Gamut Reader Bios

Scott M Bentley is a first year student in the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell. He currently lives in Seattle. His poetry and prose have appeared in Pacific Review, Albion Review and Otherwhere Approach.  

Ted Hiebert is a visual artist and theorist and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell. His work examines the relationships between art, technology and speculative culture with a particular focus on the absurd, the paradoxical and the imaginary. Hiebert is the author of In Praise of Nonsense: Aesthetics, Uncertainty and Postmodern Identity (McGill Queens, 2012), A formalized forum for informal inquiry (Noxious Sector Press, 2015) and co-author (with David Cecchetto, Marc Couroux and Eldritch Priest) of Ludic Dreaming: How to Listen Away from Contemporary Technoculture (Bloomsbury, 2017). www.tedhiebert.net

Troy Landrum Jr. is a native of Indianapolis, IN and has lived in Seattle WA, for 6 years. His passion for youth work led him  to the city but his even deeper passion for writing and literature has kept him here. He developed a passion for reading and writing later in life at the age of 27 during a process of self rediscovery surrounding self identity, faith, his culture and his families migration stories from Jim Crow South.  A process that will continue to be at the helm of his human experience as a African American male. His work in community and literary work hopes to reimagine and uncover the stories of histories past that have often disappeared with the lives who have transitioned in communities of color. He is currently working toward his Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Washington Bothell Campus.

Matt Porter is a writer, musician, and etc. artist currently living in a basement with hordes of baby spiders. Their work has appeared in material reality and has covered such topics as fluid-reality, post-humanism, gender performance, and socio-economic politics. High-falutin subject labels aside, they are a life-long lover of all things music and the work they will be reading from tonight focuses on the center of this obsession: The Beatles. Through poetry, essay, and complete fabrications, they hope to get at the essence of the Beatles: that which has made them the most influential group in the history of recorded music.

Natalie Singer is the author of the lyric memoir California Calling: A Self-Interrogation. Her writing has been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Proximity, Entropy, Hypertext, Literary Mama, The Washington Post, Largehearted Boy, The Nervous Breakdown, and the anthology Love and Profanity. Natalie has been the recipient of several awards, including the Pacific Northwest Writers Association nonfiction prize. She's taught writing inside Washington State’s psychiatric facility for youth and Seattle’s juvenile detention center, has worked as a journalist around the West, and is currently a storyteller for a technology company. Natalie holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington.