2017 Jack Straw Writers Program

afrose fatima ahmed is a hybrid Texan-Washingtonian who writes on city streets and at the tops of evergreens. She holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Texas and is a VONA alumna.

afrose is the author of four self-published poetry chapbooks. She is currently working on a full length collection of poems entitled blood gold and honey (a few of her favorite things) that takes the shape of a fictional tarot deck. She has been published in Juked, the Seattle Review of Books, and other journals.

afrose climbs in her spare time, in order to gain perspective.

2017 Writers Program

Quenton Baker is a poet and educator from Seattle. His current focus is the fact of blackness in American society. His work has appeared in Jubilat, Vinyl, Apogee, The James Franco Review, and Cura. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the James W. Ray Venture Project award from Artist Trust. He is the author of This Glittering Republic (Willow Books, 2016).

2017 Writers Program

Jamaica (she/her) is a poet and educator. Her first book, Bone Language, was published by YesYes Books in June 2023. Her work has appeared in Guernica, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and more. She is the recipient of multiple awards including a 2023 Pushcart Prize and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College in New York.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

Jamaica Baldwin’s poetry debut, Bone Language, is a testament to the specific ways women survive the world and its attacks on their bodies. At the core of this poet’s survival is an engagement with a mother/daughter relationship that lives within the shadows of addiction-a love letter to mothers as they are, not as the world has asked them to be. With precision and vulnerability, Baldwin’s lyric “I,” signifies her body and its history as it reckons with loss, misogyny, racism, and desire. “I kept answering/your drowned voice with my own, / kept singing along /to our borrowed honey, / kept words, / the dead of women quick / with longing.”

The End of Sorrow Is Not Happiness

I’ve gained many things since cancer: poetry, extra
weight, a distrust of happiness—the way this country
names it a pursuit, a destination most are never meant
to reach no matter how many shovels we break digging
there is always more earth, more history, more heft
required to fail. Even if I could make my way through
their labyrinth of promises without coming undone
I’m not sure I’d want to give up my sorrows, all my
reckless patients wandering through untamed hallways.
I’ve grown accustomed to their defiance, to the melancholy
of women unbolting private alienations. I prefer this
fracture of a home we’ve built together without borders,
without hustle. And the birds pay us no mind here,
nor the trees, nor moss. So much endless brilliant moss.

2017 Writers Program

Ellie Belew lives in the world of stories we tell ourselves and each other. She writes them down as novels, short prose pieces, and community histories. Belew has published one novel, Run, Plant, Fly (with audio CD produced through Jack Straw’s Artist Support Program); two labor histories, Fully Involved, Bringing Power to the People; and curated and edited About Wallowa County, an anthology of multimedia contributions by the people who live there.

2017 Writers Program

2003 Artist Support Program: Run Plant Fly, a CD based on her novel by the same name.

Catalina Marie Cantú, of Mexican/Madeiran heritage, writes essays, poetry, and prose inspired by her experiences in social justice, domestic relationships, and economic survival. She earned her BA in La Raza Studies, and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Washington. Her poetry has been published in La Bloga, Poetry on Buses, and Raven Chronicles. She received scholarships from Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Artist Trust EDGE Professional Literary Development Program, and Richard Hugo House. Catalina is a member and former chair of Los Norteños, NW Latino Writers Group, and a co-founding member of La Sala, a Latinx artist network.

2017 Writers Program

Wancy Young Cho has appeared in Salon, The Windy City Times, Ghost Factory, No Touching Magazine, and Hair Trigger. He was the recipient of the 2008 Gold Circle Award for Traditional Fiction by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and took First Place in the 2005 Written Image Screenwriting Competition. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Wancy lives in Seattle with his two dogs, Memo and Tiki.

2017 Writers Program

Calvin Gimpelevich is a fiction writer whose work appears in Electric Literature, Plentitude, Glitterwolf, cream city, THEM, and other publications. He is the recipient of awards from Artist Trust, Jack Straw Cultural Center, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

2017 Writers Program

Steph Kesey is a multimedia artist working in video, sculpture and installation. Steph is one half the collaboration KeseyPollock; KeseyPollock’s gallery and public works have been supported by The MacDowell Colony, The Rasmuson Foundation, The Seattle Art Museum, MadArt, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Tin House, and many others. Steph is currently at work on a book of nonfiction about the last year of her bipolar father’s life. Steph is originally from Seattle and studied Film and Media at La Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. She teaches film at SIFF.

2017 Writers Program

Hera McLeod lives in Seattle, but holds true to her Washington, D.C. roots by being unapologetically blunt. She is a woman of color who seeks to empower and educate women through personal narrative. She is the author of the blog Cappuccino Queen, a blog about moving on from an abusive relationship to live the best life and is working on a memoir about the cautionary tale of a woman’s journey from self-conscious to self-confident, from victim to advocate.

2017 Writers Program

D.A. Navoti is a member of the Gila River Indian Community and a multidisciplinary storyteller, writer, and composer. He is a descendant of Hopi, Zuni, Akimel O’otham, and Yavapai-Apache tribes, and his artwork investigates what it means to be Indigenous in the 21st century. Navoti’s literary work has been published by Indian Country Today, Spartan, Homology Lit, The Seventh Wave, Cloudthroat, and elsewhere. He’s a former writer fellow at Hugo House and Jack Straw Cultural Center, and in 2020 he was a Radical Imagination grantee from NDN Collective and a CityArtist with the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Artist Support Program 2022: “O’otham Rhapsode,” a multimedia projection depicting the lives and homelands of the Akimel O’otham, whose ancestral lands are located south of Phoenix, Arizona.

2017 Writers Program

Ashlan Runyan is a writer who believes that sometimes the best way to show up to your work is to switch mediums and teach yourself to knit a pair of socks, or quilt, or how to make herbal medicine, or dance. That is, Ashlan is a writer amongst a few other things. She is always learning more about how to use her art as a political tool and as a healing tool, both for herself and others. She is the world’s worst vegan and the world’s best something, probably.

2017 Writers Program

Brandon Young is a spoken word artist operating primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, currently residing in Seattle. His work combines deadpan humor with historical events. He has been a featured performer at QACon 2013, APATure 2014, the New Sh!t Show, the Racket and the San Francisco Queer Open Mic. He is published in the Dead Animal Handbook and the upcoming Tandem Vol. 3. His project for Jack Straw is a collection of essays revolving around objects that were protected from disposal, and the people that care for them.

2017 Writers Program