Alumni News - Writers Workshop Alums
Dawn Angelicca Barcelona
Poetry Participant, '22Dawn Angelicca Barcelona’s debut chapbook, Roundtrip, will be published by Finishing Line Press in March 2025. Roundtrip was named as the second honorable mention in Finishing Line Press’s 2023 New Women’s Voices chapbook competition. More info here.
Tara Dorabji
Writers Workshop Participant '13Tara Dorabji’s debut novel, Call Her Freedom, won the Books Like Us Grand Prize and will be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2025. More info here.
Toni Martin
Writers Workshops Participant, '12Toni Martin’s short story “Hold On” won the Craft 2024 Short Fiction Prize, judged by Deesha Philyaw . She is the author of When the Personal Was Political: Five Women Doctors Look Back (2008) and her short stories and essays have appeared in Zyzzyva, The Bellevue Literary Review and The Threepenny Review. More info here.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff & Participant, '93Andrew Tonkovich’s first stanzas of a post-election Bob Dylan-inspired ekphrastic poem, “Rows of Desolation,” appear in the current The Journal of the Plague Years. He continues writing daily, in dialog with both Dylan’s song and our political moment. More info here.
Wendy Scheir
Writer's Workshop Participant, '98, '99, '07, '13, '17Wendy Scheir’s short stories appear in the Spring 2024 issue of The Thieving Magpie and the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Hypertext Review. More info here.
Attended with the help of Barber, Gill Dennis, Henry Carlisle, and Getty Scholarships
Karen Fang
Writers Workshop Participant, '21Karen Fang’s new book, Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong, which she workshopped with the Community of Writers, is out in print and audio. The biography of a Chinese American immigrant artist launched with several events in California, and has been praised as “the definitive new biography” (Smithsonian Magazine) and “a deserving tribute to a groundbreaking artist” (Publishers Weekly). More info here.
Attended with the help of a James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshop Participant '11, '12, '14, '16Janine Kovac’s The Nutcracker Chronicles: A Fairytale Memoir was a finalist for the American Best Book Award in the Performing Arts category. In their 5-star review, Readers Favorite had this to say: “The descriptions of [Kovac’s] emotional highs and lows of pursuing a passion—such as the thrill of performance, the sting of competition, and how personal relationships coexist—will resonate with anyone who has ever chased a dream.” The Nutcracker Chronicles launches on November 12, 2024 and is available wherever books are sold. More info here.
Attended with the help of A George Pascoe Miller Scholarship, a Carlisle Family Scholarship, and an Eshleman Scholarship
Andrew Nicholls
Writers Workshop Participant, '14“As Man Is To God”, Andrew Nicholls’ long poem in Seussian verse on the troubled making of Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, was published by Slow Lightning Lit, November, 2024. More info here.
James Toupin
Writers Workshop Participant, '10James Toupin’s first book, Upon the Century Called American, was issued in November 2024 by Main Street Rag Publishing. It tells, from the author’s point of view, histories running from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire through the Covid pandemic. Of local Community interest, it includes a poem inspired by the drive from San Francisco to the 2010 Workshop (which remembers the author’s taking the same ride as a child) and another depicting Lake Tahoe in the drought of the 1980s that first ran in an anthology next to a poem by Robert Hass. More info here.
Anthony J Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant, 08Anthony J. Mohr’s essay “They Went Around My End” was published in volume 13.4 of the Cumberland River Review. His essay “Totally Atwood” appeared in Isele Magazine. More info here.
Michael Croft
Writers Workshops Participant, '87, '89, '94, '99Michael Croft’s upcoming novel, The Eleanor, is set to release on November 15 from ELJ Editions.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop Participant, '93, Writers Workshops StaffAndrew Tonkovich curates a show of the painting, drawing, and writing of his mentor-teacher: “Peter Carr: Artist for Survival.” It opens at Cerritos College Art Gallery Monday, October 28 with a reception talk by Tonkovich: a long-ago student of the “outsider artist,” Comp Lit professor, activist, and writer at CSU Long Beach. Carr’s paintings, drawings, and illustrations evoke Blake, Whitman, German Expressionism, Kenneth Patchen, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti with celebratory emphasis on the ecosystem of Laguna Beach and popular resistance to war, nuclear power, US intervention, and ecological destruction. Carr self-published a dozen books including Aliso Creek. Free through December 13. More info here.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshops Participant, '92, '93; Writers Workshops Co-DirectorLisa Alvarez’s short story “Strongman” appears in the new issue of About Place Journal. The issue is a special themed one titled Shaping Destiny: Election Season, Before, During and After. Alvarez read from the story at last summer’s workshop. More info here.
Attended with the help of UCI & Ancinas Scholarships
Alison Owings
Writers Workshops Participant '03, '12Alison Owings most recent oral-history book, Mayor of the Tenderloin / Del Seymour’s Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco, was published in September, 2024 by Beacon Press. An unforgettable account of Del Seymour, who overcame 18 years of homelessness and addiction to become one of the most respected advocates in San Francisco. Honest and compelling, Mayor of the Tenderloin follows homelessness in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods as it was lived—in the words of someone who lived it and is now fighting to solve it. This book was nine-years in the making, and San Francisco Chronicle called it “A richly satisfying tapestry.”
Sue Repko
Writers Workshops Participant, '05Sue Repko’s essay, “Air and Light and Time: Pruning Your Writing Projects for a Better Harvest,” appeared in the August 28, 2024 issue of the Brevity Blog. More info here.
Robin Romm
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff, '11, '12, '13, '14, '15Robin Romm’s second story collection, Radical Empathy, was recently published by Four Way Books. The first story in it won a 2024 O’Henry Prize and will also be published in The Best Short Stories 2024: The O’Henry Prize Winners. More info here.
Marcia Meier
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Marcia Meier’s 2021 memoir, Face, won the New Mexico-Arizona Book award and several other honors. Kirkus Reviews called it “a philosophically searching memoir, and it’s emotionally stirring, as well—a profoundly personal work that should resonate with anyone who’s wrestled with trauma and its aftermath.”
Her February 2023 anthology, Writing Through the Apocalypse, Pandemic Poetry and Prose, includes the work of members of her Writing Through the Apocalypse writing group, which has been meeting weekly since early 2020. From Kirkus: “A heartfelt collection that captures the resilience and creativity of a virtual writing community in a trouble time.” More info here.
Marty Simpson Mitchell
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Marty Mitchell’s piece “Ridge Walk,” excerpted from her book-in-progress, The Lost Sierra, has been accepted for the inaugural edition of Haymaker, to be published in December. Three other pieces from The Lost Sierra have been published in the past year, in Haimat, Meadowlark Review, and the Canadian journal Prairie Fire.
Jeanne Wagner
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Jeanne Wagner’s book, One Needful Song, will be published in late 2024 as winner of the Catamaran Poetry Prize. More info here.
Mark Gozonsky
Writers Workshops Participant, '24Mark Gozonsky’s story-essay “Wattle” will appear in a forthcoming issue of The Sun. More info here.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, ’14, ’22Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story ‘The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of’ was published in Jerry Jazz Musician magazine. You can read it here to ponder over dreams turning to reality, and reality fading into dream.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22Vishwas Gaitonde’s longform essay “American Lotus: The Cultural Strengths of Kamala Harris” has been published on Medium. You can access it here. It is suggested that you watch the short embedded videos as you come to them as they complement the narrative
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshops Participant, '00Meg Waite Clayton’s upcoming novel, Typewriter Beach, will be published by HarperCollins on July 1st, 2025.
Sue Parman
Writers Workshops Participant, '98, '22Sue Parman’s short story, “Gannets and Ghouls,” appears in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine September/October, pp. 83-94. Her nonfiction memoir essay, “You Can’t Get There from Here,” won Travelers Tales, Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Grand Prize Gold Winner for Best Travel Tale of 2024. More info here.
Eugenie Montague
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Eugenie Montague’s new novel, Swallow the Ghost, was published on August 20, 2024 by Mulholland Books.
Beverly Parayno
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Beverly Parayno’s debut short story collection Wildflowers has been nominated and shortlisted for the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Fiction. More info here.
Karen Fang
Writers Workshops, '21Karen Fang’s biography of Chinese immigrant artist, Disney legend, and centenarian, Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong, will be published in October. More info here.
Attended with the help of a James D. Houston fellowship
Freeman Ng
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Bridge Across The Sky, Freeman Ng’s young adult novel-in-verse about the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900’s, goes on sale on August 27. Published by Atheneum Books For Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, the book is a Junior Library Guild “Gold Standard Selection” and received a starred Publishers Weekly review. More info here.
David Lukas
Writers Workshops, '03, '04, '05, '06, '07, '08, '09, '10David Lukas now writes a weekly nature newsletter (www.lukasguides.com) that covers a wide range of nature and language topics.
Tyler McAndrew
Writers Workshop participant, '19Tyler McAndrew’s debut book—a short story collection titled “My Prisoner & Other Stories”—won the 2024 Non / Fiction Prize and will be published fall 2025 with Ohio State University Press / Mad Creek Books. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Gill Dennis Memorial Scholarship
Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum
Writers Workshops Participant, '02; Alumni Reader: '05.Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum’s debut novel, Elita, will be published in January 2025 by TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press. Unfolding during the moody Pacific Northwest winter of 1951, Elita is a literary mystery, about which author Melissa Febos writes, “I devoured this novel, held sway by its expert construction and luminous prose, and I am haunted still by the wise and impossible questions that simmer under its breathless plot and within its indelible characters.” More info here.
Attended with the help of an Eshleman Scholarship
Laurie Wall
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Last Breath Home is Laurie’s debut novel. Having dyslexia from an early age, she had difficulty reading. Following a trip to the book store and discovering Louis L’Amour, she grew to love reading one sentence at a time. Life was not easy for Laurie’s family when her brother returned from Vietnam following a psychotic break, eventually, schizophrenia. Through a series of tragic events, and with God’s help, she healed and grew to love her brother. Redemption flourished. Attending The Community of Writers Workshop gave her the courage to complete this novel.
Her story is the motivation for Last Breath Home.
Shi Naseer
Writers Workshops Participant, ’23Shi Naseer’s debut novel, The Cry of the Silkworm, was released in June 2024 with Atlantic Books/Allen&Unwin. Set against the backdrop of the one-child policy, it is the story of a girl’s poignant coming of age in rural China and her quest for vengeance against a government official in Shanghai. Her personal essay on the inspiration behind her novel is forthcoming in The Guardian‘s A Moment That Changed Me column. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship
Jeanne Carstensen
Writers Workshop Participant, 2018Jeanne Carstensen’s A Greek Tragedy: One Day, A Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis will be published by Simon & Schuster/One Signal in March, 2025. More info here.
Beverly Parayno
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Beverly Parayno’s debut short story collection Wildflowers (PAWA Press) won a 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal, a 2024 National Indie Excellence Award for Asian American & Pacific Islander Fiction and was named a 2023 Foreword INDIES Finalist. More info here.
Lori D’Angelo
Writers Workshops Participant, '12Lori D’Angelo’s debut short story collection, The Monsters Are Here, will be published by ELJ Editions in 2024. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Ford Scholarship
Gina DeMillo Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Gina DeMillo Wagner’s memoir, Forces of Nature, was published in May by Running Wild Press and received a rave review from The Washington Post. More info here.
Ann Bancroft
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Ann Bancroft’s debut novel, Almost Family, was just published by She Writes Press on May 28th, 2024. It’s a tender and darkly funny story of a lonely, obsessive woman who meets two unlikely friends in a support group for Stage Four cancer patients. The three of them ditch the group and form their own — The Oakland Mets (for “metastases”) aiming to enjoy life toward its end and not talk about cancer all the time. In the process, they help one another accept their fates and resolve family issues, finding love and peace at the end of their lives. More info here.
Jamie Cat Callan
Writers Workshops Participants, '90Jamie Cat Callan recently received fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center (2024) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2023). More info here.
Howard Rappaport
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Howard Rappaport’s novel, Arnold & Igor, a historical/contemporary fiction about the rivalry of modernist composers Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, was published by Fomite Press in June (2024). More info here.
Attended with the help of a John Z Memorial Scholarship
Barbara B Ristine
Writers Workshops participant, '18, '22Barbara Ristine’s unpublished novel The Face Painter has been selected as the Second Place/Silver Medal Winner for Children’s and Young Adult Historical Fiction in the Historical Novel Society’s First Chapters Competition. Her short story “Canary Girl” has been published in the historical anthology Feisty Deeds: Historical tales of Daring Women, which launched June 8, 2024.
Rowena Leong Singer
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Rowena Leong Singer’s short story, “Mister Birdcage,” is now in the Spring/Summer 2024 Black Warrior Review Issue 50.2 (for the second 50th-Anniversary edition)!
“Mister Birdcage”—along with other stories, poems, nonfiction pieces, and flash—is only available in print, which you can purchase here.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Corey Campbell was named a MacDowell Fellow in fiction writing in Spring-Summer 2024. More info here.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Mara Finley
Writers Workshop Participant, ‘23Mara Finley won a Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Participant Scholarship in Nonfiction for the 2024 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Attended with the help of O’Dwyer Family Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop Participant, '83/Screenwriting Workshop Participant, '84Diane Wolff launched her new book, Cobalt Blue: Marco Polo in Dadu, on the occasion of the citywide celebration of the city of Venice for the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death. More info here.
Molly Giles
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffMolly Giles’s memoir, Life Span, was published by WTAW Press in June. More info here.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshops Participant, '87; Special Guest, '99-'23Amy Tan’s new book, Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, 2024), made the New York Times Bestseller List.
Holly LaBarbera
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Holly LaBarbera’s debut novel will be released on June 11 and is available now for preorders. All I Know is the story of a young woman who overcomes childhood trauma and tragedy to try and build a life with the boy she’s always loved. LaBarbera, a psychotherapist and professor, uses her extensive knowledge and experience to explore the complexities of romantic relationships as well as those within families and among friends, showing that love comes in many forms, including choosing to love oneself. It’s a hopeful, uplifting story about strength and resilience, rising from devastation to build and rebuild a life, over and over again. More info here.
R. O. Kwon
Writers Workshops Participant, '10R. O. Kwon’s second novel, Exhibit, will be published on May 21 with Riverhead Books. Exhibit has been named a most anticipated book by over 20 outlets, including The New York Times. Poets & Writers called it one of the buzziest books of the year, and said it’s “fiery, sexual, and undeniably original.” Kwon will be on tour for three weeks, and her tour stops are listed at here.
Rochelle Duffy
Writer's Workshops, '19Rochelle Duffy workshopped her book Flight from Silence A Journey to Free One’s Voice in a Family of Seventeen Children in the 2019 Writers Workshops. It was published in March 2024 by Empress Publications.
Joseph Bardin
Writers Workshops Participant, '01Joe Bardin’s essay, “Forever House”, is published in the Spring 2023 issue of Superstition Review. More info here.
Ann Graham
Writers Workshop Participant, '08Ann Graham’s short story, “Pour Your Own Joe,” is in the current, spring 2024, issue of October Hill Magazine. More info here.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops participant, '08Anthony J. Mohr’s memoir, Every Other Weekend—Coming of Age With Two Different Dads, swept the spring 2024 Outstanding Creators Awards, including tying in first place for the best nonfiction book and first place in the categories of autobiographies and memoirs, biographies, family, and parenting. His essay “The Last Carefree Summer” was published in Volume 20, No. 1 of the Loch Raven Review. More info here.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshops Participant, '87; Special Guest, '99-'23Amy Tan’s Backyard Bird Chronicles will will officially launch on April 23, 7 PM at Book Passage’s event at Angelico Hall at Dominican University in San Rafael.
In conversation: Amy Tan and Keith Hansen. Tickets are in-person or virtual, and include a signed book, illustrated bird postcard, and quick start guide to nature journaling.
Mara Finley
Writers Workshop Participant, '23Mara Finley’s story, “Her Berliner” (originally published in The Missouri Review) won first runner up in the Lighthouse Emerging Fiction Writers contest, as well as a fellowship for Jenny Offill’s Advanced Fiction Workshop. More info here.
Attended with the help of the O’Dwyer Family Scholarship
Cameron Walker
Writers Workshops Participant, '02, '04Cameron Walker’s essay collection, Points of Light: Curious Essays on Science, Nature, and Other Wonders Along the Pacific Coast, was published this spring by Hidden River Press.
Susan Pope
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Susan Pope’s memoir Rivers and Ice: A Woman’s Journey Toward Family and Forgiveness was published in March 2024 by Riddle Brook Publishing. She began working on the book during her week at Writers Workshop. More info here.
Jim Morgan
Writers Workshops Participant, '95, '98, '05J.W.M. Morgan is writing a novel-in-stories titled Dangerous John, about the inspiration of the abolitionist John Brown. Stories from the collection have appeared in Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Courtship of Winds, AvantAppal(achia), Unlikley Stories Mark V, and Isele Magazine. More info here.
Jason Roberts
Writers Workshops Staff, '08, '09, '11, '12, '14, '16, '18Jason Roberts’ upcoming book, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, will be will be available on April 9th, 2024.
Anara Guard
Writers Workshop Participant, '15Anara Guard’s second poetry book, Kansas, Reimagined, is published by The Poetry Box. These persona poems give new life to familiar characters and to prairie entities. Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, said that in these poems “the world of Kansas (and of Oz) does come filling in with a heavy, gravitational physicality. I so enjoyed reading them.” More info here.
Mara Finley
Writers Workshop Participant, '23Mara Finley’s story, “Her Berliner,” was published in The Missouri Review’s online BLAST series. More info here.
Attended with the help of an O’Dwyer scholarship
Lisa Kusel
Writers Workshops Participant, ’17Lisa Kusel’s psychological thriller novel, The Widow on Dwyer Court, will be published by Blackstone Publishing on July 16, 2024. More info here.
Dashka Slater
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Dashka Slater’s book Accountable: the True Story of a Racist Instagram Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed has won the prestigious J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. It is the first young adult title to ever win the award. The awards, established in 1998 and named for the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author and investigative journalist, are presented by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Previous winners include Robert Caro, Jill Lepore and Isabel Wilkerson. More info here.
George John Berger
Writers Workshops Participant, '04, '05, '14G. J. Berger’s recent book, released February, 2024, To Steal A Moment’s Time, is a first-person memoir by the most famous and sought after German actress in the last year of WWII. Kirkus Reviews says, “This work is a rare feat, a seamless amalgam of an unflinching literary realism with an unsentimental affirmation of life. A beautiful war account—both unsettling and inspiring.” More info here.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, '72, '73; Staff, '13, '14Terence Clarke is the co-author, with Ron Kaufman, of the novel M.M. Diaries, published in January 2024. He continues writing a regular column on Substack.
Rajeev Prasad
Writers Workshops, '09, '11Rajeev has published numerous short stories and novelettes in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Haven Speculative, Catamaran Literary, TasuvaarNama, and other markets. He is currently drafting a fantasy novel set in a mythical South Asia. More info here.
Ann Bancroft
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Ann Bancroft’s debut novel, Almost Family, will be published May 28, 2024 by She Writes Press. Kirkus Reviews said “It’s a story that follows a remarkable trajectory from loneliness and heartbreak to lasting love, An often-resonant narrative of adversity and friendship.” Ann worked on the novel at the Community of Writers in 2019. More info here.
Parul Kapur
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Parul Kapur’s debut novel, Inside The Mirror, Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, was published on March 1, 2024 by the University of Nebraska Press. Set in 1950s Bombay (Mumbai), India, the novel centers on twin sisters who aspire to become artists in defiance of a protective family and shaming society. It is an exploration of female creativity and identity-making in a society remaking its own identity in the aftermath of colonial rule. More info here.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writers Workshop Participant '17Rashaan Alexis Meneses’ review of Beverly Parayno’s debut short story collection Wildflowers (PAWA Press 2023) wass published in Positively Filipino.
Attended with the help of an Ancinas scholarship
Peter Stenson
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Peter Stenson’s fourth novel, We, Adults (Regal House Publishing), will be released on March 26th, 2024. More info here.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Lauren Barbato’s latest short story, “We Heard You Had Something to Say to Us,” appears in the Spring 2024 print issue of North American Review.
Attended with the help of a Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Jaclyn Moyer
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Jaclyn Moyer’s debut hybrid memoir, On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family from Punjab to California, is forthcoming from Beacon Press on March 26th, 2024. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Carlisle Scholarship
Sue Parman
Writers Workshops Participant, '22Sue Parman’s short story, “You Can’t Get There from Here,” was awarded the Grand Prize by Travelers’ Tales in their Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year on March 1, 2024. Her short story, “Gannets and Ghouls,” was accepted for publication in November 2024 by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. More info here.
Lawrence Coates
Writers Workshop Participant, '16, '23Lawrence Coates received an Individual Excellence Award in Fiction from the Ohio Arts Council. He submitted an excerpt from the novel-in-progress that he brought to the Writers Workshops in Summer 2023. More info here.
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshop Participant, '07, '11Gwen Goodkin’s TV pilot “The Plant” was selected as a semifinalist for Cinestory’s TV Retreat & Fellowship Contest. More info here.
Elizabeth Rosner
Writers Workshops Participant, '82, '83, '87; Poetry Participant, '99; Staff: '06, '15, '18, '20Elizabeth Rosner’s newest book of nonfiction, coming in September 2024 from Counterpoint, Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening (here) is a hybrid memoir interweaving personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with the latest scientific breakthroughs in inter-species communication to show how the skill of deep listening enhances our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us.
Gravity, her poetry collection (Atelier26 Books, 2014), will be published as Gravedad in a bilingual Spanish/English edition this March 2024 from Bajamar Editores, translated by Laura Miñano Mañero.
More about her previous books here.
Barbara Ridley
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Barbara Ridley’s second novel Unswerving, will be published March 2024 by University of Wisconsin Press. Foreword Reviews calls it “gripping…a woman facing tremendous losses transforms because of her courage, resilience, and community.” More info on author website.
Desiree Zamorano
Writers Workshop Participant, '89, '05, '15Désirée Zamorano’s novel Dispossessed is forthcoming from RIZE Press, September, 2024.
As a small boy, Manuel is separated from his parents during the mass expatriation of Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals in Los Angeles during the 1930s. He spends a lifetime in search of the missing pieces of his heart. More info here.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Rashaan Alexis Meneses’ short personal essay “Tribute to a Lost Star” was recently published in Write or Die Magazine.
Attended with the help of an Ancinas scholarship
Gretchen McCullough
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '08, '19Gretchen McCullough’s linked book of short stories, Shahrazad’s Gift, set in Cairo, Egypt, was published by Cune Press, February 2024. More info here.
Lisa Alvarez
Fiction Participant, Co-director of the Fiction Program, Assistant to the Director of the Poetry ProgramLisa Alvarez’s debut collection of short fiction, Some Final Beauty and other Stories is forthcoming from the University of Nevada Press, as part of their New Oeste series.
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshop Participant, '86, '87, '88, '89; Screenwriting Participant, '05Tim Wendel’s historical novel, Rebel Falls, will be published by Three Hills/Cornell Press in May. Ken Burns says, “Once again, Tim Wendel finds a riveting story to tell, this time in a little-known theater of our most complicated of wars.”
Amanda Churchill
Writer Workshop Participant, '21Amanda Churchill’s debut novel, The Turtle House, will be published by Harper Books on February 20, 2024. Moving between late 1990s small-town Texas to pre-World War II Japan and occupied Tokyo, The Turtle House is an emotionally engaging story about a grandmother and granddaughter who connect over a beloved lost place and the secrets they both carry. “Sweeping yet intimate, Amanda Churchill’s Turtle House spans cultures and continents. Minnie and her granddaughter Lia are unforgettable protagonists, whose grit and grace will inspire you. Together, they find a way through in this gripping debut.” -Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City. More info here.
Joseph Bardin
Writers Workshops Participant, '01Joe Bardin’s essay, “Blessings from the Devil”, is published in the Examined Life Journal, Volume 11, a publication of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. More info here.
Eugenie Montague
Writers Workshop Participant, '14Eugenie Montague’s debut novel, Swallow the Ghost, will be published by Mulholland Books in August 2024. Part Rashomon, part Cloud Atlas, part the internet, Swallow the Ghost traces the impact of one event on three different lives, each interlocking story offering a complex, contradictory truth. More details and available for preorder here.
Lauren Hohle
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Lauren Hohle’s short story “Basements” (workshopped at the Writers Workshops) was published by the Sun, in January 2024. She is the new managing editor for Conjunctions.
Scott Snibbe
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Featuring a foreword by the Dalai Lama, Scott Snibbe’s first book, How to Train a Happy Mind: A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment, will be released by Penguin Random House on March 12, 2024. Find it here.
Charlotte Suttee
Writers Workshop Participant '22, '24Charlotte Suttee’s debut speculative fiction novel Weather and Beasts and Growing Things (2023) has been published through Lethe Press. Find Independent Book Review’s glowing review of it here.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Writers Workshops Participant, '21Ellen Morris Prewitt’s literary thriller, In the Name of Mississippi, was named to the Long List in the Grindstone International Novel Competition and Finalist, Killer Nashville, Mainstream/Commercial, joining a previous naming as runner-up in the William Faulkner Literary Contest. More info here.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14 '22Vishwas Gaitonde’s story “Mahatma Gandhi’s Pen” has been published in Bewildering Stories magazine. You can read it here.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship, '22
Nora Rodriguez Camagna
Writers Workshops Participant, '23Nora Rodriguez Camagna’s essay, “Boysenberry Girls” was published in The Common’s Issue 26 portfolio of writing from the farmworker community. Read it here.
