2016

Elmaz Abinader is an author and a performer. Her most recent poetry collection, This House, My Bones, was The Editor’s Selection for 2014 from Willow Books/Aquarius. Her books include a memoir: Children of the Roojme, A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, a book of poetry, In the Country of My Dreams… which won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. Her plays include Ramadan Moon, 32 Mohammeds, and Country of Origin and have been performed worldwide, with a culminating performance at the Kennedy Center. She has a frequent contributor to Al-Jazeera English. She has been anthologized widely including the New Anthology of American Poetry, Radical Hope, Truth to Power, and in The Colors of Nature. Most recently her fiction has appeared in Fifth Wednesday and Nimrod. She is currently completing a novel called Almost a Life, about a woman living in the Lebanese Civil War. Elmaz is one of the co-founders of The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices) a writing workshop for writers-of-color. She teaches at Mills College and is an instructor at the Oakland Y.

2011

Ellen Adams is a queer writer of essays and fiction, as well as a singer-songwriter working in folk and country traditions. Her work appears in Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review Online, No Depression, and Singapore Art Museum, and was recently listed as notable in Best American Essays. She’s been awarded grants and residencies from Elizabeth George Foundation, the Fulbright Program, Canada Council for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and Banff Centre. She has taught workshops and writing courses throughout North America.

2016

The daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, Bianca grew up in the heart of the Midwest in Michigan. She spent five years traveling the country and the world in the Air Force before becoming a writer and director. She is a Hedgebrook Screenwriting Fellow, a WGA Veterans Writing Program Fellow and a 2018 Academy Nicholl Semi-Finalist. Her scripts have placed in the Austin Film Festival, Slamdance and ScreenCraft Screenwriting Competitions. MIRANDA OF MIND is her directorial debut and is currently making the festival rounds.

2007

Kathya Alexander is an author, playwright, storyteller, and teaching artist. Growing up in the South during the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement greatly impacted her life and continues to influence her writing. She was a Writer-in-Residence at Hedgebrook and won the Fringe First Award for Black to My Roots: African American Tales from the Head and the Heart in Edinburgh, Scotland. Other awards include 4Culture, Office of Arts and Culture, Artist Trust, and Seattle Parks and Recreation. She has been published in several literary magazines, as well as in anthologies by the African American Writers Alliance (AAWA) and Raising Lily Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workplace by Lost Horse Press. She was a freelance writer for ColorsNW Magazine and the South Seattle Emerald. Her playwriting credits include The Negro Passion Play; Black D*ck Matters; David & Jonathan: A Modern Day Retelling of the Biblical Story; and emotionalblackmale. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and is the author of a collection of short stories, Angel In The Outhouse. Her debut novel, KEEP A’LIVIN’, was released in April 2024 by Aunt Lute Books.

2023

Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar and author of The New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Jim Crow helped to spark a national debate about the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States and inspired racial justice organizing and advocacy efforts nationwide. Numerous commentators have dubbed The New Jim Crow “the bible of a social movement,” and the book has become a staple of university curriculums, advocacy trainings, reading groups, and faith-based study circles. Alexander has been featured on national radio and television media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Bill Moyers Journal, the Tavis Smiley Show, MSNBC, C-Span, and Democracy Now! She has also written for numerous publications including, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and The Huffington Post. Alexander has served as a professor at several universities, including Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics, and The Ohio State University where she held a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Alexander served as a Soros Justice Fellow in 2005 and was appointed a Senior Fellow for the Ford Foundation in 2015. Currently, Alexander is a Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City where she is exploring the moral and spiritual dimensions of mass incarceration.

1996

Amontaine Aurore is a storyteller, playwright, actor, director, producer, and performance artist. She is committed to presenting stories that illuminate multiple perspectives and explore human complexity. Amontaine’s plays have been produced in Seattle, New York, Maryland, and abroad. Her solo play, Free Desiree, was named as one of the Best New Plays of the 2013 New York Fringe Festival by Indie Theater Now. Don’t Call it a Riot, her play about Seattle activism, was a finalist in the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival and premiered in Seattle in 2018. Her filmed stage play, When a Tree Falls, premiered at SIFF Cinema in 2022. Recently, Amontaine’s play, The Ever-Expanding Moment, which received a workshop through ACT Theater, had a threeweek run in September 2024 at CAM Annex, a new performance space in Seattle’s Belltown. Her play, Legacies: A Ghost Story, will receive a workshop and public reading at ACT Theater as part of ACT’s New Works Northwest Festival in November 2024. Amontaine is a 2024 Jack Straw Writing Fellow. She has received artist grants from Artist Trust, 4Culture, the Puffin Foundation, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. She’s been a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat and the Seattle Public Library.

