Jack Straw SoundPages

Judith Roche is the curator of the 2008 Jack Straw Writers Program.
She is an alumnus of the 2001 Jack Straw Writers Program and is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Wisdom of the Body, won an American Book Award. She has edited a number of poetry anthologies and has worked in collaboration with visual artists on several public art projects which are installed in the Northwest area. She is Literary Arts Director Emeritus for One Reel, the arts producing company that presents Bumbershoot, and teaches poetry workshops. She was Distinguished Northwest Writer in Residence at Seattle University in 2007 and is a Fellow in the Black Earth Institute.

Wendy Call is writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House and co-editor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide (Plume/Penguin, 2007). Excerpts from her nonfiction book-in-progress, No Word for Welcome, have won awards from 4Culture, Artist Trust, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Seattle City Artist Program. Call’s writing has appeared in more than 20 magazines and literary journals in seven countries, often accompanied by her photographs. She has taught creative writing workshops in English and Spanish at universities, community centers, newsrooms, and detention centers.

Janna Cawrse fell in love with a fisherman when she was 19-years old. He dumped her. Five years later he came crawling back. She dumped him. Two years later – well, the story ends (or begins) with a honeymoon across the Pacific on a leaky, old, and conspicuously small sailboat. Janna’s travel memoir, The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, & The World’s Longest Honeymoon (Touchstone/Fireside, 2009) is as much about navigating relationships as navigating the world. Janna blogs about love-and-marriage for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at ‘Happily Even After’ (http://blog.seattlepi.com/HappilyEvenAfter) and writes for various sailing magazines. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies, most recently, More Sand in my Bra: Funny women write from the road, again! (Travelers’ Tales, 2007). Janna lives in Seattle with her fisherman, their daughter, and the friendly ghost of a Labrador Retriever named Scout.

Kevin Craft holds a BA in English and French from the University of Maryland and an MFA in English from the University of Washington. His first book, Solar Prominence (Cloudbank Books), won the Samuel & Rhea Gorsline Prize in 2004. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), Camargo Foundation (France), and Washington Arts Commission/Artist Trust. He teaches at Everett Community College and at the UW’s Rome Center in Italy.

Sharon Cumberland is an Associate Professor of English at Seattle University and will direct the Creative Writing Program starting in 2008-09. She has published two chapbooks, The Arithmetic of Mourning (Green Rock Press), and Sharon Cumberland: Greatest Hits 1985-2000 (Pudding House Press) as well as poems in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kalliope, Verse, The Midwest Quarterly and Image, among many others. Twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, she has won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Award, Writer’s Haven Bright Side competition, and the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association 2007 Zola Award for Poetry. She is a frequent artist-in-residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. She has recently turned to writing fiction and has completed her first novel.

Waverly Fitzgerald is a writer, teacher and writing coach. She published a non-fiction book Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythms of Life, in 2007. It was inspired by her studies of and experiments with time and flowed out of her participation in the Take Back Your Time Day movement and conferences. She also writes historical fiction and non-fiction articles about time, seasonal holidays and flowers. She posts preliminary writings about her flower project on her blog: livinginseason.blogspot.com.

Merna Ann Hecht is a storyteller, poet, and educator. Her years of work in specialized settings include the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center School, BRIDGES: A Center for Grieving Children, detention centers and facilities for homeless youth. She also teaches in the Writers in the Schools Program. Hecht is a recipient of the National Storytelling Network 2008 Brimstone Award for Applied Storytelling. Her writing has appeared in Kaleidoscope, Out of Line, Talking Points: Journal of Whole Language, The National Storytelling Journal, Standing: An Anthology of Women Poets, The Storyteller’s Classroom, Chosen Tales, and other books and journals.

Rebecca Hoogs is the author of a chapbook, Grenade, and her poems have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Zyzzyva, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Florida Review, and others. She is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Artist Trust. In 2007, she presented commissioned work at the Seattle Poetry Festival and The Roethke Readings, a presentation of the ACT Theatre. She is the Director of Education Programs for Seattle Arts & Lectures, and is the curator for its Poetry Series.

Brian McGuigan was born and raised in Queens, NY. He is a poet, performer, arts administrator, and raconteur. He works at Richard Hugo House and is the co-founder and curator of “Cheap Wine and Poetry,” Seattle’s coolest reading series. In 2007, he was also the curator of the Seattle City Council’s Words’ Worth Poetry Series. Spankstra Press published Brian’s chapbook, More Than I Left Behind in 2006, and he is currently at work on his second collection and a one-man show. For more, visit brianwithani.com.

Jennifer D. Munro was born and raised in Hawaii as a fourth-generation islander, and now lives in Seattle. She has been published in journals such as North American Review, Boulevard, Massachusetts Review, and Zyzzyva and anthologies such as The Best of Best American Erotica edited by Susie Bright, The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image, and Other Hazards of Being Female, and Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (Volumes 3, 6, 7). Her first collection of fiction, The Erotica Writer’s Husband, has just been published by en theos press. Munro is currently at work on a nonfiction book about miscarriage and motorcycling, entitled Not Suitable for Children.

Ghida Sinno was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She earned a B.A. in English Literature from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She has received grants from Artist Trust and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook and most recently at Casa Libre in Tucson, AZ. Her work has appeared in the Seattle Review, Many Mountains Moving, and Westwind Review.

Judith Skillman‘s tenth book, Heat Lightning, New and Selected Poems 1986-2006, was published by Silverfish Review Press. “The Carnival of All or Nothing” was a finalist in the American Poetry Journal contest and is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Skillman is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The King County Arts Commission, and the Washington State Arts Commission. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she has completed residencies at Centrum and Hedgebrook. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Iowa Review, and many other journals. An educator, editor, and translator, Judith lives with her husband in Kennydale, WA.

Michael Spence has driven public-transit buses in the Seattle area for 20 years. His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, Antioch Review, Yale Review, Georgia Review, and Southern Review. He has published two poetry collections, The Spine (Purdue University Press) and Adam Chooses (Rose Alley Press), and has been included in the anthologies Poetry Comes Up Where It Can (University of Utah Press) and Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range (Rose Alley Press). He lives in Tukwila, WA, with his wife, writer and teacher Sharon Hashimoto.