Mark Coggins
Writers Workshops Participant, '96, Screenwriting Workshop Participant, '01Mark Coggins’ newest novel, Geisha Confidential, the eighth in the August Riordan crime fiction series, will be released from Down & Out Books on March 4, 2024. More info here.
Renee Thompson
Writers Workshops Participant, '03, '07, 10Renée Thompson’s short story, “The Spectacular,” won Narrative Magazine’s Fall 2023 Story Contest, and placed as a finalist in The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Find her website here.
Barbara Ridley
Barbara Ridley’s upcoming novel, Unswerving, will be published on March 26, 2024 by University of Wisconsin Press.
Robin L. Martin
Writers Workshops Participant, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, '00Robin Luce Martin won the Eyelands Three Rock Prize in 2020 for her novel manuscript Lizardmaid, securing a Greek translation. It was published by Strange Day Books in November 2023. More info here.
Julia Park Tracey
Writers Workshops Participant, '16, '18Julia Park Tracey’s historical novel, The Bereaved, which was inspired and workshopped at the Community of Writers, was given a starred review by Kirkus, and then selected for their top 100 Indie Books of 2023.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, '72, '73Find Terence Clark’s ongoing translations of Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire (and other news) here.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '73Terence Clark’s review of The Only Playboy: “What It’s Like to be the Playboy of the Western World” can be found here.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant, '19, '23Jeff Adams’ short story “The Citron Tree” appears in Once Upon a Crocodile. Find it here.
Louis B. Jones
Writers Workshops Co-director and Teaching Staff / Participant, '89His essay, “Power Failure” was published in the Winter, 2024 Issue of the ThreePenny Review, edited by Wendy Lesser. Read it here.
Attended with the help of UC Irvine Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '22Vishwas Gaitonde’s collection of short stories, On Earth As It Is In Heaven, has won the 2023 Orison Fiction Prize, and will be published by Orison Books.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant, '08Anthony J. Mohr’s memoir, Every Other Weekend–Coming of Age With Two Different Dads, placed third in the parenting and relationship category of the BookFest Awards. It also became a finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards. In April, it won first place in nonfiction in the Firebird Book Awards. More info here.
Amanda Churchill
Writers Workshop Participant, '21Amanda Churchill’s debut novel, The Turtle House, will be published by Harper Books on February 20, 2024. Moving between late 1990s small-town Texas to pre-World War II Japan and occupied Tokyo, The Turtle House is an emotionally engaging story about a grandmother and granddaughter who connect over a beloved lost place and the secrets they both carry. “Sweeping yet intimate, Amanda Churchill’s Turtle House spans cultures and continents. Minnie and her granddaughter Lia are unforgettable protagonists, whose grit and grace will inspire you. Together, they find a way through in this gripping debut.” -Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City. More info here.
Attended with the help of a James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Alex Russell
Writers Workshops Participant, '19,'21Alex Russell’s novel was selected by Percival Everett as the sole finalist for the 2023 AWP James Alan McPherson Prize. More info here.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff & Participant: ’00, '21Meg Waite Clayton was in Paris for the launches of two new editions of Dernier Train pour Londres, the French translation of her international bestseller and Jewish Book Award finalist, The Last Train to London. A France Loisirs book club edition released it on October 20, and a new Pocket Books paperback on October 26. A Ukrainian translation will release it in November. The novel is being published in twenty languages. More info here.
Nicole Eyer
Writers Workshop Participant, '19T.N. Eyer’s debut novel Finding Meaning in the Age of Immortality was released on November 7 by Stillhouse Press. Finding Meaning is an arresting work of speculative fiction set in a near future, where the discovery of a cure for mortality—a very expensive and difficult cure—rips apart the fabric of society and brings two very dissimilar families together in a fraught and unlikely partnership. More info here.
Leah Korican
Writers Workshops Participant '22Leah Korican’s excerpt, “Evergreen”, from her in-progress memoir about growing up on a hippie commune in backwoods Oregon was published in the Fall issue of Heartwood Literary Magazine. More info here.
Stephen Blackburn
Writers Workshop Participant, '03, '05In mid-May, after 27 years, Each One Teach One-Up and Out of Poverty: Memoirs of a Street Activist, by Ron Casanova as told to Stephen Blackburn was re-issued in paperback by Curbstone Press/Northwestern University Press. “An eloquent voice for Americans too often ignored or scapegoated.” – Booklist. More info here.
MARY CAMARILLO
Writer's Workshop Participant, '12Mary Camarillo’s second novel, Those People Behind Us, was published in October of 2023. Set in the summer of 2017 in a suburban coastal town, five neighbors’ lives are impacted by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices. Each character searches for home and community in a neighborhood where no one can agree who belongs. Those People Behind Us was a finalist for General Fiction in the 2023 American Book Awards and was shortlisted for the 2023 Hawthorne prize. More info here.
Kristen-Paige Madonia
Writing Workshops Participant, '23Kristen-Paige Madonia’s short story, “Free Weights”, was recently published in the 2023 issue of Boulevard Magazine. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Carlisle Family Scholarship
Parul Kapur
Writers Workshop Participant '19Parul Kapur’s short story “Geronimo!” about the troubles around the forthcoming marriage of the son of aspiring Indian Americans and the daughter of old-money Atlantans, appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Ploughshares, dedicated to longform prose.
Mary Otis
Writers Workshop Participant, '00, '01Mary Otis’ most recent book, Burst, won the Silver Medal in Literary Fiction 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was also chosen by Good Morning America and the New York Post as a “Best of Spring Books” pick.
Attended with the help of a Getty Scholarship
Rosa Lowinger
Rosa Lowinger’s memoir, Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile and Repair was published by Row House Books on October 10, 2023. More details can be found on her website.
Barry Garelick
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Barry Garelick had several short stories published in online journals: “The Invisible“, “Elizabeth“, “How Has 1973 Been for You?“, and “Pretty Girls Who Never Wear Lipstick“.
Jessie Ren Marshall
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Jessie Ren Marshall’s debut story collection, WOMEN! IN! PERIL!, will be published April 2, 2024 as part of a two-book deal with Bloomsbury. In this ferociously feminist, genre-bending book, Marshall balances humor and gravitas to explore the complexities of queerness, toxic relationships, parenting and divorce, Asian and Asian American identity, and so much more. Whether they exist in the grounded realism of a college dance studio or the speculative world of Deep Space, the women of WOMEN! IN! PERIL! push against the status quo to find a better future. Jessie’s website can be found here.
Attended with the help of a James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Swathi Desai
Writers Workshop Participant ‘17, ‘18Swathi Desai’s novel excerpt “An Offering to the Gods” was a finalist in the 2023 DISQUIET literary prize.
Rosa Lowinger
Writers Workshop Participant, '23Rosa Lowinger’s forthcoming book (Row House Books, October 2023), Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile and Repair, received a starred review from Kirkus in August 2023 and has been selected as a 2023-2024 Book Club pick from the Jewish Women’s Archive. Some upcoming West Coast events can be found on her website.
Violeta Orozco
Writers Workshop Participant, '23Violeta Orozco’s second full-length poetry collection Stillness in the Land of Speed, winner of the New Voices Award was published by Jacar Press in North Carolina.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship
John H. Zobel
Writers Workshops Participant, '06John H. Zobel’s biography, Eugene Ely, Pioneer of Naval Aviation, published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press, will be released on October 15, 2023. John was working on the book at the time of his death in 2017, and it will be published posthumously.
Julia Park Tracey
Writers Workshops Participant, '16, '18Julia Park Tracey’s historical fiction, The Bereaved, was published in August by Sibylline Press, a new press publishing the works of women/FemID ages 50+. She is on book tours throughout the fall in New York, Denver, Portland, Chicago and then Kansas City in the spring. Find her website here.
Edward (Ted) Fowler
Writers Worshops Participant, '19Ted Fowler’s essay, “Lookout Towers and a Legacy Wall: On the Mass Confinement of Japanese Americans Eighty Years On,” appeared in the Summer Solstice, 2023 issue of Citric Acid, with a focus on Orange County and the Poston, AZ camp .
Matthew Monte
Writers Workshop Participant, '15Matthew M. Monte just published his second poetry collection, All Tomorrow’s Train Rides, with Sixteen Rivers Press. You can find his website here.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '73Terence Clarke’s novel, The Splendid City, which features Pablo Neruda as its central character, will be re-published in a new edition in December 2023. His new novel, The Last of Nico Sombra, which takes place in Buenos Aires, will be published next year. He is now writing a regular column on Substack.
Emi Nietfeld
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Emi Nietfeld’s memoir, Acceptance, came out in paperback from Penguin Press. Named a best book of the year by NPR, it’s available wherever you buy books.
Barbara Fischkin
Writers Workshop Participant, '95Barbara Fischkin, author of three books of narrative nonfiction and satiric fiction, has been selected as a “Monday Magazine” columnist for the literary website 3QuarksDaily. She is writing a monthly column on a variety of topics. 3QuarksDaily is a well-respected literary agregator. It presents eight to twelve items from around the web each day, in the areas of science, design, literature, current affairs, art, politics, philosophy—and more— and a daily poem. The “Monday Magazine” columns are original to the site. Access to the site is gratis. A small monthly donation provides advertising-free browsing.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant, '08Anthony J. Mohr’s essay “The Only Child at the Party” was published on June 22 in the Los Angeles Review.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22Vishwas Gaitonde’s essay “Jaya He! The Story of India’s National Anthem” was published by Serenade Magazine, August 2023 issue.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship, '22
Elizabeth Kadetsky
Writer's Workshops Alumni Reader and Participant, '97, '04In March of 2023, Elizabeth published a cover essay in American Scholar about the Met’s looted Mother Goddess, and an interview on the research ran on KERA Dallas’s Think. Her ongoing research for the project is supported by a 2022-2024 Fulbright scholar flex grant to India, which follows from Elizabeth’s yearlong Fulbright to India in 2019-2020. Elizabeth is nonfiction editor at New England Review, a role that she took on in 2019. She is a core creative writing faculty member at Penn State University, where she was promoted to Professor in July 2023.
Attended with the help of a UC Irvine scholarship
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Sommer Schafer’s inaugural collection of short stories, The Women, will be published by Unsolicited Press on November 14, 2023. Pre-orders begin September 1.
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her novel, How to Care for a Human Girl, will be published by Atria Books on August 8, 2023. The novel follows estranged sisters Jada and Maddy as they come together to deal with simultaneous unplanned pregnancies in the wake of their mother’s death.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Claudia Putnam
Writers' Workshop Participant, '12Her novella, Seconds, came out in July 2023 from Neutral Zones Press. Novelist Robin Black has said: “There is a wealth of brave wisdom in this novella. Putnam takes a social encounter and peels back its layers-through time, ancient longings, lingering dishonesties-until reaching unsettling but crucial insights. I love when a short book takes on the truly big issues of human experience, and Putnam’s does so triumphantly here.”
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14, '22Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story ‘Boys on the Bus’ has been published in the magazine Across the Margin.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22
Désirée Zamorano
Writers Workshop '05Alta Journal has published her whimsical short story “Magda’s Hen” in their summer issue #24.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshops Participant, '93Founding editor of Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination, announces the release of the journal’s Summer Solstice issue. Among regionally themed poetry and prose, comics, art, journalism and activism, it features work by Community of Writers alums Lisa Alvarez, Ted Fowler, Rhoda Huffey, and Tonkovich himself.
Patricia Dunn
Writers Workshop Participant, '05Her third novel and first psychological thriller, Her Father’s Daughter (Crooked Lane Books), is coming out on July 18, 2023. Her Father’s Daughter is the Mysterious Bookshop’s August 2023 First Mystery Crime Club Pick.
Stephanie Austin
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her creative nonfiction chapbook Something I Might Say will be published with WTAW Press on July 18, 2023.
Attended with the help of a sholarship.
Cameron Walker
Writers Workshops Participant, ‘02, ‘04She and illustrator Chris Turnham have a new children’s book, National Monuments of the U.S.A., which will be published by Wide-Eyed Editions in June 2023.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshop Participant, '87President Joe Biden awarded her with a National Humanities Medal in March of 2023.
Hilary Zaid
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her book, Forget I Told You This will be published September 1, 2023 By University of Nebraska Press.
Attended with the help of the James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Juliana Roth
Writers Workshops Participant, '17, '22She was selected as a 2022-23 Emerging Writer Fellow with The Center for Fiction. The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowships annually provide a diverse group of nine early-career, New York City-based writers with grants; editorial mentorships; monthly dinners with eminent editors, agents, and authors; access to The Center’s Writers Studio; a Master Class on Performance and Public Reading sponsored by Audible; two public readings in The Center’s performance space; and ongoing support in establishing their literary career. The Fellows were chosen from an impressive pool of 706 applicants in a blind judging process by Cara Blue Adams, Raluca Albu, and Ian Denning.
Attended with the help of the John Zobel Memorial Scholarship, and the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Lauren Kay Johnson
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her memoir, The Fine Art of Camouflage, was published by MilSpeak Books in March 2023. An excerpt from the book, “The View From Under My Scarf”, which was workshopped in the Community of Writers Open Workshop with Sands Hall, recently appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine Connections column.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Her new book The Khan’s Mistake: The Fight for the Throne was published in May 2023. This is the story of the rise of Genghis Khan and the rivals he faced in the building of his empire.
The book is historical fiction based on an authoritative bibliography and 30 years of research and writing. It is suitable for students from 9th grade and above to undergraduate level as assigned reading for courses in global history.
The book is published on the serialized story platform Amazon Kindle Vella in 40 episodes.
Zelda Lockhart
Writers Workshop Alum, '90Her 4th novel, Trinity, (HarperCollins, Amistad) will be published July 4. Preorders are available now. Trinity is the riveting story of the daughter-spirit born to stitch love back into the scattered wombs of her Black mothers and call love back into the fishing blues songs of her Black male kin. Praise for Trinity: “If we are ancestrally haunted, we may also be ancestrally healed. This is the lesson of Zelda Lockhart’s Trinity, an epic, vivid and heart-wrenching novel. Reminiscent of the work of Gayl Jones and Alice Walker.” -Imani Perry, author of NYT bestseller South to America.
Attended with the help of a Galway Kinnell Scholarship
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshops Participant, '19His short story “The Procedure” appears in the Spring 2023 Issue of 34 Orchard Journal.
Ramona Ausubel
Writers Workshop Participant '07, '12/ Teaching Staff MemberHer new novel The Last Animal was released from Riverhead Books in April 2023. NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed her on Weekend Edition Saturday.
Attended with the help of UC Irvine Scholarship
Chris Lombardi
Writers Workshop Participant, '92Chris Lombardi’s novel Blue Season was published in 2022 by Mumblers Press.
A literary mystery, set in the 1990s: How did Molly, a promising musician and graduate student, end up in a Baltimore psychiatric hospital calling herself Lucia? Readers unravel the clues as hospital scenes alternate with Molly’s journals. A story about memory, trauma, and Lucia Joyce — the daughter of Irish writer James Joyce, who died in 1982 in the Swiss mental hospital where she’d lived for more than 40 years.
Erin Almond
Writers Workshops Participant, '22Her short story “The Unbearable Weight of My Heart” was selected by Jennifer Haigh to win First Prize in Pangyrus Magazine’s Fiction Contest. She’s especially grateful for David Ulin’s insightful comments and edits.
Attended with the help of the Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag
Poetry Participant, '14His new book, Hands Like Trees, a story cycle about one immigrant family’s tryst with hope and despair, rupture and belonging, spanning three decades and two continents, is available for purchase at your nearest book store!
“Glows with life in every story. Here are characters that are complex, astute, painful, funny, enlightening and most of all enjoyable. Restless men and willful women, who seek escape but also belonging, a contradiction and elusiveness that bursts with wit and empathy. These are nimble stories imbued with insight into the ties that bind, the ties that break, stories that shimmer with the soul of a poet…A marvelous debut.” – John Vigna author of No Man’s Land
Ilana DeBare
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Her debut novel Shaken Loose will be published by Hypatia Press in July. Speculative fiction set in an unraveling Christian Hell, it raises questions about how a supposedly just God can allow so much injustice. Community of Writers instructor Karen Joy Fowler calls it “a compulsive read, a narrative full of surprises about a woman who becomes more herself after death than she ever was in life.” Pre-order now here.
Mary Torre Kelly
She published a Science-Fantasy novel, The Life Of Death Show, which holds five stars on Amazon. She is actively seeking an agent.
Attended with the help of a scholarship.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop Participant: '93As founding editor, he is proud to announce the newest issue of Citric Acid: An Online Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination. The spring 2023 edition is the fifth collection of writing from and about Orange County, California and includes original prose and poetry.
Alix Christie
Writer's Workshops Participant: '00Her new historical novel The Shining Mountains was published in April 2023 by High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press. It’s the epic tale of her ancestor’s brother and his Scots-Native family caught in the crossfire of Manifest Destiny in the American Northwest. Her short story “Everychild,” a dystopian environmental fable, won the 2021 Editor’s Prize in Fiction from The Missouri Review.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22His short story ‘Swayamvara’ has been published in Brink literary magazine (Issue 5, Spring 2023).
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship. '22
A.R. Taylor
Writers Workshop Participant, '13Her latest novel, Call Me When You’re Dead, was published in September of 2022 by She Writes Press. An excerpt from her previous novel, Jenna Takes The Fall, appears alongside works by Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Di Prisco, Katharine Ogden Michaels, and others in Volume 4 of the Simpsonistas: Tales from the New Literary Project.
Rita Chang-Eppig
Writers Workshop participant '15Her debut, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, a historical novel with speculative elements based on the life of a legendary Chinese pirate queen, will be published by Bloomsbury in May, 2023. It has been named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Debutiful, The Chicago Review of Books, The Rumpus, Polygon, Tor, and The Washington Post.
Monica Wesolowska
Writers Workshop Participant: '95; Art of the Wild Participant: '96; Published alum reader: '13She published her second children’s picture book, Elbert in the Air (Dial Books, 2023, illustrated by Jerome Pumphrey.)
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Michelle Bracken
Writers Workshops Participant: '17Michelle Bracken’s short story, “The Crush,” was published in Across the Margin.
Parul Kapur Hinzen
Writers Workshop Participant: '19Her debut novel, Inside the Mirror, won the 2022 AWP Prize for the Novel, judged by Brandon Hobson, and will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in Spring 2024. The story maps the estrangement of twin sisters in 1950s Bombay, India, as they struggle to find their voice as artists and independent young women in the devastating aftermath of colonial rule.
David Lukas
For over 20 years, David Lukas led morning nature walks for the Community of Writers and loved sharing his amazing nature stories with writers. David has now started a weekly nature newsletter as a way to continue sharing these stories, and he also gives short weekly nature talks on a wide variety of topics,
Kazim Ali
Poetry Participant: '98; Poetry Staff: '10, '12, '16, '18, '21, '23Sukun: New and Selected Poems, by Kazim Ali, will be published by Wesleyan University Press in September 2023.
Jasmin Iolani Hakes
Writers Workshops Alumni: '19Hula, the debut novel by Jasmin ʻIolani Hakes about a family navigating Hawaiian colonization alongside a burgeoning sovereignty movement, is set to release on May 2, 2023 with HarperVia.
Attended with the help of the Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshops Participant: '01Joe Bardin’s essay, “Waiting for It,” was published in Bull Journal.
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshops Participant: '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her debut novel Italian Love Cake (Bordighera Press, 2021) is named 2023 Distinguished Favorite in General Fiction by the Independent Press Award. Italian Love Cake is available in two French editions, under the title Liberata, Éditions Anne Carrière (2022), and Pocket (2023),
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14,'22His multimedia essay “The Harmonium Across Continents and Centuries,” has been published in Serenade magazine. It chronicles the odyssey of a musical instrument, the harmonium, across its 230+ years of existence from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Americas. Embedded music videos provide examples of harmonium music.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22
Andrew Tonkovich
1993His short story, “Three Acts in Three Plays (Plus One)” appears in the print edition of the spring issue of Juked.
Elizabeth Filippouli
Writers Workshops Participant '07, '22Elizabeth Filippouli adapted and produced a play inspired by Alexander the Great that invites audiences to rethink the idea of greatness and re-imagine the personality of the statesman through the eyes of his tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. In this contemporary adaptation the old is intertwined with modern references, making Alexander’s life relevant to today’s context. The hybrid staged reading brought together a modern epic poem by Greek playwright Stamatis A. Filippoulis, art by leading British artist Paul Benney and music by Greek composer Stamatis Spanoudakis that lifted words and visual poetry. Over 500 theatre lovers attended in the British Library in London in February 2023.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, ,22Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story ‘Carabas’ appears in ‘The Journal’ (Issue 46.2, Spring 2023).
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22
Michael Golding
Writer's Workshops Participant, '90, '92Michael Golding’s fourth novel Quick Bright Things — about the Golden Age of Broadway — will be published in April 2023 by Butterfish Press.
Tara Dorabji
Writers Workshop participant '13Her debut novel, Fire, is the grand prize winner for The Simon & Schuster Books Like Us Award.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '71, 72; Teaching Staff '22His seventh novel, The Last of Nico Sombra, was published on February 14, 2023 online in a serialized edition on Substack. Placed in Buenos Aires, it tells of the complicated, perhaps disastrous, love between the crime lord, Nico Sombra, and a daughter of the Argentine aristocracy, Natalia Faustino.
You can find more about the book here.
Lea Aschkenas
Writers Workshops Participant, '02; Art of the Wild Participant, '99Her debut children’s book, Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle, will be published simultaneously in English and in Spanish by Star Bright Books in April, 2023. The Spanish edition was a Junior Library Guild selection.
Freeman Ng
Writers Workshop participant, '19Bridge Across the Sky, his Young Adult novel-in-verse based on the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900’s, was acquired by Simon & Schuster for publication in Fall of 2024.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant, '04-'06; Staff; Board Vice-ChairHis new novel, The Sons of El Rey, just sold to Simon and Schuster.
James D. Richardson
Writers Workshops participant '20The launch of his book The Abolitionist’s Journal: The Memories of an American Antislavery Family about his ancestors’ work on the Underground Railroad, was recently broadcast on C-SPAN; serving a Black Union regiment in the Civil War; and founding a college in Texas for the previously enslaved. Richardson was interviewed at the Beers Books in Sacramento by Ginger Rutland, another alum of the Community of Writers.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “At the End of the Day” appears in Adelaide Literary Magazine.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story “Fatherhood” is featured on The Razor, a publication from the Gotham Writers Workshop. Accompanying her story is a professional recording from voice actor Alex Shafer.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22His multimedia essay “Bringing in the Sheaves: The Samuels of Chennai,” about a trio of brothers who sing southern gospel in southern India, was published in Serenade magazine, January 2023.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22
Mike Karpa
Writers Workshops Participant, '92, '94His thriller/suspense novel Criminals, set in Tokyo, received a starred review and was named one of Kirkus Reviews‘ “Best Books of 2022,” Indie edition. It was first workshopped at the Community with Ann Close. His new comic novel about a New York family, The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg (Mumblers Press, 2022), was published Dec 20, 2022.
Christopher Upham
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff ScreenwritingChristopher Upham’s first novel, Daktoum has been published by Cereus Press and is available in all major outlets. Based on Upham’s experience as a medic in Vietnam, Daktoum explores the effects of trauma on masculinity when diverse young Americans are abandoned by their own government on a remote jungle fire base.
Clare Frank
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Clare Frank’s Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire is due out from Abrams Press in May, 2023.
Attended with the help of The Alexander Cushing Locals Scholarship
George Berger
Writers Workshop Participant, 2004,2005,2014G. J. Berger’s third novel, a legal thriller titled, Chasing Justice was published in November, 2023. “With Chasing Justice, accomplished historical novelist G.J. Berger makes an impressive debut in the conspiracy thriller genre. In a league with the best of Grisham and Baldacci.” -Dan Pollock, author of Lair of the Fox and Duel of Assassins
Susanne Pari
Writers Workshops Participant, '89, '90, '91Her second novel, In the Time of Our History, about rebellious women in a large Iranian-American family, will be published on January 3rd, 2023. It is a Buzz Books selection and will appear on the January Indie Next list. Amy Tan says, “I fell in love with this jewel of a novel from the first page.’ Rabih Alameddine calls it “both unique and universal, a must-read tile in the new mosaic of American novels.” Publishers Weekly calls it “a luminous multigenerational tale…that navigates the cultural differences between newer Americans and older immigrants and provides a frank look at fraught family dynamics.”
Charmaine Craig
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '18; Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98Her novel My Nemesis will be published by Grove Press in February, 2023. Her previous novel, Miss Burma, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14, '22His short story ‘Mardy Gras’ has been published in The MacGuffin, Fall 2022 issue.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop participant '04, '05; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis short story, “Detainment,” was included in 2022’s Best American Mystery and Suspense.
Gretchen McCullough
Writers Workshop participant '06, '08, '19Her novel Confessions of a Knight Errant was recently published by Cune Press. The novel is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a corpse turns up.
Attended with the help of Del Duca Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22His commentary “Wash or Wipe? – That is the Question!” has been published in the inaugural issue of Arasi literary magazine.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22
Anara Guard
Writers Workshops Participant, '16Her debut novel Like a Complete Unknown is a finalist for the Chicago Writers Association’s 2022 Book of the Year in indie fiction.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “Everybody’s Good” appeared in The Gettysburg Review, volume 24, number 1.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Mason Boyles
Writers Workshop participant, '20, '21His debut novel Bark On is will be available through Driftwood Press in February, 2023.
Attended with the help of Robert Stone Memorial Scholarship
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14, '21; Writers Workshops participant '04, '08; Writers Workshop teaching staff '20, '23Her second novel Circa was published by Mariner Books in May, 2022, and her third novel, Midnight at the War, will be published by Mariner Books in 2024. Circa was chosen by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Book Club this summer.
