circles on Straight Highways, was published by Irenicon Press in 2012. His second book of poetry, small things (Turning Point Press), Will be released in March, 2023.…
Laura Read
Morning Workshop Faculty
Laura Read is the author of But She Is Also Jane (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023, winner of the Juniper Prize); Dresses from the Old Country (BOA Editions, 2018); Instructions for my Mother’s Funeral (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, selected by Dorianne Laux), and The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You (winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, 2011).…
Anastacia Reneé
Past Faculty
Anastacia Reneé is an award-winning cross-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and podcaster.
Robert Stubblefield
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Robert Stubblefield has published fiction and personal essays in Dreamers and Desperadoes: Contemporary Short Fiction of the American West, Best Stories of the American West, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Left Bank, The Clackamas Literary Review, Cascadia Times, Oregon Humanities, Oregon Salmon: Essays on the State of the Fish at the Turn of the Millennium, Open Spaces, basalt, High Desert Journal, and The Whitefish Review among others.…
Elizabeth Thorpe
Editing Workshop Faculty
Elizabeth Thorpe teaches writing at Drexel University and Olympic College. She earned an MFA in Fiction from Goddard College, and is a literary editor for freelance clients and a proofreader for design company 160over90. Her short fiction collection, Cities, was published by Texture Press in 2015. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Per Contra, escarp, Kahini, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Maine Review, among others.…
Shawn Vestal
Past Faculty
Shawn Vestal’s debut novel, Daredevils, was published in spring 2016 by Penguin Press. His collection of short stories, Godforsaken Idaho, published by New Harvest in April 2013, was named the winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
