Teachers & Staff

Kate Carroll de Gutes

Adjunct Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Kate Carroll de Gutes is a wry observer and writer who started her career as a journalist and then got excited by new journalism which became creative nonfiction and is now called essay (personal, lyric, and otherwise). Kate's book, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won the 2016 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in Memoir. Kate writes on a wide range of topics, but her obsession is to focus on sexuality and gender presentation, and living an authentic life. Learn more at katecarrolldegutes.com.

 

Susan DeFreitas

Writing Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Susan DeFreitas’s work has appeared in The Utne Reader, The Nervous Breakdown, Story Magazine, Southwestern American Literature, and Weber—The Contemporary West, along with more than twenty other magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the author of the novel, Hot Season, and the chapbook Pyrophitic, as well as a regular contributor at Litreactor.com. She holds an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she serves as a collaborative editor with Indigo Editing & Publications.

Matthew Dickman

Senior Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Matthew Dickman is the author of All-American Poem (American Poetry Review/ Copper Canyon Press, 2008), Mayakovsky’s Revolver (WW Norton & Co, 2012), Wish You Were Here (Spork Press, 2013) and has co-written along with his brother 50 American Plays (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) The recipient of The Honickman First Book Prize, The May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College, the 2009 Oregon Book Award, his poems have appeared in the London Review of Books, McSweeny’s, Esquire, Poetry London, The New York Times Style Magazine, The Believer and The New Yorker among many others. He is lives and works in Portland, Oregon where he is the poetry editor for Tin House Magazine.

Michael Dickman

Visiting Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Michael Dickman is the author of four books of poems, The End of the West (2009), Flies (2011, winner of the James Laughlin Award), Green Migraine (2015) and most recently, Days & Days. He is also the coauthor, with his twin brotherof 50 American Plays (Poems) (2012), and Brother (2016). He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he is on the faculty at Princeton University.

Merridawn Duckler

Senior Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

A prose writer, playwright, poet, and artist, Merridawn Duckler is a senior fellow at the Attic Institute, a member of the Atheneum faculty, and a leader of the Individual Consult Group. Her recent work appears in: TAB: Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Blast Furnace, Zone 3, The Psychoanalytic Review, The Offing, The Meadow, Rivet, Really SystemPoetica and Defenestration. She was a finalist for the 2016 Sozoplo Fiction Fellowship. Her work has been performed at Red Cat at Disney Hall, as well as in other venues in Arizona, California, New York, Oregon, Washington and Valdez Alaska. Her verse play appeared in the Emerging Female Playwright Festival Manhattan Shakespeare Project. She is a member of the Blackfish Gallery collective. Fellowships and awards include Best Creative Non-Fiction Anthology and Pushcart nomination, winner Writers@Work, Yaddo, Squaw Valley, NEA, SLS in St. Petersburg, Russia, Southampton Poetry Conference with Billy Collins, and others. She is an editor at Narrative and the international philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics

Patrick Dundon

Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Patrick Dundon is the author of the chapbook The Conspirators of Pleasure (Sixth Finch Books). He’s a graduate of the MFA program at Syracuse University where he served as Editor-in-Chief for Salt Hill Journal. His work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, Cosmonauts Avenue, DIAGRAM, HobartThe JournalVinyl and elsewhere.

Omar El Akkad

Writing Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Omar El Akkad's debut novel, American War, received the 2018 Oregon Book Award for fiction. Omar was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in the Middle East before moving to Canada. In a ten-year career as a reporter, he covered stories across the planet — from the war in Afghanistan to the military trials in Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Omar is a recipient of the National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting for his coverage of the “Toronto 18” terrorism arrests. He has also won the Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for young Canadian journalists, and has been nominated for several National Magazine Awards. He is a graduate of Queen's University.

Writing Fellows

Writing Fellows offer workshops in fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, or poetry, as well as in general literary subjects such as publishing or literature. These fellows bring fresh perspectives and special energy to Attic workshops, and give you an opportunity to work closely with some of the best up-and-coming writers in the Northwest as you broaden your literary community, as well.

Meet the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters' Writing Fellows

 

Wayne Gregory

Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

A participant in Attic Institute workshops with senior fellow Merridawn Duckler and associate fellow Ariel Gore, Wayne Gregory was a 2010-2011 Atheneum Fellow and also a 2011-2012 Hawthorne Fellow. Wayne's work has appeared in The Sun, Alltopia, Ashe Journal, The Hawthorne, the Lambda award-winning anthology, Portland Queer, and the forthcoming anthology, Fashionably Late. His memoir, The Tongues of Men and Angels, has just been published by Rebel Satori Press. The story takes place in the evangelical South of the sixties and seventies and chronicles the beginnings of Wayne’s struggle as an adolescent, his budding sexuality, and how he hid his homosexuality from others and from himself for years until he was finally forced out in middle age. Wayne has taught at Willamette University and currently works at Portland State University. He is a linguist, a proud grandfather, and a card-carrying member of the Portland Gay Men's Chorus. Originally from Louisiana he now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Emily Harris

Adjunct Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Emily Harris is a reporter and producer for Reveal. She previously served as an NPR international correspondent, based first in Berlin and later in Jerusalem. Her 2014 coverage of Gaza was honored with an Overseas Press Club citation. She also was part of the NPR team that won a 2004 Peabody Award for coverage in Iraq. Harris lived in and reported from Russia during the upheaval of the 1990s. In the U.S., she covered a range of beats for NPR’s Washington desk and reported jointly for NPR and PBS’ “Now” with Bill Moyers. Harris helped start and host “Think Out Loud,” a daily public affairs talk show on Oregon Public Broadcasting. She worked to evaluate and share new financial models for journalism as editorial director of the Journalism Accelerator startup. She’s drafted a screenplay about relationships born in war and collects audio stories of awful and mind-changing moments in peoples’ lives.

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A Statement of Our Values

The Attic Institute of Arts and Letters opposes the legitimation of bigotry, hate, and misinformation. As a studio for writers, we do not tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind. We embrace and celebrate our shared pursuit of literature and languages as essential to crossing the boundaries of difference. To that end, we seek to maintain a creative environment in which every employee, faculty member, and student feels safe, respected, and comfortable — even while acknowledging that poems, stories, and essays delve into uncomfortable subjects. We accept the workshop as a place to question ourselves and to empathize with complex identities. We understand that to know the world is to write the world. Therefore, we reaffirm our commitment to literary pursuits and shared understanding by affirming diversity and open inquiry.