Kenneth Weinberg
Writing the Medical Experience, '02Kenneth Weinberg’s latest book, Exquisite Moment of Sorrow and Grace, was published in April 2025. Find it here.
Omnium Gatherum: Alumni & Teaching Staff News
Welcome to the Community of Writers Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News. We invite you to find out what our community has been up to recently. You may view by date or by program (see left sidebar). Sign up for monthly updates here.
We also invite alumni and staff to submit your news here. Please note that news must be less than 12 months old, brief and to the point, and may be edited for brevity and/or clarity.
Antonio López
Poetry Program Participant, '17, '23Antonio López was named San Mateo County Poet Laureate in April 2025. More info here.
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshops Participant, '86, '87, '88, '89Rebel Falls by Tim Wendel captured the 2025 W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for excellence in military fiction. The book was published by Three Hills, an imprint of Cornell University Press. The Boyd Award honors the best American military fiction set in a period when the United States was at war.
“Rebel Falls is a riveting novel set during the American Civil War,” the ALA says. “The book was inspired by true stories of female spies who risked everything for the Union cause.” More info here.
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant, '07, '10, '14, '17Jeanine Steven’s newest poetry collection, Left-Handed Hummingbird, was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing House in January 2025. Her title poem was developed at the Community of Writers in 2007.
May Kuroiwa
Poetry Participant, '23May Kuroiwa’s poem, “When Nothing is All You Can Do”, is included in the anthology Chaos, Crises, Conflict, published by Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia.
Cathy Wang
Writers Workshops Participant '19Cathy Wang is featured in Issue 43 of KHÔRA. Her piece, “The Shape of Hope,” is published under her pen name “Cathy Lue-W.” More info here.
Andrew Roe
Writers Workshops Participant, ’97, ’04Andrew Roe’s short fiction has been recently published in Story, Wigleaf, MoonPark Review, and Pithead Chapel. More info here.
Freeman Ng
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Bridge Across The Sky, Freeman Ng’s verse novel based on the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island, won the National Consortium For Teaching About Asia’s 2024 Freeman Award (name correspondence entirely coincidental!) for Young Adult/High School literature. More info here.
Therí Pickens
Poetry Participant, '17, '20, '24Therí Pickens’s debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, has been published by Duke University Press in March 2025. More info here.
Andy Young
Poetry ParticipantAndy Young’s poetry collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in October 2024. More info here.
Jessica Danger
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Jessica Danger was recently named the Nonfiction Alumni Fellowship at Bennington College (Winter 2025) and was selected as a nonfiction mentor in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship program for Summer of 2025. Danger also has a forthcoming publication, due out in May 2026 with Santa Fe Writers Project, titled No Heroic Measures: A Memoir. More info here.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry Participant, '20Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology, coedited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray
Street, was published in March 2025 by Trinity UP. This updates the 2013 Ecopoetry Anthology with poems written and/or published since 2010 by poets not in the first book.
Ann’s eighth book of poems, Into the Chalice of Your Thoughts, was published in 2024 by Guadalajara UP. It is an ekphrastic project with Guadalajara-based photographer Wilfried Raussert; the poems were translated into Spanish by the Women in Translation group based at U Wisconsin-Madison. Works were exhibited at the 2023 Guadalajara Book Festival and in Mexico City. Now, an expanded MS seeks an American publisher. More info here.
Ronald Lauderbach
Poetry participant, '22Ronald Lauderbach and his wife, Kathleen Hurder, have published a book containing photos of oil paintings showing their Provenance experiences, with accompanying poems. The poems were translated into French by Dr. Hadley Wood, Professor Emerita of Point Loma Nazarene University.
Claudia Reder
Poetry Workshop, '10, '20Claudia M. Reder’s third collection of poems, Dizzying Words, was published by Main Street Rag, January, 2025. More info here.
Tim Foley
Writers Workshops Participant, '01, '02Tim Foley’s collection of ghost stories, Tales Nocturnal, has been published by PS Publishing, UK. More info here.
Dave Essinger
Writers Workshops Participant, '09Dave Essinger’s second novel, This World and the Next, was released from Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2024. “Some fiction feels so real it is astonishing. This book is like that. …it almost felt like it could have been tracking real events.” -Vick Mickunas
More info here.
Attended with the help of a LoJo Foundation Scholarship
Sarah Perrin
Writers Workshops Participant, ’24Sarah Perrin’s short story “Just Girls” won the 2025 DISQUIET Literary Prize for fiction and will be published in Granta. More info here.
Attended with the help of A Ruth Nyswander Del Duca Memorial Scholarship
Mark Gozonsky
Writers Workshop ‘24Mark Gozonsky published an essay in The Los Angeles Times about his successful quest to play tennis on every public tennis court in LA County.
Nettie Reynolds
Fiction Participant, 1999Nettie Reynolds essayist and playwright most recently had her essay “Safety with Gene Hackman” published in popular humor’s Little Old Lady Comedy. The essay is an homage to youthful longing and Gene.
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction Participant, 1993/ Ongoing Staff MemberAndrew Tonkovich’s review of Sue Coe and Stephen F. Eisenman’s The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism appears in the online Los Angeles Review of Books.
Daniel Pope
Writers Workshops Participant, '19, '21, '23Daniel Pope has won the 2024 University of New Orleans Press Publishing Lab Prize! His winning manuscript, Go Help Yourself, is set for publication in Spring 2026.
A gripping exploration of obsession and loneliness in the vein of Gabe Habash’s Stephen Florida with the sharp comic edge of Gabriel Smith’s Brat, Go Help Yourself examines the American fascination with self-help, pop psychology, and compulsive dieting through the poignant lens of a troubled mother-son relationship.
Sue Repko
Writers Workshops Participant, '05Sue Repko’s essay “What To Do With The Bodies” appeared in The Manifest Station in February 2025. More info here. More info here.
Karen Terrey
Poetry Participant, '19Karren Terrey was named 2025 Poet Laureate of Nevada County.
John Harvey
Poetry Participant, '95; Writers Workshops Participant, '97John Harvey’s most recent chapbook, Blue in Green, was published in the UK by Shoestring Press in March, 2025.
Jeff Kingman
Poetry Participant ’12, ‘22Jeffrey Kingman’s poem “Lake Michigan” was published in eMerge Magazine in January of 2025. More info here.
Diane Tober
Writers Workshop Participant, '05Diane Tober’s new book, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them, was awarded the Carol R. Ember Book Prize by the Society for Anthropological Sciences (SAS). The SAS Carol R. Ember Book Prize recognizes books whose significant theoretical, empirical, or methodological contributions to anthropology embody the mission of SAS to advance the scientific study of human societies.
“Dr. Tober’s eye-opening exposé on the treatment of egg donors is a much-needed challenge to the hearts-and-flowers narrative that relies on exploitative, harmful practices to fuel the ready supply of eggs to desperate infertile recipients.” Liz Scheier, author of Never Simple: A Memoir.
More info here.
Janet Constantino
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '09, '11, '12Janet Constantino’s debut novel, Becoming Mariella, will be released on February 4, 2025. The novel is published by SheWrites Press and is distributed by Simon & Schuster. Ms. Constantino won 2nd prize in the MFK Fisher Last House Writing Contest, for an excerpt from Becoming Mariella. More info here.
Rachel Richardson
Poetry Participant, '01Rachel Richardson’s third collection of poems, Smother, was published by W. W. Norton in February 2025. More info here.
Sholeh Wolpé
Poetry Participant, '04The Invisible Sun by Attar was collected and translated by Sholeh Wolpé. (Harper Collins, 2025)
Twelfth-century Persian poet Attar (1145–1221) was revered by Rumi and though his work is beloved around the world, he is mostly unknown to English readers. Translated in simple, elegant language by poet Sholeh Wolpé—one among generations of poets influenced by Attar’s poetry—The Invisible Sun is a beautiful treasury of Attar’s most prescient poetry, offering comfort and inspiration. More info here.
Yuki Tanaka
Poetry Participant, '15Yuki Tanaka’s first full-length poetry collection, Chronicle of Drifting, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in April 2025. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Lucille Clifton Scholarship
Ann Graham
Writers Workshops Participant, ‘08Ann Graham’s short story, “Sparkle and Shine,” was published by Muleskinner Journal, Another Twist of Fate issue. More info here.
Georgia San Li
Poetry Participant, '23; Writers Workshops Participant, '22Georgia San Li’s poetry chapbook, Wandering (FLP), was released in 2024. Her poetry was longlisted for the 2024 London Magazine Poetry Prize. We Eat Ugly Lionfish (Willow Springs, Winter 2024) and The Full Report (Exposition Review, Summer 2024) have been nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize.
Susan Browne
Poetry Participant, '88, '11, '22Susan Browne’s fourth poetry collection, Monster Mash, will be published in March, 2025, by Four Way Books. More info here.
Jim Gunshinan
Poetry Participant '98, '08Under the mentorship of Brian Tierney, Jim Gunshinan is experimenting with the Pantoum. Three of these poems were published by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.
Adela Najarro
Poetry Participant, ’16Adela Najarro’s latest book, Variations in Blue, was chosen by the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Collaborative as the second volume in their curated series, published March 2025. More info here.
Sarah Ghazal Ali
Poetry Participant, '21Sarah Ghazal Ali’s debut collection Theophanies recently won the 2025 GLCA New Writers Award in poetry, and was just named a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. More info here.
Sameer Pandya
Writers Workshops Participant, '04; Writers Workshops StaffSameer Pandya’s upcoming novel, Our Beautiful Boys, will be published by Ballantine Books on March 18, 2025. Preorder it here.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14, '22Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story “God Made Chardonnay, The Devil Made Merlot” was published in Litro magazine. You can read it here.
Attended with the help of a Maat scholarship
Lindsey Steffes
Writers Workshops Participant, '16Lindsey Steffes’ debut novel, Gichigami, won the Juniper Prize for Fiction and will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in March 2025. More info here.
Attended with the help of an O'Dwyer Scholarship
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15, '19Jon Riccio’s newest chapbook, The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in November 2024. More info here.
Lydia Liu
Poetry Participant, '20, '22Lydia T. Liu’s first chapbook of poems, the problem of deer, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2025, after being selected as a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. the problem of deer is a lyrical exploration of transitory landscapes. “This is a short book that contains thousands of books.” (Eileen Myles) More info here.
Attended with the help of a C.D. Wright Memorial Scholarship
Alix Christie
Writers Workshops Participant, '00Alix Christie’s novel, The Shining Mountains, appears in paperback in March 2025. Her short story “Everychild” won a 2024 Pushcart Prize, and the opening of her forthcoming novel, Rubble Women, won the gold prize in the 20th-century category of the Historical Fiction Society’s 2024 First Chapters Competition. More info here.
Nanda Reddy
Writers Workshops, '22Nanda Reddy’s novel, A Girl Within A Girl Within A Girl, debuts March 4, 2025 (Zibby Books). In this story of identity and immigration, an Indo-Guyanese woman grapples with revealing her hidden past to her husband of decades. She peels back secrets to reveal the multiple identities she inhabited to survive her adolescence. “Too important and gripping to put down…” Kirkus. “A powerful story of resilience and reinvention…” Publisher’s Weekly. More info here.
Pamela Pan
Writers Workshops Participant, '24Pamela Pan’s story “Baba’s Accordion” is published in California Writers Club’s Best of the Best: 2024 Literary Review. Her short story “Waiting” is published in Vision & Verse: A Fusion of Poetry, Prose, and Photography, 2024. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship
Jeanette Horn
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Jeanette Horn’s debut novel, Play, With Knives, was published by Regal House Publishing in March 2025. More info here.
Ann Graham
Writers Workshop Participant, ‘08Ann Graham’s short story, “Sparkle and Shine,” is in The Muleskinner Journal: Another Twist of Fate. More info here.
Amelia L Williams
Poetry participant, '19Amelia L. Williams’ debut poetry collection Species of Concern from Shanti Arts (January, 2025) is now available from the publisher and other booksellers. The book examine braided journeys of personal loss and environmental grief, of grasping and letting go. Each section opens with a poem set in a speculative future; subsequent poems return readers to the teeming planet we inhabit—where grounding practices of mindfulness allow us to manage many species of concern—humans among them, both vulnerable and culpable. More info here.
Sherry Lynne Smith
Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '99In December 2024, Sherry Smith’s article, “The Vote for Freedom to Liberia from Prospect Hill Plantation, 1847,” and dataset, were published in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 5, no. 4 (2024): 93-101. More info here.
Jeanne Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant, '09Jeanne Wagner won the 2024 Catamaran Poetry Prize for her manuscript One Needful Song. More info here.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant, '01, '03, '19Yiskah Rosenfeld’s poem “Bird Call Koan with Glossary” from her new book Tasting Flight was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It first appeared in Issue #14 of OGQ. More info here.
Kevin Fitchett
Poetry Participant, '14; Writers Workshops Participant, '19Kevin Fitchett has received a second-year fellowship for fiction at the Fine Arts Work Center, where he will be in residence until April 2025.