2017

María Isabel Álvarez is a first-generation Guatemalan-American writer. She received her BA in English Literature and her MFA in fiction from Arizona State University. Her writing has appeared in Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Sonora Review, Puerto del Sol, and Gulf Coast, among other venues. The recipient of the inaugural Matt Leone Fellowship at the Colgate Writers’ Conference, her work has received support from The Elizabeth George Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Hedgebrook. She lives in Arizona, where she is at work on a novel and a short story collection. You can read her work at maria-isabel-alvarez.com.

2019

Jane Barr is a first-generation African American whose family immigrated from Ghana. A screenwriter and director, she earned her MFA in Film & Television from the Savannah College of Art & Design. Jane’s screenplay, 12 Days, was a second-rounder at both Sundance 2017 and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship 2017. Her feature screenplay, Colony I, was a second-rounder at Sundance 2018 and 2020. Jane was chosen as a fellow for the Hedgebrook Screenwriting Lab 2019 and the Athena Virtual Screenwriting Lab 2020. Her feature script, African Dogs Don't Choke was a finalist for the Shore Scripts Feature contest 2020, and her TV pilot, An American Tale, was the Grand Prize Winner of the BlueCat Screenwriting Contest 2020. Jane was chosen as an Essence/Women in Film Pathmaker 2021 and she was recently chosen as one of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation/Athena Film Festival 2022 Women in Science Development Fund winners. Jane is currently developing a feature with Lionsgate and a documentary with One Story Up productions. Jane Barr is repped by Management 360 & UTA.

2011

Natalie is the author of Queen Sugar, which has been adapted for a seventh television season by and co-produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey. Natalie's new non-fiction book We Are Each Other’s Harvest: African American Farmers, Land & Memory, was released from HarperCollins in April 2021. Natalie has had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, VCCA, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi where she was the SFFILM and Bonnie Rattner Fellow. Her non-fiction work has appeared in National Geographic, Lenny Letter, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She has taught fiction at Saint Mary’s College and Sierra Nevada University. Natalie is a current resident at SFFILM.

2016

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and author of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press) and Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Yefe Nof, Jentel, and National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and the anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton). She teaches poetry and creative writing with Antioch University, MFA and UCLA Extension. Bermejo is the director of Women Who Submit. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times.

2012

Born on Hilltop in Tacoma, but raised in the Southend of Seattle, Stasia represents her home through and through. After learning all the lyrics to Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" at the age of 8, she realized that a career in Hip-Hop was her destiny.

She is formerly one half of the Psychedelic-Space-Rap-Jazz duo THEESatisfaction, with whom she produced, wrote and performed.

She signed with Sub Pop Records in 2011, and released two albums. She was able to spread her love of music to many countries like France, UK, Australia, China, Portugal and Iceland. She is a member of the Black Constellation, along with Shabazz Palaces, Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, Nicholas Galanin, Nep Sidhu and Erik Blood.

2014

NoViolet Bulawayo is the author of the novels Glory (publication date, March 8, 2022), and We Need New Names, which was recognized with the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Pen/Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, the Fred Brown Literary Award, the Betty Trask Award, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award (second place), and the National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” Fiction Selection. We Need New Names was also shortlisted for the International Literature Award, the Man Booker Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, and has taught fiction writing at Cornell and Stanford Universities. She grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and is currently writing full-time from the wherevers.

