RICHARD HUGO HOUSE
Annual Report 2012
Hugo House is for writers – from
their first words to their last. It’s a
place to read words, hear words, and
make your own words better.
A LETTER FROM
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TREE SWENSON
in their calendars where “WRITING!” had
previously been emblazoned), we narrowed it
down to one basic fact—writing is crucial.
We took inspiration for that conclusion
from, among other sources, an essay by George
Saunders called “Thank You, Esther Forbes”
from his collection The Braindead Megaphone,
in which he talks about how he came to
writing as a young man, and how he learned
what good writing is capable of. He realized,
Tree Swenson as he put it, that “by honing the sentences
you used to describe the world, you changed
Dear friend of Hugo House,
the inflection of your mind, which changed
your perceptions.” That’s why we offer writing
“Mr. Schmader is brilliant. What would we
class for adults and teens, why we have the
do if Hugo House didn’t commission this kind
writer-in-residence and Made at Hugo House
of crucial work?”
programs, why we spent more than one third
That quote was from an audience member
of our time producing events like the Literary
who attended A Short-Term Solution to a
Series, Cheap Wine & Poetry and Cheap Beer
Long-Term Problem, an original show we
& Prose, A Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term
commissioned and produced in 2012 with
Problem and Riddled (Marya Sea Kaminski’s
writer and performer David Schmader. And
original show), and dozens of book launches,
while we were initially just pleased to see the
group readings, open mics, and more. As
positive feedback (who doesn’t love praise,
denizens of a writers’ center, we hate to use
after all?), it set us to thinking. Why do we do
a limp metaphor, but in this case, it’s apt: in
what we do? What would it be like if Hugo
helping writers create and present their best,
House weren’t around?
most insightful work, we’re trying to change
After many discussions (and visions of
the world.
our beloved students, audience members, and
What would life be like for writers, readers,
community writers staring listlessly at holes
and literary audiences if Hugo House didn’t
do the work that we do? Well, we’re doing
everything we can to keep that question
rhetorical, and we’re incredibly grateful to the
donors, writers, students, audience members,
and volunteers who help us on that journey.
Read on to see what we’re capable of together.
Best,
Tree Swenson
Executive Director
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Gary Gigot, President
Connie Petersen, Vice President
John Burgess, Treasurer
Brad Meacham, Secretary
Tom Ball
Sean Clemmons
Kip Robinson Greenthal
Donté Felder
Isla McKetta
CLASSES
Hugo House classes are a safe,
challenging place for youth and adult
writers of all levels to create new writing,
workshop existing work, try out new forms
or genres, and meet other writers, all with
the expert guidance of our professional
instructors and teaching artists.
STATS
Adult classes offered: 110
Adult students: 1,049
Scholarships: $5,768
Youth students: 57
Scribes sessions: 3
Scribes students: 57
Scribes scholarships: $9,930
TESTIMONIALS
My debut novel, Something to Hold, was
honored with the 2012 Washington State Book
Award for middle grade/young adult fiction.
When I walked into Richard Hugo House on the
evening of October 3rd, I thought how perfect it
was to have the event held here. Hugo House has
been my steady partner throughout this book’s
long journey from vision to publication.
As soon as I put the first stumbling words
on paper, I knew I needed help to keep going.
I joined Hugo House and took my first class,
“Writing Triggers for Teachers,” with Frances
McCue and Chick Chickadel almost exactly 10
years ago. Frances and Chick pushed me forward.
When I hit major roadblocks, I came back for
more: in 2008, to work with Susan Zwinger on
revision and Joni Sensel on beginnings and
endings; and in 2009, for Joni’s class on writing a
strong query.
For me, Hugo House has truly lived out its
mission: creating an environment that has been
supportive and collaborative, and a place where
writers of all kinds discover their authentic voices,
take artistic risks without fear of judgment, build
audiences for their work, and launch their writing
careers.
-Katherine Schlick Noe
EVENTS
I
n 2012, Hugo House events
ran the gamut from readings
to book launches to writing happy
hours to new work premieres to
musical performances and beyond.
Talented artists at all levels in their
careers read both established and
new works on our cabaret and theater
stages. We work to build community
by combining diverse performers
and genres—you’ll always find
something new to you on a Hugo
House stage. And because access is a
key element of creating community,
we made 82 percent of our events in
2012 completely free to attend.
