Meet Our IWL 2026 Instructors
We’re so excited to announce our instructors for this year’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab, KSW three-month summer program focused on BIPOC writers happening June 3 - August 19th.
Interested in joining the IWL summer cohort? Applications for the Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab are open until March 22nd.
IWL 2026 Instructors
Shelley Wong
“I am writing poems to affirm other people like me, who have felt unseen and unheard in literary and artistic spaces…Poetry is for everyone, and we are in the golden age of poetry because of the people of color writing today.”
“I write to re-vision the world and explore possibilities of being and becoming, to test my freedom within the field of the page. I write a poem with the hope that a reader will one day close the space and affirm its presence.”
Spring insists we can build the world
around us again. How has love brought you here?
My head is heavy from the crown.
We dream or don’t dream and sing
in different keys. Don’t go down the river
without looking back. There is ocean in that tree."
from “For the Living in the New World”
Shelley Wong is a poet and the author of As She Appears (2022), longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and Poetry Northwest, and anthologies, including We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word; Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry; and They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets. She has led creative writing workshops at University of San Francisco, the Ohio State University, and Kenyon College. Her honors include fellowships and support from MacDowell, Kundiman, Hedgebrook, and Montalvo Arts Center. She lives in San Francisco and will be leading IWL’s poetry unit.
Yosimar Reyes
“Reyes’s poetry was everything spoken word poetry is known for. It was lyrical, confessional, anti-establishment…“ – The Bottom Line
“Reyes’ conciencia is personal and political, cultural and sexual…It is the hard-shelled hypocrisy of tradition that Reyes wants to crack open and expose with his words…The poet has one foot in new territory and another in the old world, and he’s dancing to redefine those worlds and himself.” – Olga Garcia
Como sacred ceremonias
Mi cuerpo es elemento
Something powerful
Algo that goes beyond the flesh
And is manifested through these poems
from “Pride“
Yosimar Reyes is the current Santa Clara County Poet Laureate and was named the 2024 Creative Ambassador by the City of San José. A writer, poet, and performer, Reyes is widely recognized for his compelling storytelling and exploration of the undocumented and queer experience. His autobiographical solo show Prieto—a recipient of the Gerbode Special Awards in the Arts—has toured nationally to universities and cultural institutions across the country. Reyes is currently developing two new theatrical works: No Llegamos Aquí Solos, in collaboration with Teatro Visión (premiering Spring 2026), and Si Dios Quiere, Regreso, a solo piece set to premiere in Fall 2026. Yosimar will be leading IWL’s unit on writing for performance.
Shruthi Swamy
“Swamy's ability to carve meaning from a lyrical use of narrative brings the reader along with Vidya on her sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love. Vidya's disruptive journey is Swamy's disruption of common expressions for literary narrative. The novel is a sensual, artful dance, powerfully told.” – NPR Books on Archer
“Those hard times are here: I think the kind of writing where we imagine alternatives, imagine what could be possible, to delineate both the dream and the nightmare, are necessary now more than ever.”
I find that at night you can look at your life from a great distance, as though you are a child sitting up in a tree, listening to the meaningless chatter of adults. I stood up in the kitchen. It had been years since I stayed up this late. Slowly, infinitely slowly, the creatures were inching back, toward the shed at the side of the house, the dog retreating, the snake advancing. Their movements were like the progression of huge clouds that seem to sit still in the sky, and you mark their advancement only against the landscape. I followed them, moving from one window to another. I became very angry with Neela. What arrogance or stupidity had urged him to take on this task? It’s easier to be the hero, to leave and let others suffer the consequences. To run barking into the house was all he needed to do, to show me the snake so I could close up our doors.
from “Night Garden“
Shruti Swamy is the author of the story collection A House Is a Body, and a novel, The Archer. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Elizabeth George Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Council, and Vassar College, and is a 2024 Rome Prize Fellow in Literature. Shruti’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeny's, AFAR Magazine, and The Believer,and twice won the O. Henry Prize. Her introduction to Ursula K Le Guin’s masterpiece Always Coming Home appears in the novel’s 2023 reissue. She teaches writing with the collective The Dream Side and will be leading IWL’s prose unit.