Q&A with Christie Valentin-Bati

How would you describe yourself as a writing instructor? Alternatively, what type of instructor do you inspire to be?

My main goal as an instructor is to bring out the language that exists in all of us already 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 really good writing is just about what can elicit a sense of aliveness in your reader. Craft techniques like simile, plot, or metaphor are often placed as the primary focus for learning, but I think the hardest part of writing is figuring out what moments and particular details are “on fire with their aliveness.” Content first, form second.

What excites you about teaching at Hugo House?

I’ve sat in on a few classes and have been a part of Write-O-Rama. I’ve found that the students at Hugo House are all engaged and enthusiastic which is all any instructor ever wants. I am excited by the possibilities of bringing in new and experimental forms of writing like writing to audio, blending images and text, and trying out non-conventional writing prompts and exercises. I know the students will be receptive and excited to experiment with me.

Who is your class best suited for? What would you like your students to take away from the class?

My class is suited for everyone, but especially those interested in global studies/non-western cultures and are curious about mythology and crafting work that infuses everyday life with things as fantastical as gods and goddesses. A big question will be: how does the use of folklore and mythmaking bring forth the questions/truths about our human experience? Though there is an emphasis on poetry, the class contains a variety of readings and prompts including flash fiction and non-fiction narrative.

What advice do you have for writers working through a creative block?

Creative block often stems from putting too much pressure on one’s self to write something good. Rather than trying to write something “good”— just try to write something truthful. I often like to sit and write the present moment: what I am seeing, hearing, feeling, touching—and using language as exact as possible to describe my surroundings for at least 10 minutes. In doing this, I don’t need to try hard to create something original; I am just jotting down the world as it is. I find that if I do this enough times my brain begins to form its own ideas and I go from there.

What are you reading now? How do you approach reading as a writer?

I just finished Notes on a Past Life by David Trinidad (a 1/2 gossip tell-all and 1/2 poetic memoir) which really moved me. In between vivid descriptions of everyday life are immense moments of loss where Trinidad works through the grief of losing friends during the height of the AIDs epidemic, his mother dying, living in New York before and after 9/11, and a “divorce” (in quotations as this was before the legalization of gay marriage). I try to approach reading by only picking works by writers that make me feel alive and those who have a brilliant grasp of lyrical language no matter the genre. When I find a line that particularly moves me, I write it down. And I look up every word I don’t know in the dictionary.

Tell us about an author, poem, idea, storyline, sentence—something that has you currently captivated.

I’m currently captivated by the idea of audience and who one writes for. I read Dark Traffic by Joan Naviyuk Kane and Rules of the House by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa. Both authors write about their lives in different ways, but neither write for or toward the outsider perspective. The two authors never bother to directly define who the people of their books (F., S., “she”) are and instead allow the reader to figure it out (or not) as they read along. It feels very refreshing to read a piece of work that is not interested in the voyeur and refuses to dumb itself down or define the things of the book on the chance that a reader outside of Kane’s indigenous community or in Dhompa’s case unfamiliar with Taiwanese culture may not understand them. Either a reader will look up the things they don’t know or they won’t.

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.

Register now for Writing with Folklore & Myth: Resilience, Community, & Grief  »

Learn more about Christie Valentin-Bati:

Website: www.christievb56.wixsite.com/christievalentinbati
Instagram: @christie.vbati

The post New Teacher Feature: Christie Valentin-Bati Explores Folklore & Mythology appeared first on Hugo House.

Q&A with Miriam Tobin

How would you describe yourself as a writing instructor?

I’m very interactive as an instructor and believe in the classroom as a place of conversation. This is probably due to my background in the theatre and working in collaborative spaces. Instructing, to me, is as much about bouncing ideas around a group as it is about presenting a syllabus.

What excites you about teaching at Hugo House?

So many great writers have passed through Hugo House, and I’m honored to be among them. What excites me most about teaching here is the hunger that the students have for learning.

Who is your class best suited for? What would you like your students to take away from the class?