But free doesn’t mean cheap—even
if one of our biggest events, “Cheap
Wine & Poetry”—and its spin-off,
“Cheap Beer & Prose”—implies
otherwise. Of the nearly 7,000 people
who attended events at Hugo House
“
in 2012, almost 1,000 alone came for
the “Cheap” readings to hear Seattlearea writers (many largely unknown
beyond the bounds of the floating
bridges) read poems and stories that
made audiences poetry sigh and
prose groan. In April, Sister Spit, the
multimedia troupe of LGBT poets,
writers, and performers touched
down for a one-night-only show
featuring the iconic Dorothy Allison,
who celebrated her birthday with us
over cupcakes, and in September,
we hosted the Seattle micro-event
of 100,000 Poets for Change, an
international celebration of poetry
and call for social change, featuring
a marathon of poetry readings in
our cabaret lasting more than five
hours—and nearly hypnotizing
program director Brian McGuigan
into speaking solely in verse.
78
Number of events produced or coproduced by Hugo House in 2012
34%
Percent of the time
we were open and
presenting events
608 6,698
Number of people who
held an unloaded M-1
carbine as part of the
immersive audience
experience at Marya Sea
Kaminski’s Riddled
Event
attendees
This was my first time here and not
what I expected in a fantastic way.
I’ll be back.
— CHEAP BEER & PROSE
ATTENDEE
Elaina Ellis reads at the Lit Series on the theme ¡Viva La Revolución!
HUGO LITERARY SERIES
T
he Literary Series is our flagship event: four times a year, we gather
authors and musicians, provide them with a theme and a writing
prompt and ask them to premiere their new, unvetted work in front of
more than 200 people. In 2012, this commissioning process helped bring
new pieces of writing into the world from Chad Goller-Sojourner, Lidia
Yuknavitch, Heather McHugh, Suzanne Morrison, Ben Lerner, Sam
Lipsyte, Elaina Ellis, Matthew Zapruder, Steve Almond, Emily Kendal Frey,
Claire Dederer, and Ryan Boudinot; and new music from Alex Guy, Tomo
Nakayama, Daniel Spils, and Jason Dodson.
780 tickets were sold for our Literary Series events in 2012, which played
to an average of 81 percent capacity crowds in our theater. And were those
crowds ever in for a treat—they were the first people to hear new work from
some of the best writers around today. But despite their talent and outward
poise, even the writers themselves didn’t always know what was coming, as
Suzanne Morrison wrote about for Crosscut.com in April:
A friend was presenting an autobiographical story at the Series, and the
night was a hugely entertaining mix of graphic novel, memoir, and literary
fiction. All my fears of Seattle’s literary scene slunk away, embarrassed by
their own existence.
Soon enough, I summoned the courage to introduce myself to Brian
McGuigan, the House’s program director, and was delighted to find that he
wasn’t scary in the least. He was sincere. He loved stories and good writing,
no matter what package they came in. We started talking about our work,
and after my first book launched last August, he invited me to participate in
the final Literary Series event, which took place last month.”
R
ead the rest of Suzanne’s article, including her fear of “visions of the
great Lipsyte and the award-finalist Lerner chuckling behind their
hands” at her work and her realization that she likes an audience whose
attention she must earn, an audience that is “scary,” at bit.ly/11AS8Xo.
“
After I moved home to Seattle from New York seven years ago,
I quickly developed a crippling, irrational fear of the Richard
Hugo House, Capitol Hill’s literary arts center.
I had this idea that Seattle literary events were populated by hyperintellectual hipsters whose junior high scars had hardened over time
into a kind of shiny brittle exoskeleton, under which beat a cold, cynical
PoMo heart. I feared these imaginary Seattleite smartypants would scorn
narrative—which is more or less the only religion I practice—preferring,
say, experimental poetry comprised exclusively of punctuation, or worse,
cow patties thrown at readers to illustrate the failure of language in a postcolonial society.
The event that changed my mind about Seattle’s literary scene was the
Hugo House’s Literary Series, an affair that takes place four times a year, in
which three writers and one musician present new work based on a theme.
Suzanne Morrison at the Lit Series
COMMISSIONED THEATRE SHOWS
A
Marya Sea Kaminski in Riddled
t Hugo House, we support
writers that work “on the
page and on the stage,” as we like to
say. The Literary Series lives at the
intersection of page and stage, but
we wanted to push even farther into
the world of performed written work.
So we tapped Lit Series alums David
Schmader (class of 2008) and Marya
Sea Kaminski (class of 2010) to write
and perform original monologuebased plays in our theater, and they
did not disappoint.
In Dave’s autobiographical show,
A Short-Term Solution to a LongTerm Problem, he was half-Spalding
Gray, half friend-who-shows-youYouTube videos. A Short-Term
Solution explored the meaning of
comedy and how to cope (or not
cope) with sadness and tragedy
through humor. Dave’s show was
originally scheduled for a fourweekend run in January, but it was
“
This was easily the best piece of writing/
performance I have seen in 10 years.
Simply brillant. It spoke to me, inspired me;
thank you Dave Schmader!
— A SHORT-TERM SOLUTION TO A
LONG-TERM PROBLEM ATTENDEE
David Schmader
so popular (every performance sold
out), we brought it back for a second
run in March. In all, it played for 16
performances to audiences at an
average capacity of 95 percent.
