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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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Daemond Arrindell (Cleveland High School & Franklin High 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 Bedard (Roosevelt High School) is a poet and screenwriter. She received an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Montana and taught in the Missoula Writers in the Schools program. Emily's poetry has been published in local and national journals, and she recently collaborated with her sister on a screenplay called June Blackr. An editor of Crab Creek Review and a freelance writer, she has taught writing at the middle school, high school, and university level. She has also worked as an irrigator on an Air Force base, a fish sorter in Alaska, and a baby wrangler on a movie set. For inspiration in her writing and in the classroom, she looks to pop culture, language play, and writers from all eras.
Aaron Counts (Chief Sealth 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). 
Karen Finneyfrock (Nathan Hale High School & Blue Heron Middle School) 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 (Hamilton International Middle School & Blue Heron 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.
Eli Hastings (Garfield High School) 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 (TOPS (The Optional Program at Seward)), 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.
Rachel Kessler (Ballard High School & Room Nine Community School) 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.