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2008-09 WITS Writer-in-Residence Biographies Click here for more information on how to become a Writer-in-Residence.
Kevin has been a life-long writer. His first stories, written in elementary school, were sequels to popular movies from his childhood. He wrote his first “novel” in 6th Grade, about a CIA agent trying to save the world. He began writing stories for young readers while he was a teacher. His hardcover debut, Carlos is Gonna Get It (October 2008), was inspired by his teaching years in Dorchester, MA, an urban neighborhood of Boston. Kevin is also the author of the middle-grade paperback series Oliver Nocturne. Inspired by the environs of Seattle, Oliver is a new take on a classic genre, in which vampires are reinvented for younger readers. Kevin uses his science teacher background to play with creepy ideas about how a vampire family would live in the modern world. As much about families and fitting in, Oliver is chock-full of spine-tingling adventure, intrigue, and comedy. When he is not writing, camping with his wife Annie and 3-year-old daughter Willow, or tending to the tomato plants, Kevin is busy as a musician. His band, Central Services, for which he writes songs, sings, and plays drums, has charted nationally on college radio and been featured on NPR. The band just finished a kids’ record, called the Board of Education, featuring songs for elementary school kids in the classic pop veins of Ben Folds, the Shins, and Schoolhouse Rock.
WITS Schools
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Samar Abulhassan (Ingraham High School ELD) earned her M.F.A. from Colorado State University before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked in public schools for nearly seven years. Last fall, she taught poetry to sixth graders through California Poets in the Schools. She is passionate about helping youth awaken through the joy and transformation that might emerge from a relationship with language and community. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she is especially invested in helping young people trust their own experience of the world by making space on the page for wildness and unexpected shapes and sounds. A 2006 Hedgebrook alum and inspired by watery landscapes, she is excited to be in Seattle. She is the author of two chapbooks, Farah (Dusie 2007) and Nocturnal Temple (Dusie 2008).
Daemond Arrindell (Meany Middle School) full-time work is managing a teen hotline, but his passion has always been poetry. He is the Seattle Slammaster, curating the Seattle Poetry Slam for six years, and has coached the Seattle National Poetry Slam team for five years. He is a faculty member at Freehold Theatre teaching Spoken Word & Performance Poetry. Daemond has facilitated writing workshops at Harborview Medical Center, Edmonds Community College Theater Camp, the National Poetry Slam, Monroe Correctional Complex, Echo Glen Children's Center, and Nova Project Poetry Festival. Recently, Daemond was awarded 2nd place in the Washington Poets Association Bart Baxter Performance Poetry competition.
Emily Beyer (TOPS. 5th & 6th grades) grew up in Seattle and went to Nathan Hale High School where Writers in the Schools was piloting some of its first residencies. At Nathan Hale, her life changed when the writers who visited her classes ignited a passion for poetry and through their example convinced her to pursue creative writing. She eventually completed an MFA at University of Iowa. She was recently awarded a Seattle CityArtist Project Grant and an Artist Trust GAP grant to finish her first book of poetry. 
Aaron Counts (Franklin High School & Garfield High School) has seen first hand the transformative power of words. He has worked as a teacher, an adolescent counselor and a gang-intervention specialist, using creative writing as a tool in each of those positions. More recently, he has been an adviser to the intergenerational literary arts education organization, Youth Speaks Seattle, and the co-founder of the Akoben Brotherhood, a local grassroots group dedicated to uplifting the consciousness of African American boys and men, facilitating workshops in schools, jails, prisons, and on street corners. Aaron’s writing, which has appeared in print, online, on stage, and on t-shirts across the country, tiptoes the line between spoken and written forms—at least until that line ceases to exist. He is the co-author of Reclaiming Black Manhood, and a correspondent for the ego trip collective (ego trip’s Big Book of Racism, VH-1’s Race-o-rama). 
Wilson Diehl (Roosevelt High School) received her B.A. from Swarthmore College and her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa. Her essays, poems, and award-winning mock-educational film have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Paterson Literary Review, on buses around town, and on the national film festival circuit. She has led students through various creative pursuits at the University of Iowa, numerous Seattle-area community colleges, Hugo House, Reel Grrls, and the Nature Consortium. She's also worked as an editor for Seattle Metropolitan magazine. Currently she’s working on a collection of essays as well as writing the occasional poem.
