Summer 2026 Faculty
June 21 - 27, 2026
Join us on Zoom
M. Evelina Galang
M. Evelina Galang is the daughter of Filipino American immigrants who first came to the United States in the mid-1950s. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, she is the eldest of six. By the time she was twelve, she had moved to seven cities before her family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Galang is the author of two novels, two story collections, and a work of nonfiction, and the editor of Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. She draws from the stories she grew up on and the research from a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award as well as numerous grants and fellowships from the University of Miami. Galang has been recognized as a Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist, a Zalaznick Distinguished Visiting Writer at Cornell University, the recipient of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. The American Library Association named Galang’s Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery among recommended feminist literature for ages zero to eighteen. She lives in Miami, where she teaches creative writing.
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee is the author of a memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember, which was published by Ecco / Harper Collins, which was highlighted on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, reviewed by the New York Times, and elsewhere. It was the first illness memoir written by a BIPOC writer published by a major publishing house in America. Their fiction and essays can be found at the New York Times, BuzzFeed, ZYZZYVA, Guernica, Catapult, and other literary magazines. Lee's work has been honored by Hedgebrook and VONA. They have taught at various writing workshops and MFA programs, where their mission is to change the landscape of literature. Lee holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. They are an Essays Editor at the Offing.
Willie Perdomo
Willie Perdomo is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix, The Crazy Bunch, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime. Winner of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the New York City Book Award in Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. He co-edited the anthology, LatiNext, and was recently awarded a Letras Boricuas 2024 Fellowship. He teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy and was appointed New York State Poet (2021-2023).
Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea. He is the author, most recently, of The Sense of Wonder and Craft in the Real World, and his memoir, To Grieve Is To Carry Another Time, is forthcoming from Little, Brown. He teaches in the MFA Program at Virginia Tech.
Tim Seibles
Born in Philadelphia in 1955, Tim Seibles is the author of seven collections of poetry, including his most recent, Voodoo Libretto (Etruscan Press, 2022), One Turn Around the Sun (Etruscan Press, 2017), and Fast Animal (2012), which won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and was nominated for a 2012 National Book Award. Other titles are Buffalo Head Solos (2004), Hammerlock (1999), Hurdy-Gurdy (1992), and Body Moves (1988). His poems have been published in the Indiana Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Cortland Review, Ploughshares Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. Seibles has received fellowships from both the Provincetown Fine Arts Center and The National Endowment for the Arts. He also won the Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City. On July 15, 2016, Seibles was named Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Terry McAuliffe. Seibles lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is a member of the English Department and MFA in writing faculty of Old Dominion University. He is a teaching board member of the Muse Writers Workshop.
Workshop Tuition: $1,000
Residency Tuition: $1,200
VONA Summer. Give yourself the gift of time and community. Applications close on February 15.