The Jack Straw Writers Program

Jim Cantú has penned poems, prose and personal essays. His work includes contributions to Writing the Land – Windblown II (2022), In Xóchitl in Cuícatl : floricanto : cien años de poesía chicanx/latinx (1920-2020) (2020), Raven Chronicles (2017), Seattle Poetic Grid (2017), Whirlwind Magazine (2016) and others. He’s been a Writer-In-Residence for La Sala’s La Cocina event. He’s a graduate of the Artist Trust Literary Edge program and a 2023 Jack Straw Writer. Jim’s community activities include producing Latinx music and public affairs programs for community radio and La Sala Seattle. Jim also works at El Centro de la Raza, a community service organization that has been serving our “Beloved Community” for over 50 years.

2023 Writers Program

Hana Choi is a first-generation immigrant writer from South Korea. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Epoch, Mississippi Review, and CRAFT Literary, and has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her short stories have been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and named a finalist for the 2022 Missouri Review Editors’ Prize and the 2023 Mississippi Review Prize. She is a recipient of the 2022 Grants for Artists’ Progress from Artist Trust. She currently lives in Seattle and is at work on her first novel.

2023 Writers Program

Brian Dang (they/them) is a Vietnamese/Chinese playwright/poet/teaching artist based in Duwamish Territory (Seattle). Brian is a proud resident playwright at Parley. Brian’s artistic homes include Seattle’s Writers in the Schools and Arts Corps. For Brian, writing is an act of envisioning an eventual communing, an opportunity to freeze time as we know it, and a reaching for joy. They really like bread.

2023 Writers Program

Geri Gale (she/her) writes and draws at night and on the weekends. Her award-winning books include In the Closet: A Triad (American Fiction Award, LGBTQ+ Fiction Finalist; IAN Book of the Year, LGBTQ+ Fiction Finalist; A Notable 100 Book in the 2022 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book; Foreword Indies Book Award, LGBTQ+ Fiction Finalist); Patrice: a poemella (Silver IPPY: LGBTQ+ Fiction, Independent Publisher Book); Alex: The Double-Rescue Dog (National Indie Excellence, Picture Book, Finalist); and Waiting: prosepoems (Dancing Girl Press). Her prose, poetry, and drawings have appeared in several magazines. She is a Moth StorySLAM winner who performed in the Moth Seattle Grand Slam. On Instagram, 60 readers read her novel In the Closet: A Triad from their very own closets.

2023 Writers Program

Stephen Reed Griggs (b. NYC, 1960) earned certificates in Narrative Non-Fiction and Arts Management from the University of Washington, a Bachelor of Musical Arts in Saxophone Performance from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from Pace University.

As a writer, Griggs is a member of the Jazz Journalists Association. His work has been published in the Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Earshot Jazz, Raven Chronicles Volume 26, Creative Colloquy Volume 3, Stories of Music Volume 2 (2017 International Book Award), and Rhythm in the Rain: Jazz in the Pacific Northwest. Griggs’ historical research has been mentioned in The John Coltrane Reference and Wild Isle in the City.

Musically, Griggs is an award-winning composer, producer, performer, and publisher with six commercial jazz recordings of his music on his independent, self-produced Hip City Music label. NEA Jazz Master Elvin Jones is featured on two of Griggs’ records. He accepted the Jazz Journalist Association 2021 Best Historical Recording award as Associate Producer on John Coltrane: A Love Supreme Live in Seattle for finding the source tape. His live performances of site-specific programs of social justice stories and original music have twice earned an Adventurous Programming Award by Chamber Music America and ASCAP, and The Seattle Channel broadcast Griggs’ music and narrative program based on the police killing of native carver John T. Williams on Front Row: Steve Griggs Ensemble present Seeing John T. Williams. Griggs is the featured saxophone soloist on the soundtrack for the Microsoft video game Halo 3: ODST which sold more than 6 million copies worldwide.

2023 Writers Program

Artist Support Program 2017: Record six songs and narrations for the program Sound in Stone: Music in the Sculptures of James Winston Washington.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record and mix the narrative and music program for A Cup of Joe Brazil, an audio documentary about an important figure in Seattle’s cultural history.

Artist Support Program 2013: Perform oral history recording, digital preservation of historic recordings, and production of audio excerpts for a blog and biography about the life and impact of Joe Brazil.

Artist Support Program 1997

Originally from South Florida, Garfield Hillson is a Black-Queer poet and educator working in Seattle. He believes in the beauty of words and the power of story-sharing. He believes in trauma-informed social justice healing and that art and education are the building blocks to achieve this. Garfield imagines being Black and Queer is nothing if not a study in silence. So he writes to reclaim the language that was stolen from him, to empower others, and to push imaginations to craft a better NOW !! Garfield is a Seattle Poetry Slam Grand Slam Champion (2015); a Rain City Slam Grand Slam Champion (2017); and a five-time Seattle Poetry Slam National Team Member (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). Garfield has appeared in Rising Up: A Queer Social Justice Play (2017); and Dear White People—Resistance (2018).