Angela Dy (Chief Sealth High School) developed her artistic foundation in the heart of the filipino-amerikan arts group isangmahal arts kollective, of which she has been a member since age fifteen. Since 2002, she has been a mentor and educator for the youth spoken word and poetry organization Youth Speaks Seattle, and became its Program Director in 2005. She competed on the Seattle Youth Poetry Slam team for three consecutive years (2000-2002) and co-coached the 2003-2005 Seattle Youth Slam Teams at Nationals. Angela, also known as Angel, has conducted numerous writing and performance workshops at local area high schools. She has performed her work at every major university in the state of Washington, as well as on stages in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Norfolk, and Amherst. Her first chapbook was released in 2004, entitled Common Sensuality. Another is in the works. She is thrilled to be a part of WITS this year. 
Karen Finneyfrock (Nathan Hale High School & Summit K-12) is a poet, performer and teacher living in Seattle, WA. As an accomplished Spoken Word Artist and member of the Poetry Slam movement, Karen‘s work was featured in the only two National Poetry Slam Anthologies (From Page to Stage and Back Again, 2003 and Freedom to Speak, 2002.) Karen was honored as a "legend" at the National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX and was a member of Seattle's 2008 National Slam Team. Karen has performed at Bumbershoot, the Seattle Poetry Festival, the Redmond Poetry Festival and Vancouver’s West Coast Poetry Festival. She has been featured in two national spoken word tours. A recent alumna of Hedgebrook Writers Colony, Karen has published two books of poems and is working on a book of young adult fiction.
Kathleen Flenniken’s (View Ridge Elementary) first poetry collection, Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Daily and American Life in Poetry, and she is the recipient of literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Artist Trust. Kathleen has taught creative writing in Seattle area schools through a number of arts agencies, and is an editor and president of Floating Bridge Press, a nonprofit all-volunteer press dedicated to publishing Washington State poets.
Laura Gamache (Catharine Blaine K-8 and Hamilton Middle School), poet and educator, has published poetry on buses, on tee shirts, on bookmarks, on the radio, on stage, in journals including Pontoon 7 & 10, and Crab Creek Review, and online in LocusPoint and Avatar Review. She received an MFA from the University of Washington in 1993, and directed the UW Writers in the Schools program for nine years. She participated in the Jack Straw Writers Program in 1999 and 2002. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, nothing to hold onto, in 2005. Teachers & Writers Collaborative has published two of her teaching essays. A passionate advocate for the inner life, Laura has shared her love for the written word with kids in Puget Sound area schools since 1992. This October, she heads south to Chiloquin, Oregon, for nine weeks, as 2008 Sprague/Williamson Writer in Residence sponsored by Fishtrap.
Matt Gano (Ingraham High School) is a nationally known poet, writer, and performance artist. He is currently a member of the 2008 National Poetry Slam team for Seattle and finished in top position this year to earn the title, "Seattle Poetry Slam Grand Slam Champion.” He was a member of the National Poetry Slam team for Seattle in 2004, and again in 2005. Matt works as a full time teaching artist with Seattle Arts and Lectures and Arts Corps. He is also the Arts in Education Facilitator and a writing mentor for Seattle’s nationally renowned youth poetry program, Youth Speaks. His published work includes the chapbooks “Welcome Home,” “I Eight the Infinite,” and “Art Barker”, as well as a self-titled poetry LP, and a live recording entitled “A Giant’s Pulse.”
Himanee Gupta-Carlson (Big Picture and Highline High School) teaches political science, social sciences and creative nonfiction. She holds a B.A. in Journalism, an M.A. in American Studies, and a Ph.D. in Political Science. Her dissertation, “No Place to Call ‘Home’: Remapping America’s ‘Middletown’ from a South Asian Perspective,” is about the experience of South Asians who settled in her hometown of Muncie, Indiana, beginning in the late 1960s. Her writing blends scholarly knowledge of America’s racial and ethnic politics with storytelling. She has been a reporter for The Kansas City Star and The Seattle Times, and a copy editor for The Honolulu Advertiser. Both academic and general interest journals publish her work.
Eli Hastings (Highline High School, 1st Semester) is an at times far-flung Seattleite who married a more far-flung Spaniard but he’s now home, working in the arts and social services (WITS, Pongo Teen Publishing, and the Eastside Domestic Violence Program). He earned his MFA and taught Creative Nonfiction and English courses at the UNC at Wilmington. A book of essays, Falling Room, is out from Bison Books (University of Nebraska Press) in their prestigious American Lives Series. A memoir, A Cold and Broken Hallelujah, and two novels are under consideration. His work has appeared in: Rivendell, Third Coast, Cimarron Review, Pinyon, Whetstone, Alligator Juniper, Pedestal Magazine, the Seattle Review, Wandering Army, The Tulane Review, Blood Lotus, and most recently in the anthology, Men Speak Out (against sexual violence), Routledge Press, UK, 2007. The essay he placed with Third Coast was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the essay at Alligator Juniper won their nonfiction contest. His story published in Whetstone, “Out of the Blue,” is in the pre-production stages as a short feature film by Westbound Films (www.westboundfilms.com). Really he just wants to hang out with his old dog, Kaya.
