Teachers & Staff

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. 

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. 

Adjunct Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

Lee Montgomery teaches nonfiction in the Atheneum. She is the author of The Things Between Us, A Memoir (Free Press, August 2006), Whose World Is This? Stories (University of Iowa Press, September 2007), and Searching for Emily: Illustrated (Nothing Moments Press, October 2007). The Things Between Us received the 2007 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction and Whose World Is This? received the 2007 John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award in Fiction in 2008.

Montgomery's fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Black Clock, Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly, Story Magazine, Black River Review, the Santa Monica Review and the Antioch Review. Nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, Alaska Quarterly, the American Book Review, Boston Magazine, Travel Holiday, 'Scape, The Hollywood Reporter, Tin House, Paris Passion, Boston Phoenix, the Oregonian, Willamette Week, New England Monthly, the Antioch Review and the anthology The Honeymoon is Over (January 2007, Warner Books).

Montgomery is also an editor. For the last ten years she has been at Tin House as the associate publisher and editor of Tin House Books and an executive editor of the magazine. Also, while at Tin House, she founded the Tin House Writers Workshop in 2003 and directed it for three years. Previous to this, she was the fiction editor at the Iowa Review, the editor of the Santa Monica Review, and various anthologies including Transgressions: The Iowa Anthology of Innovative Fiction (University of Iowa Press), Absolute Disaster: Fiction from Los Angeles (Dove Books), Woof! Writers on Dogs (Viking Penguin, September 2008).

She lives with her husband, daughter, and two bizarre schnauzers in Portland, Oregon.

Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters

John Morrison's book, Heaven of the Moment, won the Rhea & Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition and was a finalist for the 2008 Oregon Book Award in poetry. He received his MFA from the University of Alabama. John's poetry has appeared in numerous national journals including the Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, and the Southern Poetry Review. A former Attic Institute Studio for Writers participant, John has taught poetry for the University of Alabama, Washington State University, and in the Literary Arts Writers in the Schools program where he served as director from 2006-2009. His new book of poetry, Monkey Island, is due out from redbat books in 2020.

WHY I LIKE TO TEACH AT THE ATTIC INSTITUTE: "What makes teaching at the Attic special has an easy answer: the writers who are curious enough to climb the stairs and join a class or workshop. Whether novice or master — and I’ve had both in the same class — everyone shares a dedication to poetry and, very quickly and deeply, to each other. Often their talent brings them to the Attic. They know they can write. They’ve seen flashes of brilliance in their metaphors, images, and in the music of their lines. Now they want to know what to do to weather the challenges and risks and write at their potential. So the workshops are always home to energetic discussions of craft and of fresh, sharp poetry (who doesn’t love that?), and home to writers poised to explore and develop a practice that can sustain their artistic life and lift their poetry to its potential. These writers are what make the Attic so special to me: they inspire me to teach my best and encourage me to write my best."