The 1998 Jack Straw Writers, selected by Curator Charles Mudede, are Paul Cerda, Lauri Conner, Eben Eldridge, Jamal Gabobe, Paula Gilovich, Sonia Gomez, Daniel Gutierrez, Tracie Hall, Gregory Hischak, Kimball MacKay-Brook, Trisha Ready, David Schmader, Devon Whyte, and Deborah Woodard.
Meet our 1998 Jack Straw Writers
Paul Cerda READ MORE >
From the 1998 Jack Straw Writers Anthology: “I am a twenty-seven year old Chicano, or Mexican-American. I was raised in mostly middle-class white suburban communities where the only other students with Spanish surnames were my siblings. I’m currently a full-time composition and literature professor at Shoreline Community College. I moved to Washington after living in or around San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Guadalajara Mexico, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. I have been writing as a hobby for many years and I have published a few of my stories. The prevailing theme of my work is about ‘life in the interstices.’ I have experienced two very different cultures, yet I feel as if neither is truly ‘my culture.’ As a young child I became very aware of my difference in middle class white suburbia. When I moved back to an area with a large Latino population I realized how different I was in that setting as well. My work exudes this sense of half-belonging and examines the multiple roles that every human must play in their social interactions.”
1998 Writers Program
Lauri Conner READ MORE >
Lauri Conner is a Cave Canem fellow whose poems have appeared in Sou’wester, Seattle Review, and other journals and anthologies, including The Ringing Ear. She holds a PhD and an MFA from the University of Washington and has taught at Cornish College of the Arts, Antioch University, Seattle Academy, and Seattle Central College. She is the Head of School at Lake Washington Girls Middle School.
1998 Writers Program
Eben Eldridge READ MORE >
From the 1998 Jack Straw Writers Anthology: “I have spent most of my life in Los Angeles where I got my emotional passport. Now I can go anywhere. Now I live in Seattle. I have self-published four poetry books. Presently I’m working on a new book to be named later (I don’t want to ruin the alchemy). I am also a contributing writer and an on-air personality for Radio’, a syndicated radio show. Conceptually, I don’t call myself a writer, in fact the last thing I do is write my poems down. I prefer to speak. I prefer the energy of the human voice.”
1998 Writers Program
Jamal Gabobe READ MORE >
The poet Jamal Gabobe has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington. The Path of Difference is his third poetry book. He has published another book of poetry titled Love and Memory and an Arabic poetry book called Qalb La Yanam. Jamal’s travel essay Termites and Clans was included in the anthology An Ear to the Ground: Presenting Writers from 2 Coasts, published by Cune Press. He was part of the Jack Straw Writers Program and has written on modern Egyptian literature and the Canadian author Margaret Laurence. His article “European Travel Writing on Somaliland: the rhetoric of Empire and the emergence of the Somali subject” was published by Bildhaan Journal at the University of Macalaster.
He is a member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed ACCESS: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship and is staff at the University of Washington, Tacoma Library. He has campaigned for social justice issues and worked as a journalist for the Somaliland Times until that weekly was banned by the Somaliland government for exposing government corruption. He has taught English, Arabic, and Somali literatures and has a six-year experience as an instructional consultant at the University of Washington’s Center for Teaching and Learning. He is also an advisor to the University of Washington, Tacoma’s Somali Students and received the 2017 student advisor award.
1998 Writers Program
Paula Gilovich READ MORE >
From the 1998 Jack Straw Writers Anthology: “I graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and now freelance for Allure magazine and do a little writing for The Stranger. I’m currently teaching English and creative writing at an alternative high school in Long Beach, Washington and working on my second collection of poems and my first novel. As a writer, I come from the position of being a woman. I approach the text and the world in a very female way, whether that femaleness be stereotypical or my own personal concept of it. I also write poetry simply to tell myself what I am thinking. I liken this process to following behind my own footsteps; if those footsteps are associations, then my poetry is simply the measurement between them.