My class is best suited for anyone interested in playwriting—so writers of all genres and experience levels. Though this is a “basics of playwriting” workshop, it’s really more about the elements of drama. We’ll be diving deep into what makes a compelling story; how to create tension and suspense; and how structure, characters, action, and style all play off of one another. Students will write a mini play that can then expand upon on their own. I hope they take away a real joy for playwriting.

Where do you find inspiration?

I’m currently working on a play based on different mythologies from around the world, so I’m finding inspiration in other stories. I’ve been reading hundreds of folktales, and it’s pretty incredible how much overlap there is in how different cultures have explained fear, disease, natural disasters, and death. Maybe this is morbid, but I’m feeling inspired by all the demons I’m reading about, whether they’re told as tricksters or thieves or witches or child snatchers. They’re helping me add a mischievousness to my own writing, like I have permission to go deep and dark and really explore human emotion.

What challenges are you working through as a writer, in your writing practice?

I’m not the most scheduled writer, so my biggest challenge is probably meeting the page. I’m working hard on creating routines and rituals that get me there on a more regular basis.

Tell us about an author, poem, idea, storyline, sentence—something that has you currently captivated.

I love the concept of the house in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. After I read it, I couldn’t stop thinking about this idea that a house can contain a whole world, or a whole world can exist inside a house. I keep returning to the image of an ocean at high tide beating against the walls of a house full of statues—it’s both haunting and exhilarating to imagine.

Miriam BC Tobin (she/her) 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.

Register now for Basics of Playwriting for Writers of All Genres  »

Learn more about Miriam Tobin:

Website: www.mirbct.com

The post New Teacher Feature: Miriam Tobin and the Basics of Playwriting appeared first on Hugo House.

Q&A with Cara Stoddard

Who is your class best suited for? What would you like your students to take away from the class?

I based this class off the five-year diaries my grandmother used to keep where you can see your entry from that same day the previous year(s). My grandmother usually recorded the weather and what was coming ripe in her garden, as well as who she and my grandpa met up with for coffee at the Wooden Spoon and who she talked to on the phone that day.

I hope for students to leave this class with a new or renewed habit for record keeping for the purpose of noticing the cyclicality of the seasons, tracking change over time, and ultimately paying closer attention to their own interconnectedness within a larger network of living things and how everything relies on everything else.

What advice do you have for writers working through a creative block?

Idle time is when my best ideas come. Watering the garden. On the lightrail. Waiting for my daughter in the parking lot after practice. I work full time (not as a writer) and sometimes have to manufacture “idle” time so that I have space to declutter my thoughts—something where I am not having to parse new inputs (not listening to the radio or a podcast or scrolling through social media on my phone). I also keep a “Self” text thread on WhatsApp where I collect ideas that I can return to later when I have set aside writing time.

What are you reading now? How do you approach reading as a writer?

Reading begets writing for me, and it is so easy to get too busy and not have enough time in the day to read. When I go through a dry spell reading, my writing follows suit. To get out of a dry spell, I usually pick up momentum with a graphic novel or something else super compelling and page-turning. I also love pairing reading with eating (coupling a new habit with something I am already going to do every day helps me). I’m currently reading Amateur by Thomas Page McBee, which is fantastic at the level of the line.

Tell us about an author, poem, idea, storyline, sentence—something that has you currently captivated.

Oliver Baez Bendof’s poem Outing, Iowa

“If you ever doubted that a body can transform completely, take the highway north from town, past the crowded diner with the neon sign for pork loin sandwiches, and go left at the arrow for the lake. Can I tell you? The land where I was born was born an ocean, and that ocean born of ice. … plates shifted, glaciers melted into river, into rows of corn that flipbook past your car. Park anywhere and follow the trail back in time … I still bleed, still weep: what we used to be matters.”

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.

Register now for her upcoming class on Oct. 25, Keeping a Phenology Journal: Recording the Changing Seasons »

Learn more about Cara Stoddard:

Website: www.carastoddard.com
Instagram: @bigspeedsguanaco

The post New Teacher Feature: Cara Stoddard and Inspiration from the Natural World appeared first on Hugo House.

Sally Ashton
Listening to Mars (Poetry) forthcoming from Cornerstone Press, Spring 2024.

Katrina Carrasco
Rough Trade (Literary Fiction) forthcoming from Macmillan Publishers April 9, 2024.

