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enormous, centuries-old trees. I imagined myself at age 30, 40, 50: my identity composed of what I’d received from other people. A deep sense of liberation and relief washed over me: I was no longer solely responsible for the person I became. And I would never be truly alone, because I would carry those bits of other people within me. I discovered my vocation as a writer in that moment, though it would take me another eighteen years realize it. I remember that man’s words each time I enter a writing

torrin a. greathouse Poetry Biography Biography torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Her work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity, The Ragdale Foundation, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center

Guardian, Tin House, New England Review, DIAGRAM, ZYZZYVA, and many other publications, as well as anthologies including Best of the West and The Pushcart Prize. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has a BA and MFA from the University of Arizona. He lives in Oregon and teaches at Oregon State University and the Rainier Writing Workshop. Mentor. Workshops and classes in fiction and nonfiction I want your work to be your own, so my approach to advising individual students

Northwest Sinfonietta.  Mrs. Peterson is an active freelance player in the Puget Sound area performing with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Seattle Opera, and the Fifth Avenue Theatre.  She has performed with the Philadelphia String Quartet and has appeared on the Second City Chamber Music Series.  She is a coach for the Seattle Youth Symphony and maintains a large private studio.

Renee Simms Fiction, Nonfiction Biography Biography Renee Simms, J.D., MFA, is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a John Gardner Fiction Fellowship at Bread Loaf, and fellowships from Ragdale and Vermont Studio Center. She’s an associate professor of African American Studies at University of Puget Sound and teaches with the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran’s low-residency MFA program. Her debut story collection Meet Behind Mars was a Foreword

Brenda Miller Nonfiction Website: http://www.brendamillerwriter.com/ Biography Biography Brenda Miller edited the anthology The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Her most recent collection of her own work is A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form. She is the author of five more essay collections, including An Earlier Life, which received the Washington State Book Award for Memoir, and she is the recipient of six Pushcart Prizes. Her book of collaborative

– one-shot 3-hour sessions, weekend retreats, and semester-long creative writing classes.  Sometimes students come into a workshop simply wanting a push, sometimes they need help finding their voices.  Everyone talks about ‘finding a voice,’ as if we all knew what this means.  We don’t.  I don’t.  What I can do in a workshop is to help students allow themselves to be clumsy, foolish, and sometimes nuts in their writing, while loosely hanging onto the reins.  What are the reins?  I don’t know that

Judith Kitchen Founding Director, In Memoriam Biography Biography Judith Kitchen (1941-2014)  was the co-founder of the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at PLU.  She is the author of four collections of essays, most recently The Circus Train (Ovenbird Books, 2014).  Her other collections are Half in Shade: Family, Photography, Fate and Distance and Direction (Coffeehouse Press) and Only the Dance (U. of South Carolina Press).  She is also the author of a novel, The House on Eccles Road

, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice (coauthored with Martha Silano), Fire on Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, and Demystifying the Manuscript: How to Create of Book of Poems (coauthored with Susan Rich). She lives in a sleepy seaside town where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. Kelli  is the cohost of the poetry series “Poems You Need” with Melissa

pop music. He is Principal Trombonist of Olympia Symphony, Federal Way Symphony and Seattle Rock Orchestra. He is also the trombonist for Kalimba: The Spirit of Earth, Wind, and Fire. Since 2000 Ryan has been an active freelance musician throughout the state of Washington performing with groups such as Tacoma Symphony, Tacoma Ballet, Yakima Symphony, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, Northwest Sinfonietta, Lyric Opera Northwest, and Bellevue Philharmonic. He has performed and taught