Marya’s show was a much
bigger production—Riddled was an
immersive theatrical experience,
including a set that took over the
whole theater (including a bar that
was also for audience members) and
a backing band. Marya played an
unnamed character on the run from
the law and fronting a rock band, and
the Hugo theater played a dingy rock
club. Riddled was a rock musical
about guns, violence, Bonnie and
Clyde stories, rock music, and the
constructive and destructive impacts
they all can have our psyches and
relationships. Riddled played for
eight performances in June to
audiences at an average capacity of
80 percent.
RESOURCES
Since 1999, our writers-in-residence program has provided
financial support to local writers in exchange for working
on their own craft and mentoring other writers. 2012 saw the
continuation of poet and memoirist Tara Hardy in the position,
and the addition of novelist Peter Mountford (winner of the 2012
Washington State Book Award for his novel, A Young Man’s
Guide to Late Capitalism).
Through our writer-in-residence program, we also
collaborated with Path with Art, a nonprofit serving marginalized
adults without access to the arts. Tara taught weekly poetry
classes in our cabaret, and many students remarked that
studying at Hugo House has made them “feel like real writers.”
TARA
“Amazing. So helpful. Tara is an incredible teacher,
reader, writer, editor, and critic. I can't wait to work on
her suggested edits.”
PETER
WRITERS-IN-RESIDENCE
“Meeting with Peter to discuss my work was amazingly
helpful in advancing my fledgling writing career.
He gave me direct, critical feedback, provided
developmental editing assistance, and then connected
me with an editor he thought would enjoy the piece
once it was complete. I took all of his advice, and within
a week, my work was published to great acclaim.”
MADE AT HUGO HOUSE FELLOWSHIP
INAUGURAL MADE at
HUGO HOUSE WRITERS
(from left)
BILL CARTY, poetry
Project: You Troubler
Introduced in the fall of 2012,
Made at Hugo House is a
fellowship program for King
County writer ages 35 and
younger, supporting them with
free classes, priority access to
our writers-in-residence and
writing space, regular themed
cohort meetings (on agents, artist
statements, grant applications,
publishing, etc.), and resources
for producing readings and
IRENE KELIHER, fiction,
The Visionaries
ERIC MCMILLAN
fiction, Clear
ELISSA WASHUTA,
memoir, Starvation Mode
KATHARINE OGLE,
poetry, The Smallest Gun
I Could Find
ANCA SZILAGYI,
fiction, More Like Home
Than Home
ZAPP Zine Archive and Publishing Project
Hugo House’s Zine Archive & Publishing Project
(ZAPP) is one of the largest independent zine
archives in the world, with more than 20,000 items
in the non-circulating collection. ZAPP is open to
the public three times a week (Wednesdays 4 p.m.
to 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 1 p.m.–5 p.m.); it
also hosts classes, tours and field trips for location
nonprofit and educational organizations and
visual art shows.
IN 2012, ZAPP HAD:
Total ZAPP volunteer hours: 1,400+
Zines donated: 900+ (?)
ZAPP open hours: 584
Zines cataloged: 1,175
ZAPP visitors: 300+
ZAPP tours, workshops, and presentations: 12
TEENPROGRAMS
WRITE TIME
Our weekly drop-in writing circle for teens, Write Time, welcomed
students to Hugo House every Wednesday during the school year.
The young authors worked with poet and young adult novelist
Karen Finneyfrock to create new work based on prompts, read and
workshop one another’s work, study inspiring pieces and perform
their work at the every-other-month youth open mic, Stage Fright.
Number of Write
Time meetings in the
2011-2012 school year
31 16
Number of young 63
54
writers who attended
Write Time
Average age of
attendees
Number of those 63 young
writers who attended more
than one Write Time
YOUNG WRITERS MENTORSHIP
Launched in the fall of 2012, the Young Writers Mentorship Program
pairs teen and accomplished adult writing mentors for nine months
of one-on-one creative writing mentorship. Mentors and mentees
meet weekly to review the teen’s work and come up with new ideas
for projects.
YOUTH LEADERSHIP BOARD
2012 also saw the creation of our Youth Leadership Board (it was
a busy fall for us!). The Youth Leadership Board is composed of
six students from Seattle and surrounding areas. YLB members
volunteer 10 hours per month during the school year, coordinating
our youth open mic, offering peer mentorship to other young writers,
and helping shape Hugo House youth programs.
“
Working with someone as she begins learning to
write, seeing the raw functions of imagination and
helping her mold material into her true meaning and
intention, watching her learn from realizing her own
stories, there’s nothing more heartening. Here is the
next generation of stories, just beginning.
—LAURA SCOTT, YOUTH MENTOR