1998 Writers Program
Sonia Gomez READ MORE >
Sonia Gomez is an American born Sri Lankan, who was raised in Kenya and Zimbabwe. She received an MFA from the University of Washington and has taught at that institution, and at local community colleges. She has also worked at Seattle Arts and Lectures and Richard Hugo House. Gomez has received grants from Artist Trust and the Seattle Arts Commission, and has participated in Jack Straw’s Writers Program and Artist Support Program, as well as Writers in the Schools programs. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Crab Creek Review, The Journal of African Travel Writing, and Many Mountains Moving, and other literary journals.
2000 Writers Program (Curator)
Artist Support Program 1999
1998 Writers Program
Daniel Gutierrez READ MORE >
From the 1998 Jack Straw Writers Anthology: “I was born and raised in New York City and I moved out to Seattle thirteen years ago to attend the University of Washington, where I received an M.A. in English. My recent publication credits include The Madison Review, River City, Pearl, The Rockford Review, and The Cape Rock. Currently I am an associate poetry editor for The Seattle Review and have nearly completed a book of poetry entitled Dreams of a Landlocked Sailor. In it I explore people’s attempts to reconcile the conflicts that arise from their unquenchable desire for the unattainable prize. It is a world of unfulfilled expectations, unrequited lovers and creatures of nature trapped in a concrete jungle. However, it is also a world full of hope, since it is the hopeful that never give up. Even though satisfaction is always out of reach, I see beauty and redemption in the quest.”
1998 Writers Program
Tracie D. Hall READ MORE >
Tracie Hall is Executive Director of the American Library Association. She previously served as Director, Culture Program at Chicago’s Joyce Foundation. As Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) for the City of Chicago where she oversaw the Arts and Creative Industries Division which included the Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Music Industry, and Farmers Market programs, as well as the Chicago Film Office, Chicago Artists Month and Lake FX Summit and Expo.
Deeply invested in the intersection of arts access, literacy, youth and economic development, Hall led the organization and founding of the NYC Early Learning Network; developed the Seattle-based SCRIBES program, which has become a long-running youth creative writing project; conceived and curated the NEH-funded Festival of Caribbean Literature with the Connecticut Center for the Book; served as author and principal investigator on three milestone Institute of Museum and Library Science (IMLS) grants; and in Chicago has worked on several initiatives positioning art at the intersection of workforce development and public safety.
A poet, fiction writer and playwright, Hall is a Cave Canem fellow and the recipient of various awards and residencies for her writing, creative and community work.
Holding degrees from the University of California, Yale University and the University of Washington, Hall was born and mostly raised in South Los Angeles. She is Founding Curator of experimental arts space, Rootwork Gallery and continues to make time to serve on various non-profit boards and committees.
1998 Writers Program
Gregory Hischak READ MORE >
Gregory Hischak’s short plays Hygiene and Poor Shem have been produced as part of Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Apprentice/Intern Tens program and both were restaged as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays (2010 and 2014, respectively). His full-length play, The Center of Gravity, won the 2009 Clauder Prize and premiered at Portland Stage Company (Portland, ME) in 2010, and was recently staged at the Cotuit Center for the Arts (Barnstable, MA) in 2014. His plays have also been staged by A Contemporary Theatre (Seattle, WA), A Theatre Under the Influence (Seattle, WA), City Theatre (Miami, FL), The Source Festival (Washington, D.C.), Salem Theatre Company (Salem, MA), The Pan Festival (San Francisco, CA), and the Boston Theater Marathon, among others. Hischak lives in Yarmouth, MA where he is the Associate Director of the Edward Gorey House.
