Festival Poet Bios – 2026

Naomi Shihab Nye is an acclaimed Palestinian-American poet, essayist, and novelist known for her empathetic, cross-cultural writing that explores identity and finds beauty in everyday moments. Born in 1952, she spent her adolescence in Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She is the currentYoung People’s Poet Laureate. She is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a bestselling poetry book of 2006). Her recent novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen as both a Best Book of 2014 by the Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children’s Book by the American Library Association. Naomi Shihab Nye is Professor of Creative Writing – Poetry at Texas State University. She lives in San Antonio, Texas. Her most recent collection is Everything Comes Next.

Samar Abulhassan is a Jack Straw Writer and holds an M.F.A. from Colorado State University. She’s worked in California public schools for seven years. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she is a 2006 Hedgebrook alum and the author of six chapbooks, including Farah and Nocturnal Temple. Samar has worked with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools since 2008 and as a teaching artist for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation since 2010. Samar also participated in the 2018 Skagit River Poetry Festival. In 2016, Samar received a CityArtist grant to aid in completing a novel-in-poems reflecting on memory, longing, and the Arabic alphabet.

Kelli Russell Agodon (she/her) is a bi/queer poet from the Pacific Northwest . Kelli is the author of four collections of poems, including the award-winning Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), Hourglass Museum, and Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year for 2010,and a Top 10 GoodReads Best Books of the Year in Poetry. Her recent book, Accidental Devotions, was published on May 12, 2026, by Copper Canyon Press.  She also coedited Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays & Interviews to Create a Book of Poems with Susan Rich and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She also co-hosts the poetry series, Poems You Need, with Melissa Studdard.  She has received awards, fellowships, and grants from the Poetry Society of America, Dorothy Rosenberg Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Artist Trust, Centrum, and others. Kelli lives in a sleepy seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker.

Originally hailing from NYC, Roberto Carlos Ascalon has lived in Seattle for over 25 years. He is a Kundiman, Jack Straw, and Artist Trust fellow, a two-time Seattle Slam Team member, and the winner of the 2013 Rattle Poetry Prize for the poem “The Fire This Time, or, How Come Some Brown Boys Get Blazed Right Before And Other Questions Without Marks”. His teaching artistry has exhibited in museums across Seattle and earned him a trip to the White House where he received the honor of shaking hands with President Obama. He currently teaches with The Greater Seattle Bureau of Fearless Ideas.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a gender-Queer poet living in a rural community in northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. Her third book, Transitory, is forthcoming in the fall of 2023 from BOA Editions. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in 45th Parallel, Rogue Agent, The Indianapolis Review, and Rise Up Review. She is an avid hill-walker and lover of nature who spends most days contemplating what’s moving, growing, or arriving around her. Her work can be found atwww.subhagacrystalbacon.com.

Kara Briggs is a Sauk-Suiattle tribal citizen. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, when her parents taught high school from 1964 to 1966. She has been a journalist, consulted for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in its first decade on the National Mall, and now works at Ecotrust, a non-profit that has invested its New Market Tax Credits in the Molokaʻi Land Trust. Kara recently completed her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Art, and previously completed her Master of Public/Tribal Administration from The Evergreen State College. She holds a BA in English from Whitworth University and lives on the Tulalip Reservation north of Seattle, Washington. Her debut poetry book, Rivers in My Veins, was recently published by Saint Julian Press.

Paul Hlava Ceballos is the author of banana [ ], winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and WA State Book Award. His collaborative chapbook, banana [ ] / we pilot the blood, shares pages with Quenton Baker and Christina Sharpe. He has fellowships from CantoMundo, Artist Trust and the Poets House. He has been featured on the Poetry Magazine Podcast and Seattle’s The Stranger. He currently lives in Seattle with his family, where he practices echocardiography.

Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are the author of The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009), recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017; winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) and Shiny City (Airlie Press, 2025). They are also the author of chapbooks to make black paper sing (speCt! Books, 2019) and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2020), which was a Leslie Scalapino Finalist. A Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, and EmergeNYC Fellow, they have been awarded fellowships from Callaloo, Can Serrat, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Imagining America, EmergeNYC and the Intercultural Leadership Institute. They are a member of the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundations writing communities. Chen has also been awarded the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers and served as Hugo House Writer-in-Residence.  Chen’s writing has been featured at literary readings across the country, including Poets Against Rape, Word from the Streets and the Dodge Poetry Festival.  A graduate of Tufts University, they earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside and a PhD at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Chen is currently an associate professor in both the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and in the MFA program in creative writing and poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.  In 2023, Chen was appointed poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, through 2025. In 2024, Chen received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

Blas Falconer is the author of The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2013) and A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007). He is a recipient of the 2009 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award and a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant. His poems have recently appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Puerto del Sol, among other literary journals. A coeditor of Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010) and The Other Latino (University of Arizona Press, forthcoming 2011), he coordinates creative writing at Austin Peay State University, home of Zone 3 Journal and Zone 3 Press.

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.  Gallagher participated in BIRDMAN and SHORT CUTS, films centered on the work of her late husband Raymond Carver’s stories.  Her own collection, The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories, published in 2009, is the basis for film episodes under development.  She was privileged to speak and read in celebration of Theodore Roethke at the Bloedel Reserve in September 2024.

Ed Harkness grew up in Seattle and still lives not far from his childhood home. He is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including most recently Syringa in Twilight (Red Wing Press, 2010). Saying the Necessary, his first full-length collection, was published by Pleasure Boat Studio in 2000. His poems can be found in print journals including Fine Madness, Great River Review, The Humanist, Midwest Quarterly, Seattle Review and others. His work has also appeared in several pioneering online literary journals, including Mudlark, Switched-on Gutenberg, and Salt River Review. Harkness lives with his wife, Linda, in Shoreline, WA, where he teaches writing at Shoreline Community College. He’s the proud father of two grown sons, Devin and Ned.

Lorraine Healy is an Argentinean poet who has been published extensively. Nominated for Pushcart prizes in 2004 and twice in 2018, she has a M.F.A from the New England College and a post-MFA from Antioch University LA. She is the first poet to have received a green card solely on the merits of her work. The 2009 winner of the Libby First Book Award, her book “The Habit of Buenos Aires was published by Tebot Bach. She has published three chapbooks, “The Farthest South” by New American Press, “The Archipelago” by Finishing Line, and “The Voices of Abraham” by World Enough Press. Her second full-length, “Mostly Luck. Odes & other poems of praise,” was published by MoonPath in 2018. Lorraine has long lived on Whidbey Island, where she has taught advanced poetry seminars and works as a fine-arts photographer.

Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California and born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother.  Laméris is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and was honored by the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her poem Small Kindnesses has been translated to multiple languages, quoted in O Magazine, turned into a short film, and was recently read by actress Helena Bonham Carter.  Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her third and newest collection, Blade by Blade (2024)  is now available through Copper Canyon Press.  Laméris has been on the faculty of Pacific University’s low  residency MFA program. She founded Litfield, an online writing community where she currently teaches

Gary Copeland Lilley is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being The Bushman’s Medicine Show, from Lost Horse Press (2017), and a chapbook, The Hog Killing, from Blue Horse Press (2018). He is originally from North Carolina and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. He has received the Washington DC Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He has been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Best American Poetry 2014, Willow Springs, The Swamp, Waxwing, the Taos International Journal of Poetry, and the African American Review. He is the Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference and a Cave Canem Fellow. Gary Copeland Lilley teaches in the Western Colorado University Creative Writing MFA program.

