Resident Roster: WITS 2025!
In partnership with and with support from Seattle Arts & Lectures, which administers Seattle’s Writers in the Schools (WITS) program that brings working artists into kids’ classrooms, MARS is excited to host a special “winter break” residency session for four remarkable, deserving artists who spend time in schools helping nurture creativity among youth. For one week in February, these four special souls will get to spend a week living and working from their own classroom. They (and any interested public) will also enjoy a visit from Seattle author Molly Olguin, who teaches creative writing and English in Seattle, and whose new collection of short stories The Sea Gives Up the Dead (Red Hen Press, 2025) was chosen by Carmen Maria Machado for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.
Now, meet the writers!
Samar Abulhassan is the author of six chapbooks, including Farah and Nocturnal Temple. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she has worked both in California public schools and with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program for more than a decade. Samar has participated in the Skagit River Poetry Festival and in 2016 received a CityArtist grant to aid in completing a novel-in-poems reflecting on memory, longing, and the Arabic alphabet. Samar often finds inspiration in images and places and replicates these techniques in her teaching.
Ell Lin is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator of Native Pacific Islander ancestry with a background in community-rooted written, visual, and performing arts. ell has facilitated multigenerational antiracist theater, developed poetry and creative writing performances with incarcerated youth, taught multilingual language arts courses as well as elementary education, and won awards in photography, teaching, instrumental music, and poetry. ell’s most recent poem is locally featured in a community celebration coupling food with poetry. Her doctoral writing is inspired by the blazing legacy of warrior poets, including Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldúa, who urged reclaiming language as bridges to liberatory relationship and action. The sacred mists of Coast Salish mountains, protagonist of ell’s first published poem as a child, continue sparking wonder, healing, and dreams.
Corinne Manning is the author of the acclaimed story collection We Had No Rules (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020). Their forthcoming novel Dirty Joke is a retelling of Dante's Inferno about Italian Americans in hell and will publish with Bunny Press/Fonograph Editions in February 2027. Additional fiction has been published widely and has been anthologized in Someplace Generous: An Inclusive Romance Anthology, Edited by Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame. Their essays and criticism have appeared in venues such as Lux Magazine, The New York Times, and The Baffler. They have received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony (2015, 2017), 4 Culture, Artist Trust, Jack Straw Media Gallery, The Banff Centre, Mineral School, and The Hub City Writer's Project. They are a passionate educator working in community organizations, academic spaces, and private mentorship.
Acca Warren is a trans poet, educator and practitioner of play. Poetry is a form of play that involves these vital alliterative parts: place, pause, poesis and pals. When we write, may it be creation in service of connecting us to where we are and each other, space when we need it, and friendship. Whether your poetry is written or spoken, a playground game or a favorite dish to cook, they are excited for your art to be in the world. Their favorite thing to yell is ‘That’s My Friend!’ so come meet them. Let’s be friends.