Jamie Cat Callan
Writers Workshops participant '91She has been awarded a fellowship by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Jamie Cat Callan will be among 22 Fellows focusing on their own creative projects at this working retreat for writers, poets, visual artists, and composers. VCCA fellows have received worldwide attention including MacArthur fellowships, Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim fellowships, National Endowment of the Arts awards, Grammy Awards, and Academy Award nominations. Jamie Cat Callan has received several previous fellowships from VCCA as a fiction writer, but this is her first VCCA fellowship as a visual artist.
Charles Harper Webb
Writers Workshops participant '91His novel Ursula Lake was published in Spring 2022 by Red Hen Press.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '22; Participant ‘00Her 8th novel, the international bestseller The Postmistress of Paris—a New York Times Editors Choice and GMA Buzz book—is out in paperback. It’s the Costco Book Club pick for October and on the IndieNext New in Paperback list for November. Her book, The Last Train to London, is now out in French, the 18th of the 20 languages it will be published in.
Lise Haines
Writers Workshops participant '99Her newest, Book of Knives, was published in October, 2022, from Poisoned Pen Press.
Claire Boyles
Writers Workshop Participant '18She was named a 2022 Whiting Award Winner in Fiction, and her short story collection, Site Fidelity, won the 2022 High Plains Book Award for Short Stories.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “Four Years Before the Break-in” was published in the summer 2022 issue of The Main Street Rag.
Jung Hae Chae
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her memoir-in-essays, Pojangmacha People, won the 2022 Graywolf Press Literary Nonfiction Prize (to be published in June 2025).
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Bruce Rettig
Writers Workshops Participant, '12,'15His memoir, Refraction, will be published on November 15, 2022. It has won several writing awards, and is published by Wayfarer Books, an Eco-Lit imprint of Homebound Publications. Homebound is a partner of One Tree Planted, and for every book they sell in their store, a tree is planted.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Her short story, “Pastoral Funkitude”,” appears in Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Fall/Winter 2022 issue.
Marcia Bradley
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her debut novel, The Home for Wayward Girls, will be published by HarperCollins in April, 2023. This work of fiction dives into the Troubled Teen Industry in our country and tells the story of one woman’s escape from a residential program on a ranch west of the Rockies. The novel details abuse, the anxieties she carries on her journey, and ultimately how through her survival she finds hope in the future.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop participant '83; Screenwriters Workshop participant '84Her serialized story Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama has been nominated for the Buchanan Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.
Juliana Roth
Writers Workshops Participant '17, '22She was selected as a 2022-23 Fellow with the Center for Fiction. She is also screening her new short film at Cinema Village on 10/26 at 2PM.
Natalie Harris-Spencer
Writers Workshops Participant, '22She has been chosen as the winner of the 2022 Chestnut Review Stubborn Writers Contest. Her winning story, “Fish Mother,” which she workshopped at this summer’s workshop, will appear in the January 2023 issue.
Daniel Pope
Writers' Workshop participant '19, '21His short story, “Last Stop,” has been published in Issue 43 of the Bellevue Literary Review.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Caroline Frost
Fiction Participant '17, '21; Published Alumni Reading Series '22Her debut novel Shadows of Pecan Hollow was longlisted by the Center for Fiction for best first novel and shortlisted by the Crook’s Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American south. She will be speaking on panels at the upcoming Texas Book Festival and Tucson Festival of Books.
Terry Shames
Writers Workshop participant '98Her newest, Murder at the Jubilee Rally, a Samuel Craddock mystery, was published in October, 2022.
Janice Obuchowski
Writers Workshop Participant, '08Her story collection The Woods has won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award through the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series and will be published in November, 2022.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant '14, '22His essay on the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II, “The Second Elizabeth – A Life Appreciated” was published in Merion West.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story “Women of a Certain Kind” appears in the fall 2022 issue of The Georgia Review.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Alina Grabowski
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Her novel, Women and Children First, will be published by SJPLit/Zando in fall, 2023.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshop Participant’07, ‘11She has won a mentorship with The Writers Lab – sponsored by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman- to further develop her TV pilot The Plant.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writer's Workshop, '17She will be a Parent-Writer resident at Mineral School, Washington, this Fall 2022, and will participate in the AWP 2023 panel “Impossible Balance: Re-examining the narrative about writing and parenting” with John Messick, Keema Waterfield, Sean Prentiss, and Ukamaka Olisakwe
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship
Jamie Ford
Writers Workshop Participant, '06His latest novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, was named the #1 Indie Next List book for August 2022. It was also chosen for the Today Show’s Read With Jenna book club, and has been optioned for a streaming series by Universal Content Productions.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97; Writers Workshop Teaching StaffShe has two novels coming out in September, 2022: Unleashed (A Publishers Weekly BuzzBook 2022) from Dutton, and Livid from Red Hen Press. These books were sold on the same day within half an hour of each other! Despite having lost her voice to ALS, she is doing her best to get the books into the hands of readers.
Melenie Freedom Flynn
Writers Workshop participant '09, '10She is the recipient of a generous 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowship to support the completion of her memoir about growing up in the backseat of Delilah, her family’s big blue Ford LTD, as they moved back and forth between the Rajneesh Commune in Oregon and Las Vegas during the 1980s.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Kristin Ohlson
Writers Workshop participant '84Her new book, Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Cooperation and Generosity in Nature, will be released by Patagonia Books on September 6. Publisher’s Weekly says, “Journalist Ohlson (The Soil Will Save Us) pushes back against the Darwinian notion that “competition rules” in this vivid survey. Despite the popular notion that nature is a “vicious and never-ending battle of survival for meager resources,” Ohlson makes a solid case that the opposite is often true…This is as charming as it is enlightening.”
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshop participant '08 and '10She was recently appointed the Chair of the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts, where she is also an associate professor. Her books include The Bohemians, Song of a Captive Bird, and The Good Daughter.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '73; Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis new piece on the Turkish Harem is now live on Substack. It’s more than what you think.
Ramona Reeves
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her debut book of fiction, It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories, won the 2022 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and is available for purchase (release date Oct. 4, University of Pittsburgh Press).
Akil Kumarasamy
Writers Workshop Participant '15Her new novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, was published by Macmillan in August, 2022.
Attended with the help of Eshleman Scholarship
Eddy Ancinas
Her new book, Tracing Inca Trails: An Adventure in the Andes, will be published on September 20, 2022.
Karen Joy Fowler
Writers Workshop teaching staff '00, '01, '03, '05, '09, '13, '18, '22Her newest book, Booth, was recently long listed for the Booker Prize.
James Richardson
Writers Workshop participant '20His book, The Abolitionist’s Journal: The Memories of an American Antislavery Family, will be published in fall 2022 by High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press. Over the course of more than twenty years, Richardson and his wife, Lori, retraced the steps of his ancestor, George Richardson (1824–1911), revealing his great-great-grandfather Richardson’s involvement in the Underground Railroad, serving as the chaplain to a Black Union regiment in the Civil War and founding a college in Texas for the formerly enslaved. The author raises questions about why this fervent commitment to the emancipation of African Americans was nearly forgotten by his family. More info.
Margaret Allen
Writers Workshop Participant, '16In Swimming with Corpses, published in June, 2022, Margaret Allen has pieced together the early years of a doctor, a soldier, and a nurse, from their 1920s English childhoods in Portsmouth, Manchester, and India to their experiences in the London Blitz, on the D-Day beaches of Normandy, and in the chaos of war-torn Europe. This true story of three people who would probably never have met were it not for the lacerating events of the Second World War illuminates unfamiliar intimacies that occur during conflict and their impact on subsequent relationships. More info
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis new story collection, San Francisco, was published on June 1, 2022. To order, click here. He is also writing on The Arts on Substack.
Monica Wesolowska
Writers Workshop Participant '95; Art of the Wild Participant '96She has published a debut children’s picture book, Leo + Lea (Scholastic, illustrated by Kenard Pak, August 2022). Leo + Lea is a celebration of math, friendship, and different ways of seeing and being in the world. The words and illustrations follow a math pattern called the Fibonacci sequence (a pattern often found in nature), creating a beautiful metaphor for our connection to each other and the natural world.
Mary Camarillo
Writer’s Workshop Participant, 05Her debut novel The Lockhart Women is the 2022 WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Multiform Fiction. The WILLA Literary Awards, named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Willa Cather, recognizes the best in literature, featuring women’s or girls’ stories set in the North American West that are published each year.
Michael Shapiro
Writers Workshop participant, '22Traveler’s Mind: UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center has awarded authors Michael Shapiro and Ethan Watters a grant to study the concept of intellectual humility, the idea that not everything you think is right and not everything you believe is true. During the next 18 months, Shapiro and Watters, both longtime journalists, will be interviewing scientists and travelers to glean how (or if) travel makes us more open-minded. GGSC said there were 150 applicants; just 18 grants in various topics were awarded. Other winners include reporters from NPR and Scientific American – for the full list and more about the award, see link.
Alix Christie
Writers Workshops Participant, '00Her short story “Everychild” won the 2021 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in fiction from The Missouri Review.
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop participant '19Her debut novel, Sirens and Muses, will be published by Penguin Random House in July, 2022.
Gina DeMillo Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Her longform essay “Following Floodlights Instead of the Moon” won the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Prize.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '12, '14, '16Her novel-in-progress Proposition has been selected for fiscal sponsorship by Fractured Atlas.
Proposition follows the sex-trafficking epidemic in Oakland from the dual perspective of survivors striving to create a better world for themselves and white-savior activists oblivious to the ways they perpetuate systemic inequality, and is based on her essay, “Dancing on the Blade,” for which she received the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Award for Nonfiction.
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller Scholarship, Carlisle Family Scholarship, Eshleman Scholarship
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop Participant '19Her debut novel Sirens & Muses will be published by Ballantine/Random House on July 12, 2022. She is on tour promoting the book and will be doing events in Minneapolis, Brooklyn, Cape Cod, Stillwater, MN and Northfield, MN. See her website for more details.
Attended with the help of O'Dwyer Scholarship
Karen Moulding
Writers Workshops Participant, '07,'08,'10Her short story, “We Will Live Here Forever,” has been published in the KGB Bar Online Literary Review and appears in the April 2022 issue.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17She was a finalist in Phoebe’s 2022 short fiction contest. Her story, “We Can’t Live Without the Birds and Animals,” appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Phoebe.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction Workshop participant; Fiction workshop teaching staffHis essay on Michelle Latiolais’ novel SHE appears in a new collection, The Many Voices of
the Los Angeles Novel (Cambridge Scholars Press). The essay, “Ariadne’s Thread or Things Befall Apart (Together) in L.A.: She by Michelle Latiolais,” appears alongside laudatory meditations on the work of writers Wanda Coleman, Joan Didion and Carolyn See, among others.
Lawrence Coates
Writers Workshop Participant '18His story “The Ferry and the Road,” which appeared in Story in 2021, was named a Finalist for the 2022 Spur Award in Short Fiction, given by Western Writers of America. The story was workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2018. It is also the first chapter of his novel-in-progress.
Tim Wendel
Fiction Workshop participant '87, '88; Screenwriting Workshop participant '07His latest novel, Escape from Castro’s Cuba, received the Professional Achievement Award for Johns Hopkins University faculty. In addition, the novel was a finalist, and the only work of fiction, selected for the Casey Award, given annually to the best baseball book.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “Around Here Somewhere” appears in the Spring 2022 issue of 34 Orchard.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “In a Burning Volcano” appeared in Salamander, issue #53 (Fall/Winter 2021-2022). It was a finalist for the Salamander 2021 Fiction Prize.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop participant '83; Screenwriting Workshop participant '84Her Palace Drama Fish Shoes has been posted on the story platform Wattpad in episodes. “What happens when the daughter of Emperor Khubilai Khan must persuade her father to listen to her husband, the King of Korea and desist from invading Japan by sea? To read it for free, download the Wattpad app and go to Historical Fiction.
Sands Hall
Fiction Workshop teaching staffHer piece on “finding current relevancy—and outrage—in the accusations of plagiarism that have long haunted a classic of the West: Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose” is out now in Alta.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant '72, '73His fourteenth book, a story collection titled San Francisco, will be published on June 1, 2022. It is so titled because every story takes place in that city. One of the stories, “Crusts of Bread and Such,” will appear in the Fall 2022 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.
Sholeh Wolpé
Writers Workshsop Participant,'04Her most recent book Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse (University of Arkansas Press, March 2022) is hailed by Ilya Kaminsky as a book “that created its own genre—a thrill of lyric combined with the narrative spell.” A short film about the book marries her poetry and voice to music and film: https://youtu.be/0iHMAZwYrhw
Alix Christie
Writers Workshop Participant '00Her short story “Everychild” won the 2022 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in fiction from the Missouri Review and appears in the spring 2022 issue. Her second novel, a family epic of the fur trade set in the 19th century Pacific Northwest, will be published in spring 2023 by High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press. Her latest book, “Toxic: A Daughter’s Memoir of Desertion”, is out on submission.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His short story ‘Vermin’ was published in the 2021 issue of Descant.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops participant '08His essay, “The Wonderful World of Beverly Hills,” was published in the winter 2022 issue of Mason Street Review. In March, 2022, his essay, “The Hamburger,” appeared in Ink, a Hippocampus anthology.
Daniel Pope
Writers Workshop participant, '19, '21His short story, “Good Neighbors,” which was chosen as a finalist for the 2021 Narrative 30 Below Contest, was published as a Story of the Week in Narrative Magazine in April 2022.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Anna Hogeland
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her debut novel, The Long Answer, was published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House) on June 21, 2022.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship
Mary F. Burns
Writers Workshops Participant, '05Her fourth historical mystery in the John Singer Sargent/Violet Paget series is out now! The Eleventh Commandment was dubbed by Kirkus Reviews as “A thrilling whodunit and an edifying work of historical fiction….an exceedingly intelligent and entertaining novel.”
Caroline Kim
Writers Workshops Participant, '18, '19Her short story “Motherhood” appears in the Spring 2022 Issue of STORY Magazine.
Jennifer Egan
Writers Workshop participant '89Her new novel, The Candy House, was published on April 5, 2022 from Scribner’s.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His multimedia essay “There Will Always Be Stars In the Sky,” on the life and legacy of Lata Mangeshkar, India’s beloved diva, was published in Serenade magazine, March 2022.
Ellen Bravo
Writers Workshops Participant, '99, '00, '01She has a new novel out, Standing Up: Tales of Struggle, written with her husband Larry Miller. Inspired by five decades of organizing, Standing Up is about those who clean bloody hospital sheets, forge parts for sewer pipes, arrange flights, or process checks — all while caring for kids, holding relationships together and wrestling with multiple forms of oppression. As the characters stand up, slow down, form unions, leave an abusive relationship or just stir up good trouble, they entertain and enlighten and encourage us to love deeply, as we continue the fight for justice. Best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard calls it “Shocking, terrifying, inspiring and deeply felt lives of the unsung.”
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop participant '18Her short story collection, Proof of Me and Other Stories, is now available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble.com. It will be released by New American Press in Philadelphia on March 24, 2022 during AWP. To preorder: tinyurl.com/5f58mcf4
Rachel Howard
Writers Workshop participant '13; Writers Workshop teaching staff '17, '19Her essay, “The Man with the Poodle: Political Theater in the Time of CRT” was recently featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Teresa Burns Gunther
Writers Workshops Participant '15She won the 52nd New Millennium Award for Fiction for her story, War Paint, included in her collection, Hold Off The Night, forthcoming from Bequem Press.
Alicia Hokanson
Poetry Workshop participant '93, '97, '99, '09Her new book, Perishable World, (Pleasure Boat Studio Press, 2021) won the 2021 Grand Prize from the international Eyelands Book Awards.
Patricia Dunn
Writers Workshop Participant, '04Her debut novel for adults, Last Stop on the 6 (Bordighera Press), workshopped during her time at Community Writers, was published in November, 2021.
TN Eyer
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story, “Date of Death”, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appears in Volume 24 of Water~Stone Review.
TN Eyer
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story “A Dying Breed” appears in the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Cathy Wang
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story “ESL” will be published in the ninth issue of Huizache. During the fiction workshops of 2019, her individual conference mentor was founding editor Dagoberto Gilb. Her pen name is Cathy Lue-W.
Sean Marciniak
Writers Workshops Participant, '09, '14His short story, “October in Kauai,” was selected to be in the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022. It originally appeared in the Mystery Tribune, Issue No. 15.
Caroline Frost
Writers Workshop participant '17, '21Her debut novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, was just published by William Morrow! A chapter was workshopped at the Community of Writers Fiction Workshop in 2017.
Ramona Reeves
Writers Workshops Participant, '18She won the 2022 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her linked short story collection It Falls Gently All Around. It will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2022.
Mark S. Wisniewski
Writers Workshops Participant, '91The inaugural volume of a short story anthology, Coolest American Stories 2022, founded and edited by Mark Wisniewski, has been published and received early praise from Ben Fontain, Lori Ostlund, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and the Santa Fe Reporter. Mark’s goal is to publish “interesting, compelling storytelling that appeals to people from all walks of life,” thus, he hopes, providing a yearly collection of tales that can serve as a common ground for enjoyment rather than divide Americans nationwide.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staffThe inaugural issue of his newest project, Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Journal of Imagination and Regimagination, features writing by Community of Writers friends Victoria Patterson, Grant Hier, Lisa Alvarez and Mary Camarillo, among OC writers sharing poetry, fiction, and memoir from and about the region.
Claudia Putnam
Writers Workshops '12Her personal essay, Double Negative, won the Split/Lip Press CNF chapbook contest and is forthcoming March 15, 2022. It is available for preorder starting on February 15.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story, “The Girl from Yesterday,” appears in the Hive Avenue Literary Journal.
Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His new translation of the classical Tamil masterpiece on ethics, power, and love, The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, was published by Beacon Press on January 11, 2022.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Melenie Freedom Flynn
Writers Workshops Participant '09, '10She is the recipient of a generous 2022 Elizabeth George Foundation grant to support the completion of her memoir about growing up in the backseat of Delilah, her family’s big blue Ford LTD, as they moved back and forth between the Rajneesh Commune in Oregon and Las Vegas during the 1980s.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jung Hae Chae
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her essay, “Hole(s),” won the 2021 Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize and appeared in the Winter 2021 issue.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Caroline Frost
Writers Workshop participant '17, '21Her debut novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, was just published by William Morrow. It’s a gritty Texas thriller about a fierce woman and the partner in crime she can’t escape. Caroline workshopped a chapter from her novel at Community of Writers in 2017.
Nevada McPherson
Writers Workshop Participant, '08Her novel, Poser, will be published by Outcast Press in February, 2022.
First in a noir series called the Eucalyptus Lane Novels, set in and around Palo Alto, CA, Poser offers a “class-conscious, peeping-Tom gaze into Silicon Valley’s bedrooms and back-alleys, where dreams really do come true and unlikely, life-altering connections are made, for better—or worse.”
Mary Kuryla
Writers Workshop participant '10Her novel Away to Stay comes out with Regal House Press in February, 2022.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshops participant, '18Her short story collection, Proof of Me and Other Stories, is now available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble.com. It will be released by New American Press in Philadelphia on March 24, 2022 during AWP. To preorder: tinyurl.com/5f58mcf4
Anara Guard
Writers Workshops Participant, '16Her debut novel, Like A Complete Unknown, will be published in March, 2022 by New Wind Publishing.
Martina Clark
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Her memoir, My Unexpected Life: An International Memoir of Two Pandemics, HIV and COVID-19, has just won an award from POZ Magazine for 2021 Best in Literature. While it holds less literary weight, it does hold high endorsement from the community of people living with HIV which, considering the subject matter of Clark’s memoir and her own life with HIV, it sends a resounding endorsement from a key readership.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “The Sensible Gardener” appears in the December 2021 issue of Anti-Heroin Chic.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His short story, ‘The Queen of Artichoke Hearts’ was published in the inaugural online issue of The Other Side of Hope, a new literary magazine in Britain dedicated to refugee and immigrant writing.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant '14His commentary “The Queens on the Throne of Kings,” written to mark Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee (70 years on the throne) which falls on Feb 6, 2022, was published in Merion West on November 8.
Freeman Ng
Writers Workshop participant '19His debut picture book, a biography of the seminal haiku poet Matsuo Basho (written entirely in haiku, of course!) was released by Stone Bridge Press on October 19, 2021.
Jackie Davis Martin
Writers Workshop Participant '14Her novel Stopgaps was published in May, 2021 and is available through Bookbaby. com or Amazon.com.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His short story “New Lives, Old Habits” was published in the Autumn 2021 issue of Spellbinder magazine in the United Kingdom.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant, '19His short story “The Stonecutter’s Wife” appears in Otoliths.
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop participant '19Her debut novel, Sirens and Muses, will be published by Penguin Random House in July, 2022.
T.A. Niles
Memoir and Nonfiction Workshop participant '21A play he co-wrote with Linda C. Lederman, An Attitude of Gratitude, will be performed virtually on November 6. To register for the live performance, visit this link.
Meghan Robins
Writers Workshops Participant, '15Her short essay “Being a Woman is Like Making French Onion Soup” won first place in the WOW! Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest.
Attended with the help of Alexander Cushing Memorial Scholarship for Locals
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writer's Workshop Participant, '17Her piece “On Teaching at the End of the World” was recently published in Literary Hub’s series “Teaching Through a Pandemic” on October 18, 2021.
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04; Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '15, '16, '18, '19, '20, '21Her feature in Alta Journal, “The Safe Place That Became Unsafe,” won Folio’s national award in the category of Best Investigative Reporting. This is the story about a predatory pastor who abused generations of Chinese boys and a follow-up to her book, The White Devil’s Daughters.
Tiphanie Yanique
Writers Workshop participant '05; Writers Workshop teaching staff '15, '21Her newest novel, Monster in the Middle, was recently published by Riverhead Books.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant '93; Co-director of the Fiction WorkshopHer short story, “Everyone was Singing Freiheit,” appears in the fall 2021 issue of Air/Light magazine.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop participant '14He was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers Studio, in Nottingham, England. His story, ‘The Worth of a Miracle’ was included in the prize anthology Black Lives. An audio recording of the story has been posted on the Nottingham City Libraries website as part of Black History Month (celebrated in October in Britain) & can be accessed here all October.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshop Participant, '92Her collection of stories,The High Price of Freeways, is co-winner of this year’s Tartt Fiction Award. Livingston Press, from the University of West Alabama, will publish this collection in June, 2022.
Rowena Leong Singer
Writers Workshop Participant '19Her novel manuscript, All Manner of Beasts, has been selected as the winner in literary fiction in the 2021 Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest. In this novel, a wife becomes the hero to the husband who thought she needed saving in the midst of Japanese-occupied Philippines during World War II, while soldiers hunt for guerrillas and their supporters, making this couple their target. The excerpt she submitted for this contest is a revised version of the one she submitted for critique at the Community of Writers summer Fiction workshop in 2019.
Mandy Gardner
Writers Workshops Participant '17Her piece, “Recovery from Simultaneous Stroke and Cardiac Arrest,” a humorous take on the traditional medical abstract and based on a true story, was recently published in the Maine Review.
John Foran
Writers Workshop participant '13His newest novel, A Mistaken Hostage, was published in September, 2021.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Her short story, “Dead Eddie” will be in the 150th anniversary anthology of the Elm Leaves Journal out of Buffalo State.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation scholarship
Joshua Ferris
Writers Workshop participant '03His newest novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes, was published in September, 2021, by Little, Brown and Company.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant '92Judy Juanita’s poetry collection, Manhattan My Ass, You’re in Oakland, won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Many of the poems appear in New Verse News online. Her short story collection, The High Price of Freeways, won the Tartt Fiction Prize 2021 at the University of West Alabama [UWA] and will be published by Livingston Press [UWA] in 2022.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop Participant 1993, 94, 97, Teaching StaffCai Emmons’ fifth book of fiction, the novel Sinking Islands, was published on Sept. 14, 2021. In addition, she has two novels forthcoming in 2022, Unleashed from Dutton, and Hair On Fire from Red Hen Press.
Tiphanie Yanique
Writers Workshops Participant '05/ Writers Workshops Staff '15, '21Tiphanie Yanique’s new novel, Monster in the Middle, will be published by Riverhead Books on October 19, 2021.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, 1972, 1973Terence Clarke’s latest novel is The Moment Before, was published September 15. Renowned Parisian artist Yvette Roman suffers from epileptic seizures that are preceded by extraordinary visions. Much of her work is based on those visions. While in New York City for an exhibition of her work at The Guggenheim, a painting by Yvette is delivered to her Manhattan gallery. But, Yvette has no recollection of having done it, even though the painting may be her masterwork. Is it hers? Is it a forgery? Is someone trying to destroy Yvette?
This novel is the third of a trilogy. The others are My Father in The Night and When Clara Was Twelve. All three are available everywhere, in print and digital versions.
Martina Clark
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Martina Clark’s memoir, My Unexpected Life: An International Memoir of Two Pandemics, HIV and COVID-19, is being published by Northampton House Press and comes out October 5th, 2021. This memoir was her workshop piece in 2013.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Debra A. Daniel
Writers Workshops Participant, '01Debra A. Daniel’s novella-in-flash, A Family of Great Falls, was short listed for the Bath Novella-in-flash Award 2021, and was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in the UK. Two of her pieces were also shortlisted for the Smokelong Quarterly Mikey Award, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and long listed for the Reflex Fiction Award.
