WITS 2024 Residents Announced!

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, Mineral School 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, hosted by returning alum Meredith Arena (2021) and fed by founder Jane Hodges. Alumna Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum (2015) will with other teaching artists present a special reading (and, we suspect, pep rally) with our guest teachers, who will also have the opportunity to present their work publicly.

Now, meet the writers!

Cypress Manning is a queer trans writer, artist, and educator from Taos, New Mexico. They received their MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2019, and are a current Hugo House Fellow (2022-2023). For Cypress, writing is a process of selfmaking, a way of engaging with/in community, and a powerful practice of embodiment for all people, young and old. They are in a two-person cribbage league with their mom, and live in Seattle with their partner.

Sierra Nelson is a poet, essayist, co-founder of literary performance art groups The Typing Explosion and Vis-à-Vis Society, and president of Seattle’s Cephalopod Appreciation Society. Nelson’s poetry books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions) and I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press) collaborating with visual artist Loren Erdrich. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including I Sing the Salmon Home and the Cascadia Field Guide, as well as on King County Metro buses, with runes on lava stone in Reykjavik, and accompanying ichthyologist Dr. Adam Summer’s fish skeleton photographs at the Seattle Aquarium and Ljubljana Natural History Museum in Slovenia. 

Nhatt Nichols is a graphic journalist, poet, and non-fiction cartoonist from the Okanogan. Her work centers around rural narratives, forests, borders, and food systems. You can find her graphic journalism in High Country News, Civil Eats, and The Daily Yonder, and This Party of the Soft Things (Bored Wolves, 2022), a book-length poem about the planer post-people, is in its second printing. Nhatt holds a postgraduate certificate from the Royal Drawing School in London and runs her studio practice from Chimacum. Her illustrated novel, Morels, is forthcoming from Bored Wolves in 2024.

Clara Olivo is an AfroSalvi poet living in diaspora. Born and raised in South Central L.A. to Salvadorean refugees, Clara weaves history and lived experience, creating transcendental poetry that amplifies ancestral power and pride. Writing for her lost inner child, Clara steps into her poetry with the intention of healing the hurts of her past and inspiring hope for the future. Since finding her voice, she has performed in open mics and art receptions from Seattle to Washington D.C., is a 2022 Pushcart nominee and has been featured in publications such as The South Seattle Emerald, Valiant Scribe, and Quiet Lightning’s Literary Mixtape.