Samiya Bashir
Poetry Workshop Participant, '09Samiya Bashir’s upcoming book, I Hope This Helps, will be published in May, 2025 by Nightboat Books.
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.
Scot Siegel
Poetry Participant, ‘07Scot Siegel’s fourth collection of poems, Tender Currencies, won the Sally Albiso Book Award, and will be published by Concrete Wolf-MoonPath Press in January, 2025. 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
Jessica Cohn
Poetry Participant, '21Jessica Cohn launched Gratitude Diary (Main Street Rag, NC), her first poetry collection, in October 2024. Cohn, a long-time nonfiction writer, debuted at age 66. More info here.
Jami Macarty
Poetry Participant, '10, '14, '17Jami Macarty’s fourth chapbook, The Whole Catastrophe, was published by Vallum Chapbook Series in September 2024. More info here.
Holaday Mason
Poetry Participant, '00, '06, '19Holaday Mason’s 6th full length collection, As If Scattered, was published by Giant Claw/What Books Press in October of 2024. More info here.
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.
KB Ballentine
Poetry Participant, '15KB Ballentine’s ninth collection of poetry All the Way Through will be released this November with Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. 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.
Martin J. Smith
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffMartin J. Smith’s latest essay, “For the Love of A Smart Dog”, is now available on Garden & Gun. Read it here.
Yuki Tanaka
Poetry Participant, '15Yuki Tanaka’s co-translation with Mary Jo Bang, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi, was published by Princeton University Press in November as part of The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation. This is the first time the work of the great Japanese surrealist has been made available in English. More info here.
Attended with the help of A Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
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.
Ananda Lima
Poetry Participant, '17Ananda Lima’s novel Craft Stories I Wrote for the Devil, published by Macmillan, is a 2025 Long List Selection of the American Library Association’s Carnegie Medal. The short list will be announced in November.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshops StaffAlex Espinoza’s novel Sons of El Ray, published by Simon and Schuster, is a 2025 Long List Selection of the American Library Association’s Carnegie Medal. The short list will be announced in November.
Blas Falconer
Poetry Teaching StaffBlas Falconer’s newest poetry book, Rara Avis, was published by Four Way Books in September 2024. 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.
Laura Paul
Poetry Participant, '23Laura Paul’s new book, Film Elegy, was published by PRROBLEM Press in October, 2024. More info here.
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
Evie Shockley
Poetry Participant, '99 Staff, '09, '10, '13, '15, '18, '21, '23Evie Shockley was awarded the $25,000 2024 Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement. More info here.
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.”
Stephen Massimilla
Poetry Participant, '04, '06Stephen Massimilla’s new prizewinning poetry book, Frank Dark, was published by Barrow Street Press and won the 2023 American Book Festival Best Book Award, the North American Book Award, and others, and has been reviewed widely. (Massimilla also did the cover painting.)
And his co-edited anthology, Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice, won several recent awards, such as the International Book Award, The ABF Best Book Award, and the IPPY Living Now Award. It includes work by many of today’s most accomplished poets, including alumni of and poets who have taught at the Community of Writers: Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Brenda Hillman, Major Jackson, Patricia Spears Jones, Ada Limón, and several others. More info here.
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.
Alice Jones
Poetry, '88, '89. Staff: Writing the Medical Experience
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.
Emily Hyland
Poetry Participant, '19Emily Hyland’s first collection of poetry, Divorced Business Partners, debuts through Howling Bird Press on October 21st, 2024. She will be reading in conversation with Mark Doty at Poets House in NYC on 10/22. 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.
Jami Macarty
Poetry Participant, '10, '14, '17Jami Macarty’s fourth chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024), which critic Rosie Long Decter calls “a testament to the necessary entanglement of all things,” was published on September 11, 2024. More info here.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Participant, '07Ruben Quesada’s new poetry collection is now available for Pre-order. Brutal Companion, winner of the Barrow Street Press Editors Prize, will be published on October 15, 2024. More info here.
Attended with the help of a UC Riverside Scholarship
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Participant, '07Ruben Quesada will be read from his award-winning collection of poetry at Grace Cathedral with poets A. Van Jordan, Dorianne Laux, and Alice Templeton on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, from 7:30-9:00 PDT. Save the date and RSVP here.
Attended with the help of a UC Riverside Scholarship
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.
Cintia Santana
Writers Workshops Participant '94; Poetry Participant, '14, '17, '23Cintia Santana’s debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet (Four Way Books), won the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Poetry. More info here.
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.
Matthew Zapruder
Poetry StaffMatthew Zapruder’s newest poetry collection, I Love Hearing Your Dreams, was published by Scribner on September 24th, 2024. More info here.
Brenda Hillman
Poetry Staff, '95, '97, '98, '04, '07, '09, '10, '12, '13, '15, '17, '19, '20, '21, '22, '23, '24Poet Brenda Hillman’s first book of prose, Three Talks (Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality) was published by University of Virginia Press.
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
Michael Zysk
Poetry Participant, '20Michael Zysk’s third poetry collection, Sophia’s Wisdom (Wipf and Stock) integrates themes of Shekinah Theology with Sophia Christology. Verses of Part 1 explores cosmic creation and destruction with images from astrophysics woven with Jewish hermeneutics; verses of Part 2 survey the evolution of the divine personification of Wisdom across Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic scriptures. More info here.
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
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Participant, '91, Staff: '16, '24Patricia Spears Jones’ poetry collection, The Beloved Community, was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Awards.
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.
Ellery Akers
Art of the Wild Teaching Staff, '94Ellery Akers’ new book, A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art, won the 2024 Blue Light Award and is forthcoming in September. Gary Young has called it a” sublime conjunction of word and image….an extraordinary conversation between dazzling drawings and subtle, heart-rending poems. This book is a gift.” Akers’ previous collection, Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, won BookAuthority’s Award for Best Environmentalism Books of All Time. More info here.
Edith Friedman
Poetry Participant, '24Edith Friedman’s collection Reconstruction was chosen by Lee Ann Roripaugh as the 2024 Lefty Blondie Press First Chapbook winner, and will be released September 7, 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.
Cintia Santana
Writers Workshops Participant '94; Poetry Participant, '14, '17, '23Cintia Santana’s debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet (Four Way Books), won the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal and is a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. More info here.
Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras
Poetry Participant, ’23Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras is the recipient of a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Dreamer Scholarship
Jesse Nathan
Poetry Participant, '15, '18Jesse Nathan’s first book of poems, Eggtooth, has been nominated for the 2024 Northern California Book Award. More info here.
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.
Lisa Sewell
Poetry Participant, '98Lisa Sewell’s upcoming book of poetry, Flood Plain, will be published by Grid Books in January 2025. 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
Amy Shimshon-Santo
Poetry Participant, '23Amy Shimshon-Santo’s new book is out with Flowersong Press and includes a plurilingual Orality Archive. “Random Experiments in Bioluminescence is a remarkable collection of luminous poems for cherishing cultures, languages, and the Earth.” More info here.
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.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant, '01Lynne Goldsmith’s new poetry collection, From the Edge of Chaos and Form, was published in July, 2024 by the Transnational Press.
Beverley Bie Brahic
Poetry Participant, '08Apple Thieves, Beverley Bie Brahic’s fifth collection of poetry, will be published by Carcanet Press in the U.K. in August 2024. More info here.
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
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant, '01Lynne Goldsmith’s middle grade novel The Language of Fragments was publised in June 2024 by Wipf and Stock.
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.
Radha Marcum
Poetry Participant, '22Radha Marcum’s second poetry collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone, winner of the 2023 Washington Prize, is now available. Carol Moldaw says: “Radha Marcum writes unflinchingly and with a rare synthesis of lyric and scientific intelligence, investigating just what it is to exist with consciousness now. Charged, luminous, and hard-won, these poems are indispensable.” 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
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant '01, '03, '18Yiskah Rosenfeld’s first full-length collection, Tasting Flight, was published June 18, 2024 by Madville Books. Tasting Flight was runner-up for the Arthur Smith Award, a finalist for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and received a Louis Award honorable mention. Chad Sweeney writes, “Tasting Flight is a Hebraic Sutra where Rosenfeld sits in meditation until she and the garden are one, bread and night are one, sacred and mundane, the cursed and the blessed, until Lilith and Eve complete the circle whose center is everywhere.” More info here.
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.
Rickey Fayne
Rickey Fayne‘s first novel, All God’s Children, is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2025.
Attended with the help of the Kimbilio Scholarship
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.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant, '12, '22Jeffrey Kingman’s (’12, ’22) poem, “We Can All Listen,” was published in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, April 2024. His poem, “College,” was published in Your Impossible Voice, Issue 30, May 2024. More info 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
Carrie Nassif
Poetry Participant, '21Carrie Nassif’s speculative memoir in experimental poetry, The Vulture Girl, comes out from Saddle Road Press June 17th. Her book launch will be at SOMOS in Taos, NM, July 27th. More info here.
Attended with the help of Janice Bevilacqua Memorial Scholarship
Nicholas Yingling
Poetry Participant, '16Nicholas Yingling’s debut poetry collection, The Fire Road, was published by Barrow Street Press in April 2024. More info here.
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.
Diannely Antigua
Poetry Participant, '16Diannely Antigua’s recent poetry collection, Good Monster, was published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2024. Good Monster grapples with the body as a site of chronic pain and trauma. Poignant and guttural, the collection “voyage[s] the land / between crisis and hope,” chronicling Antigua’s reckoning with shame and her fallout with faith.
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.
Tamam Kahn
Poetry Participant, '23Tamam Kahn’s poetry book Across The Difficult: With Rabia of Basra and Others won a first place award from The BookFest, Spring 2024. More info here.
Cintia Santana
Poetry Participant '14, '17, '23Cintia Santana’s first collection of poems, The Disordered Alphabet (Four Way Books), received the 2023 North American Book Awards Silver Medal and was short-listed for the 2023 Golden Poppy Prize. More info here.
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.
Peter Dale Scott
In 2024, Peter Dale Scott published two interrelated books, Reading the Dream: A Post-Secular History of Enmindment (Rowman & Littlefield), and Dreamcraft (McGill-Queen’s University Press). Both are sequels to his 2023 book, Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope (Rowman & Littlefield). 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.
Armen Davoudian
Poetry Participant, '18Armen Davoudian’s debut book of poems, The Palace of Forty Pillars, was published by Tin House in March 2024. Titled after a landmark in Isfahan, Iran, where twenty pillars are reflected in a courtyard pool, thereby becoming forty, the book explores a life divided between home and exile, queerness and familial belonging. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Barbara E. Hall Scholarship
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.
Angela Siew
Poetry Participant, '20, '23Angela Siew’s poetry chapbook, Coming Home, was a finalist for the 2023-24 CutBank Chapbook Contest (University of Montana). More info here.
Attended with the help of Attended with the help of a Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
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.
Sara Ellen Fowler
Poetry Participant, '19Sara Ellen Fowler’s first book, Two Signatures, has been selected by Joan Naviyuk Kane for the 2023 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. It will be published by the University of Utah Press in April 2024. More info here.
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.
RJ Ingram
Poetry Participant, ‘13RJ Ingram’s debut poetry collection, The Autobiography of Nancy Drew, is forthcoming in April 2024 from White Stag Publishing. Pre orders will start coming out early April. 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.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff,Andrew Tonkovich, founding editor of Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination, announces the release of the spring issue, themed “Resistance.” Among other contributors, CW fiction alum Mary Camarillo (Those People Behind Us) offers an essay on Huntington Beach, CA and poetry alum Chris Davidson (Why To These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers) shares new work. 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.
Saba Keramati
Poetry Participant, '22Saba Keramati’s debut poetry collection, Self-Mythology, was selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and is available now. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
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
Chuck Joy
Writing the Medical Experience, '03Chuck Joy was featured poet in the Periodical Issue #2 from Poets’ Hall Press in Erie PA. Find his website here.
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.
Armen Davoudian
Poetry Participant, '18Armen Davoudian’s new collection The Palace of Forty Pillars was published by Tin House Books in March, 2024. More info here.
Jesse Nathan
Poetry Participant, '15Eggtooth, Jesse Nathan’s debut collection, has won the 2024 New Writers Award in Poetry. It’s also been long-listed for the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize, and been named a finalist for the Golden Poppy and the Medal Provocateur/Eric Hoffer Award. More info here.
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Participant, '91; Teaching Staff, '16, '23Patricia Spears Jones has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Porter Fund, an organization supporting the literary arts in Arkansas. The Porter Fund’s Lifetime Achievement Award is given out every five years to an Arkansas writer with a substantial and recognized body of work.
Marguerite L Harrold
Poetry Participant, '08Marguerite L Harrold’s first book, Chicago House Music, Culture and Community (Belt Publishing) will be published August 13, 2024. It is available for pre-order. 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.
Max Stone
Poetry Participant ’23Max Stone recently published three poems. “Would you date yourself?” in the February 2024 issue of Ghost City Review, “Dysphoria Blues,” in Issue 2 of Frozen Sea, and “Something is always burning,” in Baby Teeth Journal. His chapbook, Temporary Preparations, was published by Bottlecap Press in July 2023. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Carlisle Family Scholarship
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.