Attended with the help of Nona Stuck Fiction Scholarship
Swathi Desai
Writer's Workshop Participant '17, '18Swathi Desai’s short story, “A Girl, Almost Ten”, was featured in the May 2021 issue of Faultline. https://issuu.com/faultlinejournal/docs/faultline30printfinal
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop participant '93, '94, '98; Writers Workshop teaching staff '08, '10Her newest novel, Sinking Islands, will be published by Red Hen Press in September, 2021.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop participant ‘00; Published Alumni Reading Series ‘03Her most recent novel, The Postmistress of Paris (HarperCollins, November, 2021) was included on Publishers Weekly’s notable literary fiction for fall 2021, and received a starred review praising its “lyrical, thought-provoking prose” and concluding, “This sterling portrait of a complex woman stands head and shoulders above most contemporary WWII fiction.” Meg’s international bestseller and National Jewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London is now forthcoming or published in 20 languages.
Kate Nason
Writer's Workshop Participant '18Her debut memoir, Everything is Perfect, narrated by the author, was released by Audible on August 5th.
Manjula Stokes
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '11Her novel, Celeste & Chris, workshopped at Community of Writers, was recently published.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant 08His essay “Places of Worship” appeared in Penmen Review on June 11, 2021. His essay “One Year After the Break-in” was published by Eclectica Magazine Vol.25, No.3 (July/August 2021).
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “The Saint” was published online in the summer 2021 issue of Baltimore Review, and will be included in the magazine’s annual print anthology. Also published online is an audio recording (check the horizontal black bar at the bottom of the screen) of Gaitonde reading his story, with music by Lydian Nadhaswaram.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant, '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her first novel, Italian Love Cake (Bordighera Press, 2021), about a young Italian American woman struggling to save her family’s store on the eve of WWII, will be translated into French and published by Éditions Anne Carrière, Spring 2022.
Barry Garelick
Writers Workshops Participant '92His book Out on Good Behavior: Teaching Math While Looking Over Your Shoulder was published by John Catt Educational, in January, 2021.
Anne Chadwick
Writers Workshops Participant '02, '04Splitting Heirs, written and illustrated by Anne Chadwick (McCaa Books, July, 2021), reimagines her grandfather’s legal quest to find the rightful heirs of mysterious loner. In 1923, a puritanical lawyer teams with a profligate genealogist on an odyssey from Los Angeles to Paris and Provence, where they encounter characters ranging from grateful to greedy and sympathetic to seductive. This historical courtroom fiction explores multicultural perspectives on families and kinship.
Andrew Tonkovich
1993His short story “Bone Saw,” a fantastical political meditation responding to the murder of journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi appears in the recent Technology issue of ZYZZYVA.
Marcia Meier
Writers Workshop participant, 2019Her latest book, Face, A Memoir (January 2021, Saddle Road Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Eric M. Hoffer Book Award grand prize, and won honorable mention in the memoir category. Her essat, “Skin Craft,” which is about her relationship with her surgeon and derived from the book, was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Short Memoir Prize, and is in the latest edition of Reed Magazine.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “Outside the Mayan” recently appeared in Story Issue 10.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Lawrence Coates
Fiction Workshop participant '17His story “The Ferry and the Road” appeared in the April 2021 issue of Story. An excerpt of this story was workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2017.
Joseph Holt
Writers Workshop Participant, '18His debut story collection, Golden Heart Parade, will be published by Santa Fe Writers Project in September, 2021. Golden Heart Parade was a winner of the SFWP Literary Awards, which were judged by Carmen Maria Machado. In her comments, Machado wrote, “I loved this collection—it’s raw, dark, and surprisingly funny. . . . There’s so much precision and verve in these stories. I was captivated the entire way through.”
Nawaaz Ahmed
Writers Workshops Participant, '11His debut novel, Radiant Fugitives, following three generations of a Muslim Indian family confronted with a nation on the brink of change in Obama-era San Francisco and Texas, was published by Counterpoint Press on August 3, 2021.
Attended with the help of Ford scholarship
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant; Writers Workshop co-directorHer article “A reading guide to legendary Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez” was recently published in the Los Angeles Times Books section.
Cory Wilson
Writer's Workshop Participant, '15He has signed an agreement with Los Angeles based publisher Mystic Boxing Commission. His debut novel, A Kiss Away, will be released Fall, 2021.
Wendy Voorsanger
Writers Workshops Participant '16 or '17Her historical novel, Prospects of a Woman, published in October, 2020 from She Writes Press, has won 7 awards: 2021 IPPY Awards Gold Winner in Best Regional Fiction-West-Pacific, 2021 Independent Press Awards Winner in Western Fiction, 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in Regional Fiction, 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in First Novel, 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Western Fiction, 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Regional Fiction: West, and 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Book Interior Design: Fiction.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshop Participant: '11, '12, '14, '16Her essay “Dancing on the Blade” won the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award in Nonfiction and appears in the spring 2021 issue of Under the Sun.
Attended with the help of 2011: George Pascoe Miller; 2012: Carlisle Family; 2014: Eshleman Scholarship
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story “Patroness” appears in the latest issue of Pacifica Literary Review.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshop Participant, ‘07, ‘11Her short story collection, A Place Remote, (West Virginia University Press) has won a Silver IPPY in the Great Lakes – Best Regional Fiction category.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshops Participant '87, frequent Writers Workshops Special Guest, Member of Board of DirectorsA new documentary, Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir, recently premiered on PBS. Amy Tan is an intimate portrait of the groundbreaking writer that interweaves archival imagery, including home movies and personal photographs, animation and original interviews to tell the inspiring story of Tan’s life and career. To watch, click here.
Mary Dixie Carter
Writers Workshops Participant '17Her debut novel The Photographer will be published by Minotaur Books/ St. Martin’s Press (U.S.) on May 25, 2021 and by Hodder Books (UK) on May 13, 2021.
Laura Otis
Writers Workshops Participant, '08, '11She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2021-2022 to work on a book she is calling The Neuroscience of Craft. The book will analyze contemporary fiction-writers’ techniques for helping readers to blend senses in their imaginations.
Casey Guerin
Writers Workshop Participant ’19Her short story “What Consumes You” won the 2020 Greensboro Review Robert Watson Literary Prize and appears in the Spring 2021 issue, as well as online.
Monica West
Writers Workshop participant '09, '12Her novel, Revival Season, will be published by Simon and Schuster on June 15, 2021.
Mark Coggins
Writers Workshops Participant 1996, Screenwriting Workshop Participant 2001His newest book, Street Stories, a street photography monograph, will be published by Poltroon Press in May, 2021.
Leslie Hsu Oh
2020, 2019 Writers Workshops ParticipantA chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published in the February 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure.
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship
Stacy D Flood
Writers Workshop Participant, '98An unanchored traveler meets devastating consequences as he searches for a new life in The Salt Fields, a debut work of prose from Stacy D. Flood, a stark and poignant Southern Gothic novella focused on the African American Great Migration after the Second World War, and a work that will leave readers thinking long after the final page.
Attended with the help of Getty Scholarship
Ron Nyren
Writers Workshops Participant, '94Ron Nyren’s novel The Book of Lost Light was the finalist for the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction.
RONALD ALEXANDER
Summer 1995His story, “Marrow,” appears in the January 2021 issue of The Hong Kong Review. Alexander is an instructor at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program in Los Angeles.
Jenny Pritchett
Writers Workshops Participant '04Her new book, You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood, was published by Running Press/Hachette in May, 2021. An audiobook is also available.
Attended with the help of Walker Foundation Scholarship
Eileen Garvin
Writers Workshop Participant '16Her debut novel, The Music of Bees, will be published on April 27 by Dutton.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97 , Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer new novel, Sinking Islands, will be published in September, 2021 by Red Hen Press. It has been chosen as the Rumpus Book Club pick for July, and she will be interviewed on A Mighty Blaze by Lisa Genova on April 29.
Tiphanie Yanique
Her new novel, Monster in the Dark, will be published by Penguin in October, 2021.
Katherine Field Rothschild
Writing Workshop Participant, 02Her young adult novel, Wider than the Sky, about sisters in the aftermath of their father’s sudden death who discover family secrets, was published by Soho Teen on January 19, 2021.
Lynn Gordon
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Her stories appeared in the spring 2021 issues of Prime Number Magazine and The Louisville Review.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story ‘The Worth of a Miracle’ was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers Studio, Nottingham, England. His story, along with stories of other winners and finalists, have been published in the anthology Black Lives, in the United Kingdom, available as print and Kindle editions.
Joan Steinau Lester
Writers Workshop Participant '03Her memoir, Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, will be published May 18, 2021, from the University of Wisconsin Press. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker says, “This book is the real deal, the way it was. A good book for folks to grow on. I love it.”
Martin J. Smith
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis newest book, Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads, will be published on April 15 by Bower House Books (hardcover) and Tantor Media (audio). This is longtime staff member Smith’s fifth nonfiction book, in addition to his five suspense novels.
Alma Katsu
Her novel, Red Widow, will be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on March 23.
Carol Edgarian
Her new novel, Vera, was recently published by Scribner.
David Loux
His debut novel, Chateau Laux, will be released in April, 2021.
Yang Huang
Writers Workshops Participant,'19Her third literary novel, My Good Son, won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. It was published on April 29, 2021.
“MY GOOD SON is about a tailor named Mr. Cai in post-Tiananmen China and the dreams he holds for his only son, Feng. Mr. Cai schemes with one of his clients, Jude, a gay American expat, to get his son to the States, and the novel, about parental expectations, social class, and sexuality, highlights both the similarities and differences between Chinese and American cultures.”
Attended with the help of Barbara Hall Memorial Scholarship
JoAnne Tompkins
Writers Workshop Fiction Participant, '06, '10Her debut novel, What Comes After, will be published by Riverhead Books on April 13th, 2021.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshops Participant '06, '10Her novel The Bohemians was published on April 6, 2021, by Ballantine. The novel imagines the friendship between a young Dorothea Lange and her Chinese American assistant in 1920s San Francisco.
Grant Farley
Writers WorkshopsHis novel, Bones of a Saint, will be published by Soho Press March 16, 2021. The opening chapter to this novel was first treated in workshop at the Community of Writers.
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her debut novel Sirens & Muses will be published by Ballantine/Random House in 2022.
Attended with the help of the O'Dwyer Scholarship
Merridawn Duckler
Writers Workshop participant '07Her short story won the Elizabeth Sloane Tyler Memorial Award from Woven Tale Press, judged by Ann Beattie, and appeared in the 2019 issue of Woven Tale magazine.
Merridawn Duckler
Writers Workshop participant '07Her chapbook Idiom recently won the Washburn Prize from Harbor Review.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshop Participant '08He has recently been named a fellow in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard.
Regina Louise
Writers Workshops Participant '01, '14; Screenwriting Participant, '03Her new book, Permission Granted: Kickass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love, will be published by New World Library in June, 2021. Permission Granted illustrates proven paths from “you couldn’t possibly” to “just watch me!” Regina Louise puts a unique spin on tried-and-true techniques of personal growth, coaching readers to deeply understand who they are and what they have been through. From this self-awareness, they can move into self-compassion and learn to give themselves the care and support they may have lacked.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside Scholarship
Marcia Butler
Writer's Workshop Participant '16Her third book, and second novel, Oslo, Maine, releases on March 2, 2021 from Central Avenue Publishing.
Kate Hope Day
Writers Workshop Participant '16; Published Alumni Reading Series '19Her second novel, In the Quick, will be published by Random House on March 2, 2021.
Andrew Nicholls
Fiction Participant, '14He has a new book, Comedy Writer, about techniques and habits of mind for humor writing. The paperback is half craft, including exercises, and half information about markets. It covers TV, monologue, animation, stage and print, expanding on an undergrad course Andrew taught at UC Davis as Artist in Residence in 2019. Andrew was also the former head writer for Johnny Carson.
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshops Participant, '86-89; Screenwriting, '05His new novel, Escape from Castro’s Cuba, will be published by University of Nebraska Press in March,2021, with endorsements from Daniel Silva, Jane Leavy and former big-league pitcher Luis Tiant. Escape is a sequel to his award-winning novel Castro’s Curveball.
Stephanie Austin
Writer's Workshops Participant, '12Her essay “Something I Might Essay” appears in the February 2021 issue of The Sun magazine.
Hanna Bahedry
Writers Workshop Participant ‘19Her short story “Key Change” was recently published in the Maine Review.
Laura Otis
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '11She has just published The Memory Hive, a novel about a woman struggling to survive with an abusive husband, a demented mother, and a demanding job. In a non-linear way, the story unfolds in 50 interconnected episodes, exploring the way that memory works.
Chad Michael Lange
Writers Workshop Participant, '99, '02, '07His short story “The Tutor” was published in the Winter 2021 issue of Catamaran.
John B. Roberts II
Writers Workshops Participant '18His book, Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Reelection Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferraro, (McFarland 2020) has been optioned by a major television network for a forthcoming series.
Robert Steven Williams
Writers Workshops Participant, '04, 05,He recently launched Gatsby in Connecticut head-on into the global pandemic thinking the film festival circuit might bring attention to his documentary. The film, starring Sam Waterston and narrated by Keir Dullea, made The New Yorker’s Best Movies List for 2020. According to The New Yorker, the film develops in poignant detail the story of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s wild summer of 1920. Available on Amazon Prime, major cable and other digital platforms in the US/Canada. ROW in 2021. Distributed by Vision Films.
Jessi Phillips
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her short story “Anything You Ask Me To”, was a finalist in the Nimrod Literary Awards and appears in the Fall/ Winter 2020 issue.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop, '17Her short story “Fatherhood” appears online in the December 2020 issue of Hobart.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His two-part multimedia essay “Ode to Beethoven” (illustrated, with embedded videos) to mark the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven, was published by Serenade magazine.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His essay “The Milk in Many Lands” appeared in the 2020 issue (No: 3) of the literary magazine, Stonecrop.
Katherine Seligman
Writers Workshops Participant '14Her debut novel, At the Edge of the Haight, which won the 2019 PEN/Bellwether prize, will be published by Algonquin Books in January, 2021.
Monika Rose
Poetry Workshop participant '97; Writers Workshop participant '00; Art of the Wild participant '95, '96She wrote and illustrated an early reader children’s book, Bed Bumps, in 2020, published by Manzanita Writers Press. Bed Bumps is a poetic tale of a little boy grappling with organization issues and a mischievous sister.
Carol Orange
Writers Workshop Participant 2013A Discerning Eye by Carol Orange was published by Cavan Bridge Press in October 2020. An audiobook narrated by Campbell Scott and Kathleen McElfresh was launched in December 2020. The story takes off from the tragic robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Jack Estes
Writers Workshops Participant, '98 & ScreenwritingParticipant, '05Jack Estes’ new novel, Searching for Gurney, which follows the lives of three US Marines and a North Vietnamese soldier during the Vietnam war, was published by O’Callahan Press in November 10, 2020.
Jenn Alandy Trahan
Writers Workshops Participant, '08, '17Jenn Alandy Trahan’s short story, “The Freak Winds Up Again,” is the November 2020 issue (#271) of One Story.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Rhoda Huffey
Writers Workshops Participant, '85/ Writers Workshop staff, 2000 onwardRhoda Huffey’s novel 31 Paradiso will be published by Delphinium Books in the spring of 2022.
Attended with the help of attended on UCI scholarship
Marcia Meier
Writers Workshop Participant, '19; Janet Fitch's Writing from the Senses Workshop, '20Her book, Face, A Memoir, will be published Jan. 12, 2021, by Saddle Road Press.
Lucille Lang Day
Writers Workshop participant '78, '79; Poetry Workshop participant '76Her seventh full-length poetry collection, Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place, was published by Blue Light Press in November, 2020.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Her first collection of poetry, Manhattan My Ass, You’re in Oakland, will be published by EquiDistance Press in December, 2020.
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop Participant '83; Screenwriting Workshop participant '84She will be giving a talk on her new book Batu, Khan of the Golden Horde: The Mongol Khans Conquer Russia for the Virtual Speakers Series of the American Center for Mongolian Studies in Ulan Batur.
This is the first book in her Silk Road Series, about the successors of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan). The other books in the series are forthcoming.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “How Does Your Garden Grow?” appeared in the 2020 issue of the literary magazine, The Broken Plate.
Lorraine Comanor
Writer’s Workshop participant '09Her essay “Walking with Birds,” published in Boulevard, fall 2019, made the Notables of Best American Essays of 2020.
Swathi Desai
Writers Workshop Participant, '17, '18Her short story “Lady: Part I” appears in the November 2020 issue of the literary magazine Orca.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis short story and novella collection, Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations, was published in November, 2020, from What Books Press. The collection features eight short stories which appeared originally in Ecotone, Juked, Orange Coast Review, Faultline and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and a novella featuring the famous alpine lake. Realism and absurdism, unrealism and political autobiography all mixed up for our weird moment. Cover art by the legendary Gronk.
Colleen Morton Busch
Writers Workshops Participant, '04, '15Her piece about her family’s deliberations over what to do about her father’s Michigan mail-in ballot when it arrived one day after he died in September 2020 appeared in The Washington Post. Her piece about Jane Hirshfield’s latest collection, Ledger, was featured in Orion and Wild Hope earlier this year.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09She judged the 2020 High Plains Book Award for Fiction (winner: Joe Wilkins’ Fall Back Down When I Die). She taught workshops for Hampton Roads Convergence of Writers and the Brandeis National Committee. And she was recently interviewed by Sean Murphy, Executive Director of 1455 Literary Arts, about books, the writing process, and more.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Darien Hsu Gee
Writers Workshop participant '99She will have two new titles published this year: Other Small Histories (Poetry Society of America, 2019 Chapbook Fellowship winner), and Allegiance: Micro Essays, in which she dissects her beliefs and navigates the complexity of family dynamics in search of her identity–– What does it mean to be Chinese American? How are we reflected in the people we love, and us in them? What obligation do we have to those who share our blood, and how does a woman claim her life as her own?
Ellery Akers
Art of the Wild teaching staff '94Her new poetry book, Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, was recently featured in The New York Times Magazine; Naomi Shihab Nye, the NYT editor, described the book as “powerful.”
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild, Participant, '92His book-length poem, Azorean Suite/ Suite Açoriana, was published in a bilingual (English/Portuguese) edition by Letras Lavadas in October, 2020.
Lyndsey Ellis
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Her debut novel, Bone Broth, will be published by Hidden Timber Books in spring 2021. Her short story, “Jazz & Other Words for Love,” appeared in issue 2 of the Community of Writers’ new online literary journal, Omnium Gatherum Quarterly.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship (Waimea Williams)
Ron Nyren
Writers Workshops Participant, '94His debut novel, The Book of Lost Light, won the 2019 Big Moose Prize and will be published by Black Lawrence Press on November 16, 2020. It’s the story of Joseph Kylander, his obsessive photographer father, and the impulsive young cousin helping to raise him, as they take refuge with a group of artists in the Berkeley hills after the 1906 earthquake.
David Kerns
Writers Workshop Participant, '07His novel, Fortnight on Maxwell Street, recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for the best general fiction book of 2018, has been released as an audiobook performed by Chicago voice and stage actor Doug MacKechnie. The novel is a reluctant hero’s journey of fear and courage set in Chicago in the spring of 1968. 24-year-old medical student Nick Weissman spends two weeks delivering babies in the kitchens and bedrooms of the inner-city’s slum tenements. Over his head medically, and unprotected in one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, his character and resourcefulness are tested in the extreme when a national tragedy intervenes.
Jacquelyn Stolos
Writers Workshops Participant '14, '19Jacquelyn Stolos’ debut novel, Edendale, will be published by Creature Publishing on October 20, 2020.
Jessica O’Dwyer
Writers' Workshop Participant '06, '16, '18Her debut novel, Mother Mother, was published by Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press on October 1, 2020.
Maria Espinosa
Writers Workshop Participant '93Her latest novel, Suburban Souls, was published on October 15, 2020, by Tailwinds Press.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “The Hardy Girls” appeared in the 2020 spring/summer issue of Maryland Literary Review. His Essay “My Father and Me Too” was published in Green Hills Literary Lantern’s GHLL XXXI (2020).
Mary Kuryla
Fiction Participant, '10; Published Alumni Reading Series '19Her novel, Away to Stay, will be published by Regal House Press in September, 2021.
Thomas Allbaugh
Writers Workshops Participant '13His chapbook, The View from January, was published by Kelsay Books in January, 2020.
Holiday Reinhorn
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her short story, “Sagrada Familia,” (workshopped at the Community of Writers Summer Workshop in ’17) was featured as ‘Story of The Week’ at Narrative Magazine and appeared in the Fall 2020 issue. Other stories by Holiday are upcoming in the Fall 2020 issue of Ploughshares and the Spring 2021 issue of American Short Fiction.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis short story and novella collection, Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations, arrives in November, 2020, from What Books Press. The collection features eight short stories which appeared originally in Ecotone, Juked, Orange Coast Review, Faultline and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and a novella featuring the famous alpine lake. Realism and absurdism, unrealism and political autobiography all mixed up for our weird moment. Cover art by the legendary Gronk.
Dorothea Bonneau
Writers Workshop Participant '12Her historical fiction, Once in a Blood Moon, was a 2020 American Fiction Winner for the African American Category. The novel is also a 5 Star Reader’s Choice pick.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73A translation of his novel, The Splendid City, to Spanish by Chilean novelist, Jaime Collyer, will be published on December 1, 2020.
Wendy Voorsanger
Writers Workshop participant '16Her debut novel, Prospects of a Woman, is available October, 2020 from She Writes Press. A gripping and illuminating window into life in the Old West, Prospects of a Woman is the story of one woman’s passionate quest to carve out a place for herself in the liberal and bewildering society that emerged during the California gold rush frenzy. Featured in BuzzFeed as “New Historical Fiction Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down This Fall.” Favorable Early Reviews: “The author’s language is evocative and beautiful.”—Kirkus. “A lusty, intelligent, and captivating portrait of a woman in early California.”—Foreward. “A fascinating, complex, dark, and beautiful novel.”—Douglas Glover
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop participant '17Her essay “What Would You Call It?” appears online at North American Review.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop '19His short story “A Trip to the Store: A Memoir” appears in VOICES 2020, a themed issue of Dreams, Desires & Delusions from Cold River Press.
Oakley Hall
Co-Founder of the Community of Writers and Writers Workshops Staff Member.His classic proto-postmodern novel Warlock, is featured in Library of America’s new anthology, The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s & 50, edited by Ron Hansen (September, 2020). The book also includes The Ox-Bow Incident (Van Tilburg Clark), Shane (Schaefer), The Searchers (Le May).
Read Thomas Pynchon’s 1965 review of Warlock.
Aida Salazar
Writers Workshop participant '07Her second novel, Land of the Cranes, was published in September, 2020, from Scholastic Press. It is about a little girl and her pregnant mother who are caged in an immigration detention facility. The book has already gained a starred review from KIRKUS who called it, “powerful… lyrical… soaring…” and another starred review by Publisher’s Weekly who called it “Lyrical, passionate, and all-too timely.” It was a BookCon 2020 Middle Grade Buzz Book and was featured on the Cultural Frontline on the BBC’s World Service’s program Cultural Impact.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff; Writers Workshop Participant, '91, '92Her poem “On the Origin of Karl Marx” appears in So It Goes, the annual literary journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship and Ancinas scholarship
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshops Participant, '07, '11Her short story collection, A Place Remote, was published in September, 2020, by West Virginia University Press.
Tyler McAndrew
Writers Workshop Participant, '19His short story, “The Storyteller,” recently appeared on The Baffler.
Attended with the help of Gill Dennis Memorial Scholarship
Kimberly Sheridan
Writers Workshop Participant ‘19Her essay, “Restoration,” was published by Entropy Magazine.
Inderjeet Mani
Writers Workshops Participant, '00His novel, Toxic Spirits (Calumet Editions, 2019), set in Thailand, is now being translated into multiple languages. Reviews have included “A complex and enthralling international intrigue with a treasure of remarkable detail” (Frederick Barthelme) and “Mani tells his story in taut, highly descriptive prose, capturing his Thai setting’s cornucopia of sights and tastes” (Kirkus).
Lev Grossman
Writers Workshop Participant '94His novel for children, The Silver Arrow, was published in September by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Writers Workshop teaching staff '18, '19; Writers Workshops in the Virtual Valley special guest '20She was recently awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction published in 2019 for her novel The Revisioners.
Donna Miscolta
Writers Workshop Participant '98Her third book, Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, was published by Jaded Ibis Press in September, 2020. It was listed in Ms. Magazine’s September 2020 Reads and Parade Magazine’s 20 New Fall Books From Latinx Writers.
Linda Olson
Writers Workshop Participant, '13Her debut memoir, Gone, will be published on October 27, 2020, from She Writes Press.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His essay “Lydian Nadhaswaram: From Musician to Actor – and Back” (on a child music prodigy in India making his movie debut) was published in Serenade magazine on Sep 3, 2020.
A.R. Taylor
Her new novel, Jenna Takes The Fall, was published September 1, 2020 from She Writes Press.
Swathi Desai
Writers Workshop Participant ‘17, ‘18Her short story, “The Big Men”, appears in the June 30th, 2020 issue of Prometheus Dreaming.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshop participant '11, '12, '14, '16Her essay “Destination: Okay” will be featured in a new anthology What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories about Premature Birth, due out November, 2020, from Melville House and available now for pre-orders. Subject matter from this essay—specifically the science of language acquisition— was originally workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2011.
Attended with the help of 2011: George Pascoe Miller Memorial Scholarship; 2012: Carlisle Family Scholarship; 2014: Eschelman Scholarship
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writers Workshop Participant '17She was recently honored as a 2020 Bainbridge Resident for The Seventh Wave, where her latest essay, “Foreign Domestic” is featured in their 11th Issue.
