Instructors
Cassie Premo Steele
Instructor of A Year of Earth Joy Writing
Cassie Premo Steele’s newest book is the environmental novel, Beaver Girl, chosen as the 2024 One Book, One Community selection for the City of Columbia, South Carolina. An environmental poet, novelist, and essayist, her writing focuses on the themes of trauma, healing, creativity, and mindfulness, and she participates in community events and teaches classes on these themes online and in person. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The author of 18 books, including 3 novels and 7 books of poetry, her poetry has won many awards and been nominated 8 times for the Pushcart Prize. For the past five years, she has led free seasonal Forest Wellness Journaling Workshops at Congaree National Park. “Still Here” is her monthly column for The Post and Courier‘s Free Times, which highlights the wild and rural places across the state of South Carolina, where she lives with her wife.
Gretchen Primack
Instructor of Writing Like an Animal
Gretchen Primack is a poet, educator, and indie bookseller living in New York’s Hudson Valley. She has taught and/or administrated with prison education programs (mostly college) since 2006. She’s the author of three poetry collections: Kind (Lantern Publishing), which explores the dynamic between humans and other animals in our time and place; Visiting Days (Willow Books), which imagines a maximum-security men’s NYS prison like the ones where she’s taught; and Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press), a more personal collection; along with a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line). She co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animalswith Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown (Penguin Avery). Her poetry publication credits include The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, FIELD, Poet Lore, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Tampa Review, and many others journals and anthologies.
Midge Raymond
Instructor of Writing for Animals
Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent, the short-story collection Forgetting English, and, with coauthor John Yunker, the mystery novel Devils Island. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Midge has taught at Boston University, Boston’s GrubStreet Writers, Seattle’s Hugo House, and San Diego Writers, Ink. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is co-founder of the boutique publisher Ashland Creek Press.
John Yunker
Instructor of Writing for Animals
John Yunker writes short stories, plays and novels focused on the complex and often conflicted relationships between humans and animals.
He is co-author (with Midge Raymond) of the mystery Devils Island. He is author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. And he’s co-founder (with Midge Raymond) of Ashland Creek Press, a publisher devoted to environmental and animal literature.