Bill Carty
We Sailed on the Lake (Poetry) from Bunny Presse.

Kristi Coulter
Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career (Memoir) from Macmillan Publishers.

Leora Fridman
Static Palace (Nonfiction) from punctum books.

Alma García
All That Rises (Fiction) forthcoming from The University of Arizona Press October, 2023.

Jennifer Haupt
Come As You Are (Novel) from Central Avenue Publishing.

Minda Honey
The Heartbreak Years (Memoir) forthcoming from Little A publishing October 2023.

Wendy Kendall
Cherry Shakes In The Park (Romance) from The Wild Rose Press.

Kelly McWilliams
Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay (Young Adult Contemporary) from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Amanda Montei
Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control (Memoir/Nonfiction) from Beacon Press.

Katherine Quevedo
The Inca Weaver’s Tales (Fantasy Poetry) forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press.

Susan Rich
Blue Atlas (Poetry) forthcoming from Red Hen Press April 2, 2024.

Hailey Spencer
Stories for When the Wolves Arrive (Poetry) from First Matter Press.

Anca L. Szilágyi
Dreams Under Glass (Fiction) from Lanternfish Press.

Jeanine Walker
The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Poetry) from Groundhog Poetry Press.

Rachel Werner
Moving and Grooving To Fillmore’s Beat (KidLit/Picture Book) from Capstone Editions.

Carolyne Wright
Masquerade: a Memoir in Poetry (Poetry) from Lost Horse Press.

The post Hugo House Instructors Books Round-Up appeared first on Hugo House.

Q&A with Gina Siciliano

How would you describe yourself as a writing instructor? Alternatively, what type of instructor do you inspire to be?

What excites you about teaching at Hugo House?

Who is your class best suited for? What would you like your students to take away from the class?

What are you reading/how do you approach reading?

What are you working through currently?

I’m in the midst of the most challenging project I’ve attempted yet–a series of what I call ‘essay comics’ that combine memoir, history, politics, and literary criticism. George Orwell is the focus, especially his often overlooked earlier work like ‘Clergyman’s Daughter’ and ‘Homage to Catalonia.’ I’m attempting to use an intersectional feminist lens to explore Orwell’s many contradictions, delving deep into the perilous world of the 1930s, including the creepy similarities between then and now.

Gina Siciliano (she/her) is an artist, writer, historian, and bookseller living in Seattle, WA. Her award-winning graphic novel I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi was published by Fantagraphics in 2019.

Register now for Gina’s upcoming class on Oct. 3, Words & Pictures: An Intro to Comics »

Learn more about Gina Siciliano:

Website: www.ginasiciliano.com

The post New Teacher Feature: Gina Siciliano and Intro to Comics appeared first on Hugo House.

Q&A with Greta Kline

How would you describe yourself as a writing instructor? Alternatively, what type of instructor do you inspire to be?

I’m interested in helping students find new ways to access their writing process. I hope to provide encouragement, as well as tools, exercises, and inspiration they can bring with them to their own practices after the class is over.

What excites you about teaching at Hugo House?

I’m excited about bringing a new perspective (as a songwriter) to students who work in all different forms of writing, and helping maintain a supportive space together. I’m a strong believer in creative exploration, and I hope I can convince some students to try their hand at forms of writing and performance that they maybe haven’t considered before. 

Who is your class best suited for? What would you like your students to take away from the class?

Writers who perform, performers who write, and people that want to branch out or learn more about the possibilities for those practices. People who are willing to play, experiment, push themselves, be silly. People who are interested in transforming their relationships to error, mistakes, misunderstandings, and how to use these instances to their creative benefit. I’d love for students to take away a newfound confidence in sharing work as well as creating it. I hope they will feel creatively inspired and excited to work on something new, or reimagine something they’ve been working on.

What advice do you have for writers working through a creative block?

Make something bad! Draw or write with your non-dominant hand. Go outside and write down what you see. Write something you will never show anyone. Just unlock the part of you that is judging your work, and make something for the sake of unblocking yourself.

Where do you find inspiration?