Beverley Brahic
Poetry Participant, '08Beverley Bie Brahic’s translation of Hélène Cixous’s Well-Kept Ruins (Paris, Gallimard, 2020) was published by Seagull Books in 2022. Apple Thieves, her fifth collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Carcanet (U.K.) in 2024. 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.
George Sorensen
Writers Workshops Participant, '87, '23Hot Dish Confidential – That Year My Friends Taught me to Cook by George Sorensen is being published by Flexible Press. This is a small press in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This creative non-fiction memoir recount the raucous year when George organized his friends, who claimed they were gourmet cooks, to teach him cooking skills. This resulted in themed dinners including a Greek Tunic Party, Charles Dickens Christmas, South of France, New Orleans, and other events. It also resulted in wine store adventures, romance, ill mannered guests and a blue ribbon for apricot jam at the state fair. More info here.
Marisa Lin
Poetry Participant, '21Marisa Lin’s chapbook, Dream Elevator, will be published on March 12, 2024 by Kernpunkt Press. More info here. 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.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant, '01, '03, '18Yiskah Rosenfeld’s poem won a Frontier Poetry Roots and Roads Prize, judged by Craig Santos Perez. The poem will appear in her next book, Tasting Flight (Madville Publishing, June, 2024).
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.
Ann Graham
Writers Workshops Participant, '08Ann Graham published a poem, “From There to Here,” in the Texas Observer, Nov-Dec 2023 issue.
Michael Zysk
Poetry Participant, '21Michael Zysk’s third poetry collection Sophia’s Wisdom will be published in 2024 by Wipf and Stock. Blending astrophysics with hermeneutics, the poems trace the evolution of Biblical Wisdom, its enlightenment, and divine person as the feminine aspect of God. More info here.
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.
Tricia Knoll
Galway Kinnell Workshop, '23Tricia Knoll’s newest chapbook, The Unknown Daughter, will be released by Finishing Line Press on March 1, 2024. Twenty-four poems by different speakers who acknowledge what it means to be unknown at the monument to the Unknown Daughter. More info 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.
Joanna Solfrian
Poetry Participant, '05Joanna Solfrian’s fourth poetry collection, Temporary Beast, is available for order from Beltway Editions.
She is also teaching a generative, in-person workshop in March on symbolic details at Brooklyn Poets. Find her website here.
Roxanne Hamilton
Poetry Participant, '23Roxi Power’s book, The Songs That Objects Would Sing, was published Fall 2023.
C.S. Giscombe writes, “The first line of Roxi Power’s incredible burst of poems lays down the law with one hand and sets things in motion with another—that is, she writes, as if to remark on the coming noise made by fire, death, love…The many motions of this music, of these songs that objects would sing, will brush the reader with a difficult and worthy joy.”
Tracy Fuad
Poetry Participant, '17Tracy Fuad’s second collection of poetry, Portal, won the Phoenix Emerging Poets’ Prize and will be published on February 19th by University of Chicago Press. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Galway Kinnell Scholarship
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Poetry Participant, '99, '10, '20Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s biography Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer was published as an audiobook in January 2024. Listen to it here.
Georgia San Li
Poetry Workshop Participant, 2023 & Writers Workshops Participant, 2022Georgia San Li’s poetry chapbook Wandering will be published May, 2024 by Finishing Line Press. This collection explores questions of myth and meaning through strands of broken history, ambition, love, abandonment and connectivity. Advance sales are available now at Finishing Line Press. Her poetry work was shortlisted for the 2023 Oxford Poetry prize and appears or is forthcoming in The Glacier, LIT Magazine, SWWIM, Willow Springs and The Missouri Review.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant, '01, '03, '18Yiskah Rosenfeld’s ekphrastic chapbook Naked Beside Fish will be published in March, 2024. Advance sales are available now at Finishing Line Press or 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.
Arthur Solway
Poetry Participant, '19Arthur Solway’s most recent poetry collection, Friday Night, Shanghai, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023.
“Friday Night, Shanghai is a love letter to one of the most dynamic cities on the planet. Living as an expatriate in China for well over a decade, Solway’s poems are intimate meditations on what it means to be nomadic at heart, or “stranded in a world that won’t let go.” “
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.
Victoria Chang
Teaching Staff: '20, '23Victoria Chang’s forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair Books in the U.K.
Jeremy Nobel
Poetry Participant, '07, '09, '12, '15In Jeremy Nobel’s most recent book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection, he leverages many voices, from pioneering researchers, to leaders in business, education, the arts, and health care, to the lived experience of lonely people of every age, background, and circumstance. He discovers that the pandemic isolated us in ways that were not only physical, and that, at its core, a true sense of loneliness results from a disconnection to the self. He clarifies how meaningful reconnection can be nourished and sustained. More info here.
Barbara Ridley
Barbara Ridley’s upcoming novel, Unswerving, will be published on March 26, 2024 by University of Wisconsin Press.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Participant, '07Ruben Quesada’s collection of poetry, Brutal Companion, has been selected for the 2023 Editors’ Choice award for poetry. The collection will be published in late 2024. More info here.
Attended with the help of a UC Riverside Scholarship
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.
Molly Fisk
Poetry participant, '92, '95, '98 & Art of the WildMolly Fisk’s third collection, Walking Wheel, a series of linked poems set in 1875, is under contract with Red Hen Press for publication in 2026. Find her website here.
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
Joseph Zaccardi
Poetry Participant, '06, '10Joseph Zaccardi’s new collection, Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2023. During his time as a Navy corpsman in the Vietnam War, he found refuge in a volume of ancient Chinese and Vietnamese poetry. His study, now lifelong, has borne fruit in this present volume. For more details, visit Sixteen Rivers Press.
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
Joan Baranow
Poetry Participant, '90, '91, '92 '93, '94, '99, '01, '03, '06, '08, '11, '18Joan Baranow’s sixth collection, Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague, won the Brick Road Poetry contest and was published in June 2023. Much of the book centers around the covid-19 pandemic; many were inspired by Galway Kinnell’s “Sheffield Ghazals.” Michael Waters says, “Whether writing elegies or confronting her own mortality, Baranow leans toward community for consolation and renewal.” More info here.
Jay Aquinas Thompson
Poetry Participant, '18Jay Aquinas Thompson is publishing a hybrid memoir, The Resurrection Appearances: Fragments of a Daybook, with Gold Line Press in January 2024. An account of a grief year told in dreams, poetry, myth fragments, and childhood memories, Resurrection received its first readers as hybrid texts in the poetry workshops at Community of Writers.
Attended with the help of a Hilary Gravendyk Memorial Scholarship
William Ward Butler
Poetry Participant, '21William Ward Butler co-founded a new online poetry journal called Frozen Sea; Issue Two was published on December 15, 2023.
Peggy Dobreer
Poetry Workshop, ‘21Slow Lightning: Astonished Poetry, was released on November 12. Edited by Peggy Dobreer, this wildly diverse collection of poems, all originating in Slow Lightning daily somatic writing practice, was written with several Community of Writers faculty and alum includes: Janet Fitch, David Francis, Georgia San Li, Jacinta Camacho Kaplan, Darothy Durkac, Carrie Nassif, Jamie O’Halloran and others. More info here.
Attended with the help of a Sharon Olds Poetry Scholarship
Haley Lasche
Poetry Participant, '07Haley Lasché published her first full-length poetry collection, ONE with Beauty School Editions, LLC, a poetry press she founded and runs with poet Paula Cisewski. She continues to edit and produce Concision Poetry Journal triannually.
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.
Tamam Kahn
Poetry Participant, '23Across the Difficult: With Rabia of Basra and Others—Poems by Tamam Kahn was published by Albion-Andalus Books in July. “A book of history and bravery, poems that burst through silences of centuries, unafraid of either bliss or agony. Tamam Kahn has become a branch on the mighty tree of knowledge that is women’s knowledge of the unbreakable connection between flesh and spirit. She declares, and we all can declare, ‘We could have world history rewritten. Right now. Why not?’” Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light and The Volcano and After. More info here.
Victoria Dalkey
Poetry Participant, '92Victoria Dalkey’s new poems “Sleepwalker” and “Kulicke’s Orange” will appear in the Summer 2023 issue of The Sacramento Poetry Center’s Tulle Review and six of her recent poems “Floating Island,” “Our Peaches,” “Sea Change,” “Nile Fable/Babylonian Tale,” “Sappho’s Breath,” and “January Night, 28 Degrees” are included in Cold River Press’s new anthology Voices 2023: Dahlias, Gods & Mermaids.
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.
Ananda Lima
Poetry Participant, '17Ananda Lima’s short story collection Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is forthcoming from Tor (a Macmillan imprint). Craft is a surreal linked stories collection revolving around the absurdity of our times, art, and writing, as well as a complex view of the immigrant experience. The stories are written by a fictitious writer who sleeps with he Devil at a Halloween party in 1999 and sees him again and again throughout her life as she writes him stories about things that are both impossible and true. Kelly Link, author of Book of Love, calls it “an absolutely thrilling reminder that short stories can be the best kind of magic.”
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.
Valyntina Grenier
Poetry Participant, ‘05Valyntina Grenier’s first full-length collection of poems, Honeymoon Shoes, was published by Cathexis Northwest Press in October, 2023. She is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words. She is the author of the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart (Cathexis Northwest Press, 20) and In Our Now (Finishing Line Press, 22). You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her work here.
Caroline Frost
Writers Workshops Participant, '17, '21, Published Alumni Reader '22Caroline Frost’s second novel, The Last Verse, will be published by William Morrow on March 5, 2024. Set in the Nashville music scene of 1977, the story follows a struggling musician who writes a hit song that both promises her fame and implicates her in a heinous crime. More info here.
Eileen Garvin
Writers Workshops Participant, '16Her second novel, Crow Talk, will be published April 30, 2024. It tells the story of three wounded souls whose lives intersect at a remote alpine lake. Crow Talk is a story of love, loss, and the healing power of the natural world.
Héctor Tobar
Héctor Tobar (Teaching Staff: 2020, 2021, 2023) was awarded the Kirkus Prize for his nonfiction, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”. The Kirkus judges called Our Migrant Souls a “vital work of autobiography and cultural commentary — which also serves as a potent manifesto. “
Ken Weinberg
Writing the Medical Experience, '02Ken Weinberg’s recent memoir weaves together his many stories from the ER, Urgent Care and house calls, with chapters covering his participation in The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia P&S, political activism with Physicians for a National Health Program and more. He submitted a chapter on literature and medicine to Psychology Today and now has a blog.
Peter Vanderwall
Screenwriting Participant, '93Peter Vanderwall’s children’s picture story book, Mac’s Big Wish, was recently published by Luminare Press. The book has just been named one of five nominees for the 2024 Patricia Gallagher Children’s Choice Picture Book Award. Oregon school children of all ages are eligible to vote for their favorite title during the current school year. The Oregon State Literacy Association will announce the winner in May 2024. More info here.
Andrew Tonkovich
StaffSanta Monica Review editor Andrew Tonkovich announces the fall 2023 issue of the magazine, marking its 35th year of publication. The newest collection of fiction and nonfiction includes writing from four (!) Community of Writers alums: Rebecca Schultz, Lauren Hohle, Michael Guista, Laurel Leigh, and Victoria Patterson. Read it here.
Chuck Joy
Writing the Medical Experience, 2003Chuck Joy has a new collection, “Vinyl”, of 15 poems from What Why Aesthetics (Erie PA) exploring the border between this book and a record album.
John Harvey
Poetry participant, '93, '95New collection of poetry, On Balance, published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham UK, November 2023.
CJ Palmisano
Screenwriters' Workshop, '11CJ Palmisano’s short story, “How Far to Woodstock?” was published in Stanford’s 2021 Annual Anthology, 166 Palms. The London Writers’ Salon published two of her short stories in their annual anthologies: “Roundabout” (in 2022) and “Cotton Candy and the Tilt-A-Whirl” (in 2023). Palmisano’s screenplay, ROADS TAKEN, was selected by the Nostos Screenwriters’ Lab in Tuscany. Along with eight other screenwriters, she spent 3-1/2 weeks working with professionals to develop the script in Arezzo, Italy this past May (2023).
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.
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21Stella Santamaria was nominated for Best of Net Nominee for her poem on a kayak in this miami bedroom published by the Rising Phoenix Review. Read it here.
Attended with the help of an Ancinas Scholarship
Diana Fuller
Screenwriting Program DirectorDiana Fuller’s newest movie, Tails of the City, is set to premiere at the prestigious 2023 San Francisco Short Film Festival. Tails of the City is a visual adventure, experienced through the eyes of dogs and their parents that proves mixed breeds can find love, laughter and mutual pleasure when sharing common ground.
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Participant, '91, '92, '94; Teaching Staff: '16Patricia Spears Jones’ fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, was published September, 26 2023 by Copper Canyon Press. More information here.
