Monica Woelfel

Monica Woelfel’s writing has been nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize. It has won awards including 2nd Place in the 2024 Pacific Northwest Writers Association literary awards for Women’s Fiction and 1st place for the Portland Oregonian’s Short Fiction Contest, judged by Craig Lesley. A longtime resident of the U.S Pacific Northwest, she took an MFA in Fiction just across the border at University of British Columbia in 2003.

Woelfel’s work has appeared in literary journals including North American Review, The Seattle Review, Event, and The Sun. She has been anthologized in The Soul Unearthed (beside Maxine Kumin, Terry Tempest Williams, and David Abram) and in Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming. She has been granted residencies at Hedgebrook and Norcroft Writing Retreat. As a Washington State Artist in Residence for four years, she taught creative writing in schools and nonprofits throughout the state.

Woelfel grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the daughter of parents active in the Civil Rights Movement. Her White parents adopted her sister in 1968, who identifies as biracial (African American/White). Woelfel and her sister have an on-going dialogue about race issues, which continually inspires her to educate herself further on cultural biases and White privilege.

Woelfel currently lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband and two rescue pups. She works as a hospice nurse.