Everywhere! I live in New York City, and leaving the house can often mean being overcome by external stimuli. Often I’m inspired by tuning in to small moments happening in my surroundings – a piece of cute trash on the ground, a human talking to their dog, kids playing ball. I’m also generally inspired by human interactions, conversation, and questioning reality.

What does your creative practice look like? Any writing rituals?

One of my common creative rituals is to sit down with a collection of scraps and organize them. Small pieces of writing, scribbles, and voice memos. Then I draw connections and piece stuff together from there.

What are you reading now? How do you approach reading as a writer?

Right now I’m reading The Book Thief. I’m a songwriter, so reading a book doesn’t feel totally related to my practice, but it still inspires me. I find that reading novels makes me think about different ways of relaying stories, and helps bolster my vocabulary.

Greta Kline is a professional musician known as Frankie Cosmos. She has spent the majority of the past decade playing music all over the world, as well as writing and recording.

Register now for her upcoming class on Oct. 19, The Writer vs. The Performer »

Learn more about Greta Kline:

Website: www.frankiecosmosband.com
Instagram: @frankiecombos

The post New Teacher Feature: Greta Kline and Writing for Performance appeared first on Hugo House.

Interview with Writer in Residence, Joyce Chen

We’re excited to have you back for another year of residency. How do you envision this second-year building upon the first; how will this second term distinguish itself from the first?

I’m really excited to be back for a second year, and to work with a new cohort of writers, poets, and artists. I envision this second year as a space for expansion — helping the fellows to deepen their relationships to their art and to each other; meeting with more writers from the community and learning about their questions and desires; and finding ways to connect disparate members and organizations from the Seattle area to create the strong bonds that will bolster our writing community. The first year was a lot of finding my footing and seeing how I might best serve in this role; the second year is all about taking action to empower more writers, to build community for everyone who believes in the power of story.

Tell us about the project/manuscript you’ve been working on during your residency. How has this residency shaped your work, your process, your relationship with writing?

This past year, I’ve been digging deep into my manuscript, a memoir-in-essays that examines the lived experience of second-generation immigrants through the lens of time perception. I’ve spent many afternoons typing away at Hugo House, and being in constant conversation with other writers has helped buoy me through some tougher writing days — hearing what issues other writers are tussling with or what concerns they have about their own work always serves as an important reminder: we’re all in this together. Writing can be a lonely endeavor, but we don’t have to go it alone.

Tell us about your work with the Fellows cohort. What have you learned from mentoring and coaching throughout your first year, and what are your goals for working with the Fellows during this second year?

I’ve really loved working with this year’s cohort of Fellows. They are all so brilliant and tender — it’s been a privilege to witness their growth both on the page and off. I’ve been reminded of the importance of collaboration in the creative process, and it’s been exciting to see how different genres and forms can help inform one another. For the incoming cohort, my main goal is to listen deeply to each of the Fellows and see how I can begin to build bridges for them to the people and the resources they might need to level up, wherever they are in their creative journeys.

How has this experience in the residency surprised or changed you?

This first year of the residency has really whipped by! I think my biggest takeaway so far has been that transparency is perhaps one of the most valuable resources you can give a writer or an artist, whether it’s talking about how books get published or what to think about when querying agents. As writers, we’re up against so many obstacles just to get our art out there in the world, so it’s of utmost importance that we help each other whenever and however we can. Transparency is a sign of respect and gives all parties agency to make the decisions they need to make, and it’s rarer to come by than one might think.

What are you currently reading?

I just finished Jane Wong’s Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, which I loved, and I just started digging into Letters to a Writer of Color, an anthology edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro.

You’re also teaching a class with us this fall! Tell us about the class and what excites you about the topic.

I’m really looking forward to teaching this course, Writing Grief: Time, Form, & Memory, as this is a topic I think about a lot—not just how do we write about deeply emotional experiences, but why. What do we hope to attain or learn by writing into uncomfortable or dark situations, and can we lead with that north star as a way to guide us through our art-making? I’m really looking forward to sharing some great pieces I’ve been collecting over the years surrounding different topics of grief, and to having really fruitful discussions about the how’s and why’s of how we all try to navigate the stickiness of life through writing.