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
Tamam Kahn
Poetry Participant '18, '23Tamam’s new book of poetry, Across the Difficult: With Rabia of Basra and Others, was published in July, 2023 by Albion-Andalus Books, with poems about Rabia of Basra and historical women of the Middle East.
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.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry, '92, '00, '09, '13, '20Ann Fisher-Wirth’s book-length poetry/photography collaboration with Wilfried Raussert, Into the Chalice of Your Thoughts, will be exhibited at the Guadalajara Book Fair in November 2023 and published by Guadalajara University Press, with facing translations of the poem into Spanish by the 4W-Women in Translation Project located in Madison, Wisconsin.
Ann’s seventh book of poems, Paradise Is Jagged, was published in February 2023 by Terrapin Books. Also in February 2023 she received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Poetry and Literature from the Mississippi Arts Commission. Find her website here.
Adela Najarro
Poetry Particpant, '16Adela Najarro has been selected as a 2023 Individual Artist Fellow by the California Arts Council for the Central California Region. The California Arts Council and the administering organization SVCREATES has recognized her as an established artist with a stipend in unrestricted funding to support her writing endeavors. Find her website here.
Hermelinda Hernandez
Poetry Participant, '23Hermelinda Hernandez’s poem “The Exit” won the 2023 Ernesto Trejo Memorial Prize and was published in the Academy of American Poets prizes for the University & College Poetry Prizes. More information here.
Kazim Ali
Poetry Participant, '98/ Staff Poet: '10, '12, '16, '18, '23Kazim Ali’s newest collection of poems, Sukun, was published by Wesleyan University Press in September 2023.
Jesse Nathan
Poetry Participant, '15, '18Jesse Nathan’s first collection of poems, Eggtooth, with a foreword by Robert Hass, was published in September 2023.
Sally Van Doren
Poetry Participant, '01, '03, '06, '23Sally Van Doren’s fourth poetry book, Sibilance, was published by Louisiana State University Press in September 2023. You can find it here.
Matt Broaddus
Poetry Participant, '19Matt Broaddus’ first book of poetry, Temporal Anomalies, by was published by Ricochet Editions on September 15, 2023. You can find it here.
Attended with the help of a Cave Canem Scholarship
Cintia Santana
Cintia Santana’s first collection of poems, The Disordered Alphabet, was published by Four Way Books on September 15. You can find her website here.
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.
Helena Mesa
Poetry Participant, '16Helena Mesa’s Where Land Is Indistinguishable from Sea was published by Terrapin Books. More details.
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
Molly Giles
Writers Workshops Staff, '23Molly Giles’ most recent book, The Home for Unwed Husbands, was published by Leapfrog Press in August 2023. She will be touring the U.S., reading from her new novel starting August 19, 2023. Find her website here.
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Participant, '91, '92, '94Patricia Spears Jones was just named the New York State Poet and will receive the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry at a special ceremony hosted by University at Albany President Havidán Rodríguez to take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, at the University at Albany’s Campus Center West Auditorium.
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21Stella Santamaria has just accepted a lecturer position in the Writing Studies Department at the University of Miami.
Attended with the help of an Ancinas 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.
Nicole Sealey
Poetry Participant, '11Nicole Sealey’s newest volume of poetry, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, was published on August 15, 2023 by Knopf. A redacted audio version, read by Nicole herself, was published in The New Yorker, and a Q&A published in Poets & Writers as well.
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Participant, '91, '92, '94Patricia Spears Jones’ fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, is forthcoming September 2023. More information here.
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15, '19Jon Riccio’s recent “Teaching Takeaways” craft articles for the literary nonprofit organization 1-Week Critique include commentary on poems by Community of Writers alumni Emily Wolahan and Maria Nazos. 1-Week Critique was co-founded by another Community of Writers alum, Matthew Schmidt.
Loisa Fenichell
Poetry Participant, '22Loisa Fenichell’s poetry collection, Wandering In All Directions Of This Earth, has been selected by Eduardo C. Corral as winner of the Ghost Peach Press 2022 Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming from Ghost Peach Press come September. Preorders are available now!
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.
Andrea Hollander
Poetry Participant, '91Andrea Hollander’s sixth full-length poetry collection, And Now, Nowhere But Here, was released on July 28, 2023, by Terrapin Books.
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
Margaret Elysia Garcia
Poetry Participant, '21Margaret Elysia Garcia’s first poetry collection, the daughterland, was published by El Martillo Press in June 2023.
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
Eliot Schain
Poetry Participant, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2007, 20011, 2015, 2022He recently released an album, with selections from his recent book The Distant Sound–poems accompanied by guitar.
C Pirloul / Cynthia Broshi
C Pirloul’s doubleheader chapbook, 7 Cervicals / Riga Pine, was released by Thixotropic Press in June. The chapbook is composed of a spine of sestinas with a global cast of characters, as well as a conversation with a riga pine off the Talinn Highway near Skultes Muiza in Latvija.
“To rotate the Atlas thereby turning our face in time…”
Cintia Santana
Poetry Participant, '14, '17, '23Cintia Santana’s first collection of poems, The Disordered Alphabet, published by Four Way Books, will be released on September 15, and is available for pre-order now.
Matt Broaddus
Poetry Participant, '19The first book of poetry, Temporal Anomalies, by Matt Broaddus (he/him) will be published by Ricochet Editions on September 15, 2023.
Attended with the help of a Cave Canem 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.”
Jesse Nathan
Poetry Participant, '15, '18His poem “What the Cedar May Have Said” appeared this spring in The New York Review of Books. Nathan’s first collection of poems, Eggtooth, appears in September with a foreword by Robert Hass.It can be preordered here. It was named a “must-read” by The Millions.
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.
Sally Van Doren
Poetry Participant, '01, '03, '06, '23Her fourth poetry book, Sibilance, will be released by Louisiana State University Press in fall 2023. This insightful abecedarian collection includes work which first appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London and Prairie Schooner. The cover features an asemic drawing by Van Doren, who is also an exhibiting artist. As Poetry Participant Chanda Feldman notes, “Van Doren’s trim and brisk poems display a thrilling diction at every turn. She applies wit and acuity to both exultation and elegy.”
Matt Mauch
Poetry Participant '08His fifth book, A Northern Spring (Trio House Press, July 1, 2023), is a hybrid work of lyrical prose and poetry, the spring in focus being the COVID spring of 2020. “Part memoir, part needle-skipping-in-its-groove travelogue, part collection of lyric poetry,” says Michael Bazzett of this chronicle that opens in Northern Ireland when a travel ban is announced for “everybody in Europe” and ends the last week of May 2020, when George Floyd was murdered, an uprising began, and the world turned its gaze to South Minneapolis, where Mauch lives. Says Heidi Czerwiec, “This collection tries to connect us, blur genre & even grammar, to turn violence toward justice, a true revolution.”
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21She is a faculty fellow for the XM Scifi Summer Institute for the Science & Fiction Lab at Florida International University, 2023, in Miami, Florida.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Scholarship
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.
Dan Bellm
Poetry Workshop Participant, '90, '92, 95, '97, and '03He published two new books in spring 2023, the chapbook Counting (Finishing Line Press) and a translation of Mexican poet Balam Rodrigo’s Central American Book of the Dead.
Adela Najarro
Poetry Workshop Participant ,'16She’s pleased to announce the publication of Volcanic Interruptions, which combines her poetry with the acrylic/mixed media paintings by Janet Trenchard. As feminists, both artists want to depict how a woman’s power arises from the earth, soil, and volcanoes, and they have been collaborating on this theme throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The poems in this collection were started during Adela’s 2016 poetry workshops!
Camille T. Dungy
Staff Poet: 2020, 2022Her book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden was published in May by Simon and Schuster. She spoke with NPR’s Melissa Block about the journey that gardening put her on, and what it’s revealed about who gets to write about the environment.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshop Participant, '87President Joe Biden awarded her with a National Humanities Medal in March of 2023.
Diane Schenker
Poetry Participant, `14, '19Her full-length poetry collection, Expert Terrain, has been published by Word Poetry. It was previously shortlisted by the Harbor Mountain Press MURA Book Award and awarded Honorable Mention by the Concrete Wolf Louis Poetry Book Award.
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.
Matthew Moniz
Poetry Participant, '19His sonnet crown “After The Planets” won Poetry by the Sea’s Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest.
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
Suzanne Goldenberg
Poetry Participant, '21Six of her poems were published in the April edition of NYC arts journal, The Brooklyn Rail.
Attended with the help of the CD Wright Memorial 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
Jeanne Foster
Poetry Participant, '88Her latest book of poetry, Your Form Became My Own, was published by Kelsay Books, January 2023.
Joan Baranow
Poetry Participant, '18Her book, A Slight Thing, Happiness was published by Saint Julian Press in 2022. Two additional books will be published this spring: her chapbook Aphids in the Rose (Finishing Line Press) is about breast cancer, interwoven with poems about the resiliency of nature, and her full-length collection, Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague, won the Brick Road Press poetry contest.
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
Diane Schenker
Poetry participant, '14, '17, '19Her debut full-length poetry collection, Expert Terrain, is being published by Word Poetry and will be available in May/June 2023.
Rusty Morrison
Her book, titled Risk, will be published by Black Ocean Press in spring, 2024.
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.
KB Ballentine
Poetry Participant, '15Her eighth collection of poetry Spirit of Wild was published in March by Blue Light Press.
Attended with the help of a scholarship.
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.
Matthew Zapruder
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHis new book, Story of a Poem, a memoir about writing poetry and fathering, is available for pre-order!
“… the luminous, lyrical meditation on wringing from suffering and air, threaded with a singular, moving story about parenting an atypical child. I read it in a single gulp, and you will too.”
—Mary Karr, author of THE LIARS’ CLUB
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.
Adela Najarro
Poetry Participant: '16Her chapbook, Volcanic Interruptions was published by Jamii Press. The chapbook combines her poetry with Janet Trenchard’s acrylic/mixed media paintings so that the written word and image come together in conversation.
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.
Amanda Galvan Huynh
Poetry Participant: `19Her latest book, Where My Umbilical Is Buried, a poetry collection that delves deep into the waves of grief, was published by Sundress Press.
Attended with the help of the Maat Scholarship
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.
Natasha Saje
Poetry Participant '92Natasha Saje’s book of poems, The Future Will Call You Something Else, will be published by Tupelo Press in May 2023.
Andrew Kaufman
Poetry Participant: '01 and '08His fourth full-length book of poems, The Rwanda Poems: Voices and Visions from the Genocide, was published in March 2023 by New York Quarterly Books. It is based on months of interviews he conducted with genocide survivors and perpetrators in Rwanda and with sex slavery survivors in Eastern Congo. Poems from from the book have appeared or are due to appear in 50 years of Poems from the Community of Writers, Bitter Oleander, Christianity and Literature, Great River Review, New York Quarterly, Poetrybay, Skidrow Penthouse, Tar River Poetry Review, Terminus, and Today’s American Catholic. He wrote the first drafts of 7 of these poems while taking part in the 2008 workshops.
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant: '07, '10, '14, '17She has published a new chapbook (pamphlet in the U.K.), Tea in the Nuns’ Library, (Eyewear Publishing Ltd). This collection of meditative, lyric poems is always on the move: from the quiet politeness of a garden lunch in England and a puppet performance of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, to Folsom Prison, the ancient Rocky Mountains, and a coyote with a platinum tinged coat rummaging through supermarket bins in winter.
Melinda Palacio
Poetry Participant: '08She will be Santa Barbara’s 10th Poet Laureate, 2023-2025. Her poetry books include Folsom Lockdown, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting (Tía Chucha Press 2012) and Bird Forgiveness (3: a Taos Press).
Attended with the help of a scholarship
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
Heidi Seaborn
Poetry Participant: '22She won the Jeffrey E. Smith Poetry Prize from The Missouri Review for a portfolio of poems. Her work will be published in the Spring issue of The Missouri Review and she receives a $5000 award.
Michelle Bracken
Writers Workshops Participant: '17Michelle Bracken’s short story, “The Crush,” was published in Across the Margin.
James Davis May
Poetry participant: '09His second poetry collection, Unusually Grand Ideas, was published by LSU Press in February.
Chuck Joy
Writing the Medical Experience ParticipantHis new collection of new poems called Vinyl, was published by What Why Aesthetics (Erie PA).
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),
Judy Rowe Michaels
Poetry Participant, '03, '92, '91Her fourth poetry collection This Morning the Mountain was published in March ’23 by Cherry Grove Collections and is available from Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.
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.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant '01, '03, '19She was runner up for the 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. Her collection, Tasting Flight, will be published by Madville Books in 2024. Naked Beside Fish, a chapbook of ekphrastic poems, is also forthcoming (Finishing Line Press, 2023).
Tara Dorabji
Writers Workshop participant '13Her debut novel, Fire, is the grand prize winner for The Simon & Schuster Books Like Us Award.