Attended with the help of The Ancinas Scholarship
John Roberts II
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Part memoir, part detective story and part political thriller, his non-fiction book Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Reelection Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferraro was published by McFarland & Company, Inc. in July, 2020.
Barbara B Ristine
Writers Workshops Participant '18Her novel, Faces of War, has been selected as a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s 2020 RISING STAR Award for Unpublished Women’s Fiction.
Barbara Fischkin
Writer's Workshop Participant '95Her piece on “Autism in the Time of Covid” was published in Statorec, as part of a 31-author series on the Pandemic – so that we won’t forget.
Jeff W. Bens
Writers Workshop participant '93His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out September 15, 2020, from Blackstone Publishing.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “At Home and Away,” set against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent memory, the Sri Lanka civil war, was published in the Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Epiphany.
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction Participant '93His short story “Metonymy” was a finalist in the Solstice Summer Fiction Contest, and appears in the magazine’s current issue.
Jeff Bens
Writers Workshop participant '93His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.
Lori Tobias
Writers Workshop participant '94, '95Her memoir, Storm Beat: A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast, is due out in September, 2020, from Oregon State University.
Judy Batalion
Writers Workshop participant '11Her new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, will be published by HarperCollins in June, 2020.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop participant '18Her short story, “The Duck Walk” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Phoebe Journal.
Lise Haines
Writers Workshop participant '99She has an essay up on the Broad Street Blog.
Penny Cagan
Poetry Participant '92, '93; Writers Workshop participant '92She has entered into a 7 1/2 year cycle called Daf Yomi, where people around the world read the same portion of the Talmud each day. She has been writing daily about the readings from a literary perspective in the Times of Israel. Her blog can be found here.
Lorraine Comanor
Writers Workshop participant '09Her essay “Walking with Birds” was published in the Fall 2019 issue of Boulevard.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop participant '14, '19She recently received 2 gold medals from the NATJA Travel Media Awards. “Painting the Next Chapter,” published in Adventure Journal won gold in Lifestyle, Personality & Profiles and “What It’s Like to Break Bread in the Desert” in Saveur Magazine won gold in Family Travel.
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship
Grace Talusan
Writers Workshops Participant '98; Published Alumni Reading Series '19The paperback of her memoir, The Body Papers, was published by Restless Books in March 2020 with a new afterword, reading guide, and interview. Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan’s memoir The Body Papers bravely explores her experiences with sexual abuse, depression, cancer, and life as a Filipino immigrant, supplemented with government documents, medical records, and family photos. The memoir is on the Must Reads (long list) for the 20th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards.
Vonetta Young
Writers Workshops Participant, ‘18Her short story, “Sand and Salt,” from which she began the novel chapter she workshopped at the Community of Writers, was published in the anthology, Furious Gravity in May, 2020. She also published another short story, “As Far Away,” in Gargoyle issue 71.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09She has an essay in the upcoming anthology, Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19, published by Central Avenue. All net profits will be donated to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, helping indie booksellers in need.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14He was a finalist in The Chautauqua Institution’s 2020 Janus Prize “for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.”
Kris Newby
Writers Workshop participant '17She was recently awarded a Nautilus Award (Silver) for her book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. With a Kirkus starred review, it was also listed as one of the “best books of 2019” by Bookworm and Stanford Medicine, as well as the #1 book in public health by BookAuthority.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19Her personal essay “Wanting Warhol: My Connections to Andy Warhol” appears in the June 2020 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “Kismet” was published in Pembroke Magazine, Issue No 52, 2020.
Lyndsey Ellis
Writers Workshop participant '17Her debut novel, Bone Broth, will be published in spring 2021 by Hidden Timber Books.
Wayétu Moore
Writers Workshop participant 2009; Published Alumni Reading Series 2019Her memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, was published June 2, 2020, by Graywolf Press.
Maxima Kahn
Poetry Participant, '07; Writers Workshops Participant '06, '10Her first full-length collection of poems, Fierce Aria, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in summer 2020.
Attended with the help of Mary Turnbull Scholarship
Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Her novel, Copy Boy, will be published by She Writes Press, June, 2020.
Christina Adams
Writers Workshop participant '00She was recently awarded the Nautilus Book Award for her book Camel Crazy: A Quest for Miracles in the Mysterious World of Camels.
Scott Edward Anderson
His book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was recently awarded the First Literary Prize from Letras Lavadas, in conjunction with PEN Azores.
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Writers Workshop Participant '04Her short story, “The Runaway,” appeared in The Broadkill Review, January – February 2020 issue. An essay, “How I Lost My Vegan,” appeared in the February 2020 issue of Literary Veganism; Editions Bibliotekos.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshops Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19Her novel, Italian Love Cake, will be published by Bordighera Press, April 2021. Italy and America collide in this story of feminism and political awakening in late 1930’s America.
Eileen Garvin
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her novel Bee Music was purchased at auction by Dutton for publication in 2021. The novel chronicles the story of three lonely residents in a rural Oregon town, each struggling to deal with one of life’s curveballs — a teenager who has just become paraplegic after a freak accident, a middle-aged widow suffering from panic attacks, and a young man with social anxiety — who come together on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing and maybe even a second chance. Eileen is the author of How to be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism and has written for PsychologyToday.com, The Oregonian and Creative Nonfiction Magazine (forthcoming).
Susan Starbird
Writers Workshop Participant '04Nonfiction fragmentologist Susan Starbird launched the fifth issue of Susan The Magazine, with the theme of Varmints. Prior issues focused on water, women, work, and cars. All are available from Amazon, findable if you search the author’s name.
Elison Alcovendaz
Writers Workshop participant '16His flash fiction piece, “The Assimilation of Boyboy Santos” (originally published in Lost Balloon magazine), was selected for inclusion in the Best Small Fictions 2020 anthology.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Christine Sunderland
Writers Workshops Participant, ‘05Her seventh novel, Angel Mountain, has been published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. Set on Mount Diablo in the present day, the story is about a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a Christian geneticist who search for peace and happiness in a culture of chaos. Themes include history and memory, faith and science, human dignity and free speech. “In Angel Mountain, Christine Sunderland has created a gripping and theologically rich novel, in which four remarkable people make their way through a shifting cultural landscape ringed with apocalyptic fire, revolutionary politics, and end-times expectancy.” Wilfred M. McClay, University of Oklahoma (jacket endorsement).
Robert Stone
The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction is a vast collection of Robert Stone’s nonfiction, from war reporting to literary criticism, and was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in March, 2020. Stone was a staff member from the very early years, and a longtime friend of the Community of Writers
Ryan Ridge
Writers Workshop participant '10His new collection of short stories, New Bad News, will be published by Sarabande Books in May, 2020.
Ksenia Lakovic
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her short story “A Man at the End of the Hallway” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It was published in Scoundrel Time, in October 2019.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop participant '14, '19Her two short stories were recently awarded gold medals at the NATJA Travel Media Awards in the Family Travel and Profile categories.
Elizabeth Kadetsky
Writers Workshop Participant, '98, '04; Alumni Reader, '04Her fourth book, The Memory Eaters, winner of the first Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in March 2020. She is currently undertaking her second Fulbright fellowship to India.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship
Edan Lepucki
Writers Workshop participant '07; Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '18She edited the upcoming book, Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them, which is due out April, 2020, from Abrams Image.
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14; Writers Workshop participant '04, '15; Published Alumni Reading Series '19Her novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, recently won the Award for Literature in Adult Fiction from the Asian/ Pacific American Library Association.
Elana K. Arnold
Arnold, Elana K.Her new children’s book, An Ordinary Day, was published in March, 2020, by Beach Lane Books.
Alia Volz
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '14Her debut memoir, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2020.
Attended with the help of Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship; Oakley "Tad" Hall Prose Scholarship
Alma Katsu
Writers Workshop participant '03Her new book, The Deep, was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in March, 2020.
John DeSimone
Writers Workshop participant '11, '12His new novel, The Road to Delano, was recently published by Rare Bird Books in March, 2020.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant; Co-Director of the Fiction Workshop.Her poem, “Imagining my Grandmother on the Laredo Bridge, 1917,” was recently published in the Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review.
April Dávila
Writers Workshop participant '18Her new novel, 142 Ostriches, was published in February, 2020, by Kensington.
Jeff Bens
Writers Workshop ParticipantHis new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97, Teaching Staff 2010Her short story collection, Vanishing, won the 2019 Leapfrog Fiction Contest, and was published in March, 2020. Sinking Islands, the sequel to her novel Weather Women, will be published in early 2021. She is pleased to be an Authors Guild ambassador for the new Portland, Oregon chapter.
Bill Pieper
Writers Workshop Participant '10His new book, Borders and Boundaries, was published by Cold River Press in March, 2020.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop participant '72, '73His newest novel, the second in a trilogy, When Clara was Twelve, was published in March, 2020.
Susan M. Gaines
Writers Workshop Participant '94; Alumni Reading Series (Carbon Dreams) '01Her new novel, Accidentals, was published by Torrey House Press in March, 2020.
Attended with the help of Scholarship
Anthony Mohr
Writers Workshop Participant '08His essay “The Fairest of the Fair” appeared in Streetlight Magazine.
Andrew Altschul
Writers Workshops Participant, '97His third novel, The Gringa, was published in March, 2020, by Melville House.
Aimee Liu
Writers Workshop participant '94Her new novel, Glorious Boy, which will be published by Red Hen Press in May, 2020, was recently selected by Good Housekeeping as one of the best books of 2020.
Caroline Kim
Writers Workshops Participant, '18, '19Her short story collection, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, won the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2020.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop '19His short story, “The Citron Tree,” will appear in the Spring 2020 issue of The McNeese Review.
Dani Burlison
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her short story collection, Some Places Worth Leaving, was published by Tolsun Books in February 2020.
Christine Sunderland
Writers Workshops Participant, 05Her seventh novel, Angel Mountain, has been contracted to be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in 2020. Set on Mount Diablo in the present day, the story involves a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a faithful geneticist who meet in a world of earthquake, fire, and mob violence. Themes include human dignity and free speech, history and memory, faith and science.
Clancy McGilligan
Writers Workshop Participant '17His novella, History of an Executioner, was published in January, 2020, by Miami University Press after winning the 2019 Novella Prize.
Attended with the help of SpringCreek Foundation Scholarship
Cameron Walker
Writers Workshops Participant, '02, '04His essay collection, Points of Light, won the 2019 Tamaqua Award from Hidden River Arts Press.
Amanda Eyre Ward
Writers Workshop participant '92Her new novel, The Jetsetters, was published by Ballantine Books in February, 2020.
Gretchen McCullough
Writers' Workshop, '06, '08, '19Her essay “Alexandria Melodies” about Alexandria, Egypt and its writers was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books in December, 2019.
Devi S. Laskar
Writers Workshop participant '04, '15; Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14Her novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, was recently awarded the Crook’s Corner Book Prize.
Lisa Braver Moss
Writers Workshop Participant, '03Her novel Shrug has won first prize in YA historical fiction in the 2019 Moonbeam Awards, and was a finalist in the 2019 “Best Book” awards.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshops Participant '11, '12, '14, '16Hers memoir, Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home, workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016, was awarded the 2019 National Indie Excellence Award for memoir.
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller Scholarship ('11), Carlisle Family Scholarship ('12), Eshleman Scholarship ('14)
Joy Ma
Writers Workshops, 2004Her new book, The Deoliwallahs, was published by Pan Macmillan India in December. It is a non-fiction account of her family and the stories of several Chinese Indians who were interned after the war between India and China in 1962. An essay about it appears on Scroll.In.
Vanessa Hua
Writers Workshop participant '08, '17; Writers Workshop teaching staff '19Her book of short stories, Deceit and Other Possibilities, recently rereleased with three additional tales, received a starred review from Kirkus.
Sean Marciniak
Writers Workshop participant '09, '14His short story, “Bridge of the Hallelujahs”, appeared in the autumn 2019 issue of Orca, and was nominated for a Pushcart prize.
Nancy Kelly
Screenwriting Workshop participant '83, '00; Writers Workshop participant '06, '16The new digital restoration of her film, Thousand Pieces of Gold, enjoyed several screenings at the Rafael Film Center in November, 2019.
Katherine Rothschild
Writers Workshop participant '03Her YA novel on sisterhood in an untraditional family, Hope and Other Feathered Things, will be published by Soho Teen in early 2020.
Lisa D Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant, '92, '93; Staff since '96.Her poem “9 Line Cento for Now” was recently published by “What Rough Beast.”
Attended with the help of UCI and the Ancinas scholarship
Lawrence Coates
Writers Workshop Participant '18His book of short fiction, Bank Run, has been published by Ascent Literary Journal. This is part of the same novel-in-progress he workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2018.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop participant '11Her short stories have won the first, third and fourth Strands International short story competitions.
Sally Abbott
Writers Workshop participant '85, '01, '03, '06, '13Her novel Miami in Virgo was published by Woodbine Odyssey in October, 2019.
Mame Ekblom Cudd
Writers Workshop Participant '09, '11Her short story, “Into a Neat Line,” was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Contest. Her novel, Shooting Rockets at The Moon, was a finalist in the Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner Society’s 2019 Novel-in-Progress category.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her short story “The Ghost Rider,” workshopped at the Community of Writers, took the editor’s choice award for Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver short story contest and appears alongside an interview in the 2019 fall issue of Carve.
Andrew Roe
Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '04His short story “Is Someone Going to Say Something to the Woman Crying on BART?” will appear in the Winter 2019 issue of ZYZZYVA.
Joy J Ma
Writers Workshop Participant '04Her new book, The Deoliwallahs, will be published by Pan Macmillan India in December. It is a non-fiction account of her family and the stories of several Chinese Indians who were interned after the war between India and China in 1962.
Merridawn Duckler
Writers Workshop participant '07Her chapbook of poems, Interstate, was recently published by from Dancing Girl Press.
Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, Devi Laskar
Tamika Thompson Writers Workshop participant '15; Pallavi Dhawan Writers Workshop participant '15, Devi Laskar Writers Workshop participant '04, '15, Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14Community of Writers alums Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, and Devi Laskar have co-edited a new anthology called POC United: Graffiti, released on October 15 and available now through Aunt Lute Books.
Sharon McElhone
Writers Workshops Participant '06An excerpt from her memoir entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein” appears in the Fall 2019 Volume IX issue of Label Me Latina/o.
Marianne Villanueva
Writers Workshop Participant, July 2014Her memoir-in-flash, A Prayer Answered, was in Signs, a special themed issue of Jellyfish Review: September 2019. Her story “Tu-an Ju” was in the Otherworld/Underworld of University of Hawai’i – Manoa’s e-zine vice-versa. Her story “Things She Can Take” was in the Prairie Schooner Winter 2018 special issue on Opioids.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop participant '88, '89, 91, '99; Screenwriting Workshop participant '01His new book, The Compass of Character: Creating Complex Motivation for Compelling Characters in Fiction, Film, and TV, was published in November, 2019, by Writer’s Digest Books.
Eddy Ancinas
Writers Workshop participant '72The 70th Anniversary Edition of her SKADE Award-Winning book, Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys, was published in October, 2019.
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild participant, ‘92His newest book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was published by Homebound Publications as part of its Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His essay, “Gandhi and the Mantle of the Mahatma” written to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary (October 2nd) was published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, New York.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant '01His essay collection, Outlier Heart: Essays From My Life As An Immortalist, was published by IFERS Press.
Evan Brooke
Writers Workshop Participant '16His essay, “The Incredible Shrinking Sentence,” was recently published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Threepenny Review.
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshop participant '19Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published by University of Iowa Press in October, 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshop participant '19She was recently named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, a prize that aims to “recognize young, debut fiction writers whose work promised to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published on October 15, 2019 from University of Iowa Press.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jung Hae Chae
Writers Workshop participant '19Her essay “Pojangmacha People” recently won an emerging writers contest at Ploughshares. She brought a version of this essay to the Writers Workshop this past summer.
Laurie Ann Ann Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '14. Published Alumni Reading Series '17Her book World Gone Missing: Stories is the winner of 2018 Nautilus Book Prize silver medal in fiction.
Olga Zilberbourg
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Her English-language debut Like Water and Other Stories was published by WTAW Press in September, 2019, and received a glowing review from The Moscow Times.
Attended with the help of The Carlisle Family Scholarship
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant '14His essay, “Has India Had Its Stonewall Moment?” has been published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, to mark the first anniversary of the decriminalization of the LGBT community in India. June 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York. Gaitonde looks at both.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Partcipant '11She won the 2019 Strands International Flash Fiction first and third competitions with her stories “Howie” and “The Library.”
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her novel Italian Love Cake will be published by Bordighera Press in Fall 2020; a personal essay, “Beneath Snowy Foothills,” appears online in the July 2019 issue of Ovunque Siamo.
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story collection, Happy Like This, won Iowa’s 2019 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and will be released on October 15, 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Robin Page
Writers Workshop participant '02Her new book, Small Silent Things, was recently published by HarperCollins.
Jenn Alandy Trahan
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '17Her short story, “They Told Us Not to Say This,” published in Harper’s Magazine in September 2018, was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Colette Sartor
Writers Workshop participant '00Her collection of short stories, Once Removed, will be published in September, 2019, by University of Georgia Press. It recently received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Mark Coggins
Writers Workshops Participant, '96; Screenwriting Program Participant, '01His newest, The Dead Beat Scroll, the seventh novel in the August Riordan crime fiction series, was recently released from Down & Out Books.
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild Participant, '92His new book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, is being published by Homebound Publications as part of their Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop Participant, ‘00Her newest book, The Last Train to London, a novel based on the true story of the Vienna Kindertransports and the extraordinary woman who led the rescues, will be published by HarperCollins and HarperCollins-Canada September 10, and in translation in fifteen languages.
Maurya Simon
Writers Workshop Participant '84Her 10th volume of poetry, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2018, and was recently awarded a gold medal from the Benjamin Franklin Independent Book Awards. Her recent work has appeared in the The Georgia Review and The Gettysburg Review.
Claire Boyles
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Her essay, “Riding Ditch”, was recently published in the Summer 2019 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review. Her short story, “Lost Gun, $1000 Reward, No Questions”, won Boulevard’s Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers and will appear in the Fall 2019 issue.
Lisa Rappoport
Writers Workshop participant '94, Poetry Workshop participant '00Her new book of poetry, Penumbra, was recently published by Longship Press.
Dedria Humphries Barker
Writers Workshop participant ‘08, 15She featured in a July 2019 Facebook Live event “Poets in Pajamas,” sponsored by Sundress Publications.
Lorraine Comanor
Writers Workshop participant '09Her essays have recently appeared in The Gold Man Review and Ruminate ( shorts). Two are in press for the Euonia Review and Boulevard.
Yoav Potash
Writers Workshops Participant, '05, '08The American Jewish Press Association is honoring Yoav Potash with a Simon Rockower Award for Best Personal Essay, for his piece titled “How I learned all Israelis are not my father,” published by J. The Jewish News of Northern California. The American Jewish Press Association bills the Rockower Awards as “the Jewish Pulitzers.”
Attended with the help of Entrenkin Foundation Scholarship
Max Byrd
Writers Workshop participant '83, Writers Workshops teaching staff '18, '15, '13, '12, '11, '10, '09, '08, '06, '05, '04, '03, '02, '01, '00, '99, '98, '97, '96His newest novel, The Sixth Conspirator, will be released in August 2019 by Post Hill Press.
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction participant '94; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis new book, The Dairy of Anne Frank (and More Wish Fullfilment in the Noughties) is out now. Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review and host of Bibiocracy Radio, a weekly books show on Pacifica’s KPFK in Southern California.
Janet Fitch
Writers Workshop participant '93, Poetry Workshop participant '17, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '01, '02, '04, '06, '08, '09, '13, '15, '17Her newest novel, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, the sequel to her best-selling novel The Revolution of Marina M., was published by Little, Brown & Co. in July, 2019.
Alia Yunis
Writers Workshops Participant '04Her documentary feature, The Golden Harvest, which she wrote and directed, debuted at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in March, 2019, a top 10 international film festival, and was selected as “Best of the Fest” at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in April, 2019.
Adair McPherson
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Her debut picture book, Roadkill abc, was published by Xlibris Press in September, 2018.
Frances Badgett
Fiction Participant '99, '00, '02Her story “Half Hitch” that was published in Salamander in the Summer ’18 edition has been selected for Best of Small Fictions.
Jane Ciabattari
Writers Workshops teaching staff, '16Her new short story collection-in-progress, Arabella Leaves & Other Stories, was a finalist for the Dzanc Short Fiction Award. Her short story “Swarm” was published in The Slag Review on March 1, 2019. Her short story “Brooklyn After the Fall” was included in a flash anthology commissioned for Independent Bookstore Day in 2018, and also published in The Literary Hub.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, (HarperCollins, 2018) won the Western Writers of America Spur Award, in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Sharon McElhone
Writers Workshop Participant '06Her first chapter from her collection of personal essays on childcare and immigrant issues is forthcoming in the Label Me Latina/o Fall 2019 issue. The first chapter is entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshop participant '08His essay “Super Summer Spectacular” was reprinted in Air (A Hippocampus anthology).
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshops Participant, '03, '04, Writers Workshops Teaching StaffShe was interviewed by KQED Forum host Michael Krasny about her new book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Knopf, May 2019). The book was also reviewed in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook section, which called it “meticulously researched and inspiring.”
Janet Fitch
Poetry Workshop participant '17; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '01, '02, '04, '06, '08, '09, '13, '15, '17She recently celebrated the 2oth anniversary of the publication of White Oleander. It was released in May, 1999 from Back Bay Books.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant '04, '05, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '13, '15, '17His newest book, Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, will be published in June, 2019, by Unnamed Press.
Varley O’Connor
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '04, '12; Participant '88, '89Her fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in May 2019.
Karen Stefano
Writers Workshop Participant '08Her debut memoir, What A Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath, will be published by Rare Bird Books in June 2019.
Karen Laws
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '16Her story “Shadows Under Trees” is in the current issue of The Antioch Review (Volume 76, No. 4).
Karen’s essay on working with asylum seekers at the border is in the online journal Cagibi, Issue 6.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshop participant '87, Screenwriting Workshop participant '90, Writers Workshop teaching staff '99-'18The Joy Luck Club is celebrating its 30th birthday! A part of the manuscript was workshopped at the Community of Writers when Amy was first a participant.
Rachel Howard
Writers Workshop participant '13, Writers Workshop teaching staff '17, '19Her new novel, The Risk of Us, was released from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April, 2019.
Kris Newby
Writers Workshop participant '17Her new book, Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, will be released in May, 2019, from HarperCollins.
Varley O’Connor
Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press on May 7, 2019.
Clancy McGilligan
Writers Workshop Participant '17His novella History of an Executioner won the 2019 Novella Prize from Miami University Press, and will be published in 2020.
Attended with the help of SpringCreek Foundation Scholarship
Nathania Seales Oh
Writers Workshops Participant '18Her essay, “Orange is the No Black” was published in the September 2018 issue of Coast Magazine and online at the Orange County Register.
Ramona Reeves
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her short story won the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors Prize and appears in the Summer 2018 (Sept.) issue of Jabberwock Review. Another short story was runner-up in the Barry Hannah Prize for Fiction and appears in the Winter 2019 issue of Yalobusha Review.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '98, Teaching Staff 2010Her novel Weather Woman has won a Nautilus Book Award. The sequel to Weather Woman, called Sinking Islands, has just been sold and will be published in the spring of 2021. Her short story collection, Vanishing, won the 2018 Leapfrog Fiction Contest and will come out in 2020.
Lorraine Comanor
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her essay “The Year There Were No Mushrooms” appeared in November 2018 issue of The Goldman Review. Two pieces of flash non-fiction “The Lost Patient” and “That Which Saves Us” appeared in spring 2018 and recent 2019 issues of Ruminate.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant '01His essay, “The Inclusion Orthodoxy,” was published in Literary Yard, his essay, “Big Art,” was published in Image Journal: Good Letters, his short play, Intermission, is being performed at Winding Road Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, and his essay “Drinking from the Air” was selected for inclusion in the Transhumanism Handbook (Springer).
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant '14His trilogy of multimedia essays on India’s 13-year-old music prodigy Lydian Nadhaswaram was published in Serenade magazine in March 2019. Lydian Nadhaswaram won the CBS international talent show The World’s Best, which had competitors from all fields of arts & entertainment from 36 countries.
Amanda Fields
Writers Workshops Participant, '09She co-edited the essay collection, My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After, which will be published by The Experiment Press on May 1, 2019.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04, Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '15, '16, '18Her newest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, will be published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing in May, 2019.
Nettie Reynolds
Writers Workshop Participant '99Her new ten minute play, “Detecting Obstacles” will be produced as part of the annual “Out of Ink” Scriptworks festival in May. Nettie is currently working on her memoir as well, entitled, This is How You Start Over which details her leaving her PR career to become a spiritual death and dying chaplain.
Stephen Long
Writers Workshop participant '95, '06His newest book, All Hat, was recently released from Handin Hand Publishing.
Renee Thompson
Writers Workshops Participant, '03, '07, '09Her short story “The Winterist” won second prize in Narrative’s Fall 2018 Story Contest. This is Renee’s third appearance in the magazine; two previous stories appeared as “Stories of the Week.”
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry participant 2004, 2008, 2014 fiction participant 2004, 2015Her debut novel, The Atlas Of Reds And Blues, has been picked up abroad, and is being published by Fleet (an imprint of Little, Brown) in the UK and commonwealth countries and by Hachette India in the subcontinent.
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13His short story collection, Controlled Chaos, was published by Wheeler Street Press in April, 2019.