Learn more about Joyce’s work at Hugo House:

Learn more about Joyce’s residency and schedule a consultation with her »
Register now for her upcoming class starting on Sep. 28, Writing Grief: Time, Form, & Memory »

Learn more about Joyce Chen:

Twitter: @joycechenchen

The post Q&A with Joyce Chen, 2022-2024 Writer in Residence appeared first on Hugo House.

Interview with Poet in Residence, Ching-In Chen

We’re excited to have you back for another year of residency! How do you envision this second-year building upon the first; how will this second term distinguish itself from the first?

This past year, I enjoyed meeting community members to chat about the writing, editing, publishing, the teaching of writing and the writing life. A community member who worked at a Sno-Isle Library even reached out to ask me to facilitate a youth writing workshop! In this second year, I hope to engage more community members to utilize the Hugo House space and resources via community-based programming.

Tell us about the project/manuscript you’ve been working on during your residency. How has this residency shaped your work, your process, your relationship with writing?

This past year, I was deep in the process of curating a multimedia installation for my collaborative project, “Breathing in a Time of Disaster”, for the Jack Straw Cultural Center’s New Media Gallery and working on a digital exhibit for the show with my main collaborator, Cassie Mira. Even though this project originated from my hybrid writing, much of the work involved working with community members and learning programs like Omeka, which has sometimes felt far from that writing process. Because of this, I appreciated the opportunity to witness the excellent craft talks through the Word Works series as well as the various approaches writers chose to write about the themes in the Hugo House Literary Series because it helped keep me in touch with that part of the creation process.

I’m excited to return to that writing and work on revisions this summer. In addition, I have been in the early stages of a new creative nonfiction project on my trans family–as co-parent to two trans youth– which feels urgent in this time when trans youth are being weaponized. I’m looking forward to making more use of our Writer in Residence office at Hugo House in the next year to work on these two projects.

Tell us about your work with the Fellows cohort. What have you learned from mentoring and coaching throughout your first year, and what are your goals for working with the Fellows during this second year?

I loved working with the Fellows cohort—I found them to be incredibly thoughtful and supportive of each other in a way that was inspiring to witness. As a teacher, I don’t often get the opportunity to be in conversation with a longer project taking shape with the same cohort and I enjoyed reading and thinking about these projects over their development. The Fellows this year were also sharp readers of each other’s work and I learned so much from their careful insights into each other’s work. 

My goals for this incoming cohort of Fellows is to create a supportive and generative space for their projects. I’m excited that many of them are working on hybrid and multi-media projects!

What are you currently reading?

I’m currently reading with an eye towards writing a longer hybrid prose project as well as thinking about which books I might want to teach next year. I’m one of those readers who reads many things at the same time in delicious tiny bits, depending on what kind of mood I’m in. 

I just finished Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A Minor Chorus and am currently reading Tsering Yangzom Lama’s We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies, Steffani Jemison’s a rock a river a street, Anastacia-Reneé’s Side Notes from the Archivist, Raquel Gutiérrez’s Brown Neon, Fatimah Asghar’s When We Were Sisters, Lars Horn’s Voice of the Fish, Camille Roy’s Honey Mine, Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth and the Wa N Wari anthology, Joy Has a Sound: Black Sonic Visions. And always looking for more book recommendations!

You’re also teaching a class with us this summer! Tell us about the class and what excites you about the topic.

I’m teaching a class on the zuihitsu form, which is a Japanese hybrid form which is between poetry and essay and operates on intuition, leaps of association and juxtaposition. I love thinking and experimenting with this form because I think it holds space for a lot of the messier emotions like grief and anger. I also love that it’s a fundamentally genrequeer form!

Thank you so much to our Writer in Residence, Ching-In Chen, for sharing with us and our community what you’ve been learning and gleaning from your experience as a Hugo House Writer in Residence!

Learn more about Ching-In’s work at Hugo House:

Learn more about Ching-In’s residency and schedule a consultation with them »
Register now for their upcoming class on Aug. 26, Fungus Poetics: The Zuihitsu »

Learn more about Ching-In Chen:

Website: www.chinginchen.com
Instagram: @chinginchen
Twitter: @chinginchen

The post Connecting with Ching-In Chen, 2022-24 Hugo House Writer in Residence appeared first on Hugo House.

