This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. Tonight’s program will feature Samar Abulhassan, Danielle Hayden, Amy Hirayama, Clara Olivo, Ann Teplick, and Ankober Yewondwossen! These resident writers come together to read from their own works-in-progress, inspiring the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom.
Free (no RSVP necessary; just come)
Samar Abulhassan is a Jack Straw Writer and holds an M.F.A. from Colorado State University. She’s worked in California public schools for seven years. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she is a 2006 Hedgebrook alum and the author of six chapbooks, including Farah and Nocturnal Temple. Samar has worked with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools since 2008. Samar also recently participated in the 2018 Skagit River Poetry Festival. In 2016, Samar received a CityArtist grant to aid in completing a novel-in-poems reflecting on memory, longing, and the Arabic alphabet. Samar often finds inspiration in images and places and replicates these techniques in her teaching.
Danielle Hayden is a former French, Algebra, and English teacher originally from Detroit who is excited to be returning to the classroom. She is currently a Writers’ Room Resident at the Seattle Public Library. Danielle received a 2022 fellowship from the Jack Straw Cultural Center and a 2022 Grant for Artists’ Progress from Artist Trust. She has completed workshops with Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and Yale. Her articles, essays and poetry have appeared in publications widely. Danielle is also the creator of the website 3pistolary.com, which encourages people to write and send three personal letters. She published a book for her young daughter called A is for Aria and is currently working on an essay collection as well as a novella.
Amy Hirayama is a Hapa writer and educator from Seattle, Washington. She works as the residential workshop administrator for Clarion West, a speculative fiction writer’s workshop. She is also one of the founders of Beam Pedagogy, which provides workshops and retreats focused on educator wellness and changing systems that lead to burnout. Food, family, humor and nature are her favorite things, so she writes about them a lot, sometimes all at once.
Clara Olivo (she/her/ella) is an Afro-Salvi poet living in diaspora. Born and raised in South Central L.A. to Salvadorean refugees, Clara weaves history and lived experience, creating transcendental poetry that amplifies ancestral power and pride. Writing for her lost inner child, Clara steps into her poetry with the intention of healing the hurts of her past and inspiring hope for the future. Since finding her voice, she has performed in open mics and art receptions from Seattle to Washington D.C., is a 2022 Pushcart nominee and has been featured in publications such as The South Seattle Emerald, Valiant Scribe, and Quiet Lightning’s Literary Mixtape.
Ann Teplick is a poet, playwright, and prose writer with an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For twenty-three years, she’s been a teaching artist in Seattle public schools; Hugo House; Coyote Central; and Pongo Teen Writing, at King Co. juvenile detention and the Washington State psychiatric hospital. She has received funding from Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4 Culture, Artist Trust, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She is also a Hedgebrook and Jack Straw alumna.
Ankober Yewondwossen is an Ethiopian first-gen fortunate to be born in Seattle & creatively raised by the Seattle Hip Hop scene at the height of its renaissance. Surrounded by a milieu of ingenious, burgeoning artist-groups from Hella Dope to theeSatisfaction; it was Hip Hop, and the Hidmo, which cultivated her pedagogy for community & critical race theory, while grounding her in the ultimate tenet of the art form—being true to oneself. A legacy student of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina; she studied non-fiction writing while pursuing a self-designed major in Womanist Spiritual Quest—melding her love for Plato’s Republic with Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf”. Previous apprentice roles include a Monastic Apprenticeship in the Garifuna populated region of Honduras where, while living in a Quaker nunnery, she surveyed and studied the intersections of writing & spirituality. Ankober believes writing, in its highest form, is prayer, and, as Paulo Freire once said “there is, in fact, no teaching without learning”. You can find her 11 year old poetry blog at ankober.wordpress.com and her essays on Medium.com.