~ Teaching at The Attic ~

DAVID BIESPIEL

Director & Writer-in-Residence
David Biespiel's books of poetry include Shattering Air, Pilgrims & Beggars, & Wild Civility. Among his honors are a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry at Stanford University, a Lannan Fellowship, & a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in literature. He teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University, has taught at Stanford University, University of Maryland, & Oregon State University, & has been the Richard H. Thornton Writer-in-Residence at Lynchburg College in Virginia & the A.R. Ammons Writer-in-Residence at Wake Forest University. He's a contributor to American Poetry Review, Parnassus, Poetry, & The New Republic. A new book of poems, The Book of Men and Women is due out in 2009.

Browse David's bookshelf at Powell's Bookstore.

Also, check out David's popular anthology, Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets, recipient of the William Stafford Memorial Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award.

Plus: Listen to this September 2006 podcast interview with David from webdelsol.com.

BILL DONAHUE

Bill Donahue has written for The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, Mother Jones, National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, & elsewhere. He has work in Best American Sports Writing 2003 and in Best American Travel Writing 2004. He is a contributing editor for Outside magazine.

Browse Bill's bookshelf at Powell's Bookstore.

Read Bill's stories about skier Bill Johnson, amateur scientist William Fender and the search for the Oregon Giant Earthworm, a kayak trip down the Los Angeles River, searching for the ghost of writer Paul Bowles in Tangier, riding all-terrain-vehicles in the stripmined hills of West Virginia, and a deranged genius on a quest to visit every single Starbucks in the world. Read Bill's recent Washington Post Magazine cover story on cycling in Dominica, plus the online discussion.

Visit Bill's website.

MERRIDAWN DUCKLER

Merridawn Duckler’s publications include Carolina Quarterly, Georgia State Review, Mainstreet Rag, Mississippi Mud & Green Mountains Review, Isotope Narrative & Night Train. Her original scripts have been preformed on stages in Los Angeles and in New York, including “My Beowulf” which debuted at Disney Hall in 2008. She's the recipient of two Society for Professional Journalist Awards, Walden, Caldera & Centrum residencies, a residency at Yaddo, a RACC Fellowship, & fellowships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers' & Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is an associate editor at Story Quarterly & Narrative Magazine.

Read the The New York Times review on her libretto Copera.

JILL ELLIOTT

Registration Coordinator
Jill Elliott has degrees in business administration and journalism from her time spent in Michigan. She has been a student at the Attic, and is currently the Managing Editor of Poetry Northwest.

SHANNA GERMAIN

Shanna Germain’s poems, short stories & essays have been widely published in places like Absinthe Literary Review, McSweeney's, Salon, Best American Erotica, Best Gay Romance, Imbibe, The American Journal of Nursing, Triangulations & more. Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Nervy Girl, she is currently the editor of Roast magazine. She’s ghost-written numerous books & has received awards such as the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship from Literary Arts & a Soapstone residency.

Read an interview with Shanna at Absolute Write. Visit Shanna's blog.

MARTHA GIES

Martha Gies has published short stories and literary essays in many literary magazines and in several anthologies, including A Celestial Omnibus: Short Fiction on Faith and The World Begins Here: An Anthology of Oregon Short Fiction,and is the author of Up All Night (Oregon State University Press, 2004), a portrait of the city told through the stories of 23 people who work graveyard shift. She has received support for her work from Oregon Literary Arts and the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

Visit Martha's website.

ARIEL GORE

Ariel Gore is the founding editor of the zine Hip Mama, author of Whatever, Mom, Atlas of the Human Heart, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights, The Hip Mama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip, & editor of the anthologies Breeder & The Essential Hip Mama: Writing from the Cutting Edge of Parenting. She's a contributor to Ms. & Utne.

Browse Ariel's bookshelf at Powell's Bookstore.

View Ariel's blog. And this interview.

KATHLEEN HALME

Kathleen Halme is the author of three books of poetry: Every Substance Clothed, winner of the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series & the Balcones Poetry Prize, Equipoise, from Sarabande Books, & her newest collection, Drift and Pulse, from Carnegie Mellon University Press (2007). Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry and a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship in anthropology. Her poems have appeared widely in journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review & Anthropological Quarterly.

BARRY HUNT

Barry Hunt has a fifteen year history teaching screen writing, film making, & acting. He has been an actor and director for thirty years with credits on stage, film, and television. He is the Artistic Director of Sowelu Theater. He has worked as director and dramaturge on 9 award recognized original scripts. Recent screenplays he has mentored are Quiet City, currently nominated for Best Film by the Independent Film Awards and Dance Party USA. Each film made top ten lists in both 2006 and 2007. The New York Times praised the original writing style. Hunt is the 2005 recipient of the Leslie O. Fulton Fellowship through the Portland Civic Theater Guild.

Visit Sowelu Theter.

REBECCA KOFFMAN

Rebecca Koffman has lived and walked in Durban, London, San Francisco and Portland. Her essays and articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Natal Mercury, Salon, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Oregonian, and elsewhere.

LIZ PRATO

Liz Prato has published work in Zyzzyva, Iron Horse Literary Review, Subtropics, Massage, & Bodywork Magazine, as well as in Who’s Your Mama: An Anthology on Motherhood. She’s a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a prize winner in the Berkeley Fiction Review's 2005 Sudden Fiction Contest, and the 2007 Juked Fiction Prize. She's working on a novel about grief, art, sexual identity, & the cosmos.

Read interview with Liz.

GARTH WEBER

Garth Weber is a former editor with BOA Editions and Chronicle Books, and is a contributor to The Southern Review. He was the Art Director for the Phoenix New Times. He is currently the senior editor of Poetry Northwest.

CINDY WILLIAMS GUTIERREZ

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez is a poet-dramatist who collaborates with artists in theatre, music, and visual art. Her poems and reviews have been published in Crab Orchard Review, ZYZZYVA, Open Spaces, Calyx, Rain Taxi, among others. In 2005, her poems were exhibited in "People, Places and Perceptions: A Look at Contemporary Northwest Latino Art" at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington. Cindy is President of the Board of Directors of the Miracle Theatre Group and is currently the writer for Insight Out Theatre Collective’s For:Give project, a collaboratively generated modern-day version of The Tempest. She has been an adjunct faculty member at Marylhurst University and a literary arts facilitator with cancer patients and their families for in Menlo Park, California. Cindy earned her MFA from the University of Southern Maine, where she studied ancient Mexican poetics, as well as contemporary poetry and drama.