Carrie Nassif
Poetry Participant, '21Her chapbook, lithopaedion will be released from Finishing Line Press in March 10, 2023. A Greek term translated, literally, to “stone baby”, a lithopaedion is a very rare phenomenon that occurs when, in a failed ectopic or abdominal pregnancy, the fetus cannot be reabsorbed by the mother’s body. Instead, it becomes calcified in order to prevent infection, sepsis, and even death in the mother. Nassif could think of no better metaphor for the sacrifices a parentified child often makes to protect the well-being of its parents, one of the motherhood related themes of this collection.
Attended with the help of Janice Bevilacqua Scholarship
J. David Cummings
Poetry Participant, '88, '89, '92, '02, '11, '15His new book Handling the Bones will be one of three featured in an online reading hosted by Broadstone Books on February 18, 2023, at 1 PM Pacific. Larry Moore, Broadstone publisher and editor, is a terrific reading host and you may enjoy his introductions to the books as much as the poems. Register here.
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.
Ángel García
Poetry Workshop participant '12His poem “Vestiges” was recently featured on the Academy of American Poets’ website as part of their Poem-a-Day series.
Loisa Fenichell
Poetry Participant, '22Her debut collection, originally titled Wandering in All Directions of this Earth, but being changed to A Novel About Feelings Already Known, is forthcoming from Ghost Peach Press, having been selected by Eduardo C. Corral as the Ghost Peach Press prize winner.
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.
Donna Spruijt-Metz
Poetry Participant, '22Her debut poetry collection, General Release from the Beginning of the World, was released on January 1, 2023. Her book was chosen for publication by Brenda Hillman and published by Free Verse Editions, Palette Press.
Beverly Burch
Poetry participant, ‘03Her fourth poetry book, Leave Me a Little Want, was published by Terrapin Books. Her third, Latter Days of Eve, won the John Ciardi Prize.
Peter Scott
Special Guest of Reading Milosz: A Short CourseHis new book, Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope, focuses on Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate for literature. This biography of Czesław Miłosz is a first hand account of the poet’s life and his relationship to the author, beginning in the 1960s. Milosz was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who “voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts”.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant, '04-'06; Staff; Board Vice-ChairHis new novel, The Sons of El Rey, just sold to Simon and Schuster.
Mira Rosenthal
Poetry Participant, '00Her new poetry collection, Territorial, was selected by Terrance Hayes and published in the Pitt Poetry Series in November, 2022.
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.
Joann Gardner
Poetry Participant '91,'96Her new book of poems, Heart’s Core, is now available from Finishing Line Press.
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.
J. David Cummings
Poetry Participant, '88, '89, '92, '02, '11, '15J. David Cummings has a new collection of poems, Handling the Bones, published in December, 2022 from Broadstone Books.
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
Yeva Johnson
Poetry Participant, '20, '22Yeva Johnson’s debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, will be published by Nomadic Press in February 2023.
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
Walter Pavlich
Art of the Wild Teaching Staff, '02Sensational Nightingales, the Poems of Walter Pavlich, was edited by David Axelrod, Scott Edward Anderson, and Sandra McPherson (Lynx House Press, 2017). He was loved as a teacher at Art of the Wild. He died unexpectedly in 2002 at age 46.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry Participant, '92,'00,'09,'13,'20Ann Fisher-Wirth’s seventh book of poems, Paradise Is Jagged, will be published February 1, 2023 by Terrapin Books. It’s available for preorder now! It’s also also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshelf. Ann has also received the 2023 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Poetry and Literature from the Mississippi Arts Commission.
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.”
Sandra McPherson
Poetry Teaching Staff '80/'Art of the Wild Teaching Staff 92, '93, '95, '96, '97, '99Two of her collections were published in 2022: Speech Crush (Gunpowder Press, Santa Barbara); and The 5150 Poems (Nine Mile Books, Lafayette, NY).
Molly Fisk
Poetry Participant '92, '95, '98, '04; Art of the Wild ParticipantHer fifth collection of radio commentary, Everything But the Kitchen Skunk, came out in November, 2022. She publishes this series herself; you can order it from your favorite independent book seller through Ingram.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Workshop Participant '97, '02Her new full-length poetry collection, By Light and Hidden Matter, is now out and available online.
Edward Gunawan
Poetry Participant, '22His first prose-poetry chapbook, The Way Back, was published by Foglifter in November, 2022.
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.
Steve Fujimura
Poetry Participant, '97, '99, '16His debut poetry book, Sad Asian Music, was published by Finishing Line Press in October 2022.
Robert Thomas
Poetry Participant, '88His new book of poetry, Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff, will be published in February, 2023, by Carnegie Mellon University Press, and is available for preorder now. 80 nontraditional sonnets explore love and jealousy—the traditional obsessions of sonnets—from nontraditional angles.
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.
Forrest Gander
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHis collection of poetry, Knot, a project in collaboration with photographer Jack Shear, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in November, 2022.
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.
Margaret Elysia Garcia
Poetry Participant, '21Her fiction debut Graft was released by Tolsun Books on October 11, 2022; her poetry memoir Burn Scars was published July 1, 2022 by Lit Kit Collective. Graft is a collection of short stories set in southeastern Los Angeles/north Orange County and is an across the century response to Nathanael West’s Day of the Locusts–done Chicana noir style. Burn Scars describes the days leading up to and then the burning of Margaret’s adopted hometown of Greenville in the Dixie Fire of 2021 and the aftermath.
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.
Marjorie Saiser
Poetry Workshop Participant, '00Her most recent book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, won the High Plains Book Award for Poetry.
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
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21Her poem, “The Miami Cemetery” was selected for The Islandia Journal, issue 4. Santamaria created this experimental poem during her time in the Valley.
Attended with the help of The Ancinas 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
Anuradha Bhowmik
Poetry Workshop participant '18Her newest collection of poetry, Brown Girl Chromatography, was published in October, 2022, by Pitt Poetry Series.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Tawanda Mulalu
Poetry Workshop participant '20His new collection of poetry, Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die, was published in September, 2022, by Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets.
Ama Codjoe
Poetry Workshop participant '15Her newest collection of poetry, Bluest Nudes, was published in September, 2022, by Milkweed.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
Brittany Mishra
Poetry Participant, '22Her poem “In the Mortgage of Desire” was selected for an honorable mention in Spoon River Poetry Review‘s annual contest and will be published in their upcoming Winter 2022 issue.
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.
Anna V. Q. Ross
Poetry Workshop Participant, '13, '21Her second book, Flutter, Kick, selected by Jeffrey Harrison for the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press, will be published by Red Hen Press on November 8th, 2022.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship, '13
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
Susan Browne
Poetry Participant, '88, '10, '22She has been awarded the 2021-2022 Five Points James Dickey Prize for Poetry. Her work will be published in the 23.1 issue of Five Points, and she will receive $1,000.
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.
Javier Zamora
Poetry Workshop participant '10His memoir, Solito, was published in September, 2023, and is a New York Times Bestseller.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer third novel, On the Rooftop, was recently selected as Reese’s Book Club pick.
Ananda Lima
Poetry Workshop participant '17Her fiction manuscript-in-progress, Craft, is a finalist for the 2022 Restless Books prize for New Immigrant Writing.
Sharon Olds
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHer newest book, Balladz, is on the long list for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Shelley Wong
Poetry Workshop participant '16Her newest book of poetry, As She Appears, in on the long list for the National Book Awards for Poetry.
Mary Freericks
Poetry Workshop participant '89, '91, '00, '21She has published two new poetry books. The first, Swimming Through the Generations, completes her now five volumes of poetry memoirs. It focuses both on ancestors and grandchildren beginning with Brewster and James Hill, who designed a revolutionary war ship that is on the cover and continues to playing with her granddaughter Rachel and Barbie and Ken dolls. It also includes a poem written at the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop on acceptance. The second is a chap book entitled Pandemic Poetry. The cover, front and back, are abstract collages of Mary’s paintings.
Heidi Seaborn
Poetry Participant, 22Her second collection, An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, which won the [PANK] Poetry Prize (June 2021), has been re-released by [PANK] as Marilyn: Essays & Poems, A Collector’s Edition of an Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe to include essays that Seaborn had previously published in LitHub, Brevity, the Hunger and elsewhere as well as new criticism, photographs and the entire poetry collection.
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
Beverly Burch
Poetry Workshop Participant '04Her fourth collection, Leave Me a Little Want, is now available from Terrapin Books.
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.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Participant, '07His poem “Oath Keeper” was published in The New York Times on Sunday, August 14, 2022. It is also available online.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside scholarship recipient
Buffy McKay
Poetry Workshop participant '03Her first full-length poetry collection, Salt & Roses, has been published by Cirque Press.
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.
Eva Benedikt
Screenwriting participant '10Her feature film, El Ganador (The Winner) was awarded Best Small Budget Film in the 2022 Symbiotic Film Festival (Kyiv, Ukraine), and Official Selection (2022) of Oaxaca Film Fest, Iconic Images Film Festival (Lithuania) and Anatolia International Film Festival (Turkey). In 2021 El Ganador was a finalist in Blue Star International Film Festival (Brazil) and an award winner in the United Latino International Film Festival (USA) in 2019. She is the writer, producer, and director.
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
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15, '19His newest, Agoreography, was published by 3: A Taos Press in June, 2022.
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.”
Lynne Thompson
Poetry Participant, '97, '02She was awarded a 2022 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant, '07, '10 '14 '17Her latest poetry collection, No Lunch Among the Day Stars, will be released in October, 2022, by Cold River Press.
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.
Francesca Preston
Poetry Participant, '97, '09, '20Her chapbook If There Are Horns, including four poems written during Community of Writers summer workshops, will be published by Finishing Line Press in October, 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
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry ParticipantHer self-published Critters in the Neighborhood Come and See with Me picture book for kids was a Purple Dragonfly Award Winner–Honorable Mention.
Blake Lapin
Poetry Participant, '20His chapbook, I Look at You Instead of the Road (Bottlecap Press), is now available.
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.
Susan Cohen
Poetry Participant, '17Her third collection, Democracy of Fire, is due for release September 30 by Broadstone Books. A finalist for the Washington Prize, Wilder Prize, and Richard Snyder Prize, it includes poems honored by Richard Blanco, Vievee Francis, Kimberly Blaeser, Arthur Sze, and Mark Doty, and several begun at the Community of Writers.
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.
Farnaz Fatemi
Poetry Participant, '14Her debut poetry collection, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was selected by Tracy K. Smith as winner of the 2021 Wick Poetry Prize and will be published at the end of August, 2022, by Kent State University Press.
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.
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant, '07, '10 '14 '17Her chapbook, Ornate Persona, is soon to be released by Clare Songbirds Publishing.
This chapbook features poems influenced by dance, film, art, literature, starring Nijinsky, Apollinaire, Siddhartha, Chagall and others. The poem sequence, “Six Paintings by Miss X,” was started at Community of Writers in 2010 at Kazim Ali’s workshop.
Gina DeMillo Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Her longform essay “Following Floodlights Instead of the Moon” won the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Prize.
Marilyn Kallet
Poetry Workshop participant '05, '98, '96.Her 19th book, Even When We Sleep, was recently published by Commonwealth Books, Black Widow Press. It is her 8th book of lyric poetry.
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
Tara Betts
Poetry Workshop Participant, '09Her latest full-length poetry collection Refuse to Disappear (Word Works Books, 2022) was selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection and is the June 2022 selection for The Rumpus Poetry Book Club.
Attended with the help of Cave Canem 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
Marilyn Kallet
Poetry workshop participant '96, '98, '05Her eighth book of poems, Even When We Sleep, will be published on June 1st from Commonwealth Books/Black Widow Press, Boston. These are bluesy love poems, songs of healing, poems of Jewish identity. The title comes from Paul Eluard’s line, “Even when we sleep we watch over one another.”
Danny Kraft
Poetry Participant, '19He has started Di Freyd fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word, a free online newsletter of Yiddish poetry in translation.
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.
Gretchen McCullough
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '08, '19Her translation with the poet, Mohamed Metwalli’s book, A Song on the Aegean Sea will be published by Laertes Press, May 2022.
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Workshop participant '21Her “zip ode” was selected as the week 1 spotlight poem for WLRN/ O, Miami Zip Ode Project and featured on air and on instagram for the O, Miami Poetry Festival. She will be reading her poem in the virtual Zip Odes Finale on Wednesday, April 27 at 7 PM ET.
Attended with the help of Ancina Family Scholarship
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.
Linda Toren
Poetry Workshop participant '98, '02; Art of the Wild '03Raven Braids the Wind, from Wisdom through Manzanita Writer’s Press (MWP), is her first poetry collection to be published.
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
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21Her poem was selected for the WLRN/ Zip Odes Project for the O, Miami Poetry Festival.