1990

Jennifer Burton is a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University and helms the independent film company Five Sisters Productions. Her research and work as a filmmaker share a focus on content by and about diverse women. Her films include Origin of the Species (a feature documentary exploring how robots are already disrupting our ethical, cultural, and social lives, directed by Abby Child). Kings, Queens, & In-Betweens (a feature documentary on gender, identity, and drag), The Happiest Day of His Life (MTV/Logo) and Manna From Heaven(MGM/SONY). Corporate projects include the "Your Ford Story" campaign of mini-documentary commercials for Ford Motor Company. Working with Tufts student filmmakers, she has produced the Half the History project, a series of short films on women in American history, and Old Guy, a comedic take on ageism in the media. Her publications include Call and Response: Key Debates in African American Studies (W. W. Norton), co-edited with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and The Prize Plays and Other One-Acts: Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence, Marita Bonner, and Others (Macmillan/G.K. Hall). Burton earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in English and American Literature, writing her dissertation on hope in American literature and film.

2012

Americana singer-songwriter Sera Cahoone grew up in the Colorado foothills. The daughter of a dynamite salesman, she played her first gigs on drums in a dive bar's open blues jams at 12. As a young adult, she moved to Seattle where she played drums with the adored indie rock group, Carissa’s Wierd, and later Band of Horses. She then went on to release four solo records, two with Sub Pop. In 2019, Cahoone received a Gold Record for her work with Band of Horses.

Cahoone has earned great praise from KEXP, NPR series Tiny Desk Concert, First Listen and Songs We Love. Her work has been featured on UPROXX, ELLE and KEXP. But not only do her songs ring out in rooms of mile-high castles and the edges of sprawling forests, Cahoone is beloved by her fans. Her audiences are filled with the curious, the seekers, and those who just want to hear sing once more, “I wanna be your sidewalk / I’ll take you everywhere/ We’ll travel ‘round this world a million times.”

2003

Wendy Call is co-editor of the widely used craft anthology Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide (Penguin, 2007), author of No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy (Nebraska, 2011), and translator of two forthcoming collections of poetry by Mexican-Zapotec poet Irma Pineda. No Word for Welcome won the Grub Street National Book Prize for Nonfiction (2011), the International Latino Book Award for best Historical / Political Book (2012), and was on several “best books of the year” lists. Wendy been a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow (2015) and Fulbright Scholar to Colombia (2019-2020). She teaches creative nonfiction in Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She has taught courses on editing at universities, literary centers, and writers’ conferences and founded Goddard College’s literary journal Duende. Wendy is an alumna of two dozen artist residency programs, at five national parks, five universities, a historical archive, a public hospital, and (closest to her heart) Hedgebrook. She has been the developmental editor for many award-winning memoirs, essay collections, and other books of nonfiction, published by trade, university, and independent presses over the last dozen years. Wendy lives in Seattle, Oaxaca, and wherever she can park her sixteen-foot camper trailer.

2024

Jaymie Campbell is a multi-faceted practitioner who works in community development, visual arts and storytelling. She is of Michi-Saagig Anishinaabe and European ancestry, and a member of Curve Lake First Nation and resides on unceded territory in New Denver, British Columbia.

Jaymie spent the earlier years of her career working on consultation, negotiation, capacity building and protection of land. She continues to work in community governance, policy development and mentoring. Jaymie is also the designer behind White Otter Design Co, which incorporates traditional artistry techniques with contemporary and personal style. She aims to explore connection to land and culture through beadwork, writing and visual arts.

In 2021, she won the BC Federation of Writers Non-Fiction Contest and has works published in Yellow Medicine Review, Malahat Review and Porter House Review. She was shortlisted for the Jacob Zilber Prize in 2023 and was part of the first ever Audible Indigenous Writers Circle. Jaymie has had her artwork published in The New York Times, Good Company Magazine, Fashion Magazine, Uppercase Magazine, First American Art Magazine and Native American Art.

Jaymie is a dedicated partner, daughter, auntie and community member. Her daily practices of art and storytelling are woven into the days of spending time on the land, doing community work and spending time with her family.

2015

Jenn Champion is a song writer who lives in LA by way of Seattle.