Donna DiGiuseppe (Matcovich)
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Her biographical novel, Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance, was published in January 2019 by ACMRS/Univ of Arizona. This historical fiction dramatizes the life of Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola, whose work will be a major exhibit at the Prado, Madrid in October 2019.
Martina Newhook
Writers Workshop '15Her essay, “The Lonely Hours Before Supper,” was published in Meat For Tea (March 2019; V.13 (1)).
Colleen Morton Busch
Writers Workshop ‘04, ‘15She narrated the audiobook version of her nonfiction book, Fire Monks, the story of how five Zen monks saved a California monastery from a wildfire with a combination of hard work, aplomb, and wisdom. Blackstone released the audiobook in March 2019.
Vishwas R. Gaitonde
Writers Workshop '14His essay “Jaya He! The Story of India’s National Anthem” was published by The Mantle in January 2019. It delves into the history and controversies swirling around the anthem composed by Nobel laureate & polymath Rabindranath Tagore – and also highlights the largely hidden role of an Irish woman’s contribution to the music. You can read it here: http://www.mantlethought.org/arts-and-culture/jaya-h%C3%A9-story-india%E2%80%99s-national-anthem
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “Nixon for President” appeared in North Dakota Quarterly (Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter 2018). His essay “Love North of Sunset” appeared in Saint Ann’s Review (Winter 2019). His essay “The Last Honors Class” appeared in Glint Literary Journal (Winter 2018).
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshops Participant, '09Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award. She was additionally awarded a Hawthornden International Fellowship and will spend a month writing at the Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland.
Attended with the help of Lojo Scholarship
Max Byrd
Writers Workshop participant '83, Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis newest novel, The Sixth Conspirator, will be published in August 2019 by Post Hill Press.
Marcia Butler
Writers Workshop Participant '15Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, will be published on April 9, 2019. Recent praise from Richard Russo: “The four main characters in Pickle’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed. That’s because their creator, Marcia Butler, possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence to match.”
Grant Hier
Writers Workshops Participant, ’93; AOW ’95; Poetry Participant '98His book of historical flash fiction, California Continuum, co-written with John Brantingham, Poet Laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, is forthcoming in March, 2019.
Juan Alvarado Valdivia
Writers Workshops Participant '13His short story collection, Ballad of a Slopsucker, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in February 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Kate Hope Day
Writers Workshop Participant '15Her debut novel If, Then is forthcoming from Random House March 12, 2019. It has been optioned by Heyday Television. She will be joining us this summer as part of our Published Alumni Reading Series.
Renee Moffett Thompson
Her story, “The Winterist” took second place in Narrative’s Fall 2018 Story Contest.
Juliana Roth
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Her screenplay for her film in independent development, What We Know, which follows a sexual assault survivor as she navigates the Title IX process, is a semifinalist in the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival’s Screenplay Competition and a finalist in the 2019 Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York. The crowdfunding campaign for the film is accepting donations until mid-March on Seed & Spark.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Aida Salazar
Non-Fiction Workshop 2007Her debut book, The Moon Within, a middle grade novel in verse, will be released on February, 2019, by Arthur A. Levine Books / Scholastic. The book was called “A worthy successor to Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” in a Kirkus starred review.
Ramtin Arablouei
Writer's Workshop participant '05He is the co-host, along with Rund Abdelfatah, of NPR’s first history podcast, Throughline.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop participant '88, '89, '91, '99, Screenwriting Workshop participant '01His latest novel, The Long-Lost Love Letters Of Doc Holliday, has been nominated for the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery. The winner will be announced on March 30th at Left Coast Crime in Vancouver, BC.
Michelle Bracken
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her essay “When Your Writing Comes Through The Ether” was published in The Superstition Review.
Kate Wisel
Writers Workshop Participant '16Her first book of short stories, Driving in Cars With Homeless Men, has won the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which includes a substantial cash prize and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She was selected by judge Min Jin Lee.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jeanne Foster
Poetry Workshop participant '88, Writers Workshop participant '89, '92Her poem “Letters to Peter” appears in the Winter 2019 issue of The Southern Review. You can also hear her read the poem in TSR Audio Gallery.
Stephanie Austin
Writer's Workshop Participant, '12Her short story “Carrion” will be in the spring 2019 issue of Pembroke Magazine. Her flash fiction piece “Stray” will appear in the June issue of the Jellyfish Review.
Attended with the help of Joe Heinrich Scholarship
Karen Moulding
Writers Workshops Participant, '07, '08, '10Her novel, The Naked Shopper, has been selected First Runner Up by Red Hen Press in the Quill Prose Award contest. An excerpt from The Naked Shopper was published in January 2019 in the Capra Review.
Alex Luke
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “Sweet Blood” was published in Issue 18 of SAND Journal, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Denise Nicholas
Writers Workshop Participant '01The 10th Anniversary edition of her novel, Freshwater Road, was recently named in Pacific Standard’s “A Martin Luther King Jr. Day Civil Rights Reading List.”
Kathryn Machi
Screenwriting Participant '04 and '10, Fiction Workshop Participant '18.Her “Me, Too” dance thriller Buzz was recently sold as a TV movie to MarVista Entertainment in Los Angeles.
Dedria A. Humphries Barker
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '15Dedria Humphries Barker’s creative nonfiction book, Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, a Colored Man’s Widow, will be published in April 2019 by 2Leaf Press (distributed by The University of Chicago Press). In which four generations of black women recall their daring 19th century white matriarch, it is the story of Barker’s great-grandmother, Alice Donlan Johnson.
Attended with the help of a community of writers tuition waiver.
Aida Salazar
Writers Workshop Participant '07Her debut novel, The Moon Within, was acquired by Nick Thomas at AALB/Scholastic. This free verse middle grade novel tells the story of 11-year-old Celi, whose life swirls with questions about her changing body, her first attraction to a boy, her best friend’s exploration of what it means to be genderfluid, and her mother’s insistence she have a Chicana moon ceremony for her first menses. Publication is slated for spring 2019; Marietta B. Zacker of the Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency negotiated the deal for North American English and Spanish rights.
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14, Writers Workshop participant '04, '15Her new novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blue, was published by Counterpoint Press in February, 2019.
Emmalie Dropkin
Writers Workshop participant '18She is the co-editor, along with Edie Meidav, of the new anthology Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance. It will be released from the University of Massachusetts Press in March, 2019.
Edie Meidav
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '16, '18She is the co-editor, along with fellow Community of Writers alum Emmalie Dropkin, of the new anthology Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance. It will be released from the University of Massachusetts Press in March, 2019.
Ella Martinsen Gorham
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Her short story, Protozoa, appears in the winter 2018 issue of New England Review.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop Participant '00Her newest novel, The Last Train to London, will be published later this year as part of a two book deal with HarperCollins.
R.O. Kwon
Her essay “On Being A Woman in America While Trying to Avoid Being Assaulted,” was recently published by The Paris Review.
Lex Williford
Screenwriting Workshop Participant '97, '04His novella, Balsa and Tissue Paper, is forthcoming as an ebook and in the forthcoming 2019 Solos issue of Ploughshares.
Marci Vogel
Writers Workshop participant '05, Poetry Workshop participant '17Her new novel, Death and Other Holidays, was recently published by Melville House.
Michael Chabon
Writers Workshop participant '86, '87, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '00, '02His newest book, Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros, will be published by HarperCollins in January, 2019.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, '72, '73His 11th book, The Splendid City, was published in February 2019.
Terry Shames
Writers Workshop participant '98Her newest Samuel Craddock mystery, A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary, will be published in January, 2019, by Seventh Street Books.
Janet Fitch
Writers Workshop participant '93, Poetry Workshop participant '17, Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer newest novel, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, the sequel to her best-selling novel The Revolution of Marina M., will be published by Little, Brown & Co. in July, 2019.
James Jordan
Writers Workshop participant '09His debut novel, The Speed of Life, was published in November, 2018, by Turning Leaf Books.
Matthew M. Monte
Writers Workshop Participant '11, '15His debut poetry collection, The Case of the Six-Sided Dream, was recently published by Blue Light Press. It won the 2017 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize.
Maxima Kahn
Poetry Participant, '07, Writers Workshops Participant, '06, '10Her poems have appeared this year or are forthcoming in Sweet, The Louisville Review and Orbis Journal, and she was nominated for Best of the Net. Her essays appeared in Just How Cool Is That, The Creative Penn, Tiny Buddha and Positively Positive.
Attended with the help of Mary Turnbull Scholarship 2010
Leland Cheuk
Writers Workshop participant '01, '02His newest novel, No Good Very Bad Asian, is forthcoming from C&R Press in 2019.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant '01His essay, “In the Name of Not Repeating”, was published in Eclectica.
Katherine Rothschild
Writer’s Workshop participant, ‘03Her YA novel on sisterhood in an untraditional family, Hope and Other Feathered Things, will be published by Soho Teen in early 2020.
D. P. Medina
Writers Workshops Participant, '85, '86His novel, The Madness of the Brave, was published by Moonshine Cove Publishing in Summer 2018. A unique character-driven thriller, the novel is set in the late 70s’ world of political activism, a world of shifting alliances, faceless informants and betrayal and challengeson some of our most fundamental beliefs.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '15, '16, '18Her newest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, will be published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing in May, 2019.
Cerrissa Kim
Writers Workshops Participant, '13She served as editor and contributor to the anthology Mixed Korean: Our Stories. From the struggles of the Korean War, to the modern dilemmas faced by those who are mixed race, comes an assortment of stories that capture the essence of what it is to be a mixed Korean. With common themes of exclusion and recollections of not looking Korean enough, black enough, white enough, or “other” enough, this powerful collection features works by award-winning writers, poets, and scholars, alongside voices of literary newcomers. Mixed Korean: Our Stories is a testament to the courage, strength and resilience of all mixed people. Proceeds will be donated to 325Kamra and KoreanAmericanStory.org.
Alma Katsu
Writers Workshop participant '03Her horror novel, The Hunger, published in March, 2018, by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, was recently named one of the “5 Horror Novels to Read by Women Right Now” by The Writer.
Cynthia Robinson
Writers Workshop participant '13, '14Her debut novel, Birds of Wonder (Standing Stone Books, 2018), has been named one of four finalists for the 2018 CNY Awards in the fiction category by judge Stephanie Dickson. The winner will be announced on November 8.
Tim Foley
Writers Workshop Participant, '99, '01, '02His recent short story publications include: “Some Pages From the Journal of James Morris,” in A Book of the Sea (Egaeus Press.) and “Aneurism,” in Morpheus Tales: The Best Weird Fiction, Number 7. His essay on Ambrose Bierce, “Night-Doings in Victorian England: The Sojourn of Ambrose Bierce,” has appeared in Wormwood 30 (Tartarus Press, 2018).
Gordon Jack
Writers Workshops Participant '03, '08His second novel, Your Own Worst Enemy, will be published by HarperTeen on November 13, 2018.
Alexander Payne Morgan
Writers Workshop participant '10, '13His new book of poems, Loneliness Among Primates, was published by Kelsay Books/ Aldrich Press in September, 2018.
Christine Granados
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her second book of fiction, Fight Like a Man and Other Stories We Tell Our Children, which was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2017, won the 2017 Writer’s League of Texas Fiction Discovery Prize in April 2018. The book received Honorable Mention for Best Latino Focused Fiction Book in English from the 2018 International Latino Book Award. Fight Like a Man was also the winner of the 2018 NACCS Tejas Foco Fiction Book Award.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Family Scholarship.
Sheila Thorne
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Her story, “The Horses,” appeared in the 2018 fall issue of Raleigh Review.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant '04, '05, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '13, '15, '17His newest book, Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, will be published in June, 2019, by Unnamed Press.
Attended with the help of the UC Irvine Scholarship for MFAs.
Alicia Upano
Writers Workshop participant '12She won the 2018 James Jones First Novel Fellowship Competition for her novel, Big Music.
Attended with the help of the Mohr Scholarship.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “Faith” will appear in the Fall 2018 issue of Santa Monica Review. This is the journal’s 30th anniversary of publication, and the issue will be launched on October 14 at The Edye in Santa Monica. Gaitonde has been invited to read at the event. The attached poster has more details.
Jenn Stroud Rossmann
Writers Workshop Participant, '99Her debut novel, The Place You’re Supposed to Laugh, will be published by 7.13 Books in November, 2018.
Kirsten Whatley
Writers Workshops Participant, '06Kirsten Whatley’s short nonfiction piece, “Only Moths,” appeared in PANK‘s Spring/Summer 2018 online issue, and was subsequently translated into Italian. Two of her Hawaii-based food stories recently appeared in AFAR (May 2018) and Saveur (Fall 2018).
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Kate Hope Day
Writers Workshop participant '15Her debut novel If, Then is forthcoming from Random House March 12, 2019. It has been optioned by Heyday Television.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Partcipant (11)Elaine Barnard will be reading from the collection of stories from her travels in Asia, Emperor of Nuts at 7pm on Oct.11 at the famous KGB bar in NYC. The event is sponsored by her publisher New Meridian Arts.
Margaret C. Murray
Screenwriters Workshop, '87In late September, she launched her 4th novel, Pillow Prayers—Love Ruined, Love Reborn after the Summer of Love, at Fourth Street Fine Art Cooperative in Berkeley, CA where much of her story takes place.
Attended with the help of National Endowment for the Arts
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshop participant '86, '87, '88, '89. Screenwriters Workshop participant '05A writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, Tim Wendel’s latest book is a memoir, Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest to Cure Childhood Leukemia. He read the audiobook and is now doing voice skills for the company working with the Amazon Echo. In addition, work continues on the documentary of his book Summer of ’68, which was named a notable book by the State of Michigan.
Jen Beagin
Writers Workshop participant '11She recently made the short list for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Attended with the help of the UC Irvine Scholarship for MFAs.
Wayétu Moore
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her new novel, She Would Be King, was released from Graywolf Press on September 11, 2018. She will be joining us next summer for our Published Alumni Reading Series.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
David Paul
Writers Workshops Participant, '17,'18His short story ‘Barbed Wire’ appears in the Fall 2018 issue of ZYZZYVA.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop Participant '93, '94, '98Her new novel, Weather Woman, will be published on October 9, 2018, by Red Hen Press.
Anne Ray
Writers Workshop Participant, '06Her story “Weekend Trip”, originally published in Gettysburg Review, won a 2018 Pushcart Prize. Her story “Black Feather” is forthcoming in Indiana Review.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop Participant ,'14Her essay “K’E YIL YAL TX’I: SAYING SOMETHING,” first published in Alpinist Magazine and a Bronze medalist in the Family Travel category of the 2018 Solas Awards, was selected for Waymaking, an anthology of prose, poetry and artwork by women who are inspired by wild places, adventure and landscape, available now from Vertebrate Publishing. Her story “On the Line” was selected for Grace in Darkness, an anthology of metro D.C. women, available now from American University.
Attended with the help of The O'Dwyer Scholarship
Sean Marciniak
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '14His short story, Sanctuary, was published in the Spring 2018 edition of J Journal.
Lynn Gordon
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Her stories are appearing this year in J Journal and The Examined Life.
Julia Park Tracey
Writers Workshops Participant '16, '18Her in-depth feature on San Francisco Bay Area author and activist Kate Schatz was the cover story for Alameda Magazine in August 2018, and a major feature in Oakland Magazine August 2018.
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Writers Workshop '04Her short tale, “Clowns,” is included in the The Open Space, issue 21, “Things That Matter”.
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13His collection of 4 short stories – which feature the main characters from his first novel, The Bear Who Broke the World – was published as a Kindle exclusive by Wheeler Street Press in August, 2018.
Louis B. Jones
Writers Workshops Participant '89, Writers Workshops StaffHis short story, Everybody’s Long-Term Welfare, appears in the Fall, 2018 issue of ZYZZYVA.
Vanessa Hua
Writers Workshop Participant '08Her new novel, A River of Stars, was recently published by Ballantine Books.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop Participant '88, '89, '91, '99, Screenwriting Workshop Participant '01His newest book, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, is now available from Black Opal Press.
Robert Schladale
Writer's Workshop '16, '17His story, “Life in the Littoral Waters,” appears in the most recent issue of Redivider (February 2018).
Robert Rorke
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Harper Collins published his first novel, Car Trouble, on September 11, 2018.
Marcia Butler
Writer's Workshop Participant '15Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, will be published on April 9, 2019. Recent praise from Richard Russo: “The four main characters in Pickle’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed. That’s because their creator, Marcia Butler, possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence to match.”
Dedria Humphries Barker
Writing Workshop Participant '08, '15She won a Tier 1 writing residency award to Can Serrat, El Bruc, Barcelona, Spain, and was in residence March – May, 2018.
Gina DeMillo Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant '14Her essay, Mourning the Loss of a Sibling Rival, was featured in the Ties column of the New York Times.
Regina Louise
Writers Workshop Participant ‘02, '15, Writers Workshop Alum Reading ‘03, Screen Writing Workshop ‘09Her new book, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe: A Case History of Love, was published on July 10 by Agate Publishing. The film adaptation of her memoir, Someone’s Somebody, wrapped principal photography June 27th.
Brenda Rickman Vantrease
Writers Workshop Participant '02Her new historical fiction series entitled Broken Kingdom from Severn House. Vol. I: The Queen’s Promise was released August 1, 2018, with Vol. 2: A Far Horizon to follow in February of 2019.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop Participant '00Her new novel, Beautiful Exiles, was published August 1, 2018, by Lake Union Publishing.
R.O. Kwon
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Her first novel, The Incendiaries, was published on July 31, 2018 by Riverhead in the U.S. and by Virago/Little Brown in the U.K. It’s about Phoebe Lin, a Korean American woman who gets involved with a fundamentalist cult with ties to North Korea. Kwon was recently profiled in the New York Times as a writer to watch.
Regina Louise
Writers Workshop participant '01, '14Her memoir, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe, will be released by Agate Bolden in July, 2018.
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant '13Her short story, “Mary and the Machine,” appears in the Spring 2018 issue of North American Review.
Josh Weil
Writers Workshop Staff '17His 2017 short story collection The Age of Perpetual Light was awarded the California Book Award in Fiction.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her short story “Old Girls, or, The Ordinary Adventure” was published in the spring 2018 issue of The Hopkins Review. Her short story “Former Marys” was also published in the spring 2018 issue of Blackbird.
Attended with the help of The Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Michelle Ruiz Keil
Writers Workshop 2014She sold her debut novel All of Us With Wings to Amara Hoshijo at Soho Teen for publication in June, 2019.
David Kerns
Writers Workshop participant '07His novel Fortnight on Maxwell Street won the Eric Hoffer Award for the Best General Fiction Book of 2018. Published by Bay Tree Publishing, the novel is a reluctant hero’s journey of fear and courage set in Chicago in the spring of 1968. The manuscript, a memoir in its earliest incarnation, was workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2007.
Holiday Reinhorn
Writers Workshops Participant, '17The title story of Holiday Reinhorn’s second collection, “Our Lady of Perpetual Sadness,” was accepted for publication by American Short Fiction magazine.
John Harvey
Poetry Participant '95, Writers Workshop Staff '97His new Frank Elder novel, Body and Soul, was published by William Heinemann in the UK in April, and will be published by Pegasus in the US in September, 2018.
Andrea Alban
Writer's Workshop Participant, '04Her Writer’s Tribe has been named the official manuscript critique forum at the annual Book Passage Children’s Writer and Illustrator Conference (June 15-17, 2018). Andrea has served on the faculty of this popular conference for 10 years, presenting talks about creating quintessential characters, the art and craft of RE-Vision, and achieving self-editing mastery.
Peggy Townsend
Writers Workshop Participant '07Her first thriller, See Her Run: An Aloa Snow Mystery, was released by Thomas & Mercer on June 1 as part of a two-book deal. Her short story, “First Peak,” also will appear June 19 in Santa Cruz Noir, an anthology series published by Akashic Press and edited by Susie Bright.
Cynthia Robinson
Writers' Workshops Participant, '13 and '14She was recently spotlighted in an interview with BBC Ulster presenter Marie-Louise Muir discussing her new novel Birds of Wonder (Standing Stone Books, 2018). The interview is available via podcast here until May 25.
Aneesha Capur
Writers Workshop Participant '05She was recently invited to join the San Francisco Committee of Human Rights Watch. She is looking forward to supporting HRW’s broader efforts to raise awareness of local and global human rights issues, generate support, and mobilize policymakers to recognize basic freedoms for all.
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant '13Her story, “My Little Pet,” appears in the Spring 2018 issue of Boulevard.
Aida Salazar
Her debut picture book, Jovita Wore Pants, will be published by Arthur A. Levine Books/ Scholastic in 2020.
Michael Barsa
Writers Workshop Participant '04His first novel, The Garden of Blue Roses, was published on April 17 from Underland Press, with praise from Alice Sebold, Paul Tremblay, Ramona Ausubel, Ron Carlson, Michelle Latiolais, and others.
Lise Haines
Writers Workshop participant '99Her new novel, When We Disappear, was released from Unbridled Books in June, 2018.
Akil Kumarasamy
Writers Workshops Participant, '15Akil Kumarasamy’s debut novel, Half Gods, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in June 2018.
Attended with the help of The Eshleman Scholarship
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshops Participant, '07, '11Her first book, an essay collection titled Mass for the Shut Ins will be published by Eyewear Publishing in early 2019.
Joanell Serra
Writers Workshop participant '15Her literary novel, The Vines We Planted, was published by Wido Publishing in May 2018. The novel is set in Sonoma, California, and follows the complex interactions of three families during a year in the wine country. The novel was in progress when she attended the workshop.
Adrienne Sharp
Writers Workshop Participant '88, '98Her novel, The Magnificent Esme Wells, was released by HarperCollins in April, 2018.
Teresa (T) Stores
Writers Workshop Participant '04Her collection of short fiction, Frost Heaves, will be published by Green Writers Press in April 2018. This is her fourth book and her first collection of stories.
Attended with the help of Sallie Bell Scholarship
Nettie Reynolds
Writers Workshop Participant '99She was the first playwright picked for the Associated Writing Program Mentee Fall Program 2017. She is currently working on her memoir on resiliency titled Magical Thinking Got Me Here. She recently had her ten minute play “The Groovy Ride” produced in Austin, where she lives.
Ariel Lewis
Writers Workshop, '17She has a personal essay up at Electric Literature.
Johnny Kovatch
Writers Workshop participant '00His debut novel, 59 Hours, a Simon True book, was released by Simon Pulse in March, 2018.
Jennifer Haupt
Writers Workshop Participant '09, '13Her debut novel, In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills, was published on April 2, 2018, by Central Avenue Publishing.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Varley O’Connor
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '04, '12; Participant '88, '89Her fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in May 2019.
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshop Participant '86, '87, '88, '89, '05His new book, Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood Leukemia, will be released in spring 2018. He is a writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University.
R.T. Jamison
Writers Workshops Participant, '15His short story, “Forty Days in the Desert,” first published in the Kenyon Review, was selected for the anthology Buffalo Cactus and Other New Stories from the Southwest, available now from the University of New Mexico Press.
http://www.rtjamison.com/buffalo.html
Aida Salazar
Writer Workshops Participant '07Her debut novel, The Moon Within, was acquired by Nick Thomas at AALB/Scholastic. This free verse middle grade novel tells the story of 11-year-old Celi, whose life swirls with questions about her changing body, her first attraction to a boy, her best friend’s exploration of what it means to be genderfluid, and her mother’s insistence she have a Chicana moon ceremony for her first menses. Publication is slated for spring 2019; Marietta B. Zacker of the Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency negotiated the deal for North American English and Spanish rights.
Crystal Reiss
Writers Workshop Participant '97Crystal Jo Reiss’s first novel, Jane Is Everywhere has been published. This “more than #metoo” novel is about one woman’s absurd journey through America during the last two decades. It is now available for order at bookstores around the world (including the usual online outlets).
Shobha Rao
Writers Workshop Participant '02Her debut novel, Girls Burn Brighter, was published this month. She is also the author of the short story collection, An Unrestored Woman. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015.
Ksenia Lakovic
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her short story “The Addition” was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tillie Olsen Short Story Award and appeared in The Tishman Review in January 2018.
Gretchen Van Lente
Writers Workshop Participant '96She has two new books out this month. First is a collection of short stories of literary horror published by Hammer and Anvil Press, She-Thing and Other Righteous Tales. The second is Hydriphilica, also literary horror, published by Alternative Book Press. Both are available on Amazon. She-Thing is a book in print, and Hydrophilica is an Amazon Digital (at http://amzn.to/2FUJvjl ).
Dylan Brie Ducey
Writers Workshop Participant, '15Her two flashes, “Disorder” and “The Mother Knocks Again, Louder This Time” appeared in The Occulum in August, 2017. Also, a short story, “Jaconita,” appeared in Four Way Review in November, 2017.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Sanam Mahloudji
Writers Workshops Participant, '12Her fiction will appear in the next issue (#52) of McSweeney’s Quarterly. Her fiction is also in Passages North‘s 2018 issue and Crab Creek Review‘s Spring 2017 issue. She was also nominated for the 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers.
Priscilla Elliott
Writer's Workshop Participant, '05Her book The Sociopath’s Guide to Getting Ahead is a practical satire coming out March 13, 2018 from Skyhorse Publishing.
