Richard Hugo House

Situated in a Victorian mortuary in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, Richard Hugo House has been serving as the city's community center for literature and writing since 1997.

At the center of Hugo House's offers are their classes, taught by local and nationally renowned writers. Each season, the selection changes, but always offers both half-day and multi-week writing workshops and reading seminars. They often offer classes specifically for teachers and teenagers. 

Classes can cost a chunk of change. They're usually well worthwhile, as teachers there are unusually generous with their time and energy, and Hugo House does have a limited amount of financial aid available for classes. If the classes are beyond your budgetary reach, however, access to the current writers-in-residence is free and open to any member of the writing public who wants to make an appointment. The writers-in-residence are usually local up-and-coming authors and journalists who, in exchange for work space and a small stipend, will meet with writers during set office hours to discuss writing, the writing process or provide feedback on work.

Readings, open mics and performances happen almost nightly at the house. They have two performance spaces: a casual cabaret space with attached cafe—which opens during events to ply the audience with wine by the glass and finger foods—and a more traditional 86 seat. Check the calendar to see if you can catch the periodic Hugo Literary Series, which invites famous writers to create new work around a theme for release exclusively at the house. 

HelloSeattle Tip: One of the lesser used, but very cool resources at Hugo House is the Zine Archive and Publishing Project. Known affectionately as ZAPP, this growing collection has more than 20,000 hand-published magazines ('zines) and self-published chapbooks and comics on its shelves—one of the largest organized collections of small press publishing in the world. ZAPP is free and open to the public during most of the same hours as Hugo House.

- by Caren Gussoff Sumption, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Caren Gussoff Sumption

Caren Gussoff Sumption is a freelance writer and editor from Seattle, WA. She's written for USA Today, the Seattle Times/NW Source, MSN and AOL, and her fiction has been published worldwide. She received her MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.