Earlier this year, I wrote about the Hugo House's Made at Hugo program, which I described as...

...like a more pragmatic version of the classic writer-in-residency: Last year, Hugo House put out a call for writers age 35 or younger, living in King County, to describe a project they'd like to complete. From more than 50 applicants, House program director Brian McGuigan and an anonymous panel of poets and novelists chose six writers. Those writers get access to office space in the House, they have monthly progress meetings and contribute to a private blog on which they can share work, and they can attend any of the Hugo House classes, featuring teachers like Eileen Myles, Peter Mountford, and Sam Lipsyte, for free.

Last night, Hugo House announced the names of the authors who'll be taking part in the second year of Made at Hugo. I've listed them below, and I've linked to any online work I could find, in case you'd like to learn more about this new crop of writers:

Prose
Ross McMeekin
Raymond Fleischmann
Jessica Mooney

Poetry
Matthew Schnirman
Michelle Peñaloza

Nonfiction
Paulette Perhach

This announcement matters because last year's Made at Hugo program served as an introduction to Seattle's literary community, bringing these authors out into the world and marking them as writers to watch. You'll probably be hearing a lot more of at least some of these names in the very near future. Find the Hugo House's bios of these authors after the jump.

Raymond Fleischmann received an MFA from Ohio State University, where he completed a collection of short stories and taught a range of composition and creative writing classes. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Iowa Review, Cimarron Review, The Pinch, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly, and Los Angeles Review, among others. He’s also served as assistant editor of The Journal, Ohio State University’s literary magazine.

Ross McMeekin’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Shenandoah, PANK, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Passages North, and Tin House (blog). His essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Hunger Mountain, and Green Mountains Review. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He was born and raised in Seattle, where he now lives with his wife and daughter.

Jessica Mooney’s short fiction regularly appears in City Arts Magazine, and one of her stories was recently chosen as an Honorable Mention for Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award 2013. She received an MA in international studies with a graduate certificate in global health from the University of Washington, where she studied the confluence of gender and public health in war and post-conflict diaspora communities. In her non-fiction, scientific life, she co-authored a peer-reviewed paper on transgender women and HIV clinical research in the February 2013 issue of Prevention Science. She read in Seattle’s 2012 Lit Crawl as a featured guest of APRIL and received a writer-in-residence award as part of the Lady Assassins Writing Collaborative from Storefronts Seattle in 2011.

Michelle Peñaloza grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Asian American Literary Review, Great River Review, and Bellingham Review, among others. She is a Kundiman Fellow and the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship, the Miriam McFall Starlin Award from the University of Oregon, and scholarships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Napa Valley Writers Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Paulette Perhach earned her degree in magazine journalism from the University of Florida. Then she interned at Health and Coastal Living magazines, where she realized she wasn’t that much of a magazine person. Then she worked as an education and features reporter in St. Augustine, where she found out she wasn’t supposed to be a journalist. Then she joined Peace Corps and found out she wasn’t meant to be that good of a person. But she has since discovered that one can sculpt confusion and error into art that is at least in itself beautiful, so that's what she's into now. She has a tech writing job that funds her traveling habit, is applying to MFA programs this year, and is committed to spending the next decade or two practicing until her writing does for others what great writing has done for her.

Matthew Schnirman was born and raised on the southeastern coast of Florida, then moved north to Tallahassee where he earned a BA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. After living in Atlanta, London, and Beijing, Matthew moved to the desert and received his MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona, where he also taught poetry workshop courses and served as the associate poetry editor for Sonora Review. He has been nominated for an AWP Intro Journals Award and received a UA Creative Writing Foundation Award. In Tucson, he hosted a summer reading series, LIVE, and taught literature at Pima Community College. He lives and writes in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.