2002 Writers Program
1998 Writers Program
Kimball MacKay-Brook READ MORE >
For a couple of decades, Kimball MacKay-Brook made his living feeding people – sharecropping in the mountains of Western North Carolina and cooking in restaurants, daycare centers, and schools. For the last eight years, he’s taught at Cornish College of the Arts, providing, he hopes, a different sort of nutrition. His work has appeared in Fine Madness, The Journal, The Seattle Review, and Willow Springs, among others, and he has been awarded three grants from The Seattle Arts Commission, most recently receiving a Seattle Artist Award for 1997.
1998 Writers Program
Trisha Ready READ MORE >
Trisha Ready is a writer and a psychologist. She wrote essays for twenty years for Seattle’s alternative newspaper— The Stranger. Her writing focuses on mental health and music.
1998 Writers Program
David Schmader READ MORE >
David Schmader is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the U.S. He’s also an associate editor of The Stranger, the Seattle newsweekly for which he’s written the pop culture-and-politics column “Last Days” since 1998. In his spare time, he’s the world’s foremost authority on the brilliant horribleness of the 1995 film Showgirls, touring his live, annotated screening “Showgirls with David Schmader” to film fests across the country and providing the commentary track to MGM’s special edition Showgirls DVD in 2003. A film of Schmader’s play Straight is available at Netflix and places like that.
Artist Support Program 2007: Radio essays focusing on three individuals and how music is a part of their life.
1998 Writers Program
Devon Whyte READ MORE >
From the 1998 Jack Straw Writers Anthology: “I was born on the island of Antigua, in the British West Indies. My family then immigrated to the United States twenty years ago. I have since lived in four states, making my home currently in Seattle, for the past three years. As a resident of the Belltown Neighborhood, I live, work, and play in Seattle’s downtown. As for my fiction, the book I’m working on (Purple Princess) focuses on the African American community in Seattle. It’s about the arrival of African Americans in Seattle who came here because there were opportunities and also the racism and other attitudes were not as set in the culture. You can see that a lot of the African American experiences of Seattle has grown out of this energy and hope of the first entry of pioneers into the Pacific Northwest – it is that pioneer spirit.”
1998 Writers Program
Deborah Woodard READ MORE >
Deborah Woodard’s books include Plato’s Bad Horse (Bear Star, 2006), Borrowed Tales (Stockport Flats, 2012) and No Finis: Triangle Testimonies, 1911 (Ravenna Press, 2018). She has translated Amelia Rosselli’s poetry in Hospital Series (New Directions, 2015), Obtuse Diary (Entre Rios Books, 2018) and The Dragonfly (Entre Rios Books, 2023).
2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:
The Dragonfly/La Libellula is Amelia Rosselli’s acknowledged first major work and contains all the elements of her mature vision: trilingual wordplay, musicality, and political engagement. With its vertiginous propulsion and rotational structure, this book-length poem hovers on the edge of the surreal where meaning continuously multiplies and then negates.
Find Ortensia: her mechanics is ejaculatory
solitude. Her solitude is ejaculatory
mechanics. Find the monstrous gestures of Ortensia:
her solitude is populated with specters, and
specters populate her with solitude. And her love
ruminates and can’t leave the house. And thus her
light vibrates between the walls, with light,
with specters, with love that never leaves the
house. With only the specter of love, with love’s
reflection, with disenchantment,
enchantment and frenzy. Seek Ortensia: seek
her vibrant humility that can’t find peace,
and that can’t find farewell for anyone, and that
always bids farewell and to no one, and tips to everyone
her little summer hat, with an uncommon show of
piety. Find Ortensia who in her solitude
populates the civilized world with savages. And the guitar’s
song no longer satisfies her. And the guitar’s
pardon no longer satisfies her! . . .
2000 Writers Program (with Don Mee Choi)
1998 Writers Program
1998 Writers Program Curator
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Curator Charles Mudede is the author of The Couch Experiment and a collection of essays on post-industrial black America entitled Syncro Systems. Mudede’s essays appear frequently in the Stranger and other local publications. After completing high school in his native Zimbabwe, Mudede moved to the US and received his B.A. from Fairhaven College at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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