Ben Hinshaw
Writers Workshops Participant, '17His story ‘Brazil and Back’ appeared in the Fall/Winter 2017 issue of The Carolina Quarterly. Elsewhere, his story ‘Queen of the Forest’ placed third in the 2017 Bridport Short Story Prize, and his collection Exactly What You Mean won the 2017 Maurice Prize in Fiction. In January 2018, Ben received a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop Participant '84In early February, she did a reading from her work of narrative history An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse: The Man of Iron Recruits the Man of Letters. The reading took place at a conference at the Embassy of Mongolia in Washington, D. C., hosted by the Ambassador.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshops Participant, '09Her second novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, was published by HarperCollins in March of 2018. Susan lives in New York and blogs at the writer support group, LitPark.com.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshop Participant '06, '10Her novel Song of a Captive Bird was published by Random House/Ballantine in February 2018. It tells the story of Iran’s iconic woman poet, Forugh Farrokhzad.
Elizabeth Rosner
She will be giving a talk entitled “How Do We Deal With the Wounds of History? Understanding and Addressing Intergenerational Trauma,” at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 10th at 6 PM.
Michael Andreasen
Writers Workshop Participant '07, Published Alumni '18His debut collection The Sea Beast Takes a Lover was published February 28, 2018, by Dutton. Michael will be returning to Squaw Valley this summer as a part of the Published Alumni Reading Series.
Attended with the help of UCI Scholarship
Ramona Ausubel
Writers Workshop Participant '07, '12Her new novel Awayland will be released from Riverhead Books this month.
Attended with the help of UC Irvine Scholarship
Hilary Zaid
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her debut novel, Paper is White, was published in March 2018 from Bywater Books.
Attended with the help of The James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Sands Hall
Writers Workshops Participant and StaffHer memoir, Flunk. Start.was published by Counterpoint Press in March, 2018.
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Participant, '04, '08, '14, Writers Workshop Participant '04, '15Her novel The Atlas of Reds and Blue will be published by Counterpoint Press in February, 2019.
Cynthia Robinson
Writers' Workshops Participant, '13 and '14Her debut novel, Birds of Wonder, was published by Standing Stone Books on 20 February, 2018.
Cynthia Lim
Writers Workshops Participant, '15Her memoir, Wherever You Are: A Memoir of Love, Marriage, and Brain Injury, will be published by Coffeetown Press September 1, 2018.
Sands Hall
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff and Past ParticipantHer memoir, Flunk. Start., published March, 2018, was recently named one of the top 10 best books in spirituality and religion for Spring 2018 by Publisher’s Weekly.
Michael David Lukas
Writers Workshop Participant '09His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, will be published March 13, 2018, by Spiegel and Grau.
Attended with the help of The James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Wayétu Moore
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her debut novel, She Would Be King, will be released in September 2018 from Graywolf Press.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Hilary Zaid
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her debut novel, Paper is White, will be be released on March 13, 2018 from Bywater Books.
Attended with the help of The James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild Participant, '92He has two recent essays published, “Hallelujah: I’m No Genius” in Schuylkill Valley Journal Online and a craft essay, “POETRY AS PRACTICE: How Paying Attention Helps Us Improve Our Writing in the Age of Distraction” in Cleaver Magazine. His new book, Dwelling: an ecopoem, will be published in Fall 2018 by Shanti Arts.
Edan Lepucki
Writers Workshop Participant '07, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '18Her most recent novel, Woman No. 17, published by Hogarth in 2017, is now out in paperback. Woman No. 17 was named a notable book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, POPSUGAR, and the Washington Post. People Magazine picked it as the May selection for the Book of the Month Club.
Shobha Rao
Writers Workshop Participant '02Her debut novel, Girls Burn Brighter, will be published by Flatiron Books in March 2018. She is also the author of the short story collection, An Unrestored Woman.
Sara Borjas
Writers Workshop Participant '13Her debut collection of poetry, We Are Too Big for This House, will be published in 2019 by Noemi Press as part of the Akrilica Series.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside Scholarship
Bill Pieper
Writers Workshops Participant, '10His story “Wildflower Season” was published in the winter 2017 issue of Chiron Review, joining a lineage of past contributors that runs from Kerouac and Bukowski to Marge Piercy and Lorri Jackson. It is the first of his recent acceptances to see print, soon to be followed by “Barcelona Days” in Lipstick Party Mag and “Hi, Grandma” in Corvus Review. ChironReview.com
Rachel Howard
Writers Workshop Participant, '13, Writers Workshop Staff, '17Her novel The Risk of Us sold to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for publication in Spring 2019. It’s about a woman who longs to be a mother; the troubled child she and her husband take in from the foster care system; the inevitable tests children bring to a marriage; and the limits of human empathy coupled with the joys of new parenthood, and was pitched as appealing to fans of Jenny Offill, Rachel Cusk, and Sheila Heti.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Scholarship
Michael Andreasen
Writers Workshops Participant, '07His debut collection The Sea Beast Takes a Lover will be available February 28, 2018, from Dutton. The collection features stories that have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Quarterly West. “Andreasen has the soul of a poet and the heart of a yarn spinner; he breathes new life into familiar tropes via the ingenuity of his storytelling and his tendency to color outside the lines. The 11 refreshing stories in this debut collection are full of delicious detours, and ultimately they’re the point.” –Publisher’s Weekly
Attended with the help of UCI Irvine Scholarship
Glen David Gold
Writers Workshops Participant, '96, '97 / Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis memoir I Will Be Complete will be published by Knopf in June 2018.
Attended with the help of The UC Irvine Scholarship
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14Gaitonde’s multimedia essay, “The Birth, Death & Reincarnation of the Harmonium,” published by The Mantle, New York, in 2016 & republished by Scroll.in (Delhi, India) in 2016, has been republished by the music magazine Serenade in Jan 2018. A Dutch translation of Gaitonde’s essay, titled “De tijreis van het harmonium over de continenten,” along with additional material on the harmonium, was published in Vox Humana, Holland, in 2017.
Elaine Barnard
Writers workshops Participant 11Elaine Barnard’s work collection of stories from her travels in Asia: Emperor of Nuts: Intersections Across Cultures will be published by New Meridian Arts in 2018.Elaine Barnard’s work has appeared in a number of publications: Her short story, “Shadows” was recently published in Red Fez; “Pomegranate” was recently published in Crux; “The Road” was recently published in Fixional; and “An Ordeal” is forthcoming in Sunlight.
David Kerns
Writers Workshop Participant '05His novel, Fortnight on Maxwell Street was published in February, 2018.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshops Participant in Fiction and Nonfiction, '06,'10Her novel Song of a Captive Bird was published by Random House/Ballantine in February 2018. It tells the story of Iran’s iconic woman poet, Forugh Farrokhzad.
Cynthia Robinson
Writers' Workshops Participant '13, '14Her forthcoming novel, Birds of Wonder, out on February 20, 2018, with Standing Stone Books, received 5 stars and a featured review in the January/February 2018 issue of Foreword.
Michelle Ruiz Keil
Writers Workshop Participant '14Her short story “Random Magick” was recently published on Cosmonauts Avenue. You can read it here.
Dave Essinger
Writers Workshops Participant, '09His new novel Running Out was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in June 2017.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship.
Linda González
Writer Workshops Participant '15Her memoir The Cost of Our Lives, a story of two families on either side of the Rio Grande, was published by Wido Press and is available at widopublishing.com.
Michele Montgomery
Writers Workshop Participant '07Her essay, “We Were Snubbed by Our Dead Dog. Twice.” was published this month in the New York Times. The link to the essay can be found here.
Tara Dorabji
Writers Workshop Participant '13She has new work published in All the Women in My Family Sing, edited by Deborah Santana, a collection of prose and poetry. The collection includes writing by Michelle “Mush” Lee, Natalie Baszile, Phiroozeh Petigara, Samina Ali, Soniah Kamal, Nayomi Munaweera, Kira Lynne Allen and more!
Ramona Ausubel
Writers Workshop Participant '07, '12Her new novel Awayland will be published by Riverhead Books in March, 2018.
Terry Shames
Writers Workshop Participant '99A Reckoning in the Back Country, Terry Shames’s seventh novel in the award-winning Samuel Craddock series,was published in January 2018, by Seventh Street Book.
Jamie Cat Callan
Writers Workshop Participant, '91Her latest book Parisian Charm School was published by Penguin Random House in January, 2018.
David Hagerty
Writers Workshop Participant, 2006He has published the third book in his series of political mysteries. They Tell Me You Are Brutal (Evolved Publishing, 2017) continues the story of Gov. Duncan Cochrane, who has a murderous family secret to conceal and a saboteur to capture.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, 1972, 1973. Special Guest, 2013, 2014.His new book, New York: Stories, was published by Astor and Lenox on November 1, 2017. Publishers Weekly says “This gem of a collection by Terence Clarke celebrates the art, passions, and people of New York City.” Kirkus Reviews says “Tales like these feel like new takes on classic stories of New York by Salinger or Capote—fine company, all in all.”
Kimball Pier
Writer's workshop 2005, 2011, 2015Her memoir, Killing Penelope – A daughter’s Memoir of Failed Rescues, was published in August of 2017 by Lucky Bat Books. Killing Penelope is a true story about a girl’s devotion to her mother Penelope, a wild and eccentric woman who held a shotgun with more comfort than she held her baby girl. When Penelope became seriously ill, Kimball’s life became frightening and unpredictable. The author gives a beautiful portrayal of her experience of retrieving humor, grace, and gratitude from the rubble of despair and loss.
Sandra Scofield
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHer craft book, The Last Draft: A Novelist’s Guide to Revision, has been published by Penguin.
Dedria A. Humphries
Writers Workshop Participant '08, '15Her essay, “The Girl with the Good Hair” appeared in the anthology, The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, edited by Cathy J. Shlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts with an afterword by Heidi W. Durrow, published by 2Leaf Press. 2Leaf Press also published Dedria’s essay, “Was My Father Just Another Pig” in their Black Lives Have Always Mattered anthology edited by Abiodun Oyewole. Dedria also published an essay entitled “When the Riot Came Home” on salon.com about the 1967 Detroit riot. www.2leafpress.org
Vishwas R. Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, 2014His article, “The Grand Piano Chase,” tracing the progress of Lydian Nadhaswaram, a music prodigy in India through the pianos he played, was published on Nov 9, 2017 in The Hindu, a leading newspaper in southern India. You can read it online here. Though a stand-alone piece, it is also a follow-up to his earlier comprehensive multi-media essay on Nadhaswaram, published in May 2017 in The Mantle, New York, which you can read here.
Sands Hall
Writers Workshops Participant, Teaching StaffHer memoir, Flunk. Start., will be released by Counterpoint Press in March, 2018.
www.sandshall.com
Cynthia Robinson
Writers' Workshop Participant, '13, '14Her op-ed, “Girls Are Fine, Just Don’t Get Caught,” has been published in the opinion section of The Hill. The topic–which never seems to go away, not even in the #metoo moment we’re living right now–is closely related to her forthcoming debut novel, Birds of Wonder (February 2018).
Jennifer Egan
Writers Workshop Participant, '89Her newest novel, Manhattan Beach, was released from Charles Scribner’s Sons in October, 2017.
Stephanie Taylor
Writers Workshop Participant '13As a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, she is working with the director of the Sacramento library, Rivkah Sass, on a special graphic narrative. She will be editing the text, without changing any words, and adding around 50 of her interpreted illustrations. This will take on a “how to make a monster” approach, and describe what happened when Frankenstein (only a student, never a doctor) succeeded. The Sacramento Library events start in January.
Victoria Patterson
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '12Her new book of stories, The Secret Habit of Sorrow, is forthcoming from Counterpoint in July, 2018.
Maria Hummel
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Her newest novel, Still Lives, is forthcoming from Counterpoint in June, 2018.
Julia Scheeres
Writers Workshop Participant, '03She confronts ghosts during a tour of her childhood home for an essay in Narrative Magazine.
Jacqueline Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant, '14She has recent creative nonfiction in The Gettysburg Review (Summer 2017) and Superstition Review (Spring 2017), and a Notable Essay listing in Best American Essays 2017 for her essay “A Eulogy, Despite” in Full Grown People. Her flash chapbook The Missing Girl (winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition) was published by Black Lawrence Press in fall 2017. Her flash “Zig Zag” won the 2017 flash contest at Midway Journal, judged by Michael Martone, and she has recent microflash in matchbook and Wigleaf, among others.
Katherine Vaz
Writers Workshops Staff and Participant, '88Katherine Vaz’s new fifth book, The Love Life of an Assistant Animator & Other Stories Paperback, was published in April 2017 by Tailwinds Press. “What rich, eccentric, at times even farcical joys these stories evoke–and, at the same time, what poignant, aching sorrows. Vaz’s characters, from the gravity of their family ties to the folly and grace of their soaring aspirations, take us deep inside ourselves and our never-ending struggle to find our way in a world that changes far too fast around us.”– Julie Glass, author of Three Junes.
Attended with the help of the UC Irvine Scholarship
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshops Participant, '09She was featured in Publishers Weekly‘s September 11th Author Profile. The profile discussed the Montana town of 180 people that Henderson lived in for a month to research her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, which will be published by HarperCollins in March of 2018.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshops Participant in Fiction and Nonfiction, '06,'10Her novel Song of a Captive Bird will be published by Random House/Ballantine in February 2018. It tells the story of Iran’s iconic woman poet, Forugh Farrokhzad. Darznik also recently joined the MFA faculty at California College of the Arts.
Janet Fitch
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff & Participant, ’89/ Poetry Participant '17Janet Fitch’s novel, The Revolution of Marina M., set during the turbulent years of the Russian Revolution was published in November, 2017 by Little Brown and Co.
Martin J. Smith
Writers Workshop '92; Faculty member since 2002Globe Pequot published Mr. Las Vegas Has a Bad Knee in November 2017, Martin J. Smith’s collection of journalistic essays spanning his 31-year career in the American Southwest, with a foreword by David L. Ulin. “[…] Smith’s true gift resides in his empathy—in the gentle way he forces us to see grace and redemption in the lives of people whom most of us would be inclined to mock.”—Steve Hawk, former editor of Surfer and Sierra magazines.
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant '13Her short story, “Leaving Hope,” appears in the Fall/Winter 2017 Issue of The Carolina Quarterly.
David Kerns
Writers Workshop Participant '05His novel, Fortnight on Maxwell Street, is forthcoming from Bay Tree Publishing in February, 2018. It is a reluctant hero’s journey of fear and courage set in Chicago in the spring of 1968. The young medical student protagonist spends two weeks delivering babies in the kitchens and bedrooms of the inner-city’s slum tenements. Over his head medically, and unprotected in one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, his character and resourcefulness are tested in the extreme when a national tragedy intervenes.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop Participant '88, '89, '91, '99, '01His latest novel, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, will be published in 2018 by Black Opal Books. His writing guide, The Art of Character, recently has been purchased for publication in Spain and China. His short story, “Rusty Cage,” appeared in the anthology Just to Watch Them Die, premised on the songs of Johnny Cash. He is a contributing editor at Writer’s Digest, a regular contributor to the blog Writer Unboxed, and continues to provide his fiction workshops at the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Conference in Mexico (and other conferences), as well as at Book Passage in the Bay Area (where he is co-chair of the annual Mystery Writers’ Conference), and online at Litreactor.
Jimin Han
Writers Workshop Participant '95Her novel, A Small Revolution, was published in May 2017 (Little A Books). Los Angeles Review of Books called it “a novel of remarkably rendered extremes.…It is an ambitious and accomplished debut that pulls us out of our comfortable window seats and places us in a room, in a young woman’s heart, and in a nascent democracy’s earliest days.” It was featured as: A BuzzFeed Binge-Worthy Literary Book, one of Electric Literature’s 34 Books by Women of Color to Read This Year, one of Redbook’s 20 Books By Women You Must Read this Spring
Attended with the help of Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation Scholarship
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop Participant '04, '05, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff, '14, '17Julia Flynn Siler is a Logan Nonfiction Fellow this the fall. Along with 18 other celebrated journalists, she will be using the time to complete her work of narrative investigative history, Daughters of Joy: America’s Other Slaves and Their Fight for Freedom (forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf). For more information, please visit http://careyinstitute.org/
Marjorie Robertson
Writers Workshop Participant '08Her debut novel, Bitters in the Honey, is now available in paperback. This novel began as Robertson’s MFA these at George Mason University under the tutelage of Alan Cheuse.
Grace Talusan
Writers Workshop Participant, '98She is the winner of the 2017 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for Nonfiction for The Body Papers, a memoir about trauma, illness, and immigration as told through personal and official documentation, scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2018. She teaches writing at Tufts University and Grub Street. As a Fulbright Scholar, she returned to the Philippines for several months, the longest time she spent there since leaving at age three. She lives outside of Boston with her husband Alonso Nichols, a photographer. She attended The Community of Writers in 1998.
JJ Strong
Writers Workshops Participant, 2013.His debut novel, Us Kids Know, was published on October 24 by Razorbill, an imprint at Penguin Random House.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshop Participant ‘92The paperback edition of her book Virgin Soul was recently released (Equidistance Press, 2017). Virgin Soul was “discovered” at Squaw by the late greats Fred Hill and James Houston., and is a required text in many college classes. Her collection of essays, a Distinguished Finalist in OSU’s NonFiction 2016 Prize, DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland (Equidistance, 2016), garnered a starred Kirkus Review and Kirkus Book of the Month, March, 2017.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '80, '11Her short stories appeared or are forthcoming in the 2017 issues of Fixional, Zimbell House, Lost River Review, Beach Reads, Sunlight Press, Argot, and The Crux.
Jennifer Haupt
Writers Workshop Participant '09, '13Her new novel, In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills, a story about finding grace when there can be no forgiveness, set against the backdrop of post-genocide Rwanda, will be published by Central Avenue Publishing on April 1, 2018. She workshopped this novel both times she attended the Community of Writers workshops.
Michael Andreasen
Writers Workshop Participant '07His debut collection The Sea Beast Takes a Lover will be available February 28, 2018, from Dutton. The collection features stories that have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Quarterly West.
Attended with the help of UCI Scholarship
Amy Tan
Writers Workshop Participant '87, '90, Special GuestHer new book, a memoir entitled Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, was released by HarperCollins in October, 2017
Cynthia Robinson
Writers Workshop Participant '13, '14Her story, “Maison des Oiseaux,” finalist for the Jeffery E. Smith Editors’ Prize, is featured this week on the Missouri Review‘s website. You can read it for free at missourireview.com. Her novel, Birds of Wonder, will be published by Standing Stone Books in February 2018.
Aleta George
Writers Workshops Participant, '05, '10She received an inaugural Alan Jutzi Residential Fellowship for Non-Traditional Scholars at The Huntington Library.
Jill Kolongowski
Writers Workshops Participant '14Her first book, an essay collection called Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me, will be released by Ulysses Press in October 2017. Using a combination of personal stories and literary criticism, these essays grapple with the themes at the core of Harry and the trio’s journey and considers how the series shaped the worldview of a generation–from the need to hold tight to a sense of humor and wonder to the feminism of Hermione and the courage needed for the fight against oppression.
Attended with the help of St. Mary's MFA Scholarship
Ian Randall Wilson
Poetry Participant '08, '93; Writers Workshop '04His first poetry collection, Ruthless Heaven, was published by Finishing Line Press in October, 2017.
Bruce Rettig
Writers Workshops Participant, '12, and '15He won first place for his memoir, Refraction, in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s 2017 Literary Contest. Over six hundred pieces were submitted to twelve contest categories, and final winners were announced at the conference and awards dinner in Seattle. PNWA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to authors and the development of writing talent from pen to publication through education, accessibility to the publishing industry, and participation in an interactive, vital writer community. Rettig’s memoir was workshopped at the 2015 Community of Writers Workshop. His website is BruceRettig.com.
Attended with the help of The Carlisle Family Scholarship
Mary Kuryla
Writers’ Workshop Participant, '10.Her collection Freak Weather: Stories was selected by Amy Hempel for the 2016 AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and was published by University of Massachusetts Press in November, 2017. This Fall, 2017, her short stories appeared in Shenandoah and The Denver Quarterly.
Attended with the help of The Thomas P. Jones Scholarship
Alia Volz
Writers Workshop Participant, '11, '14Her essay “Snakebit,” originally published in The Threepenny Review, has been selected for The Best American Essays 2017, guest-edited by Leslie Jamison. Available at a local independent bookstore near you in October.
Attended with the help of Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship, Oakley Hall III Fiction Scholarship
Elana K Arnold
Writers Workshop Participant '95,'98Her novel What Girls Are Made of has been longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature.
Laurie Ann Doyle
Writers Workshops Participant, '09, '14Laurie Ann Doyle’s new book of stories, World Gone Missing, was published by Regal House press in September 2017.
Charmaine Craig
Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '98.Her novel Miss Burma (Grove Press/ Grove Atlantic) made the National Book Award long list for fiction. www.nationalbook.org
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '12, '14, '16Her debut memoir Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home was published by Moxie Road Productions on September 19, 2017. Originally conceived as a cognitive science primer, Spinning is a memoir that weaves the story of micro preemie twins with chronicle of the untimely end to Janine’s career as an international ballet dancer.
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller (2011 ), Carlisle Family Foundation (2012), Dirk Eshleman (2014)
Thomas Allbaugh
Writers Workshops Participant, '13His first novel, Apocalypse TV, will be published by eLectio Publishers in early October, 2017.
Josh Weil
Teaching Staff '13, '14, '17His new novel The Age of Perpetual Light was published by Grove/Atlantic in September, 2017.
Jeff Solomon
Poetry Participant '00, Writers Workshop Participant '92His book So Famous and So Gay: The Fabulous Potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein was published in May 2017 by the University of Minnesota Press.
Attended with the help of UC Irvine Scholarship
Nettie Reynolds (previously Hartsock)
Writers Workshop Participant 1999Her two one-minute plays are part of this year’s National One Minute Play Festival.
John Daniel
His poem “After the Wedding” was read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. The podcast can be found here: http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20170810/
Elizabeth Rosner
Writers Workshop Participant '82, '83, '87, Poetry Participant '99, Teaching Staff '06, '15Her new book, Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, was released from Counterpoint Press this month.
Ariel Lewis
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story, “Gifts,” was recently published in Wildness issue 9. She was also shortlisted for The Plaza Literary Prize for her novella, Four Small Love Stories.
Jamie Ford
Writers Workshops Participant, '06His third novel, Love and Other Consolation Prizes, was published in September, 2017, by Ballantine Books. He also has a new short story that will be published on the same date in Montana Noir by Akashic.
Nick Mann
Writers Workshop Participant '09His latest, Wounded, is a combination prequel/sequel to the 2013 novel, Forgetful, which won a Beverly Hills Book Award in the category of African American Fiction. In this new novel, three lifelong friends – Ben, Levi, and Tracy – take very different paths after high school, but all have brushes with danger and war.
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant '13Sommer Schafer has three very short stories published in FRiGG Issue 49.
Brian Rogers
Writers Workshops Participant, '95, '02Brian Rogers’ novel The Whole of the Moon was published by the University of Nevada Press in September, 2017.
Laurie Ann Doyle
Writers Workshops Participant, '09, '14Laurie Ann Doyle’s story “Just Ask for Hateman” appears in The Los Angeles Review, chronicling the journey of a daughter reuniting with her long-lost father in People’s Park. The story is featured in Laurie’s new book, World Gone Missing, to be released this October. Two other stories in the collection were treated in workshop at the Writers Workshops.
Dylan Brie Ducey
Writers Workshops Participant, '15Dylan’s short story, “The Perfect Mother,” appeared in The Tishman Review in January, 2017. A micro fiction entitled “Three a.m.” appeared in Minola Review in March, 2017. Another short story, “God Bless the Child,” appeared in Sou’wester’s spring 2017 issue. “The Dare” appeared in Split Lip in May, 2017. And Gargoyle published a short story, “Effacée Like Me,” in its 66th issue this summer. Her story, “The Talisman,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and long-listed for Wigleaf’s Top 50.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Sheila Thorne
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Sheila Thorne’s short story “The Museum of Rooms” appears in Gargoyle Magazine #66.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14He spent the month of June working on new writing at The International Retreat for Writers in Scotland on a Hawthornden Fellowship.
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13His debut novel The Bear Who Broke the World, which takes place in Berkeley during the summer of 1976, will be released on August 1, 2017, by Wheeler Street Press.
Barbara McDonald
Poetry participant, '80; Art of the Wild, Poetry,'93, Art of the Wild, Fiction '94Slipsliding by the Bay: A Novel, a spoof of San Francisco in the seventies, was treated in workshop at Squaw Valley. It was published July, 2017.
Mary Volmer
Writers Workshops Participant, 03, 05; Writers Workshops Teaching Staff ’16Her second novel, Reliance, Illinois, came out in paperback in spring 2017.
Lex Williford
1997, 2004 Squaw Valley Screenwriters' ConferenceHis novella in flash, Superman on the Roof, won the 10th Annual Rose Metal Press Flash Fiction Chapbook Award.
Merridawn Duckler
Writer workshop, '07She was named one of the WigLeaf Top 50 for micro-fiction that appeared in The Offing.
Lori Tobias
94, 95Her novel Wander was named a finalist in new fiction by the International Book Awards.
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Her debut novel, The Nest, spent more than four months on the New York Times bestseller list and was recently released in paperback.
Robert Rorke
Writers Workshop Participant '11He has placed a second chapter, Ten Dollar Bill, from his just completed novel Car Trouble in the current issue of The Amsterdam Quarterly.
Christine Granados
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her second book of fiction, Fight Like a Man and Other Stories We Tell Our Children, was published by the University of New Mexico Press, 2017.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Family Scholarship
Christie Nelson
1998 (unsure of date; better check)She will publish her third novel, Beautiful Illusion, San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition, Treasure Island 1939 with She Writes Press in May of 2018. Beautiful Illusion is a story of love and deception, intrigue and betrayal, between a female newspaper reporter, a Japanese diplomat, and a Mayan art scholar. It is also the story of the men and women who built San Francisco’s last world’s fair dedicated to peace and brotherhood in the Pacific, of a city within a city, of grandeur and pageantry, glamour and glitz, on the eve of World War II.
