Teachers & Staff

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.

Alissa Hattman

Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Alissa Hattman is author of the novel Sift (The 3rd Thing, 2023) and the zine POST (zines + things, 2021). Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Carve, The Gravity of the Thing, Propeller, Big Other, Shirley Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University and a MA in English Literature from Portland State University. Alissa has worked as a fiction editor, book reviewer, zine librarian, writing group facilitator, and teacher. | Photo credit: Jason Quigley

Carol Hendrickson

carol hendrickson

Assistant to the President of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Carol Hendrickson was the Executive Assistant to the Dean of the OGI School of Science and Engineering at OHSU for eight years and supported six consecutive Presidents of Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI) prior to its 2001 merger with OHSU. She has studied at Utah State University, the University of Utah and Portland Community College, where her love of everything green and growing led her to Landscape Architecture.  She is a long-time student of the Portland Chapter of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana.  Carol’s literary activities include five years of Women’s Life Writing classes by Marie Buckley through Hillsboro Parks & Recreation.  Since joining the Attic in 2011 she has participataed in numerous Attic workshops.  Her additional creative activities include Ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arranging), gardening and ballroom dancing.

Zahir Janmohamed

Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Zahir Janmohamed is a Zell Writing Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he received awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting. He is the co-founder of the James Beard nominated podcast Racist Sandwich and now serves on the James Beard Journalism Committee. He has written food stories for Bon Appetit, The New York Times, The Portland Mercury, NPR, and many other publications. 

Zahir Janmohamed

Adjunct Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Zahir Janmohamed's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, Boston Review, Guernica, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Racialicious, and many other publications. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Anne Cox Chambers fellowship for long-form journalism, as well as from the VONA workshop for writers of color. He previously worked in the United States Congress, where he was a senior foreign policy advisor, and at Amnesty International, where he was one of the organization’s youngest directors. He currently co-hosts a podcast about race and food in Portland called “Racist Sandwich.”

Karen Karbo

Senior Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Karen Karbo is the author of fourteen award-winning novels, memoirs and works of non-fiction including the best-selling “Kick Ass Women” series. Her first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here (1990) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year. Her other two adult novels, The Diamond Lane (1991) and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me (2001) were also named New York Times Notable Books – and were just re-released in beautiful editions by Hawthorne Books. Her 2004 memoir, The Stuff of Life (2004), about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was a New York Times Notable Book, and a People Magazine Critics’ Choice. Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, O, Esquire, Outside, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. Karen is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, an Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award. Recently, she was one of 24 writers selected for the Amtrak Residency.

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Philip Kenney

Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute

Philip Kenney is an author and psychotherapist living in Portland. His most recent book, The Writer’s Crucible: Meditations on Emotion, Being and Creativity, was a finalist for The Red City Review 2018 Non-Fiction Book of the Year. This work is intended to support writers with the emotional vulnerabilities they face living a creative life. In 2018, his essay, The Rebirth of Masculinity: What We Can Learn From Harvey Weinstein and Co. was published in issue #7 of The Timberline Review. He is also the author of the novel, Radiance, and a collection of poetry, Where Roses Grow.

Michelle Kicherer

Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Michelle Kicherer covers books and music for the San Francisco Chronicle and teaches writing classes in fiction and memoir. She is a former ghostwriter of memoir and nonfiction books and a current writing coach. Her fiction has appeared in The Masters Review, The Sierra Nevada Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review and others. Her debut novella Sexy Life, Hello came out in September 2024. Willamette Week called it “one of the most compelling short reads of the year.” Michelle aims to have one weird new experience everyday. 

Liz Lampman

Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Liz Lampman is a poet, essayist, and former fellow of The Attic's 2013-2014 Atheneum program. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Lunch Ticket, The Missing Slate, Gulf Stream Lit Mag, Timberline Review, New Territory and other publications. She has worked in an editorial capacity with Tin House and Cimarron Review and she holds an MFA from Oklahoma State University. In 2016, she was awarded Reed Magazine's Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry. 

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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.