2019

MK Chavez is an Afro-Latinx writer, editor, and educator from Oakland, California occupied territory of the Ohlone people. She is the author of Mothermorphosis, Dear Animal, (Nomadic Press), and several chapbooks including, A Brief History of the Selfie (Alley Cat Books.) Chavez curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and is co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She is also a guest event curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. She has been a visiting lecturer at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, University of San Francisco, San Jose State University, and Mills College. She is a recipient of the Alameda County Arts Leadership Award, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the San Francisco Foundation Nomadic Press Literary Award and received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Caldera, CantoMundo, Sitka Center for Ecology and Art, Playa, and VONA. Chavez teaches writing workshops and does book coaching through Ouroboros Writing Lab.

2015

Kirstin Chen is the New York Times best-selling author of three novels. Her latest, Counterfeit, is a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, a Roxane Gay book club pick, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It's been translated into eight languages and is being adapted for the screen by Sony Picture. Her previous novels are Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners. Her next novel, Tech Wives, an exploration of the myth of genius tech founders—and the women who support them, is forthcoming.

1999

Christina Chiu is the winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty, which was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2020. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints. Troublemaker was a nominee for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu has published in Tin House, The New Guard, Washington Square, The MacGuffin, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square, and has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, El Dorado Writers’ Guild, World Wide Writers.

Chiu hosts the virtual Let’s Talk Books Author Series and curates and co-hosts the Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. She is a founding member of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Chiu is a shoe designer.

2007

Roohi Choudhry was born in Pakistan and grew up in southern Africa and southwest Asia. As a creative writer who worked for a decade in social science research, she is passionate about helping people use analytical systems in concert with imagination and intuition. Awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction, her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads and the Kenyon Review, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and teaches fiction and memoir in New York City as well as online.

2014

Kelly Clayton is a writer, poet, playwright, and workshop facilitator. She is a Louisiana Creole with roots 15 generations deep. She returned home after twenty years in New York City spent teaching herself to write. Though she dropped out of high school for creative reasons (four sons), she kept both pantry and bookshelves full by working as a waitress, line cook, publisher's assistant, exotic dancer, and event producer. She is a VONA/ Voices, Hedgebrook Alumnae, and recipient of the Hedgebrook Women Authoring Change Award. Her poetry has been published by, among others: Future Cycle Press, Delacorte Press, China Grove Press, The Dead Mule Society of Southern Literature, and Random House. Kelly was awarded an Artist's Residency with the Acadiana Center for the Arts for the production of her original play, "Dancing With Aurora Borealis." She develops and teaches bespoke writing workshops in Louisiana schools, both public and private, for the Lafayette Juvenile Detention Center, and to groups of formerly incarcerated adults. She currently lives in Lafayette, Louisiana.

2004

Currently the Head of Directing and Playwriting at the University of Washington School of Drama, Valerie Curtis-Newton also serves as the Founding Artistic Director for The Hansberry Project, a professional African American theatre lab. She has worked with professional theatre's across the country including: The Guthrie Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Seattle Rep, Playmakers Repertory Comany, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Intiman Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum, New York Theatre Workshop, and Southern Repertory Theatre among others.

Awards: 2020: Seattle Times Most Influential People of the Last Decade; 2019: Theatre Puget Sound - Gregory Falls Award for Sustained Achievement; 2016: Seattle Times Footlight Award (Best in Show) 2014: Stranger Genius Awards in Performance and the Crosscut Courage Award for Culture; 2012: Gypsy Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Direction; 2001: Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s (SDCF) Gielgud Directing Fellowship 1997-1999: NEA/TCG Career Development Fellowship for Directors.

2014

Claire Dederer is the bestselling author of two critically acclaimed memoirs: Love and Trouble and Poser. Her newest nonfiction book, Monsters, is based on her viral Paris Review essay "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?". Claire's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Vogue, the Nation, Slate, and countless other publications. Claire has taught writing at literary centers, conferences, and universities across the country, including Hugo House, StoryStudio Chicago, and the University of Washington. She is currently on the faculty of the low-residency Creative Writing MFA at Pacific University.

2020

Elizabeth de Souza writes about the arts emerging from the African diaspora, with a special interest in visual art. She has an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University, and her work has appeared in print and online publications such as Callaloo, Southern Indiana Review, Surface Design Journal, and most recently Torch Literary Arts. Elizabeth was Hedgebrook’s 2020 Rona-Jaffe Fellow, and she has received awards, fellowships and grants from MacDowell, Twelve Literary Arts, and Creative Capital, among others. Her forthcoming book, “Sleeping in the Fire,” is about the plight of the Black artist in America. Elizabeth is a NYC transplant who now lives in the Pittsburgh area with her husband and two young children.