Jill McCabe Johnson (she, they) grew up in the Pacific Northwest and spent her childhood digging for clams and geoducks, harvesting wild berries, and reading in poor light. Jill writes poetry and narrative nonfiction, plus occasional forays into fiction, with a deep social conscience and even deeper roots in nature and the natural sciences. She is the author of the poetry books Revolutions We’d Hoped We’d Outgrown, (Finishing Line, 2017) finalist for the Clara Johnson Award in Women’s Literature from Jane’s Stories Press Foundation, and Diary of the One Swelling Sea (MoonPath, 2013), which won the 2014 Silver Award in Poetry from Nautilus Book Awards. Jill is also the author of the nonfiction chapbook Borderlines (Sweet Publications, 2016) and the poetry chapbook, Pendulum, finalist for the Rane Arroyo Award (Seven Kitchens, 2018). Honors include support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a grant from Artist Trust, an American Academy of Poets Award, the Deborah Tall Memorial Fellowship from Pacific Lutheran University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing, and serving as the Louise Van Sickle Fellow in Poetry at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she earned her PhD in English. Jill is editor-in-chief at Wandering Aengus Press. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Skagit Valley College in the San Juan Islands.

Jory Mickelson is an award-winning writer and educator living in Xwotʼqom / Whatcom / Bellingham on the homelands of the Lummi and Nooksack peoples. They are the author of three books of poetry: Picturing (2025, End of the Line Press), All This Divide (2024, Spuyten Duyvil Press), and Wilderness//Kingdom (2019, Floating Bridge Press) which won a 2020 High Plains Book Award. Their work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Court Green, DIAGRAM, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Jubilat, Mid-American Review, and other journals in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poet’s Prize and have received fellowships from the Dear Butte, The Desert Rat Writers Residency, the Lambda Literary Foundation, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. They were also a 2022 Jack Straw Writer for the Jack Straw Cultural Center’s in Seattle, Washington. They are a graduate of the University of Idaho’s MFA Program, the former Poetry Editor of 5×5 Lit Mag, and the creator of the blog Literary Magpie that uplifted LGBTQAI+ writers, editors and publishers. They have taught workshops and retreats on a wide variety of topics including writing and wilderness, mindfulness, zines, allyship, and poetry as a spiritual practice.

Bengali-American poet and lyricist, Sati Mookherjee, is the author of the poetry collections EYE (Ravenna Press, 2022) and WAYS OF BEING (winner of the Albiso Award, MoonPath Press, 2023). Her collaborations with contemporary classical composers have been performed or recorded by ensembles (The Esoterics, Contemporary Chamber Composers and Players) and solo musicians. (Hope Wechkin, LEANING TOWARD THE FIDDLER, Ravello Records). Her work appears in literary magazines and anthologies and has been awarded an Artist Trust/ Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship Award. Sati is passionate about sharing the pleasures of this unique art form with diverse audiences, leading workshops and giving talks to readers and writers of all ages and experience levels. A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, she presently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival. satimookherjee.com

Jeffrey Morgan is the author of two poetry collections, Crying Shame and The Last Note Becomes Its Listener, winner of the Mind’s on Fire Prize. Twice a National Poetry Series finalist, his poems appear in Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, The Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, and West Branch. He is a much-requested teacher for Poets in the Schools for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. He lives in Bellingham, Washington with his family.

Matthew Nienow was born in Los Angeles in 1983. He is the author of three chapbooks: The End of the Folded Map (Codhill Press, 2011), The Smallest Working Pieces (Toadlily Press, 2009), and Two Sides of the Same Thing (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2007). His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Indiana Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Willow Springs. His work has been recognized with support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Foundation, and Seattle’s leading arts organization, 4Culture. He holds an MFA from the University of Washington and is currently attending the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in preparation for opening his own boat shop.