2023 Writers Program

Nancy Mburu is an author and performing poet. Her writing amplifies the experiences and stories of East African immigrants in an authentic way that also encompasses black diasporans’ complex relationship with culture, tradition, language, gender dynamics, and race. Her style involves uplifting her culture by incorporating her native language Swahili and rooting her stories in their cultural and political context. Nancy has a BA in Creative writing from the University of Washington and is a 2023 Hugo House Fellow.

2023 Writers Program

A Seattle native, Dave grew up in a working-class family in White Center. He graduated from Evergreen High School and the University of Washington, where he began his newspaper career at the UW Daily. He worked as a reporter at papers in Central Washington, and later as a copy editor at Bellevue’s Eastside Journal (now gone) and The Seattle Times. A favorite newspaper experience was the few years he spent helping revive a waning, century-old weekly, which became for a while an award-winning and well-subscribed voice in its community. As for editing, his happiest job was helping his wife, Stacey, self-publish her beginner’s guide to American Mah Jongg, which continues to put groceries on their table. He has pursued poetry and short fiction as a regular at the Port Townsend Writers Conference for many years. In retirement he continues to take classes and write, usually just for the pleasure of writing, and to share a little work with friends. His writing “process” tends to be simple: 1) read first, 2) write with abandon, and 3) edit without mercy.

2023 Writers Program

Carla Shafer, 1964 student of William Stafford, writes poems addressing intersections of social justice, climate crisis, family and personal life with local and historical images. She founded the Chuckanut Sandstone Writers Theater Open Mic (1991), and co-founded World Peace Poets, which sponsors an International World Peace Poetry Postcard Exchange since February 2016.

She holds a BS in English from Lewis and Clark College, Portland,OR and a Bank Street College, NY, MEd. Her poems are available in various publications. She won the Writers International Network of Canada Empowered Poet (2018), and Sue C. Boynton Walk Awards (2007, 2017).

2023 Writers Program

Sumu (Su) Tasib is a genderqueer author and scientist living in Seattle, Washington. They have been writing for four decades and publishing scientific articles for three. Su sees writing as a path to social as well as scientific change; their stories are meant to expand perspectives while they entertain. Their debut book, A Boy Named Su, is a memoirist collection of non-fiction stories and essays about their journey into genderqueerness. They are currently working on a collection of short fiction on themes of gender, relationships, psychology, and social justice. Su’s book is available online as well as at independent bookstores; their stories and poetry have appeared in the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival in 2022 and 2023. Su also hosts the Queer Kahani podcast, a series of queer stories, interviews, and discussions.

2023 Writers Program

Kaitlyn Teer’s essays have been published in Orion, Electric Lit, Catapult, Redivider, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction was listed as notable in the 2017 Best American Essays anthology and a special mention in the 2018 Pushcart Prize anthology. Her essays have received Prairie Schooner‘s Bernice Slote Award and Fourth Genre’s Michael Steinberg Essay Prize. She was a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Peter Taylor Fellow, is a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog, and holds an MFA from WWU, where she teaches writing.

2023 Writers Program

Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, worked in AIDS services for twenty-one years; she’s certified in the Wise Woman Tradition and wildcrafts to make herbal remedies. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, won the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards. No Father Can Save Her, is available in paperback or e-book. Her poems have been published in HEAL, Autumn Sky Poetry, The Seattle Review of Books, Poetry Super Highway, As it Ought To Be, Feels Blind; recent anthologies include I Sing the Salmon Home, Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice.

Julene is an art-activist (Artivist) in the Seattle chapter of the Through Positive Eyes Project. She has attended residencies at the University of Washington’s Helen Riaboff Whitely Center, Centrum, Mineral School and Vashon AIR. She is writing a memoir. Essay publications include: The Guardian, Mollyhouse, Hags on Fire, The Muse (McMaster University), and But You Don’t Look Sick: The Real Life Adventures of Fibro Bitches, Lupus Warriors, and other Super Heroes Battling Invisible Illness. Her latest book is Slow Now With Clear Skies.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

“In post-pandemic America, [Slow Now With Clear Skies] is the book I needed to read. Weaver, an herbalist, knows we and the earth can heal together. Find channels that soothe. . . . Send anxiety into the earth. She uses images from her own life and the viruses that plague our world to witness suffering. And to acknowledge that none of us is the same after the Covid years. Her poetry resonates: It’s time / for massive change . . . / Our planet, slow now with clear skies.”
—Joanne M. Clarkson

New Age Wonder

Make a ritual
Gems heal—find a petrified tree,
a quartz crystal in a creek—
reminders of wonder and belief.

Life force spirals—
find solace in water,
in stone, in gentle rainfall,
breathe petrichor released from earth.

Touch a moss laden nurse log.
Feel the pulse of the moon,
the rising of the sun,
star glitter in the sky—
elemental, essential—
a world your body understands.

2023 Writers Program