Attended with the help of Ancinas 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
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Workshop participant '07His anthology of edited essays, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press this November.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Workshop participant '07He has a new poem “My Mother Is a Garden” in Issue 41 of The Adroit Journal.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside scholarship
Anna Lena Phillips Bell
Poetry participant, '21Her poem “Emerald (a charm for ash)” won the 2021 Winter Anthology Contest, and appears in volume 12 of the Winter Anthology online.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry Workshop participant '92, '00, '09, '13, '20She is retiring in June after nearly 50 years of university teaching. She is currently coediting an anthology of eco-poetry, prose, and art from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and the Southern US for the journal Global South; and coediting a Literary Field Guide to Mississippi. She will be in residence at Storyknife, the women writers’ retreat in Homer, Alaska, in October 2022, where she’ll work on a new book of poems.
Laura Secord
Poetry Workshop Participant '00, '03Her new historical novel-in-verse, An Art, a Craft, a Mystery (Livingston Press, 2022), is
a family saga told in a series of short poems. A hybrid of poetry, historical fiction and feminist literature, it tells the stories of two real women, Lydea Gilbert and Katherine (Kate) Harrison, who lived along the frontier of the Connecticut River in the mid 1600s. They were healers, midwives, farmers and ordinary women who faced the struggles and joys of life in a wild new land. They were women in a puritan culture, women of intuitive genius and healing powers, who lived through times where feminine power and the value of women’s lives was suspect and condemned.
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.
Victoria Dalkey
Poetry Participant '92Her poem Making Love I Remember a Dark Wood appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Birmingham Poetry Review number 49.
Sergio Reyes
Poetry Workshop Participant '20, '21In April 2022, Rosebud Magazine published “The Forbidden Kingdom”, a poem selected as finalist in the 2021 Rosebud Poetry Contest.
Sergio wrote this poem, originally entitled “Monday blob” for a Monday morning workshop led by Camille Dungy in 2020. By coincidence, Lester Graves Lennon also attended this workshop. Later that year, he assumed the role of Poetry editor for Rosebud Magazine and judged the poetry contest.
Issue #69 of Rosebud Magazine is currently available at Barnes & Noble bookstores.
Jennifer Egan
Writers Workshop participant '89Her new novel, The Candy House, was published on April 5, 2022 from Scribner’s.
Shelley Wong
Poetry Participant, '16Her debut full-length poetry collection As She Appears (YesYes Books), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize, will be published in May, 2022.
Sharon Olds
Poetry Workshop teaching staffShe is the recipient of the 2022 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry, and will be honored at a benefit put on by the Poetry Society of America on May 12. Named for Robert Frost, and first given in 1930, the Frost Medal is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in American poetry and is awarded annually at the discretion of the PSA’s Board of Governors. Previous winners of the award include Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, and most recently, N. Scott Momaday.
Emily Perez
Poetry Participant, '10, '18Her second full-length book of poetry, What Flies Want, was chosen by judge Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the Iowa Prize. Poet Wayne Miller calls it “a broad and ambitious book well-tuned to the concerns of the present moment as it attends in smart and nuanced layers to sexual violence, constructions of gender, the complexities of race, the disappointments and redemptions of marriage, and the entwined hopes and fears of raising boys in a world where ‘every man’s a ticking bomb.’” The book is available for pre-order on Amazon and the University of Iowa website, and it will be available in May, 2022.
Dan Alter
Poetry Workshop participant '11, '14, '18His newest collection of poetry, My Little Book of Exiles, was recently published by Maida Vale.
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.”
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Workshop participant '91, '92, '94; Poetry Workshop teaching staff '16She is being honored at The Poetry Project Gala in New York City on April 8. More details can be found here: https://www.poetryproject.org/gala?token=5de6c2883029110cb33f6ec372915af1ac1545ae
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.
Dan Alter
Poetry participant, '11, '14, '18His first collection of poetry, My Little Book of Exiles, comes out March 1, 2022 from Eyewear Press, London.
Ruth Kirschner
Writers Workshop Participant '01Her play Whippoorwill is being produced by Centenary Stage Co, March-April 2022, winning the Women Playwrights Series Susan Glaspell Contest. Her most recent play, The Field, has been nominated for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
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.
Emily Pérez
Poetry Participant, '10, '18She co-edited the forthcoming anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. The anthology–a collection of poems, essays, and writing prompts–features work by several members of the Community of Writers, including Diannely Antigua, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Meg Day, Keetje Kuipers, Khadijah Queen, Chelsea Rathburn and others. The book is available for pre-order and will be released by University of Georgia Press in April, 2022.
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.
Juliana Roth
Screenwriting Workshop participant '17Her new short film Final Curtain Call, on Radio City Music Hall’s Chief organist Ray Bohr, is in post-production.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
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.
Karen Joy Fowler
Writers Workshop teaching staff '00, '01, '03, '05, '09, '13, '18, '21Her new novel, Booth, will be published by Penguin in March, 2022.
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.
Kari Flickinger
Poetry Participant, '17Her second collection of poems, Ceiling Fan, was published by Rare Swan Books in February 2022.
Sergio Reyes
Poetry Participant, '20, '21He recently had a poem entitled “EL Silencio” published in the online literary journal TriQuarterly. The first draft of this poem was written for a workshop led by Bob Hass during the 2020 Poetry Workshop.
He almost scrapped the poem after writing the first few lines because he felt that it had nothing to do with the pandemic or was relevant to what everyone was going through during the lockdown. However, he went ahead and wrote it because he needed to turn something in for Saturday session.
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.
Claudia Putnam
Writers Workshops participant '12Her debut collection, The Land of Stone and River, won the Moon City Press poetry prize and is now available for preorder, to be published in March, 2022.
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.
Robin Dellabough
Writers Workshop participant; Poetry Workshop participant '87, '21Her full length poetry collection, Double Helix, will be published in May, 2022, and is available now for preorder.
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
Richard Sime
Poetry Participant, '16, '19His second collection of poems, The Next Breath, will soon be his first published book (the first collection is still looking for a home) when Finishing Line Press releases the book this year.
Erin L. McCoy
Poetry Participant, 2016Her poem, “How a lake flash-froze a herd of horses,” was selected by Kaveh Akbar for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021. This is McCoy’s second appearance in the Best New Poets anthology.
Attended with the help of Oakley Hall III Memorial Scholarship
Lester Graves Lennon
Poetry Participant, '99, '01, '03, '05, '07, '09, '11, '13, '15, '17, '19, '20His third book of poetry, Lynchings: Postcards from America, was released the first week of January, 2022. The title section (all started in the Valley) consists of 13 poems that look at 12 lynching photographs, some of which were turned into postcards.
Kelly Houle
Poetry Participant, '20She has poems appearing in the Spring 2022 issues of Press Pause (vol 6), Radar Poetry (Issue 32 XXII), The Round (Issue XXII), Sequestrum (Issue 30), and Visitant (2/23).
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.
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her newest work of poetry and visual art, Her Read: A Graphic Poem, was published in 2021 by Texas Review Press.
Shangyang Fang
Poetry Workshop participant '19His poetry collection, Burying the Mountain, was recently published by Copper Canyon Press.
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.
Fran Castan
Poetry Participant, '92She won the 2021 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. The award includes publication in The Hippocrates Prize Anthology and 1,000 British pounds. Her poem, “Voice Mail,” was chosen from a record number of entries submitted from 30 countries to The Open Category for Poets. There was a separate division for health professionals and another for young writers of poetry. A video of Fran reading “Voice Mail,” one of a series of poems she wrote while her friend battled pancreatic cancer, can be seen on the society’s website: www.hippocrates-poetry.org.
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
Neysa King
Poetry Participant '20Her first poetry chapbook, Rainbow Body, is now available for purchase. This 12-poem collection tells the story of self-discovery amidst the sex and lights of Miami Beach. You can get your copy at your local bookstore or at any online retailer. Visit www.neysaking.com/rainbow body or follow Neysa on IG @neysaking for more details.
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
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry participantHer self-published picture book, The Story of Doves, won Honorable Mention in the 2021 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards for Picture Books 5 & Younger.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “The Sensible Gardener” appears in the December 2021 issue of Anti-Heroin Chic.
Jan Verberkmoes
Poetry Participant, '17Her debut poetry collection, Firewatch, will be published by Fonograf Editions on December 7th, 2021.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Neysa King
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her first chapbook of poetry, Rainbow Body, will be released on December 12, 2021.
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.
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15,'19His chapbook Eye, Romanov was published in July as one of the James Tate Prize’s shared winners (SurVision Books). His chapbook Bayou Oncology will be published in 2022 with Osmanthus Press.
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.
Molly Giles
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHer fifth story collection, Wife with Knife, won the Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize and is being published both by Leapfrog Press in the US in November 2021 and by Can of Worms Press in the UK in 2022.
A.W. “Tony” Scott
Screenwriting Workshop Participant '12His satirical short film “Representation Matters?” was named “Best Short Film” at the Atman Film Festival in Los Angeles on 10/31/21. The film also garnered nominations for “Best Script”, “Best Actor”, and won for “Best Actress” at the Atman Film Festival. The film has also been screened at the Buenos Aries Film Festival and Osaka International Film Festival, and several other festivals in the United States, earning nominations for “Best Film”, “Best Script” and “Best Director”.
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.
A.W. “Tony” Scott
Screenwriting Workshop Participant '12He and his writing partner Jean Su’s pilot script “Leading Edge”, an Asian female-led one hour drama television series set in Silicon Valley, was named “Outstanding Drama Pilot” at the Catalyst Story Institute 2021 Content Festival (formerly ITV Fest) for television and web series content.
Jackie Davis Martin
Writers Workshop Participant '14Her novel Stopgaps was published in May, 2021 and is available through Bookbaby. com or Amazon.com.
Alison Turner
Poetry Participant '10Her debut collection, The Second Split Between, selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2021 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets, was published in November 2021 by Catamaran.
Chelsea B. DesAutels
Poetry Workshop Participant, '18Her first poetry collection, A Dangerous Place, was published by Sarabande Books in October, 2021.
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.
Louis Edwards
Writers Workshop teaching staff '06, '10, '22His novel, Ramadan Ramsey, was recently selected by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the 20 best works of fiction of 2021.
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.
Amanda Moore
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her newest book of poetry, Requeening, which was selected by Ocean Vuong as a National Poetry Series winner, was published on October 26, 2021 by Ecco.
Tom Lutz
Writers Workshop teaching staff '17, '19, '21The third volume of his travel series, The Kindness of Strangers, was published in October, 2021.
Holaday Mason
Poetry Workshop participant '00, '06, '19Her work is featured in the upcoming anthology, What Falls Away is Always: Writers Over 60 on Writing and Death. There is an in-person publication reading at Village Well Bookstore this Wednesday, October 27, in Culver City.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant '00Her children’s picture book, Critters in the Neighborhood Come and See with Me, is now available.
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
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry participant '00The sequel to her picture book, The Story of Doves: Part Two, is out now!
Michelle Bitting
Poetry Participant '05She was short-listed for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 Coniston Prize, Ruminate’s “The Waking” Flash Prose Contest, and the 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize.
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.
Nicholas Nichols
Poetry Workshop participant '19They were recently named the associate editor of The Offing, an online literary magazine that publishes creative writing in all genres and art in all media. “The Offing publishes work that challenges, experiments, provokes — work that pushes literary and artistic forms and conventions.”
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.
Amanda Moore
Poetry Workshop (Virtual Valley), 2021Amanda Moore’s debut collection, Requeening, selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2020 National Poetry Series was published in October 2021 by HarperCollins/Ecco.
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.
Elder Gideon
Poetry '21 (Virtual Valley)Elder Gideon’s debut poetry collection Aegis of Waves was published by Atmosphere Press, with a book launch at the Sacramento Poetry Center in August.
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.
Deborah Dashow Ruth
Poetry Participant. 1991, ‘92, '93, ‘95, ‘98, '00, ‘01, ‘05, ‘08, ‘13, ‘15, ‘17, ‘21A short play by Deborah Dashow Ruth is a winner in the Chameleon Theatre Circle’s 22nd Annual New Play Contest. The play is titled “The Previous Incident Versus a Recent Development,” and will be streamed sometime in the fall. Also, one of her poems was accepted for the debut issue of the Thuya Poetry Review, a new journal.
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.
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Workshop Participant (Virtual Valley), 2021Two of Stella Santamaria’s poems were published in The Acentos Review, September 2021 issue after attending Community of Writers, Poetry Program in the Summer of 2021 in the Virtual Valley.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Family Scholarship
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
Barbara West
Memoir Participant, '21Barbara West interviewed Megan Stielstra for Another Chicago Magazine on the occasion of Northwestern University Press reissuing two of Stielstra’s essay collections. Topics covered include how we take care of ourselves and each other, Moratorium on Shame and Stielstra instructing me to “Please, look at all the asses, Barbara!”
Amanda Moore
Poetry Participant, Virtual Valley '21Amanda Moore’s [Her] debut collection, Requeening, was selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2020 National Poetry Series and will be published in October 2021 by HarperCollins/Ecco.
Lynne A Goldsmith
Poetry Participant.'00Lynne’s has new children’s picture book The Story of Doves was published in 2021.
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
Andrea Carter Brown
Poetry Participant, '90Andrea Carter Brown’s fourth poetry collection, September 12, was published by The Word Works in September 2021 to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
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
Cathy Park Hong
Staff Poet: 2011, 2016Cathy Park Hong has been included in Time Magazine’s 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2021!
