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Badgerdog Teaching Artists

nicole v basta is a graduate of The New School’s MFA program in New York City where her chapbook V was chosen by Rigoberto González as the winner of the annual contest. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Birdfeast, Tinderbox, Bodega, The Shallow Ends, Ninth Letter, Nat. Brut etc. nicole is also a maker of mixed-media collages, a teaching artist, and the co-founder of Say Yes Electric Collective-- a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary arts community & performance night that ran from 2015-2018.  nicole is the Assistant Poetry Editor at Anomaly, has been an artist-in-residence at Art Farm Nebraska three times, and is a proud descendant of coal miners and factory workers.
Robin Bissett (she/her/hers) is a fiction writer who loves sharing stories and strengthening literary communities in Central Texas. She received her BA in English & Minor in Creative Writing from Trinity University in May 2020.
KB is a Black queer nonbinary poet, organizer, student affairs professional, and educator currently based in Austin, TX. They have received fellowship invitations from the Vermont Studio Center, Lambda Literary, and elsewhere. Their poetry appears in a number of places, including The Cincinnati Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and The Shade Journal. They are the founder of Interfaces. See them talk sweetness, poetry & other nonhuman things online @earthtokb.

Rob Colgate is a poet and teacher from Evanston, IL. He holds a degree in psychology from Yale University, where he directed the undergraduate peer counseling program and competed on the varsity lightweight rowing team. He spent a summer studying at the Iowa Writers' Workshop before moving to Austin, where he is pursuing his MFA in poetry with the New Writers Project at UT Austin. At UT he teaches literature and writing and serves as the nonfiction editor for Bat City Review. His first chapbook, So Dark the Gap, was published by Tammy in March 2020. In his free time he loves working as a fitness instructor at the UT gym and riding his bicycle around the neighborhood.

Zoë Fay-Stindt is a poet with roots in both the French and American south. An incoming student of Iowa State’s Creative Writing & Environment MFA program, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in fields, The Indianapolis Review, Winter Tangerine, and others. She’s a part-time river dog with a love of birds and a dangerous weakness for peanut butter. 
Shaina Frazier is a fiction writer and a recent graduate of the New Writers Project. She was born in Sacramento, CA but did a lot of growing up in Houston, TX. Shaina has a general distrust for red-colored candies as you can never be sure what flavor they are.

Rachel Gray has an MFA from Texas State University. Her fiction has appeared in Hobart and Two Serious Ladies. She taught English in Spain and worked as an English professor in Texas. She now lives in Austin and works as a public school teacher.

Poet for Hire, Jena Kirkpatrick, is editor of the poetry anthology Writing for Positive Change for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Texas. Jena tours nationally as a member of the Trio of Poets. She writes poems for clients worldwide. Her work in the classroom was featured in Teachers & Writers Magazine. Jena lives in the country with her husband, cat and about 50,000 happy bees.

Tracey Lander-Garrett holds an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College and a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Connecticut. She has had poetry and prose published in Mid-America Poetry Review, Brooklyn Review, and Connotation Press, among others, and released her debut novel A SHADE IN THE MIRROR in 2019. After thirteen years in NYC, teaching at eight different colleges during that time, Tracey relocated to Central Texas in 2016. She adores living in Pflugerville with her husband and their clowder of cats.

Anna Lyon is a PhD candidate in the American Studies department at UT Austin. She's currently completing her dissertation, a creative nonfiction book about medical history. In addition, she's secretly in the process of revising her dystopian YA novel, (but don't tell her dissertation advisers about that). Anna also teaches 7th-grade English at Trinity Episcopal School, writes young adult fiction, serves on the YA selection committee for the Texas Book Festival, and runs @QueerBookLife on Instagram, where she reviews LGBTQ+ books for kids and teens.

Sean Petrie is a poet, children's fiction writer, and co-founder of the Typewriter Rodeo on-the-spot poetry group. His books include the poetry collections Listen to the Trees and Typewriter Rodeo: Real People, Real Stories, Custom Poems, as well as several middle grade books. Sean also teaches legal writing at UT Law. More at www.SeanPetrie.com.

Amanda Scott is a Senior Lecturer at Texas State University where she teaches writing and editing, and also serves as Assistant Executive Editor of Porter House Review. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Crab Orchard Review, Juked, The Common, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel.
Terri Schexnayder found her passion for writing when she was a young girl, creating neighborhood plays and short stories. She continued to communicate effectively through the written word during her 30-plus years in advertising, helping corporate, nonprofit and state clients. These included hundreds of press releases, speeches, educational training booklets, and even radio and TV copy, while leading the very successful "Don't Mess with Texas" anti-litter campaign.. But her favorite writing is spent with Badgerdog students, young and "young at heart," which she has done since 2008 She is a graduate of St. Edward's University, English Literature, Summa Cum Laude, and has recently published her first book, A Majestic History: 100 Years of the Paramount Theatre.  

Katherine Stingley earned her MFA at Texas State University, where she teaches composition and creative writing. Her poem, 'A Daughter Goes to Work,' was a finalist for the Nimrod Journal's 2018 Emerging Poets prize. Several of her 'Chorus' poems were published in Tupelo Quarterly's seventeenth issue, and she has been named a finalist in New South Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Prize and The Penn Review’s 2019 Poetry Prize.  Most recently, her manuscript was named a finalist for Texas Review Press's 2019 X.J. Kennedy Prize. When she’s not writing or teaching, Katherine is hiking with her dogs and practicing her amateur birdwatching.

Eva Suter is a writer and theatre artist based in Austin, TX. Hailing from the Great NorthWest, she was a founding member of The Working Theatre Collective, a DIY based company dedicated to the production of new and devised works, in Portland, Oregon. An alum of the Great Plains Theatre Conference and the WildWind Performance Lab, Eva was Theatre Masters' Visionary Playwright of 2015. Medusa, A Perfectly Normal Girl was awarded the Portland Drammy for best new play in Spring 2011 and the Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Drama in 2012. Back here in Austin, Eva is a frequent collaborator in the 14/48, and Hold Me Well (Bay Area Playwright’s Finalist) received its premier in 2015 with Shrewd Productions. By night she concocts concoctions, slings fine fare, and repeats the same dumb jokes til they don’t work no more.

Noah Weisz received his M.F.A. in Fiction from the New Writers Project at UT Austin.  He has been shortlisted for the international Bath Children’s Novel Award and a finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature, and his fiction for readers young and old can be found in Highlights, Hunger Mountain, Cosmonauts Avenue, and other publications. Currently, he teaches middle-school English at Long-View Micro School and is an adjunct professor of creative writing at St. Edward’s University.

Virginia Woodruff teaches English, writing, and filmmaking. Originally from the Philadelphia area, she's lived all over the country but is happy to call Austin home. She has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in English from UT Austin, and an MFA in film directing from UCLA. With experience in journalism, blog publishing, and social media, she enjoys bringing fun, real-world projects into the classroom.
Depending on who you ask, Leah Yacknin-Dawson is either a double or triple Leo. She is a writer from Pittsburgh, PA, and received an MFA from the University of Texas. Leah has taught in some capacity for over a decade. She is the recipient of the Fania Kruger Fellowship.