Meet the 2026 Teaching Artists
Click on each photo to find the teaching artist’s workshop.
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Dr. Emily M Goldsmith (they/them) is a queer Louisiana Creole poet originally from South Louisiana. Emily received their PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and MFA in Poetry from the University of Kentucky. Emily is an Instructor of English at Louisiana State University. They read poetry for Split Lip Magazine. Their creative work can be found in or forthcoming from Pithead Chapel, Midway Journal, Moist Poetry Journal, The Penn Review, and elsewhere.
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Michaela Angemeer (she/they) is a queer neurodivergent Canadian poet who’s passionate about sharing her healing journey and inspiring readers to spend more time with their feelings. They’ve published six collections of poetry, their most recent being Please Look into the Mirror, a book about the mother wound, accountability, relationships and ancestral cycle breaking.
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Ashlee Haze (she/her) is a poet and spoken word artist from Atlanta by way of Chicago. She is one of the most accomplished poets in performance poetry and has toured the country performing at over 300 venues and universities. She is the host of the Moderne Renaissance, an educational podcast for creatives and modern thinkers. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Georgia State University and spends her time innovating ways to tell the stories not often told.
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Donney Rose (he/him) is a Baton Rouge native, New Orleans-based performance poet, teaching artist, and advocacy journalist. With over two decades on stages and in classrooms, Donney guides others in their creative journeys and brings nuanced perspectives through spoken word and other creative outlets. He’s a past Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award recipient in Literary Arts, and a member of the 2025–2026 Artist At Work (AAW) cohort.
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Leor Feldman (they/he) is a Jewish disabled writer, advocate and facilitator who explores themes of culture, placemaking and the connection between our natural world and the chronically ill, genderqueer/queer body. You can find their work in Humble Pie Lit Journal, South Broadway Press, Hey Alma and The Colorado Sun. Leor currently resides in Conifer, Colorado, yet is often found at community events in Denver.
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Originally raised in the spoken word community of Worcester, MA, Aisha is a 2023 THOI alum and Chicago based cultural worker. As both a queer first generation person, they view writing as a powerful living archive, anticapitalist practice and tool to counter erasure. Aisha is a 2024 Tin House WS alum and the 1st place winner of the 2019 Poetry Iowa Writers poetry contest for social workers. You can connect with them @flower_femme_official on Instagram.
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Ally Ang (they/them)is the author of Let the Moon Wobble (Alice James Books 2025). A National Endowment for the Arts fellow and MacDowell fellow, Ally’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, The Seattle Met, and elsewhere. They co-host Other People’s Poems, a poetry open mic and reading series in Seattle. Find them at allysonang.com or @TheOceanIsGay.
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Lin Flores (they/she) is the author of Reflections While Living in Utah (2020), a poetic narrative exploring queerness. Based in Boston, they serve as Admissions Manager at More Than Words, a youth-run bookstore and as the Culture & Events Producer at JustBook-ish, Boston’s radically influenced bookstore. Lin earned their MFA in Poetry from the University of New Orleans. A poetry reader for The Offing, their work appears in the Academy of American Poets among others.
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Talicha J. (she/her) is a Black queer poet and teaching artist, multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and Co-Founder of Camp Write Start. She serves as Assistant Managing Editor at Fahmidan Journal and reads for Frontier Poetry and Alternating Current Press. You can read her work at talichajpoetry.com/publications.
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Alissa M. Barr (she/her) is a writer and registered nurse. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, The Missouri Review, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She is the 2025 runner-up for The Missouri Review's Perkoff Prize. Alissa holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University, where she received the Kathryn Sedberry Poetry Prize.
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Rebecca Hawkes (she/her) is a queer painter-poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her first book is Meat Lovers (AUP: a Lambda finalist/Laurel prizewinner). She edits Sweet Mammalian, co-edited the climate-poetics anthology No Other Place to Stand, and holds an HZWP MFA and IIML MA. Her poems have won awards from Palette Poetry, Salt Hill, the Hopwoods, and the Academy of American Poets, and are forthcoming in the Threepenny, Georgia, & Missouri Reviews. Her next collection is coming with YesYesBooks and AUP in 2026.
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Zosia Crosse (she/her) is a queer, working-class writer, from Bristol, UK, the proud progeny of Polish refugees and Lancashire labourers. She writes fiction, biomythography and poetry. Her PhD explored how writing fiction can process trauma. She has two decades’ teaching experience and recently delivered workshops on how creative writing can decolonize academia at the University of Naples, Italy. Her current research investigates methods of writing for marginalized people. Her poetry has been published by Late Britain Press and her academic work has featured in Writing in Practice journal.
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Eryn Sunnolia (she/they) is a second-year MFA student at Rutgers-Camden University, where they also teach writing to undergraduates. Their writing has been published in Electric Literature, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, HuffPost, Well+Good, Vast Chasm Magazine, TINGE, and others. Their flash essay “Substitute” was recently nominated for Best American Essays 2025, and they are currently working on a novel.