Forrest Gander
Staff Poet: 2010, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021Forrest Gander’s collection Twice Alive, has been long-listed for this year’s National Book Award in Poetry. His poem “Post-Fire Forest,” was published last spring in The New Yorker.
Peggy Dobreer
Poetry Workshop participant '21Her newest book of poetry, Forbidden Plums: Poems in Quarantine, was recently published by Glass Lyre Press. It is a collection of poetry written during the first 40 days of quarantine in 2020.
Rachel Hinton
Poetry Participant, '11Her debut poetry collection, Hospice Plastics, was selected by Emma Bolden as the winner of the Cowles Poetry Prize and will be published by Southeast Missouri State University Press in October, 2021. Mary Szybist called Hospice Plastics “that rare collection that I’ve not been able to stop re-reading.” This somewhat autobiographical collection of poetry focuses on the illnesses and deaths of the poet’s parents during her teen years, centering on palliative care and literal plastics: medical tools and supplies—artificial, grotesquely present, weirdly funny, sublimely comforting.
David Mills
Poetry Participant, '21His poetry collection, Boneyarn, was a June bestseller at Small Press Distribution. This collection is the first book of poems about slavery in New York City, where the oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located. If you are interested in a signed copy, you can email David at edgarallanpoit@yahoo.com. Boneyarn is also available at Small Press Distribution and Amazon.
Attended with the help of Veteran's Poetry Scholarship
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 Workshops Participant, '00; Alumni Reading Series participant '04;Her eighth book, The Postmistress of Paris, has been named a Publisher’s Weekly Notable Book for Fall/Winter 2021. The novel, inspired by the efforts of real-life Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold’s efforts to rescue artists, writers, and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France, will be published by HarperCollins November 30, 2021, and in multiple translations. Her most recent novel, the international bestseller and National Jewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London, has now been published in 17 languages, and will be translated into French, Hebrew, and Turkish in the coming year.
Tory Adkisson
Poetry Workshop participant '11His first book of poems, The Flesh Between Us, selected by Brian Turner as the winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, is forthcoming from SIU Press this October.
Paco Márquez
Poetry Participant, '12He has two new poems in the current issue of The Literary Review.
Antonio Lopez
Poetry Participant '17His debut collection of poetry, Gentefication, is coming out through Four Way Books September 15, 2021. It was selected by Gregory Pardlo as the winner of the 2019 Larry Levis Prize in Poetry.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship
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.
Danusha Laméris
Poetry Participant, '00Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award, and was the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.
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.
Alison Turner
Poetry Participant '10Her manuscript The Second Split Between was selected by Dorianne Laux to be the winner of the 2021 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets. The collection will be published by Catamaran in the fall of 2021.
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.
Paul Burgoyne
Fiction Workshop participant '10His novel, Two Seasons, workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2010, was recently published and is now available on Amazon.
DeWitt Henry
Writers Workshop Teaching StaffThe concluding collection of his trilogy of memoirs, Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays, was published in April, 2021, by MadHat Press, with an introduction by John Skoyles.
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.
Lynne Thompson
Poetry Participant, '97, '04In February 2021, she was appointed Poet Laureate for the city of Los Angeles by Mayor Eric Garcetti.
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.
Hari B Khalsa
Poetry Participant '03, '06Her chapbook of poems, She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep, won the 2020 Tebot Bach Clockwise Chapbook Contest and was published in July, 2021.
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
Gerald Haslam (1937-2021)
Writers Workshop teaching staff '05, '09, '10He is the winner of the 2021 AASLH Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement, in recognition of his decades-long career.
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.
Lester Graves Lennon
Poetry Participant, '99, '01, '03, '05, '07, '09, '11, '13, '15, '17, '19, '20His poem,”Frank Embree Standing on Buggy Facing Camera Fayette, Missouri, July 22,1899 (Photographer Unknown)” which was first written during Poetry Week at the Community of Writers was published by Literary Matters.
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
Diane P Wolff
Writers Workshop Participant '83; Screenwriters Workshop Participant '84She did not win the Buchanan Prize of the Association for Asian Studies for her book, Batu, Khan of the Golden Horde: The Mongol Khans Conquer Russia. As they say in Hollywood, it was an honor to be invited to submit, and there are four more books in her Silk Road Series: The Heirs of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan). She did do a virtual talk for the American Center for Mongolian Studies to launch the book and it has been peer reviewed in Education about Asia, for use as a course book in global history.
David Mills
Poetry Participant '92, '21A finalist for the Crab Orchard Review and Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, his third collection, Boneyarn, came out in April 2021 from Ashland University Press. It is the first book of poems about slavery in New York City where the oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73His new novel, The Moment Before, will be published on September 1, 2021. It is the third of a trilogy. The others are My Father in The Night and When Clara Was Twelve.
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
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant '07, '10, '14, '17Her chapbook, Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, won the Heartland Review 2020 chapbook prize.
Tracy Fuad
Poetry Participant '17Her debut collection of poetry, about:blank, was chosen by Claudia Rankine as the 2020 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize and will be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2021. The book is available for pre-sale now.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Alicia Hokanson
Poetry participant '86, '87, '88, '90, '98Her new collection, Perishable World, was published by Pleasure Boat Studio press in May, 2021.
Jen Siraganian
Poetry Workshop participant '12, '14She was recently inducted as the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos in April 2021. Selected by the mayor and members of the Los Gatos Library Board and Arts and Culture Commission after an unanimous vote, she will serve a three-year term promoting poetry and literature in the community.
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.
Michelle Ruiz Keil
Writers Workshop participant, 2014Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale “Brother and Sister,” Michelle Ruiz Keil’s second novel, Summer in the City of Roses, follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early ’90s Portland. It will be available July 6, 2021 wherever books are sold.
Lois Rosen
Her new book of poetry, Diving and Rising, was recently published by Finishing Line Press.
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.
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
Poetry Participant, '19An artifact of erasure at once poetry and visual art, Her Read, a graphic poem by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth will be published in full color and hardback by Texas Review Press in June, 2021. In the tradition of reusing canvases, with correction fluid, scalpel & embroidery floss, Steinorth transforms a tome of art criticism, The Meaning of Art by Herbert Read, into feminist verse. Though the maternal body appears with frequency in Read’s illustrated text which spans from prehistory to the modern age, he includes zero female artists. Her Read, a graphic poem, is an excavation of buried voices– a reclamation of bodies framed in gilt & an homage to those whose arts remain unsung.
Attended with the help of I did (blessedly) receive a scholarship, which made attendance possible, but I cannot seem to locate the name!
K.M. English
Poetry Participant, '16Her debut full-length collection, Wave Says, was published by Kore Press on May 15, 2021.
Attended with the help of Cushing Scholarship!
Shangyang Fang
Poetry Participant, '19His poetry collection, Burying the Mountain, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in October, 2021.
Attended with the help of The Sharon Olds Honorary Scholarship
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant 2007, 2010,2014,2017Her chapbook, Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, was awarded the Heartland Review Chapbook Award for Poetry 2020, and recently published. The chapbook was also a Main Street Rag Finalist.
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.
Stella Beratlis
Poetry Participant, '07, '12Her second poetry collection, Dust Bowl Venus, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in May, 2021.
Pablo J Lopez
Poetry Participant, '08His book Structures the Moment was published by the Los Angeles press Anonymous Energy.
Lynne Goldsmith
poetry participantHer poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Distinguished Favorite in the 2021 Independent Press Awards.
Marc Jampole
Writers Workshop participant '05His first novel, The Brothers Silver, was published by Owl Canyon Press. The Brothers Silver follows the lives of two brothers who grow up in a family haunted by mental illness, drug abuse, and violence.
Anthony S. Abbott
Poetry Participant, '91/'02His new collection Dark Side of North was published in January, 2021 by Press53.
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.
Claire Boyles
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her debut short story collection, Site Fidelity, is coming June 15, 2021 from W.W. Norton.
Monica West
Writers Workshop participant '09, '12Her novel, Revival Season, will be published by Simon and Schuster on June 15, 2021.
Noel Obiora
Writers Workshops Participant, '09,'10His first novel, A Past That Breathes, will be published by Rare Books, Inc on May 11, 2021.
Chaney Kwak
Fiction, 2012His debut memoir, The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship, comes out from Godine in June, 2021. A tragicomic story about an (almost) sinking cruise ship, The Passenger journeys from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco.
Attended with the help of Scholarship recipient (and I thank The Community's generosity in the book's acknowledgements)
Josephine Ensign
Writers Workshops Participant, 2013Her forthcoming narrative history book, Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City, (August 3, 2021 pub date) from Johns Hopkins University Press is now available for pre-sale.
Danusha Laméris
Poetry Participant, '00She will be reading on May 16th with Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield, Marie Howe, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Donations to this event will benefit the S.H.E. students, young women from the Maasai tribe who have escaped Female Genital Mutilation and early childhood marriage.
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.
Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Poetry Participant, '19Her new collection, a more perfect Union, (Mad Creek Books, an imprint of Ohio State University Press) was selected by Kathy Fagan for the 2019 OSU Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. It was published in February, 2021 and is available now!
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
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
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Poetry Participant, '97, '12Her new poetry collection, West: Fire Archive at Jack London State Historic Park was published by the Center for Literary Publishing (Mountain/West Poetry Series) in March 2021
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.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant, '12His first full-length poetry book, Beyond That Hill I Gather, will be published by Finishing Line Press in May, 2021. The book features portrait poems of notable women.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her novel, Italian Love Cake, is forthcoming from Bordighera Press in May, 2021.
Tamsin Smith
Poetry Participant, '21Her third poetry collection, Displacement Geology, has been published by fmsbw press.
Tamsin Smith
Poetry Participant, '21Her first work of fiction, XISLE, a novel, has been published by fmsbw press.
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.
Kari Flickinger
Poetry Participant '17Her debut poetry collection, The Gull and the Bell Tower, was recently published by Femme Salvé Books.
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.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant. '00Her poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won Book Excellence Finalist Award.
Lynn Gordon
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Her stories appeared in the spring 2021 issues of Prime Number Magazine and The Louisville Review.
Ananda Lima
Poetry Participant, '17Her poetry collection, Mother/land, winner of the Hudson Prize, is on pre-order (October 21) with Black Lawrence Press. Her fiction chapbook Tropicália, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize is on pre-order with Newfound press. Her micro-chapbook, Amblyopia, was published by Bull City Press as part of their INCH series.
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15, '19His chapbook Prodigal Cocktail Umbrella was recently published by Trainwreck Press. His debut full-length collection, Agoreography, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press.
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
Kateema Lee
Poetry Participant, '18Her poem “Last Epistle” won the first place prize in the anthology This is What America Looks Like. Kateema’s new collection of poems, Transcript of the Unnamed, explores the “brief, bright lives” of missing and forgotten black women.
Genevieve Kaplan
Poetry Participant, '18Her new chapbook, I exit the hallway and turn right, was published by above/ground press in December, 2020.
Anthony Cody
Poetry Participant '18His debut collection, Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn), was a 2020 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry, Winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Prize, was recently named a 2020 Southwest Book Award Winner from the Regional Border Library Association, longlisted for The Believer Magazine 2020 Editor’s Award in Poetry, and is now a finalist for the Jean Stein Award from PEN/America.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell 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.
Sally Van Doren
Poetry Participant, '01,'03,'06Her drawings are featured in the spring 2021 issue of The 2River View.
Heather Altfeld
Poetry Participant, '08, '10, '12, '15Her second book, Post-Mortem, was released April 2, 2021, by Orison Books after winning their annual poetry contest in 2019.
Arisa White
Poetry Participant, 2010Her new memoir, Who’s Your Daddy, was recently published by Augury Books. Who’s Your Daddy ( is a lyrical, genre-bending coming-of-age tale featuring a queer, Black, Guyanese American woman who, while seeking to define her own place in the world, negotiates an estranged relationship with her father.
“A lyric anthem for the fatherless, for seekers of the places and people that made us, for the artists ready to unearth and reshape their own stories. I gulped this exquisite manual like precious medicine, a spell that made me more myself.” —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me
Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship
Brionne Janae
She was recently awarded the 2020 Cave Canem North Western University Press Poetry Prize for her book, Blessed are the Peacemakers.
Ananda Lima
Her new book, Tropicália, was recently published by Newfound.
Ann Tweedy
Poetry Participant, '97, '00, '04, '07, '12, '15, '20Her hybrid chapbook, A Registry of Survival, was recently published by Last Word Press. The chapbook explores her relationship with her mother and how this relationship has been impacted by her mother’s homelessness and mental health struggles.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop Participant 19, 20An excerpt from her memoir and photographs appear in the February 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure Magazine.
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship
Amy Haddad
Poetry ParticipantShe recently received honorable mention in the Backwaters Press Poetry Prize. She will be awarded $1,000 and her manuscript, An Otherwise Healthy Woman, will be published in the spring of 2022. Haddad is a nurse, ethicist and poet who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University in Omaha, NE for 30 years.