Rena Priest is an enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She served as the 6th Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023) and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2024 Washington State Book Award, the 2020 Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award, and the 2018 American Book Award. Her collection of essays, Positively Uncivilized, was selected as the Raven Chronicles Press Keepers of the Fire Award, and is slated for release in September 2025. In 2022, she was named the Maxine Kushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow by the University of Washington Libraries and also received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and Indigenous Nations Poets. From 2021 to 2024, she periodically toured the country as part of an all-Indigenous ensemble in a show called Welcome to Indian Country. In 2024, she served as a judge for the 50th annual National Book Award. Her poetry and non-fiction appear widely online and in print. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Susan Rich Susan Rich is the author of nine books including six books of poetry:  Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) Finalist for the Washington State Book Award for Poetry, Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy (White Pine Press), shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a Finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue / Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award. Her newest book, an anthology of original art, bird notes, and literature,  BIRDBRAINS: A LYRICAL GUIDE TO WASHINGTON STATE BIRDS, is published by Raven Chronicles Press. Her seventh book of poems, A WALKING OUT, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Rich has also co-edited two prose anthologies: The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders (McSweeney’s) with Catherine Barnett, Ilya Kaminsky and Brian Turner, and more recently, Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews for Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press), co-edited with Kelli Russell Agodon. Her writing has received fellowships from Artists Trust, 4Culture, the Fulbright Foundation, Seattle King County, and Peace Corps Writers. She has worked as a staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a human rights trainer in Gaza and the West Bank. Rich lived in the Republic of Niger, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, later moving to South Africa to teach at the University of Cape Town. Educated at Harvard University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Massachusetts, Susan Rich lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline College where she co-founded the National Poetry Month Committee. She previously taught for the Antioch MFA Program. Currently, Rich is co-founder and director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women and writes Blue Atlas.

Derek Sheffield received a 2024 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His other collections include Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, Through the Second Skin, finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He teaches in Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA program, edits poetry for Terrain.org, and can often be found in the woods along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range near Leavenworth, Washington.  Derek Sheffield is the current Washington State Poet Laureate.

Tina Schumann is the award winning author of four poetry collections, most recently Boneyard Heresies, winner of the 2023 Moon City Press Poetry Award (Missouri State University); Praising the Paradox (Red Hen Press, 2019) a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Four Way Books Intro Prize, the New Issues Poetry Prize and the Julie Suk Award among others; Requiem. A Patrimony of Fugues (Diode Editions, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition and As If (Parlor City Press, 2010) winner of the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize. She is editor of the IPPY-award winning anthology Two Countries. U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Red Hen, 2017.) Schumann’s work received the American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal, a Pushcart nomination, runner-up status in the 2023 annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize from The Missouri Review and finalist status in the 2013 Terrain.org annual poetry contest. Her work has received honorable mentions in The Atlantic, and Crab Creek Review as well as an editors’ choice recognition in the Allen Ginsberg Award. She serves as a poetry editor with Wandering Aengus Press and is a graduate of the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Her poems have appeared in publications and anthologies since 1999, including The American Journal of Poetry, Ascent, Bear Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Cimarron Review, Diode, Hunger Mountain Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, Parabola, Palabra, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, and read on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac

Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and German. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four collections of poetry, including Thieve, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award. His second novel, The Entire Sky, is slated for publication in July 2024 with Little, Brown. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.

Jane Wong is the author of the debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, out now from Tin House (2023). She is also the author of two books of poetry: How to Not Be Afraid of   Everything from Alice James (2021) and Overpour from Action Books (2016). She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her poems can be found in places such as Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, Best American Poetry 2015, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, and others. Her essays have appeared in places such as McSweeney’s, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, The Common, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and Want: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, 4Culture, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, Ucross, Mineral School, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Loghaven, and others.  The recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award for Washington artists, her first solo art show “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly” was exhibited at the Frye Art Museum in 2019. Her performance and installation work has also been exhibited at the Richmond Art Gallery and the Asian Art Museum. A scholar of Asian American poetry and poetics as well, you can explore “The Poetics of Haunting” project here. She grew up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore and lives in Seattle.