A warm and enthusiastic welcome to Celeste Chan, Adelle Dimitui, Cass Garison, Jenne Hsien Patrick, Jordynn Paz, and Neena Viel!

Meet the 2023-24 Fellows

Celeste Chan

Nonfiction/Hybrid

Celeste Chan is an artist and writer, schooled by Do-It-Yourself culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. For ten years, Celeste co-directed Queer Rebels, a queer and trans people of color arts project. She served as long-standing guest curator for MIX NYC Experimental Film Festival and OUTsider Festival (2012-2018), and screened work at film festivals in Montreal, Tijuana, Korea, Berlin, and beyond. Celeste toured the West Coast with Sister Spit, and facilitated LGBTQ history workshops for youth through Queer Ancestors Project. Raised in Seattle/Coast Salish land during the ‘80s and ‘90s, Celeste is working to complete a series of essays on Chinese/Jewish/queer histories of resistance.

Adelle Dimitui

Graphic Novel

Adelle Dimitui is a graphic novelist whose work is heavily influenced by her childhood growing up in Myanmar and the Philippines. She aims to highlight underrepresented narratives and cultures, particularly those centered around life in the Global South. Since her graduation from Princeton University, Adelle has been based in Seattle where she currently works in cybersecurity. Adelle spends her free time singing, songwriting, scuba diving, and flying planes. 

Cass Garison

Poetry

Cass Garison is a poet and artist with an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle. They have work published at Poets.org, in Gulf Coast, Bennington Review, Foglifter, and others. They are the Assistant Managing Editor at Chestnut Review and part of the poetry and art collective Eat Yr Manhood. Find them at CassGarison.com.

Jenne Hsien Patrick

Poetry/Hybrid

Jenne Hsien Patrick is a writer and artist based in Seattle. She writes poetry, hybrid text/image works and comics, often incorporating textiles and papercutting. They are currently writing about motherhood, family history, self-preservation and survival as an inheritance from the matriarchal lines of their family. Jenne is a Tin House Workshop alum, and their work has appeared in publications such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, wildness/Platypus Press, and Honey Literary among others.

Jordynn Paz

Nonfiction

Jordynn Paz is from the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation of southeast Montana. Growing up on the reservation, she regularly attended powwows and other cultural/ceremonial events, often with a book in hand. Jordynn received her Bachelor of Arts in journalism and Native American Studies from the University of Montana. As a journalist she covered Indigenous issues including the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement, blood quantum, and the complexities of Indigenous identity. Jordynn was a production assistant for the docuseries Murder in Big Horn which covered MMIW cases within her home community. Jordynn plans to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the future. Her focus on fiction and narrative nonfiction allows her to tell stories of her community in an accessible way. Growing up an avid reader she rarely saw her people in modern fiction or classic literature. She hopes to contribute to the amazing work of Indigenous writers of today. 

Neena Viel

Fiction

Neena Viel is a horror writer who lives in a cabin in the woods. A 2021-2022 Pitch Wars mentee, her work explores social horror and humor through a Black lens. Her debut novel, Listen To Your Sister, in which three siblings travel to a remote cabin in the wake of events following the youngest sibling’s Black Lives Matter activism and confront a nightmare world, is slated for a 2024 release from St. Martin’s Press. 

Learn more about the Hugo Fellows program and past fellows here.

The post Announcing the 2023-24 Hugo Fellows appeared first on Hugo House.

Natalie Serianni is a Seattle-based writer and instructor with work at HuffPost, Insider, Motherwell, MSN/SheKnows, The Manifest-Station, Seattle’s ParentMap, Today’s Parent, and MuthaMagazine, among others. Her essay, “Subtle Shifts,” was included in the 2021 anthology, The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink. She writes about grief and parenting (sometimes together), and has taught college writing for over twenty years.

Q&A with Natalie

Summer Registration Dates:
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Interested in teaching with Hugo House? The House puts out an open call for class submissions four times per year, approximately seven months before each quarter. Learn more here.

The post Summer 2023 New Instructor Speed Dating | Natalie Serianni appeared first on Hugo House.