Attended with the help of NA
Laura Cresté
Poetry Participant '20Her chapbook, You Should Feel Bad, was selected by Stephanie Burt for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and was published in November 2020.
Attended with the help of Sharon Olds Honorary Scholarship
Mary Freericks
Poetry Participant '89 / '91 / '09Her new poetry memoir, Furs for a Vegetarian, focuses on her artist mother, Sophie, Sonia Avakian, who was born in Moscow, married to escape the Communists and moved to Iran.
E. Martin Pedersen
Writers Workshops Participant, unsure of year, perhaps 2012He published two books of short poems, Bitter Pills and Smart Pills (Cyberwit.net). His full chapbook, Exile’s Choice, is coming soon from Kelsay Books (March, 2021).
Christine Sunderland
Writers Workshops Participant, '05Her novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock 2020), won Finalist and Inspirational, in the Feathered Quill Book Awards. Set in the present in the hills east of UC Berkeley, the story involves a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a Christian geneticist who search for peace and happiness in a culture of chaos. The importance of history, memory, free speech, and human dignity are some of the themes explored.
Lynne Thompson
1997, 2004She was recently named Poet Laureate of Los Angeles by Mayor Garcetti.
Thompson, an Award-winning poet, is nationally recognized as a trailblazer in contemporary literature.
R.O. Kwon
She is the editor of a new collection of stories, Kink, published by Simon and Schuster on February 9, 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.
Florencia Milito
Poetry Participant, '18Her bilingual poetry collection, Ituzaingó: Exiles and Reveries, was published by Nomadic Press in February, 2021.
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.
Maw Shein Win
Poetry Participant '02She was recently selected as a Spring 2021 Arts Research Center Poetry & the Senses Fellow at UC Berkeley in cohort with Vethea Cerna Cole, Elizabeth Zhiying Feng, reelaviolette botts-ward, Noah Warren, Ramona Nadoff, Ken Ueno, and Sara Mumolo. Win’s poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House from Omnidawn was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Open Book Award.
Julia B Levine
Poetry Workshop Participant, '95Her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, will be released by LSU Press in March, 2021.
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.
Tom Laichas
Poetry Participant '20He is celebrating two publications: Empire of Eden (The High Window Press) and the chapbook Sixty-Three Photographs from the End of a War (3.1 Press). He’ll be reading from both in a solo show online at Beyond Baroque, Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 6 pm Pacific. The event is free, but reservations are required through Eventbrite.
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.
Jade Yeung
Poetry Participant, '20She had the honor of reading alongside Patricia Spears Jones, Ali Black, A. Van Jordan, Janice Lowe, Peter Covino, and Michael Broder this year. You can check out the recording here.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
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
Sally Charette
Art of the Wild Participant, 1997Her poem “New Moon” appears in Juxtaprose Magazine, Vol. 25, Fall, 2020.
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.
Judy Brackett Crowe
Poetry Workshop participant '08, '12, '15, '18, '20Her poems have recently appeared in New World Writing, The Inflectionist Review, Catamaran, and the anthology California Fire & Water.
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.
Anthony Cody
Poetry Participant '18Anthony Cody’s collection Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), was was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America’s Jean Stein Award, and Anthony was named a 2020 Poets & Writers Debut Poet for that collection. To read about his first book and hear him read form his collection visit www.pw.org or pick up the January/February 2021 edition of Poets and Writers.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
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.
Evan I. Schwartz
Screenwriting Workshop participant '12His debut novel, Revolver, will be published in 2021 by the Concord Free Press.
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.”
Amy Elisabeth Davis
Poetry Workshop participant '16, '20; Writers Workshop participant '01Her poem, “As Company,” was recently published in the Southern Humanities Review.
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.
Natasha Saje
Poetry Participant '93Her memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place, was published by Trinity UP in November, 2020. The chapters contain arguments about immigration, nationality, gender, race, sexual orientation, class, and religion.
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.
Josh Folan
Screenwriting Workshop participant, '13His new cynical indie filmmaking case study joint, Still Filmmaking, the Hard Way, is available on Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Scribd, and all the other places humans read things.
Maria Espinosa
Writers Workshop Participant '93Her latest novel, Suburban Souls, was published on October 15, 2020, by Tailwinds Press.
Jesse Nathan
Poetry Workshop Participant, '15, '18His interview with Robert Hass in the Paris Review appeared in the Summer 2020 issue. It is #108 in their “Art of Poetry” series.
Kazim Ali
Poetry Workshop Participant ;98, Poetry Workshop teaching staff '10, '12, '16, '18His newest collection of poetry, The Voice of Sheila Chandra, was published by Alice James Books in October, 2020.
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).
Alison Turner
Poetry Workshop Participant '10Her long poem, “from the Covid Notebooks,” appears in the 2020 Summer/Fall issue of the American Journal of Poetry.
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.
Sherah Bloor
Poetry Participant, '18She is the new editor of Peripheries, a Journal of Word and Image published annually by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. The new 2020 issue includes work by Poetry Teaching Staff members, Sharon Olds and Evie Shockley, and Poetry Participants ’18, Brionne Janae, KT (Katie Taylor), and Eden Werring.
Jabari Jawan Allen
Poetry Workshop participant '18He will be teaching an advanced poetry workshop on Wednesdays, November 4 – 18, 2020 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. MST on Zoom with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
Over three sessions, students will explore the erotic god, subversion versus abolition in form, and the contemporization of the sonnet through the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Wanda Coleman, Malachi Black, Phillip B. Williams, Natasha Oladokun, and more. Registration is $109. Learn more and register today at https://piper.asu.edu/classes/jabari-allen/advanced-poetry-workshop
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship Recipient
Paul Watsky
Poetry Participant, '20His work, 4 poems and a short personal essay, appeared in the September 8 Litbreak.
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.
Joan Baranow and David Watts
Their documentary film, The Time We Have, is an Official Selection in five festivals and will screen online November 13-14 as part of the UK Film Review Festival.
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
Michelle Latiolais
Writers Workshop teaching staff, special guestHer short fiction will appear in the LA Issue of ZYZZYVA, issue no. 119, due November, 2020.
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.
Troy Jollimore
Poetry Workshop Participant, '11, '15His poem, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” originally published in ZYZZYVA, was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2020, edited by Paisley Rekdal. His fourth poetry collection, “Earthly Delights,” will appear in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in 2021.
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
Claudia Rankine
Poetry Workshop participant '93; Poetry Workshop teaching staff '07Her new book, Just Us: An American Conversation, was recently published by Graywolf Press.
Threa Almontaser
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her upcoming book of poetry, The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press, April, 2021), was recently awarded the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.
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
Caitlin McCarthy
Screenwriters Workshop Participant, '13Her feature screenplay Wonder Drug is now in the works with producer Stephen Nemeth, who she met at the Community of Writers Screenwriters Workshop when he was a featured guest speaker. Director Tom Gilroy will direct the film.
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.
Mariya Zilberman
Poetry Workshop Participant '20Her poem, “Against Temporality,” won the 2020 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest and will appear in the Winter 2020-2021 issue.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
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.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Poetry Participant, '97, '12Her new biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, was published in September, 2020, by University of Oklahoma Press. Charmian Kittredge London (1871–1955) was the epitome of a modern woman. Free-spirited and adventurous, she defied modern expectations of femininity. Today she is best known as the wife of the famous American author Jack London, yet she was a literary trailblazer in her own right. This biography is the first book to tell the complete story of Charmian’s life—freed from the shadow cast by her famous husband. In this biography, Iris Jamahl Dunkle draws the reader into Charmian’s private and public worlds, underscoring her literary achievements and the significant role she played in promoting her husband’s legacy.
Lucinda Watson
Poetry Workshop Participant '91, '92, '96, '98, '02, '04Her first book of poems, The Favorite, was published by Golden Antelope Press in September, 2020.
A.R. Taylor
Her new novel, Jenna Takes The Fall, was published September 1, 2020 from She Writes Press.
Caroline Kim
Poetry Workshop participant '18, '19Her short story collection, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, winner of the 2020 Drue Heinz Prize in Literature, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2020.
Swathi Desai
Writers Workshop Participant ‘17, ‘18Her short story, “The Big Men”, appears in the June 30th, 2020 issue of Prometheus Dreaming.
Magdalena Montagne
Poetry Workshop Participant '97Magdalena Montagne (formerly Mary Renga) is happy to announce that her first collection of poems, Earth, My Witness, will be published in August, 2020, by Finishing Line Press.
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.
Armen Davoudian
Poetry Workshop participant '18His chapbook, Swan Song, won the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook competition and is available for pre-order from Bull City Press.
Attended with the help of Barbara E. Hall Memorial Scholarship
lynne goldsmith
Poetry Workshop Participant '00Lynne Goldsmith’s poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Finalist Award in the International Book Awards.
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.
Khadijah Queen
Poetry Workshop participant '09Her new book of poetry, Anodyne, will be published by Tin House Books in August, 2020.
Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship
Joanna Solfrian
Poetry Workshop participant '06Her second book of poems, The Mud Room, was released by MadHat press in April, 2020.
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.
Alice Jones
Poetry Participant, '88, '89; Teaching Staff, Writing the Medical ExperienceHer book, Vault, was published on July 1, 2020, by Apogee Press.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop participant '18Her short story, “The Duck Walk” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Phoebe Journal.
Cornelius Eady
Poetry Workshop Teaching Staff '92, '99, '01, '04He was interviewed for Yale University’s Beinecke Library Corona Series. He discussed the on-going music project he is working on remotely with his folk trio (himself, with guitarists Lisa Liu and Charlie Rauh). Check it out here.
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.
Anthony Cody
Poetry Participant '18His debut Borderland Apocrypha was recently published in April 2020 with Omnidawn. The collection was the winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Prize by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. In her citation Berssenbrugge writes, “Intense feeling, empathy, rage, compassion swerves language, torques the page. History and data inflict. Intelligence composes, sequence wrestles with violence. It must be witnessed, expressed. The love is expression. Witness is form.” The collection is now available for purchase.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
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.
Ann Tweedy
Poetry Participant, '20, '15, '12, '07, '04, '00, '97Her chapbook Beleaguered Oases, first published in 2010 by tcCreativePress, was republished in Seven Kitchens Press’s Rebound Series in April 2020.
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
Sarah Maclay
Poetry Participant, '97, '06, '19Her poem “A Mirror of Leaves” appears in the Winter 2020 volume of Hotel Amerika.
Erin L. McCoy
Poetry Participant, '16She recently won second place in the 2019–2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest, judged by CAConrad, for her poem, “How a lake flash-froze a herd of horses.”
Kristi Maxwell
Poetry Participant, ‘02Her seventh book of poems, My My, was published by Saturnalia Books in May, 2020.
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.
Alice Jones
Poetry Participant, '88, '89. Teaching Staff, Writing the Medical experienceHer newest collection, Vault, was recently published by Apogee Press. A poem in the book, “Spell,” won the first annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize.
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.
Ken Haas
Poetry Workshop participant '08, '11, '13, '16, '19His first full-length poetry collection, Borrowed Light, was recently published by Red Mountain Press, and won the 2020 Red Mountain Discovery Award.
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.
Meryl Natchez
Poetry Participant, '87...2013Her second book of original poetry, Catwalk, is forthcoming in June, 2020, from Longship Press. Preorders available here.
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.
Richard Tayson
Poetry Participant, '93His poem, “Antigone’s Dream,” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Colorado Review.
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).
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant '00Her book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Human Relations Indie Book Award for poetry.
Leah Naomi Green
Poetry Participant '08Her essay “Return, Investment, Return” appeared in The Paris Review in April 2020 around the debut of her book The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press), selected by Li-Young Lee for the 2019 Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets.
Jesse Bedayn
His article, “Inside the Bay Area’s Geriatric Homeless Shelter,” was recently published in the New York Times. Jesse has been a Poetry Elf during our summer writing workshops for the last four years, and is currently getting his Masters in Journalism, with a focus in narrative writing, at University of California, Berkeley.
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.
Judy Halebsky
Poetry Workshop participant '06, '09, '11, '14Her newest collection of poetry, Spring and a Thousand Years, winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, was recently published by University of Arkansas Press.
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.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '15, '16, '18, '19Her newest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was recently awarded two Golden Poppy Awards, in the Regional Book and Non-Fiction categories. The Golden Poppy Awards honor books published each year by Northern California authors and artists chosen by independent booksellers throughout Northern California.
Tom Lutz
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '17, '19His new novel, Born Slippy, was published by Repeater Books/Penguin Random House in January, 2020.
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.
Diannely Antigua
Poetry Workshop participant '16She was recently awarded the Whiting Award in Poetry for her debut collection, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019). The judges said her poems “layer lyricism, religious language, and the tactile materials of daily life to build altars of affection for the people and things of her world,” each “meticulously shaped by a formal and aesthetic vision that already feels authoritative.”
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
David Koehn
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '06, '14His new book of poetry, Scatterplot, will be published by Omnidawn in April, 2020.