Merna Ann Hecht (McClure Middle School & Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center), storyteller, poet and arts and literacy educator is committed to providing opportunities that will help support young people in holding to a vision of a more humane and peaceful world. She has built her life work around the vital role of story and spoken word in many cultures. Her years of work in specialized settings most recently include the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center School, BRIDGES: A Center for Grieving Children, detention centers and facilities for homeless youth. She is a recipient of the National Storytelling Network 2008 Brimstone Award for Applied Storytelling. Merna presents courses for educators on teaching humanities and social justice through integrated arts and she performs widely as a storyteller throughout the Northwest. Her essays and poems have appeared in Kaleidoscope, Out of Line, Talking Points: Journal of Whole Language, The National Storytelling Journal, Standing: An Anthology of Women Poets, The Storyteller’s Classroom, Chosen Tales and other books and journals.
Jourdan Imani Keith (Cleveland High School) is Seattle Poet Populist Emeritus and Seattle Public Library's first Naturalist-in-Residence. She is a playwright, storyteller, activist, and educator. Her poetry, plays, essays and stories blend the textures of political, personal and natural landscapes to offer voices from the margins of American lives. She is the founder and director of Urban Wilderness Project, a community-based environmental and cultural restoration organization which provides storytelling and wilderness programming. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Jack Straw Writer’s Program and the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs for the writing and solo performance of her play, The Uterine Files: Episode I, Voices Spitting Out Rainbows. Her memoir, Coyote Autumn is forthcoming in the anthology Women's Wonderland from University of Wisconsin press.
Rachel Kessler (Ballard High School & West Woodland Elementary) has been an avid collaborator in the literary and performing arts for more than a decade. As a co-founder of the Typing Explosion, she published 4 books, wrote and performed in 5 shows, and toured internationally with their unique style of automatic interactive poetry performances since 1998. Her most recent project with the Vis-à-vis Society was a book and vinyl record “WHO ARE WE?” and show “WE ARE YOU: a Statistical Musical” based on audience input and poem-surveys. Her poems have appeared in international publications such as Tin House, TATE, and Swivel. A lifelong educator, she has taught workshops in youth detention centers, public libraries, grade schools and universities in Seattle, New York, and Chicago. Recently, she completed a residency at University of Arizona’s Poetry Center, convinced an entire audience to don eye-masks throughout a performance, and held a week-long art bookmaking camp for 1st through 7th graders. Ms. Kessler is currently at work writing and illustrating a children’s book about trolls and crows and the children who love them.
Cassie Kosty (McClure Middle School, 6th grade, 1st semester) recently received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington, where she also received a BA in English in 2005. In 2007 she was a finalist for Crab Orchard Review’s Charles Johnson Student Fiction Award, and in 2005 she was the recipient of the Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Creek Review, THEMA, and Between the Lines. In the 2007-08 school year Cassie worked as an intern with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program, assisting in creative writing classrooms at Nathan Hale High School and West Woodland Elementary. Prior to working with WITS, Cassie taught ESL, elementary English, and preschool. She is currently at work on a novel.
Linden Ontjes’s (Hutch School) poetry has been published in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Filter, and Cranky, et. al. Her performances include A Cup o' Joe at Bumbershoot; Alfred Jarry's Interior Designs and Pataphysical Window Treatments at Smoke Farm Festival; Miss Fortune and the Misfortune Cookies at Synchronicity; The National Grilled Cheese Poetry Booth at the Seattle Poetry Festival and many other public indecencies.
Judith Roche (Kimball Elementary) is the author of three collections of poetry, Wisdom of the Body, Myrrh/My Life as a Screamer and Ghosts, is co-editor of First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim, which won an American Book Award. She has edited a number of poetry anthologies and has worked in collaboration with visual artists on several public art projects which are installed in the Seattle area. She is Literary Arts Director Emeritus for One Reel, an arts producing company and teaches poetry workshops and was Distinguished Northwest Writer in Residence at Seattle University in 2007. She is a Fellow in the Black Earth Institute.