2021

Leanne Dunic is a biracial, bisexual woman who has spent her life navigating liminal spaces, inspiring her to produce trans-media projects such as To Love the Coming End (Book*hug/Chin Music Press 2017) and The Gift (Book*hug 2019). She is the fiction editor at Tahoma Literary Review and the leader of the band The Deep Cove. Her newest book is a lyric memoir with music entitled One and Half of You (Talonbooks 2021). She lives on the unceded and occupied traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

2019

Carla Du Pree is an author who writes fiction and also serves as an arts ambassador, a literary consultant, the executive director of an award-winning, nonprofit CityLit Project, and a national advocate of the literary arts. She’s received fellowships for her fiction from Hedgebrook (including a stipend from the Whiting Foundation), Rhode Island Writers Colony for Writers of Color, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and the Poetry Foundation through Furious Flower Poetry Center. Excerpts of her novel-in-progress, ‘Where the Spirit Meets the Bone’ have appeared in The Pierian Literary Journal, Callaloo, and Potomac Review, and is forthcoming in The Ilanot Review. Her short stories have been published in Callaloo, ‘The Spirit of Pregnancy’ and ‘Street Lights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience’. She was also a contributor to ‘Women in Clothes’ and featured in BmoreArt: Quarantine Diaries Literati, and a special issue as a Principle of Abundance. She’s won substantial grants as a Rubys Artist and a Maryland Arts Council Independent Artist grantee, and was awarded the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies 2020 inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Individual Award for demonstrating outstanding leadership addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in Maryland. She is the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Leader for April 2020 and holds a Master's from Johns Hopkins University, where she was a Lecturer for many years in their Part-Time Graduate Writing Seminar.

2013

Hope Edelman has been writing, speaking, and leading workshops and retreats in the bereavement field for more than 25 years. She was 17 when she lost her mother to breast cancer and 40 when her father died, events that inspired her to offer grief education and support to those who cannot otherwise receive it.

Hope’s first book, Motherless Daughters, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and appeared on multiple bestseller lists worldwide. Hope’s most recent book, The AfterGrief, offers an innovative new language for discussing the long arc of loss. She has published six additional books, including Motherless Mothers and the memoir, The Possibility of Everything. Her work has been translated into 14 languages and published in 11 countries.

Hope has also published articles and essays in numerous publications and anthologies, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Real Simple, Parade, and CNN.com. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She is a certified Martha Beck Life Coach and has also done certificate training in narrative therapy.

2012

Hedgebrook alumna Shelby Edwards is an emerging writer with publications in Sky Island Journal and the poetry anthology So Long from the Dead Reckoning Press, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Oregon State University, an MBA from the University of Washington, and an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon. She comes to writing with extensive corporate experience in crisis and risk management helping organizations navigate disaster events and anticipate and adapt to change. Shelby also spent over 20-years in the United States Army Reserve on and off active duty, mostly in Civil Affairs managing extensive projects and redevelopment efforts. Her time in service includes tours in Afghanistan and Bosnia. She and her two good dogs currently happily reside on the edge of the Salish Sea, you’ll find them in the garden at the end of the lane.

2018

Chenoa Egawa is a ceremonial leader, singer, speaker, environmental activist, storyteller and artist dedicated to bringing healing to our Mother Earth and to people of all origins. One of her principal teachings today is the importance of preserving and sharing ancestral wisdom and perspectives that benefit the health, well-being and protection of all life.

2019

Traumatic events from her childhood during the Persian revolution and the Lebanese wars shaped Sabine El Gemayel's personal interests and storytelling. She brings social issues to light with a particular focus on the socio-political differences between the Middle East and the United States advocating for peace and dialog in a world of conflict. Her goal is to shine light on the condition of women in conflicting zones and how conscious leadership can empower communities. Her passion for filmmaking brought her to Los Angeles, where she resides since 1994.

