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Hugo House

writing center in Seattle, Washington, US

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ7326592
Source-derived summary

Hugo House is a non-profit community writing center in Seattle, Washington.

About

Hugo House was founded in 1997 by Linda Jaech, Frances McCue, and Andrea Lewis. These three writers believed Seattle needed a center for local writers and readers to find a community and create new work. In 1999, Laura Hirschfield described the nonprofit organization: "Richard Hugo House is a two-year-old literary arts center in Seattle named after the Seattle-born poet and creative writing teacher Richard Hugo who wrote squarely and poignantly about people and places often overlooked."

Several new programs were created at Hugo House during the 2000s by Program Director Brian McGuigan, including Cheap Wine and Poetry (in 2005) Cheap Beer and Prose (in 2008), and the Made at Hugo House fellowship. McGuigan left Hugo House in 2014.

Tree Swenson was the executive director of Hugo House from 2012 to 2020. The current Interim Executive Director is Rob Arnold.

House

Hugo House first occupied a Victorian house originally built in 1902.

In June 2016, the organization moved to a temporary space adjacent to the Frye Art Museum on First Hill when the original house on Capitol Hill was razed. The property was redeveloped with a six-story mixed-use building which, starting in September 2018, serves as the permanent home for Hugo House.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hugo House” as writing center in Seattle, Washington, US. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 1999, 2005, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1997. The account is most persuasive where Hugo, House and writing can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as writing center in Seattle, Washington, US. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7326592. Authority coordinates are 47.616, -122.321. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1999, 2005 and 2008.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Hugo House”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hugo House primary sources, Hugo House archive and Hugo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hugo House”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Hugo House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.