(in alphabetical order)

KATHLEEN ALCALÁ
How to Write About Your Family Without Them Finding Out - May 13

KATHLEEN ALCALÁ is the author of numerous books including a short story collection, Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist, and three novels: Spirits of the Ordinary, The Flower in the Skull, and Treasures in Heaven. Her work has received the Western States Book Award, the Governor's Writers Award, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and a Washington State Book Award. A co-founder and contributing editor to The Raven Chronicles, Kathleen currently serves on the board of Richard Hugo House and teaches creative writing in the Low Residency MFA Program on Whidbey Island.

RYAN BOUDINOT
How to Be Funny (Funny Ha Ha, Not Funny Strange) - February 26

RYAN BOUDINOT is the author of The Littlest Hitler, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2006. His work has appeared in places like McSweeney's, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 and 2005, and The Stranger. He lives in Seattle and teaches in the Goddard College MFA program in Port Townsend.

MATT BRIGGS
How to Write Cheap, Fast and Loud - March 11

MATT BRIGGS has written and published four books of fiction, including the novel Shoot the Buffalo, in the hour or so before he begins the job that provides for things such as Laserjet toner, paper, and the roof over his head. Shoot the Buffalo was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and won an American Book Award in 2006. His stories have appeared in Spork, Seattle Magazine, The Steel City Review, The Mississippi Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere.

WARREN ETHEREDGE
How to Write For - and About - Humans - July 8

WARREN ETHEREDGE is the president, CEO and head of development for Lockspring Pictures (www.lockspring.com). He is also the Founder of The Warren Report (www.thewarrenreport.com), a film arts organization driven by the principle that smarter audiences make better movies! Additionally, he is one of the founding faculty members of The Film School (www.thefilmschool.com), Seattle's populist response to the Sundance Institute. For six years, he served as the curator of the One Reel Film Festival (at Bumbershoot)—the nation's best-attended celebration of short cinema.

CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
How To Write For The Stranger - November 11

CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE is the editor of The Stranger. He has worked at The Stranger since since 2003. Before that he was the literary editor at Seattle Weekly, a one-year stint that ended with him being escorted out of the building. He has edited writing by Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Raban, Charles D'Ambrosio, Heather McHugh, and many others. He never graduated from college.

JOHN JACOBSEN
How To Build it Right- July 22

JOHN JACOBSEN’S career has encompassed direction, writing and production of feature films, films for television, short films, commercials, television shows and documentaries. He has worked with such stars as Bill Pullman, Sandra Bullock, Eli Wallach, Peter Boyle, among others. Around the Fire, which he directed, won top prize at the Giffoni Film Festival, and his short films also have received awards at the Aspen Film Festival and the Houston International Film Festival. Jacobsen has also directed more than 20 stage productions regionally and in New York, worked as an assistant on Broadway to legendary director Hal Prince, and sold seven screenplays.

DAVID LASKY
How To Write With Words and Pictures - August 12

DAVID LASKY attended the College of William and Mary, majoring in Fine Arts (with a minor in English). He began drawing mini comics in 1991 while living in the Bay Area. He moved to Seattle in 1992, where he joined the ranks of a new wave of young alternative cartoonists. He has created a number of critically acclaimed comic books, including a nine page mini-adaptation of Joyce's Ulysses, eight issues of Boom Boom Comics, two issues of the award-nominated Urban Hipster, and numerous short comics for anthologies such as Kramers Ergot and The Best American Comics 2006.

JIM LYNCH
How To Pull Novels From Nature - October 14

JIM LYNCH has won national journalism awards as well as the 2006 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for his debut novel The Highest Tide, a bestseller in the United States and the UK; it has been sold in ten languages and more than twenty countries. Jim grew up in the Seattle area and graduated from the University of Washington with degrees in English and journalism. He went on to write for newspapers across the country while always writing fiction on the side.  He now sails, hikes, and writes full-time in Olympia, Washington, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

JOHN MOE
How to Be Funny (Funny Ha Ha, Not Funny Strange) - February 26

JOHN MOE is the author of Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty with the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky, and has contributed to many humor anthologies. Moe is also a contributor to McSweeneys.net, authoring the popular column “John Moe's Pop Song Correspondences.” A frequent commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, John currently covers the presidential race for public radio’s Weekend America.

GARTH STEIN
How To Write Like a Quadruped - September 9

GARTH STEIN is the author of three novels, The Art of Racing in the Rain, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (winner of a 2006 PNBA Book Award), and Raven Stole the Moon. His play, Brother Jones, was produced in Los Angeles in 2005, and was hailed as "brimming with intensity" by the LA Weekly. He teaches writing to students from second grade to adult, and lives in Seattle with his family, including Comet the quadruped. Visit www.garthstein.com

STEWART STERN
How to Write Like I Used To (AKA, THe PERSONAL CONNECTION)
June 10 & 11

STEWART STERN’S credits include Rebel Without a Cause, Teresa (Academy Award nomination), Rachel, Rachel (Academy Award nomination), and the Oscar-winning documentary Benjy, which he wrote. Stern was nominated four times for the Writers Guild Award in Motion Picture and Television Writing, including for The Ugly American, and won the Peabody Award for Sybil and A Christmas to Remember. Sybil also earned Stewart an Emmy for best-written Television Drama. Stern has taught screenwriting for 13 years at the UW Extension's Certificate program, at USC and AFI in Los Angeles, and is a regular creative advisor for the Sundance Institute's Screenwriters Lab where he teaches this same workshop every summer. 

RICK STEVENSON
How to Cough Up Your Own Hairball - June 17

Director/writer/producer RICK STEVENSON is a Seattle native known for his work in film and television in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.  Stevenson's production credits include Privileged, Restless Natives, Promised Land, Some Girls, Crooked Hearts, and he has worked with such talent as Hugh Grant, Ned Beatty, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Stevenson has also directed programs for television.  In 2004, Stevenson founded TheFilmSchool with Tom Skerritt and Stewart Stern. He holds a PhD from Oxford University, a master's degree from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor's degree in history from Whitman College in Washington State.

CODY WALKER
How to Write Poems That Double as Jokes - April 8

CODY WALKER teaches at the University of Washington, the Hutch School,  Kimball Elementary School, and the Richard Hugo House. In 2007 he was elected Seattle Poet Populist. His first book, Shuffle and Breakdown, will be published by Waywiser Press in the fall of 2008

CATHERINE WING
How to Write Poems That Double as Jokes - April 8

CATHERINE WING’S first book of poems, Enter Invisible, was published by Sarabande Books and was nominated for a 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Chicago Review, The New Republic, and Poetry, and been featured on The Writer's Almanac. She lives in Seattle.