El Gemayel successfully marked her feature debut as a writer-director with NILOOFAR an award-winning feature film produced by Jean Bréhat (Days of Glory, Out of the law, and The Insult, all nominated for Best Foreign Film by the Academy) and Fereshteh Taerpour. It competed in prestigious film festivals such as Berlinale 59th, Cannes Junior, Dubai IFF, and AFI to name a few. Her award-winning feature documentary GENERATION ZAPPED about the invisible repercussion of wireless technology has been distributed worldwide but most importantly had a tremendous impact on raising awareness about Radio Frequencies. She also edited award-winning feature films such as 1982, the Lebanese submission to the 2020 Oscars, directed by Oualid Mouaness and produced by Alix Madigan.

El Gemayel was awarded screenwriting fellowships from Hedgebrook in 2019 for her screenplay BRINGING IT HOME and DreamAgo for THE THREE OF US, 2009 and BRINGING IT HOME, 2012. Currently, El Gemayel has two compelling screenplays ready for production and a documentary project in development.

2014

Ashley Eriksson is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and animator. She is most well-known as the songwriter for the end credit music on the Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time. She has a band called LAKE that formed in 2005 in Olympia, Washington.

2017

A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. While serving as Hugo House’s 2017-2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry, Flame completed her second book of poetry, titled apocrifa, forthcoming from Red Hen Press. A voracious reader and passionate lover of words, Flame has dedicated more than 15 years teaching, training, and implementing programming in education equity, Black media, youth empowerment, and with women and youth impacted by incarceration.

2007

An award-winning poet, translator, and memoirist. Carolyn Forché’s most recent book, What You Have Heard Is True , was nominated for the 2019 National Book Award; other works include Blue Hour, The Angel of History, The Country Between Us, Gathering the Tribes, and Against Forgetting (editor). Carolyn has been honored with the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship.

2014

Ashley C. Ford is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Somebody’s Daughter, published by Flatiron Books. Ford is the former co-host of The HBO companion podcast Lovecraft Country Radio, and the current host of Ben & Jerry’s Into The Mix. She currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with her husband, poet and fiction writer Kelly Stacy, and their chocolate lab Astro Renegade Ford-Stacy.

Ford has written or guest-edited for ELLE Magazine, Slate, Teen Vogue, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Domino, Cup of Jo, and various other web and print publications.

2016

Dionne Ford is author of the memoir Go Back and Get It, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award, and co-editor of the anthology Slavery’s Descendants. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Virginia Quarterly Review, LitHub, New Jersey Monthly, Rumpus and Ebony among other publications and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. In 2018, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing. She is an adjunct professor of creative writing at Drew and Fordham Universities and she lives in New Jersey with her daughters.

2015

Lisa Matison Garrigues (she/her/hers) is an award-winning writer, teacher, and motivational speaker. She is the author of Writing Motherhood (Scribner), an inspirational and instructional guide for mothers who want to record their stories. A believer in the power of words to transport and transform, Lisa has devoted her professional life to fostering communities of women writers. Since 2000, she has taught classes in “Writing Motherhood” and “Writing Womanhood” to writers, parents, and educators nationwide. Currently, she teaches at Cabrillo College in northern California. Lisa is a fellow of Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center, and the MacDowell Colony. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Lisa is completing her certification to teach Qi Gong as she continues to seek ways to bring mindfulness to writing. To find out more about Lisa and her upcoming offerings, please visit www.writingwomanhood.com.

2016

Marisa Urrutia Gedney (she/her) named one of Forbes Magazine's top 30 under 30 in Education, 2012, spent a 14 year career using writing in the classroom as a social justice practice for identity work and strived to make college access more equitable. She directed and published a series of Ethnic Studies books that tell overlooked histories written by students in Boyle Heights.

As a Sahumadora in Danza Azteca, she practices fire as her spirit technology and transmutes grief and transgenerational trauma in her poetry. Her first poetry collection, Altar of the Imagination, is available from Finishing Line Press. She was invited by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera to read at the Los Angeles Library series, ALOUD, and has received a Writers in Residence at Hedgebrook, studied at the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Voices of Our Nation, and Las Dos Brujas.