Anthony J Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “Rainy Day Schedule” won honorable mention in Sequestrum‘s 2016 Editors Reprint Award. His essay “Super Summer Spectacular” appeared in the spring 2016 issue of Compose Journal and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Superstition Review published his essay “Risk” in its issue 19 (Spring 2017), and Prick of the Spindle published his essay “Midnight Auto” in its issue 10 (spring 2016).
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant, '01He published his literary nonfiction essay “Trenton into Time”, in the Spring 2017 issue of the Superstition Review.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop teaching Staff & Participant '04, '05She was awarded the 2017 Mayborn Fellowship in Biography for her third book. She’ll be recognized at next month’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine, Texas, where such masters as Sebastian Junger (A Perfect Storm), Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers) and Charles Johnson (Middle Passage) will be keynote speakers. More information please visit http://bit.ly/2qKoH4V
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His multimedia essay, “King of Melody, Lord of Rhythm: Lydian Nadhaswaram’s Musical Journey,” on India’s amazing 10-year-old music prodigy was published in The Mantle on May 18, 2017. You can find the essay here.
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Under his pen name, Reeve Armstrong, he has seen the publication of two books for young readers – the chapter book Dashiell Stone: Best Friends … Forever? and Will Peck SAVES THE WORLD! for middle school-aged children. They were both released in January 2017 from Wheeler Street Press.
Kimball Taylor
Writers Workshop Participant '11His book The Coyote’s Bicycle is nominated for the California Book Award.
Jordan Fisher Smith
Writers Workshop Participant '01/ Teaching Staff '14 '16His book, Engineering Eden, won the 2017 California Book Award Silver Medal for nonfiction.
Anne Rice
Writers Workshop Participant, '79Her new novel, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, is the twelfth installation of the Vampire Chronicles series. The paperback edition was released by Anchor in May 2017.
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant '13Her short story, “The Youngest Son,” is out now in the literary journal Monday Night.
Rich Ferguson
Writers Workshop Participant, '04, '07His debut novel, New Jersey Me, was released in the fall of 2016 by Rare Bird Books/Barnacle Books.
Sands Hall
Writers Workshops participant '89/ Teaching StaffHer memoir, Flunk. Start., has been purchased by Counterpoint Press for publication in January 2018. Sands is represented by Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management.
Melenie Freedom Flynn
Writers Workshops Participant; '09, '10Her nonfiction piece, “Message From Your Inmate,” won Vela Magazine‘s 2017 Nonfiction Contest. Melenie attended with the assistance of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Attended with the help of The Carlisle Family Scholarship
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshop, '07, '11Her story, “Last Chance” will be published in Vol. II of USC’s literary magazine, Exposition Review.
Angie Chatman
Writers Workshops Participant, '12, '16Her short story “Blue Bird, Blue Skies” recently appeared in Blood Orange Review.
Attended with the help of Jamie Ford Scholarship, Carlisle Family Fellowship, Jessica O'Dwyer Scholarship
Cynthia Robinson
Writers Workshops Participant, '13, '14Her story “Community,” selected by judge Kirstin Valdez-Quade as winner of the 2016 Driftless Prize in Fiction sponsored by Devil’s Lake, is out in the Spring 2017 issue. You can read it here.
Edan Lepucki
Writers Workshops Participant 2007, Teaching StaffEdan Lepucki’s second novel, Woman No. 17, was published by Hogarth/Crown in May, 2017.
Janet Fitch
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff & Participant, ’95Janet Fitch’s novel The Revolution of Marina M. set during the turbulent years of the Russian Revolution, will be released on November 7, 2017 by Little Brown and Co. Fitch’s punk-rock novel, Paint It Black, has been adapted into ta feature film which will be released in May.
Andrew Roe
Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '04His short story collection, Where You Live, was published by Engine Books in May 2017. The book received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.
Andrea Avery
Writers Workshop participant; '10, '16Andrea Avery’s first book, Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano, was published in May, 2017, by Pegasus Books.
Leonard Chang
Writers Workshops Participant, '94Leonard Chang’s new novel, The Lockpicker, was published in May 2017, and a new TV show, Snowfall, that he helped write and produce will premiere on FX in the summer.
Charmaine Craig
Writers Workshops Participant; '97,'98Charmaine Craig’s latest novel, Miss Burma, was published in May, 2017 by Grove Press. Miss Burma is an Indie Next Selection and has received a starred review from Kirkus.
Denise Emanuel Clemen
Writers Workshop Participant; '06,'10Denise Emanuel Clemen had essays published in the Fall 2016 (issue#18) Superstition Review; the November 2016 issue of the Beacon, a publication of the American Adoption Congress; the Spring 2016 (issue#14) Serving House Journal; and Chicago Now‘s “Portrait of an Adoption” in November 2016. Short fiction appeared in the 2016 Sand Hill Review, the 2016 (issue #36) Berkeley Fiction Review, and in the Pen Center USA post-election anthology, Only Light Can Do That.
Sandy Yang
Writers Workshops Participant, '12Sandy Yang’s short story, “Inside Joke,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Eleven Eleven, and appears in the Fall 2016 issue.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '2011Elaine Barnard’s short stories appear in the current issues of Lost River Review, Kyso Flash anthology, Beach Reads-Here Comes the Sun.
Anne Ray
Writers Workshop Participant, '06Anne Ray won the 2016 Danahy Prize for fiction for “Please Repeat My Name,” which appeared in the Tampa Review. Her work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Gettysburg Review, LIT, and Opium. Her story “Reluctantly” is forthcoming in Conduit, and “Guidance & Control” is currently up at The Adirondack Review.
Lindsey Lee Johnson
Writers Workshop Participant, '13Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, was published by Random House in January 2017. The novel was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, an American Booksellers Association Indie Next Pick, a LibraryReads Pick, a Book of the Month Club Pick, and People Magazine‘s Book of the Week. It was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and the Chronicle called it “extraordinary, impossibly funny and achingly sad.” The New York Times called it “an alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel” and praised its “compassion, its ability to see the humanity inside even the apparently hopeless person and the shimmering intelligence of its prose.” Lindsey attended the Community of Writers with the assistance of the Stearns Scholarship.
Cynthia Robinson
Fiction Writers Workshop Participant, '13, '14Cynthia Robinson’s novel Birds of Wonder will be published by Standing Stone Books in February 2018.
Alison Morse
Writers Workshop Participant '10Alison Morse’s collection of very short stories, If You Wave a Chicken Over Your Head, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in February, 2017.
Monika Rose
Poetry Participant, '97 & Writers Workshops Participant '00 & Art of the Wild Participant '94,'95.Monika Rose is co-editor of the Butte Fire anthology, Out of the Fire, (June 17, 2017) by nonprofit literary publisher Manzanita Writers Press in Calaveras County. Over 150 full-color pages of photography and poignant reflections in prose and poetry of a horrific fire, the seventh most destructive in California history, and one that destroyed a community and charred the landscape and environment of an already bark beetle-infested forest and woodland region. A website will chronicle the history of the event and the aftermath, reflecting the sensibilities of living in the foothill and Sierra region of California, and an eBook and eZine.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant, '01Joe Bardin’s personal history essay, “Showbiz” appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
Jacqueline Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant in Nonfiction, ‘14Jacqueline Doyle’s flash fiction chapbook The Missing Girl is now available for pre-order from Black Lawrence Press: http://www.blacklawrence.com/the-missing-girl/. Her essay “Saving Trees,” published last summer in Catamaran Literary Reader, has been included in Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction, edited by Josh MacIvor-Anderson (San Francisco: Outpost 19, 2017). She has creative nonfiction forthcoming soon in The Gettysburg Review, Under the Gum Tree, and Superstition Review, fiction forthcoming in Prime Number, and flash forthcoming in Post Road and Hotel Amerika.
Max Winter
Writers Workshops Participant, '06Max Winter’s debut novel, Exes, was published by Catapult in April. Max attended the workshops with the assistance of a UC Irvine scholarship.
Joshua Ferris
Writers Workshop Participant, '03Joshua Ferris’s latest book is The Dinner Party and Other Stories. It was published by Little, Brown & Company in May, 2017.
Kim Wyatt
Writers Workshop Participant, '06Kim Wyatt’s essay, “The Currency of Moons,” was selected to appear in Best American Travel Writing 2017 by guest editor Lauren Collins of the New Yorker. The anthology will publish in October; the essay first appeared in Creative Nonfiction’s spring 2016 issue.
Elizabeth Rosner
Writers Workshop Participant,'82,'83,'87; Poetry Participant,'99; Teaching StaffElizabeth Rosner’s first book of non-fiction, entitled Survivor Café: the Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, will be published in September 2017 by Counterpoint Press.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant, '01Joe Bardin’s creative nonfiction essay, “Soccer as a Second Language,” was published by Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travel Cultures.
Robert Rorke
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Robert Rorke has a story, “The Christmas Pyramid,” in the Winter 2017 edition of the online journal Shadowgraph.
Robin Romm
Writers Workshops Participant, '03; Teaching StaffRobin Romm has edited Double Bind: Women on Ambition, an anthology of personal essays by brilliant women on the subject of striving. It will be published in April by Liveright/Norton.
Also, Robin and her partner, Don Waters, had a baby girl in August. Sylvie Jacquelyn was born August 27, 2016 and is a total joy.
George Omi
Writers Workshop Participant; '95,'98,'01George Omi’s e-book, American Yellow, was awarded First Place for Writer’s Digest’s Self-Published e-Book Awards in the Life Stories category. He’s won prize money, recognition in the May/June 2017 issue of Writer’s Digest, Writer’s Digest Books, and a subscription to Writer’s Digest magazine.
Kim O’Neil
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Her first collection of stories, Fever Dogs, is forthcoming from Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press in summer 2017.
Attended with the help of the UC Irvine scholarship.
Gary Rogowski
Writers Workshop Participant, '15Gary Rogowski’s fiction piece, Boyborygmi, Unexpurgated or Gas as Mass; was published in February by Praxis Magazine. http://praxismagazine.com/?p=1161
Marcia Butler
writers workshop '15Marcia Butler’s memoir, The Skin Above My Knee (Little Brown), is coming out Feb 21, 2017. It has been favorably reviewed by Meghan Daum in the New York Times and also reviewed in New York Magazine.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshops Participant in Fiction and Nonfiction, '06,'10Jasmin Darznik’s novel Song Of A Captive Bird was be published by Random House/Ballantine February 13, 2018. It tells the story of Iran’s iconic woman poet, Forugh Farrokhzad.
R.T. Jamison
Writers Workshops Participant, '15R.T Jamison’s short story, “Statistics and Causal Inference Studies,” appears in the Winter 2016 issue of Four Chambers.
Bill Pieper
Writers Workshop Participant, '10Bill Pieper had six stories, all new since the publication of his collection “Forgive Me, Father” by Cold River Press in 2014, appear in various literary journals in 2016. Four of them were in the US, with the other two representing his first published work in Canada and in the UK. In addition, one of those stories , titled “Artifacts,” was chosen to appear in a hard-copy anthology due out in Spring 2017.
Kevin Allardice
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '12Kevin Allardice’s second novel; Family, Genus, Species; will be published in May, 2017, with the press Outpost19. It is set in Berkeley during the Black Lives Matter protests of late 2014. His first novel, Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, came out in 2013 with Counterpoint Press, and he read from it at the Community of Writers’ alumni reading in 2014. Kevin attended the Writers Workshop with the support of the James Houston Memorial Scholarship.
Heather Young
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Heather Young’s debut novel, The Lost Girls, which she workshopped at Squaw, has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Elaine Barnard’s non-fiction story was published in the December issue of Lost River Review.
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshop Participant, '13Sommer Schafer’s short story, “The Great Unraveling,” is out now in Ninth Letter 13.2.
Tracy DeBrincat
Writers Workshops Participant, '96Tracy DeBrincat participated as a mentor in the Fall 2016 AWP Writer to Writer Program. Her story “Help Me Find My Killer” was published in the Rough Magick Anthology edited by Francesca Lia Block & Jessa Marie Mendez (Dangerous Angel Press, 2015). Her most recent short story collection, Troglodyte, received the Elixir Prize (Elixir Press, 2014). She is currently working on a novel called How to Kill Your Coyote.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop Participant, '92, '93; StaffLisa Alvarez’ s flash fiction story “Intro to Women’s Studies or Too Much Margaret Atwood” appeared in Only Light Can Do That: 100 Post-Election Poems, Stories & Essays, published in December by The Rattling Wall and PEN Center USA. She is pleased to note that Community of Writers staff Janet Fitch and Andrew Tonkovich have poems in the anthology along with the contributions of many Community of Writers alums. Lisa attended the Community of Writers with the support of a UCI scholarship and the Ancinas Scholarship.
Terry Shames
Writers Workshop Participant , '98An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock, Terry Shames’s sixth novel in the series, launches January 3, 2017. The book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was also featured in an article in PW about police corruption and brutality in crime fiction.
Matthew Fogarty
Writers Workshop Participant, '11,'14Matt Fogarty’s book of short fiction, Maybe Mermaids & Robots Are Lonely, released in September 2016 by Stillhouse Press, was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Indie Books of 2016.
Michael Golding
Writers Workshops Participant, '90, '92Michael Golding’s latest novel, A Poet of the Invisible World, is the winner of the 2016 Ferro-Grumley Award.
Gary Rogowski
Writers Workshop Participant, '15Gary Rogowski had an excerpt of his short story, “Paris Recital,” published on-line in Sigh Press’ Journal, Winter Issue 2016. He is in unfamiliar territory being beside himself. He attended the Writers Workshop with the assistance of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Cynthia Robinson
Writers Workshop Participant, '13, '14Cynthia Robinson’s story, “Community,” has been selected by judge Kirstin Valdez Quade as winner of the 2016 Driftless Prize in Fiction, awarded by U. of Wisconsin lit journal Devils Lake. The story will appear in the spring 2017 issue. A short-short, “Breakfast,” which got its start in one of Sands’ afternoon “workshop slams” in 2014, is just out in The Pinch (Fall, 2016; 36/2).
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshops Participant, '07,'11Gwen Goodkin’s story, “Waiver,” won the Black Fox Literary Magazine contest in August 2016. Her story, “Just Les is Fine,” was published by Fiction in November. Gwen workshopped an early draft of “Just Les is Fine” at Squaw in 2007.
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Justin McFarr’s short story, “Pickwick Bowl (Burbank, California),” appears in Issue No. 9 of the East Bay Review.
Leland Cheuk
Writers Workshops, '01, '04Leland Cheuk’s story collection, Letters From Dinosaurs, was published in September 2016 by Thought Catalog Books.
Louis B. Jones
Writers Workshop Participant, '89, StaffLouis B. Jones has an essay on Jane Austen in the Winter 2016 Three Penny Review, and a piece on Plato for the upcoming Spring, 2017 Three Penny Review issue. Louis originally attended the Community of Writers with the support of a UC Irvine Scholarship.
Attended with the help of UC irvine Scholarship
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop Participant '92, '93; StaffLisa Alvarez’s poem, “At The Free Clinic, 1977,” appears in the Fall 2016 issue of Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature. She is also happy to note a number of other alums are in the same issue. Lisa attended the Community of Writers with the support of a UCI scholarship and the Ancinas scholarship.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship, Ancinas scholarship
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '12, '14, '16Janine Kovac’s book, Brain Changer: A Mother’s Guide to Cognitive Science, links parenting advice with cognitive science. This 78-page primer follows Kovac as she uses cognitive science to cope with the stresses of the newborn intensive care unit after her twins are born three months premature. Lauded as “inspiring and hard to put down” by renowned cognitive scientist and New York Times bestselling author George Lakoff, Brain Changer is available for sale on Amazon and through bookstores by special request. Janine attended the Writers Workshops with the support of a George Pascoe Miller Scholarship (’11), a Carlisle Family Scholarship (’12), and a Dirk Eshleman Scholarship (’14).
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshop Participant, '13Sommer Schafer’s story, “The Gorge,” is out now in Fiction Number 62.
Olga Zilberbourg
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Olga Zilberbourg’s third book of fiction in Russian, Khlop-strana, has appeared in Moscow-based Vremya Press in October 2016. In English, her short story, “Opera at the Ballpark,” was published in the latest issue of the Santa Monica Review. Olga attended the Community of Writers with the support of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Judy Juanita’s essay collection, DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland, was published by Equidistance Press in October, 2016. It was a distinguished finalist in OSU’s 2016 Non/Fiction Collection contest. Many of the essays appeared at The Weekling.com where the author is a contributing editor. The essays explore race, sexuality, politics and spirituality through the eyes of a feminist foot soldier. “The Gun as Ultimate Performance Poem” recalls the author’s youthful foray in the Black Panther Party; this essay was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Susan Henderson’s second novel, currently titled Petroleum, has sold to HarperCollins. Susan’s first novel, Up From the Blue, was workshopped at the Community of Writers. She also received two Pushcart nominations this year–one from New World Writing for “Fish with Bent Fins” and the other from SUNY Buffalo’s Elm Leaves Journal for “Dead Eddie”. Susan attended the workshops with the aid of a Lojo Scholarship.
Sam Silvas
Writers Workshop Participant, 1998Sam Silvas’ short story collection, Stanton, California, was published in November (Silver Birch Press).
Marilyn Guinnane
Writers Workshops Participant, '07,'13Marilyn Guinnane’s short story, “Ginny Reaper,” was published in October, 2016, by the Scarlet Leaf Literary Magazine, & can be viewed online.
Kelly Luce
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Kelly Luce’s debut novel, Pull Me Under, was released on November 1, 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Richard Ford
Writers Workshop Participant, '70; StaffRichard Ford’s newest book is a memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents. It was released in May of 2017 by Harper Collins.
Michael Chabon
Writers Workshop Participant, '86, '87; StaffMichael Chabon’s latest novel, Moonglow, was released November 22, 2017 by Harper Collins, and reviewed here in the New York Times.
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshops Participant, '04, '08,'14; Writers Workshop Participant, '04,'15Devi S. Laskar’s chapbook; Gas & Food, No Lodging; will be published by Finishing Line Press in February 2017. She recently won first prize in poetry at the 27th annual Mendocino Coast Writers Conference.
Sara Baker
Writers Workshop Participant, '91; Screenwriters Workshop, '95Sara Baker’s debut novel, The Timekeeper’s Son, has been published by Deeds Publishing. Set in the New South, The Timekeeper’s Son explores middle-aged grief and youthful yearnings, the price of hidden disabilities and wounds, and the claims and limits of community. Sara Baker’s short fiction has been published most recently in Confrontation, Cleaver, H.O.W. Journal, and the China Grove Journal.
Lisa Alvarez & Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffLisa Alvarez and Andrew Tonkovich look forward to the early spring arrival of their co-edited book from Heyday, the first-ever literary anthology of Orange County, California. Featuring nearly 200 years of writing from and about the County, this collection includes work by Community of Writers staff and alums, as well as co-founder Oakley Hall. Publication date of Orange County: A Literary Field Guide is February 1, 2017. Thanks to all our fellow Communitarians for suggestions and direction, especially Heyday founder and frequent workshop guest Malcolm Margolin.
JJ Strong
Writers Workshop Participant, '13JJ Strong’s debut novel, Us Kids Know, was purchased by Razorbill Books, an imprint at Penguin Random House. It is due to be published in the fall of 2017.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73,'80,'11,Elaine Barnard’s short stories appeared in the 2016 issues of Lowestoft Chronicle, Anak Sastra, Kyso-Flash and Green River Review.
Donna Miscolta
Writers Workshop Participant, '98Donna Miscolta’s short story collection, Hola and Goodbye: Una familia in stories, was selected by Randall Kenan for the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and is being published November 1, 2016 by Carolina Wren Press.
Vickie Vertiz
Poetry Participant, '15; Writers Workshop Participant, '15Vickie Vertiz was chosen to be a Poetry Center summer resident in 2016 by Natalie Diaz. Her collection of poetry, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, will be published by
The University of Arizona Press, Camino del Sol series. Vickie attended the Poetry Workshop with the assistance of the Lucile Clifton Memorial Scholarship.
Vishwas R. Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant 2014Vishwas R. Gaitonde’s short story “Pigs is Pigs and Eggs is Eggs” (published in The Iowa Review) has been cited in ‘Best American Short Stories 2016’ [guest editor: Junot Diaz; series editor: Heidi Pitlor] as one of the “Other Distinguished Stories” in the notables list. His story “On Earth As It Is In Heaven” has been published in the Fall 2016 issue of Santa Monica Review.
Ann Graham
Writers Workshops Participant, '08Ann Graham recently had two stories published in Panther City Review.
Laurie Ann Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '14Laurie Ann Doyle’s new book of stories, World Gone Missing, will be released by Regal House press in Fall 2017. She teaches writing at The San Francisco Writers Grotto and UC Berkeley.
Tyler Dilts
Writers Workshop StaffTyler Dilts’ latest novel, Come Twilight, was published in August by Thomas & Mercer. Come Twilight is the fourth book in the Long Beach Homicide series.
Dylan Brie Ducey
Writers Workshops Participant,'15Dylan Brie Ducey’s flash piece, “The Talisman”, was published in Pithead Chapel in September 2016. Also in September, her short story, “Even When You Think I’m Not There,” appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs. Another flash, “I Hate Everyone In This Family,” appeared in Cheap Pop in October, 2016. Dylan attended the workshop with the assistance of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
https://pitheadchapel.com/the-talisman/
http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=626
http://www.cheappoplit.com/home/2016/7/26/i-hate-everyone-in-this-family-dylan-brie-ducey
Sommer Schafer
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Sommer Schafer’s novella, Julie Goes North, recently received publication in the anthology, Brewed Awakenings 2.
Greg Hrbek
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Greg Hrbek’s Not on Fire, but Burning, published in 2015 by Melville House, is now out in paperback. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and an NPR Best Book of 2015.
Jacqueline Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant, Nonfiction, ‘14Jacqueline Doyle’s flash fiction chapbook The Missing Girl (winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition) is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Two of her stories were nominated for Best of the Net this year: “Nola” by Monkeybicycle, and “Winter Afternoon” by Phoebe Journal. She also has recent creative nonfiction in Catamaran Literary Reader, The Pinch, Electric Literature, Full Grown People, and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (White Pine Press, 2016).
Anara Guard
Writers Workshops Participants, '16Anara Guard’s short creative nonfiction piece “Ripening” appears in the 5th anniversary October 2016 issue of Under the Gum Tree
Dedria Humphries Barker
Writers Workshops Participant, '08, '15Dedria Humphries Barker’s essay, “The Girl with The Good Hair” has been accepted for publication in the anthology, The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-first Century. The anthology is being edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Tara Betts. The publisher is 2Leaf Press, an imprint of The Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars Inc. New York, NY. Dedria’s essay is about how her Detroit neighbors discovered how good her hair was when it was wet.
Andrew Roe
Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '04Andrew Roe’s short story collection, Where You Live, will be published by Engine Books in May 2017.
Josephine Ensign
Writers Workshop (Nonfiction) Participant '13Josephine Ensign’s medical memoir, Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review section, October 16, 2016.
Dani Burlison
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Dani Burlison’s new zine, Lady Parts, was published in September 2016 and is now available through Pioneers Press. Copies can be ordered here.
Elison Alcovendaz
Writers Workshops Participant in Nonfiction, '16Elison Alcovendaz’s essay “A Man’s ABCs of Miscarriage” has been published by The Rumpus. Parts of this essay were treated in workshop at the Community of Writers and read by Jason Roberts. The essay can be read here.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Krys Lee
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Krys Lee’s novel, How I Became a North Korean, was released by Viking in August of 2016. The novel was inspired by her accidental activism and friendships with North Korean defectors.
Jordan Fisher Smith
Writers Workshop Participant, '01, StaffJordan Fisher Smith’s latest nonfiction work, Engineering Eden: The True Story of a Violent Death, A Trial, and the Fight Over Controlling Nature, was released in June by Crown.
Sharon McElhone
Writers Workshops Participant, '06Sharon McElhone’s new bilingual column now appears monthly in La Oferta and her fiction is forthcoming in the anthology Basta!
Martin J. Smith
Writers Workshops Participant '91, Teaching StaffMartin J. Smith’s newest book, Combustion, was released in September by Diversion Publishing.
Vanessa Hua
Writers Workshops Participant '08Vanessa Hua’s debut short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, has been getting great advance praise: O, The Oprah Magazine: a “searing debut”; Booklist: “an intriguing collection”; Bustle: “exactly what we need to be reading in this country right now, and probably always”; Nylon: “profoundly moving and impossible to forget.” She’ll be reading throughout the Bay Area, Nevada City, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York this fall. For more information, go to www.vanessahua.com
Attended with the help of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Scholarship
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant, '01Joe Bardin’s literary nonfiction, “Body Archeology,” will appear in the Louisville Review in the Fall issue 2016.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Vishwas Gaitonde’s essay “An Ecological Movement Sprouts From Literature” was published in The Mantle on September 6, 2016.
David Hagerty
Writers Workshop Participant, '03The second book in David Hagerty’s series of murder mysteries, They Tell Me You Are Crooked, will be released on Sept. 26 by Evolved Publishing. It follows Gov. Duncan Cochrane as he attempts to catch a sniper in Chicago’s most notorious housing project while maintaining the secret of his daughter’s killing.
David owes much of his success and persistence as a writer to Louis B. Jones, who taught him what it takes to make it in this trade.