2022-2023 Poet Roster

Samar Abulhassen

Samar Abulhassan holds an M.F.A. from Colorado State University and has worked in public school classrooms for 15 years, the last ten years for Seattle Arts & Lectures’ WITS program and the last five years for the Skagit River Poetry Project. 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 and what departs/which arrivals. She recently received a 2016 CityArtist grant to complete a novel-in-poems, reflecting on memory, longing and the Arabic alphabet.

Click here for more on Samar at Lectures.org

Roberto Carlos Ascalon

Originally hailing from NYC, Roberto Carlos Ascalon has lived in Seattle for over 22 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

Subhaga has nearly twenty years’ experience as a teaching artist working in elementary, middle, and high schools and over forty years teaching writing in community colleges. She’s the author of four collections of poetry including Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, a chapbook on the Wenatchee and Methow watersheds, forthcoming in the spring of 2023, and Transitory, a chronicle of murders of transgender and gender nonconforming people in 2020, recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, forthcoming in the fall of 2023 from BOA Editions. Her work encompasses documentary poetry focused on social issues and environmental change.

Matt Gano

Matt Gano is a career author and creative writing instructor with over 15 years of classroom experience as an Artist-In-Residence for Seattle Arts and Lectures, Writers in the Schools, and as a traveling Teaching Artist for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. Matt is author of Suits for the Swarm, (MoonPath Press), co-founder of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Program, and former director of Fremont Abbey Arts Center’s NEXT STAGE program.

Gano’s most current work as a recording artist can be found on all streaming platforms under the moniker, ENTENDRES.  Matt represented Seattle at the National Poetry Slam multiple years, is a former Seattle Grand-Slam champion.   He is the author of 6 chapbooks. http://www.mattgano.com/

Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and writing coach. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour, was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications such as The New York Times, Orion, Terrain.org, Ecotone, and Poetry Northwest. Her memoir, A Little Bit of Land, will be published by Oregon State University Press in 2022.

Lorraine Healy

Lorraine Healy was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College, NH, and a post MFA in teaching Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Lorraine was a high school teacher and college instructor in Argentina before coming to the U.S. almost 25 years ago. She has taught at Antioch University Seattle, LITFuse Poetry Festival, Skagit Valley Poetry Festival, and as a guest poet in many universities. A Hedgebrook alumna, and the author of two full-length collections and three chapbooks, Lorraine feels comfortable teaching in English or in Spanish, or combinations of both. Her latest full-length collection, Mostly Luck. Odes & Other Poems of Praise, draws on the tradition of Pablo Neruda’s Elementary Odes.

An award-winning photographer who enjoys analog photography, she is also interested in combining poetry and photography in different ways.

Lorraine teaches at the high school and college levels.

Jourdan Keith

Jourdan Imani Keith is a poet, playwright, essayist, lecturer, and storyteller. A contributing writer for Orion Magazine and Sierra Magazine, her environmental memoir Tugging at the Web is forthcoming from University of Washington Press. She is the author of Soul Topography, an author’s edition chapbook focused on heritage and place. A storyteller in the Griot (Gree-oh) tradition, she keeps the culture and history of marginalized people alive through myths and legends of the land.

David Lasky

I’m a graphic novelist. I create “poetry comics,” and in my teaching have focused on “haiku comics” for over a year now. Haiku are the perfect length for writing a poem and then drawing it as a short comic strip in the course of a workshop. I’m attaching a couple of examples of my own haiku comics.

I’ve been teaching comics for 15 years, which includes a decade at the Hugo House, and I feel comfortable teaching writers who are not experienced or even comfortable with drawing. I begin with very simple shapes and lead them gradually into it.

Magdalena Isabelle Manning

My background is in poetry. I have a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, am a current Hugo House Fellow, have been teaching creative writing in schools for three years, and have worked in public education for almost a decade.

Jeffrey Morgan

Jeffrey Morgan is the author of two poetry collections, Crying Shame (BlazeVOX [Books], 2011) and The Last Note Becomes Its Listener (Conduit Books & Ephemera, 2019), winner of the Minds on Fire Open Book Prize. His poems appear in Copper Nickel, The Kenyon Review Online, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, and Rattle. He lives with his wife, daughter, and brother in Bellingham, WA, and he works for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation as a Poet-in-the-schools.

Ario Salazar

Ario has worked primarily with dual-immersion, K-5 students in San Francisco. He also has worked with high school and undergraduate students.

Martha Silano

Martha has been teaching poetry writing at all grade levels (kindergarten through MFA/graduate school) for the last 25 years. Places she’s taught include Northern Michigan University, Edmonds Community College, Bellevue College (where she is currently an instructor), the Seattle Writers in the Schools program (Hamilton Int’l Middle School), the Seattle Public Library, San Juan Island Public Library, and at conferences and workshops across the country. She’s also co-editor, with Kelli Russell Agodon, of a book of 366 writing prompts (one for every day of the year), The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice. More information about upcoming appearances and workshops, as well as links to The Daily Poet and samples of her own work, can be found at marthasilano.net

Jeremy Voigt

Jeremy Voigt has been teaching in public schools for thirteen years and has taught literature and creative writing the entire time. He has taught middle school, high school, and community college courses. Jeremy has been a visiting writer in elementary schools and taught at conferences such as the Port Townsend Writer’s conference. https://skagitriverpoetry.org/interviews/2012/03/poet-as-activist-a-conversation-with-jeremy-voigt/