As Co-Founder of, Your Truth at Work, a WOC-led DEI consulting agency, she helps organizations and individuals unlearn and dismantle oppressive workplace norms to create a more equitable future for the modern workplace.

Experiencing significant loss from an early age, she dedicates her life to normalizing the grief experience and volunteered with the COVID Grief Network providing 1-1 and small group grief support.

2020

G.R. Gritt pulls effortlessly from the past to create soulful futurisms with their new sound that elegantly weaves the melodies using vocals, guitar and new electronic elements. They create both intimate and anthemic music that would fit in a folk club, a dance club and anywhere in between. G.R. Gritt is a Juno Award winning, Two-Spirit, Transgender, Francophone, Anishinaabe/Métis artist and after living many years in Yellowknife, they have returned to Sudbury/Robinson Huron Treaty territory where they grew up. This homecoming coincides with a journey that they feel better represents them. With these changes has come a new voice both physically and in the growing magnetism of their songwriting.

The Northern cities G.R Gritt has lived in forced them every winter through snow and harsh temperatures to make a choice between isolation and seeking community as a source of warmth. Their music serves as one of these beacons of connection for all who come near it. Welcoming yet truthful, they reclaim space through songs that show that intersectional identity is expansive and not to be divided into parts. By exploring the emotional and cultural core of their heritage as a non-binary, queer, Indigenous artist they create new space and encourage others to do the same.

After releasing their first single, “Quiet Years”, November 27, 2020, and their second single, “Doubt It”, February 12, 2021, G.R. Gritt released their full-length album, Ancestors, on April 16, 2021 on Coax Records.

2017

Katrina Goldsaito is the author of the award-winning book The Sound of Silence, which Maria Popova called “An illustrated serenade to the art of listening to your inner voice amid the noise of modern life.” Based on a story from her Japanese father, The Sound of Silence was named a Book of the Year by NPR, People Magazine, Brain Pickings, The Boston Globe, the Huffington Post, and won the Northern California Book Award. As a travel journalist, she has written for National Geographic, NPR, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN-Go, and the Japan Times among others; and she was Vice-Editor of Tokyo Artbeat and a reporter for NHK-World.

Her art practice includes Tea Pourings with strangers at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, Gen-Sou-En in Brooklyn. Her interview-based work, FishBird, on being mixed race, began at UnionDocs in Brooklyn, and was shared with the Brooklyn Historical Society and on NPR. Her art work has been supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Berwick Institute, and the Earhart Foundation.

Her current work, ReachYou, a transmission from the future to help us be in the present, is supported by the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Live Arts Boston grant at the Boston Foundation, and the US Embassy and has been performed in Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic, with a free experimental prototype available for you to be a part of http://reachyou.space/ios.

Being a resident at Hedgebrook (Waterfall cottage!) shaped Katrina's art practices, and she returns again and again to that green, that spaciousness, that welcome, and that gentleness in her daily work.

2011

A Pushcart nominee, Joan Goodreau's recent books are Where to Now? Strangers Together: How My Son’s Autism Changed My Life, Where to Next? and Another Secret Shared. She was awarded two Hedgebrook Writing Residencies to complete her memoir and Covid Silence, which she reads on YouTube. Her prize-winning short plays have appeared in local Northern California theater productions. As a parent of an autistic child and a Special Education Program Specialist, she sees the Spectrum from both sides. Joan Goodreau’s stories, articles and poems have appeared in such publications, reviews and anthologies as Dalhousie Review, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Watershed Literary Magazine, The Broken Plate Literary Magazine, Floodplain Review, One Universe to the Left Anthology, Phases Story Anthology, Crossroads Anthology, Remember When Story Anthology, Beyond Distance Story Anthology, Transitions, One Day, Little Red Tree International Poetry Anthology, Telling Our Stories Anthology, 2nd Latitude Anthology, Roll Anthology, Plus Women’s Magazine, The Word Magazine, Flashquake, Ahoy Magazine, Voices Anthology, Quiet Diamonds, Crossroads, One Universe to the Left, Essential Voices (A Covid Anthology), Vision and Verse, Songs of the San Joaquin Valley.

2017

Yu Gu is a filmmaker born in Chongqing, China and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She works in narrative and documentary film, using a lyrical approach to explore themes of identity, migration and artistic freedom. Yu’s hybrid documentary A Moth In Spring premiered at Hot Docs International Film Festival and was licensed and distributed by HBO. Her feature documentary films Who Is Arthur Chu? and A Woman’s Work are currently supported by the Center for Asian-American Media, Sundance Institute, ITVS, Tribeca Film Institute, Firelight Media and Film Independent. In collaboration with artist Gu Xiong and Academy Award-winner Mark J. Harris, Gu is developing Interior Migrations, a multi-platform project documenting the memories of migrant workers. Gu received her MFA in film production from the University of Southern California. She also works as an editor and recently completing The Walk, a short film for HBO, and music videos for Jewel.

2013

Minal Hajratwala (they/she) is the founder of the Unicorn Authors Club and co-founder of the Changemaker Authors Cohort, nurturing writers to finish books. Her books include Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (winner of four nonfiction awards), Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment (poetry), Moon Fiji (travel guidebook), and Out! Stories from the New Queer India (anthology). She is a Hedgebrook alum and board member.

2015

Catherine Harris-White (SassyBlack) is a multifaceted creative force with a focus in the performing and literary arts. Hailing from Seattle, this Goddess of “psychedelic soul” & “hologram funk” explores sound through deep electronic compositions.

A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, Catherine has fostered a thriving solo career, writing, composing and producing all of her music with over 15 projects released since 2014. In addition to her own compositions, she has composed music for Microsoft, WNYC, University of Washington, 5th Ave Theatre (15 Minute Stories) and the film Seattle Women Black Panthers: Keepers of the Dream.

As a writer, she has written interviews, reviews and opinion pieces for CRACK Magazine, Okayplayer & Tom Tom Magazine and used to co-write the column “Ladies First” for Seattle Weekly.

Along with her music, which has been featured on Adult Swim, BET’s series Twenties as well as the Michelle Obama Spotify Playlist Vol. 1, her acting prowess has been featured on HBO’s Vinyl and Comedy Central’s Broad City. Her musical journey is available for listening and purchase through Bandcamp, Spotify & all other streaming platforms.

2016

Vanessa Hua is an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of the national bestseller A River of Stars, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the forthcoming Forbidden City. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Panama, and Ecuador, and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She has taught, most recently, at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

2018

Tina is first generation Taiwanese American. She was born in Dallas, TX but raised in the Lower East Side and Chinatown of New York City. She attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. She then went to Playwrights Horizons Theatre School at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts focused in acting, directing and design. After a few years working in theatre in San Francisco, she was lead to Los Angeles due to her blossoming television and film career. Her television credits include: Arrow (CW), Rizzoli & Isles (TNT), The Night Shift (NBC), Shameless (Showtime), Hollywood Heights (Nickelodeon), and The Office (NBC). For full credits please visit tinahuang.com or www.imdb.me/tinahuang. Tina is currently co-artistic director of Ammunition Theatre company whose mission is to tell underrepresented stories and to engage in social activism with community organizations. She was honored to be a 2018 Hedgebrook Screenwriter’s Lab Fellow and recently directed the music video for Icarus + Verbal’s BENDER . Tina is excited to have co-founded 1:1 Productions, LLC. (1to1productions.com) with Karla Mosley in 2016 and feels lucky to have had this amazing team of collaborators make a very personal story come to life for which she won the “Best Performance” award at the TIDE film festival 2018. XIN is dedicated to her mother.

2017

Ladee Hubbard is the author of the novels The Talented Ribkins, which received a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award, and The Rib King. Her short story collection, The Last Suspicious Holdout, was published in March 2022. She is a recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Award and has also received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, the American Academy in Berlin, Camargo and Sacatar.

2021

Tessa Hulls is an artist, writer, and adventurer who is equally likely to disappear into the wilderness or a research library. Her debut graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Eisner Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and the Libby Award, and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Cartoonist Studio Prize. Tessa's creative practice weaves genres in category-defying ways, and she is pivoting her career to fuse her two great loves of creativity and the wilderness by becoming an embedded comics journalist working in long-term partnership with scientists and Indigenous organizations working in remote environments. She would love to hear from you if you want to partner with her on this endeavor.

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