Armen Davoudian

Poetry Participant, '18

Armen 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, '15

Eggtooth, 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.

Photo of Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones

Poetry Participant, '91; Teaching Staff, '16, '23

Patricia 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. 

Jeff Adams

Writers Workshops Participant '19, '23

His story “The Stonecutter’s Wife” appears in Bulb Culture Collective. More info here.

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Rashaan Alexis Meneses

Writers Workshop Participant '17

Rashaan 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, '10

Peter Stenson’s fourth novel, We, Adults (Regal House Publishing), will be released on March 26th, 2024. More info here.

Max Stone

Poetry Participant ’23

Max 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, '17

Lauren 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, '17

Jaclyn 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, '22

Sue 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, '23

Lawrence 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, '08

Beverley 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, '11

Gwen 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, '20

Elizabeth 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, '19

Barbara 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, '15

Désirée​ 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, '23

Hot 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, '21

Marisa 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, '17

Rashaan 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, '19

Gretchen 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 Program

Lisa 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, '05

Tim 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, '21

Amanda 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, '01

Joe 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, '14

Eugenie 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, '18

Yiskah 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, '17

Lauren 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, '08

Ann Graham published a poem, “From There to Here,” in the Texas Observer, Nov-Dec 2023 issue.

Michael Zysk

Poetry Participant, '21

Michael 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, '19

Featuring 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, '23

Tricia 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, '24

Charlotte 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, '05

Joanna 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, '23

Roxi 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, '17

Tracy 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, '20

Iris 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, 2022

Georgia 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, '18

Yiskah 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, '21

Ellen 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 '22

Vishwas 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, '23

Nora 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, '19

Arthur 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, '01

Mark 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, 10

Renée 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, '23

Victoria 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

Writers Workshops Participant, '07, '09, '12, '15

In 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, '07

Ruben 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, '00

Robin 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, '18

Julia 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.

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Molly Fisk

Poetry participant, '92, '95, '98 & Art of the Wild

Molly 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, '73

Find Terence Clark’s ongoing translations of Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire (and other news) here.

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '73

Terence 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, '23

Jeff 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, '89

His 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, '10

Joseph 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, '22

Vishwas 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, '18

Joan 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, '18

Jay 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, '21

William Ward Butler co-founded a new online poetry journal called Frozen Sea; Issue Two was published on December 15, 2023.

Peggy Dobreer

Poetry Workshop, ‘21

Slow 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, '07

Haley 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, '08

Anthony 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, '23

Across 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, '92

Victoria 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.

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Amanda Churchill

Writers Workshop Participant, '21

Amanda 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,'21

Alex 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, '17

Ananda 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, '21

Meg 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, '19

T.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 '22

Leah 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, ‘05

Valyntina 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 '22

Caroline 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, '16

Her 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, '02

Ken 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, '93

Peter 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.

https://www.petervanderwall.com/

Andrew Tonkovich

Staff

Santa 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, 2003

Chuck 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, '95

New collection of poetry, On Balance, published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham UK, November 2023.

http://www.mellotone.co.uk

CJ Palmisano

Screenwriters' Workshop, '11

CJ 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, '05

In 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, '12

Mary 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, '23

Kristen-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 '19

Parul 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.

https://www.pshares.org/omnibus/fall-2023

Mary Otis

Writers Workshop Participant, '00, '01

Mary 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, '21

Stella 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 Director

Diana 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: '16

Patricia Spears Jones’ fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, was published September, 26 2023 by Copper Canyon Press. More information here.

Jessie Ren Marshall

Writers Workshops Participant, '19

Jessie 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, '23

Tamam’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, ‘18

Swathi 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, '20

Ann 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, '16

Adela 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, '23

Hermelinda 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, '23

Kazim Ali’s newest collection of poems, Sukun, was published by Wesleyan University Press in September 2023.

Jesse Nathan

Poetry Participant, '15, '18

Jesse 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, '23

Sally 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, '19

Matt 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, '23

Rosa 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, '16

Helena Mesa’s Where Land Is Indistinguishable from Sea was published by Terrapin Books. More details.

Violeta Orozco

Writers Workshop Participant, '23

Violeta 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

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22

Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story “The Cow In His Throat” has been published in Books and Pieces magazine. You can read it here and find him on X.


Attended with the help of a Maat Scholarship

Molly Giles

Writers Workshops Staff, '23

Molly 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, '94

Patricia 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, '21

Stella 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, '06

John 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, '18

Julia 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, '11

Nicole Sealey’s newest volume of poetry, The Ferguson ReportAn 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, '94

Patricia Spears Jones’ fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, is forthcoming September 2023. More information here.

Jon Riccio

Poetry Participant, '15, '19

Jon 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, '22

Loisa 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, '19

Ted 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, '15

Matthew 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, '73

Terence 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, '91

Andrea 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, '19

Emi 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, '95

Barbara 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, '08

Anthony 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, '22

Vishwas 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, '21

Margaret 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, '04

In 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, 2022

He 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, '23

Cintia 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, '19

The 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, '13

Sommer 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, '19

Her 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, '12

Her 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, '18

His 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, '22

Vishwas 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 '05

Alta Journal has published ​her whimsical short story “Magda’s Hen” in their summer issue #24.

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22

His multimedia essay on the music prodigy Lydian Nadhaswaram, “King of Melody, Lord of Rhythm: Lydian Nadhaswaram’s Musical Journey” has been published by Serenade Magazine. You can read it here.


Attended with the help of the Maat Scholarship

Andrew Tonkovich

Writers Workshops Participant, '93

Founding 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, '23

Her 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 '08

His 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, '21

She 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, '05

Her 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, '12

Her 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, ‘04

She 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.

Adela Najarro

Poetry Workshop Participant ,'16

She’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, 2022

Her 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, '87

President Joe Biden awarded her with a National Humanities Medal in March of 2023.

Diane Schenker

Poetry Participant, `14, '19

Her 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, '12

Her 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, '22

She 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, '19

Her 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, '90

Her 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, '19

His short story “The Procedure” appears in the Spring 2023 Issue of 34 Orchard Journal.

Image of Ausubel Book Cover

Ramona Ausubel

Writers Workshop Participant '07, '12/ Teaching Staff Member

Her new novel The Last Animal was released from Riverhead Books in April 2023. NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed her on Weekend Edition Saturday

http://ramonaausubel.com/
Attended with the help of UC Irvine Scholarship

Suzanne Goldenberg

Poetry Participant, '21

Six 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, '92

Chris 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, '22

Her 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, '88

Her latest book of poetry, Your Form Became My Own, was published by Kelsay Books, January 2023.

Joan Baranow

Poetry Participant, '18

Her 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, '14

His 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, '19

Her debut full-length poetry collection, Expert Terrain, is being published by Word Poetry and will be available in May/June 2023.

http://www.dianeschenker.com

Ilana DeBare

Writers Workshop Participant, '11

Her 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.

David Watts

His recent collection of haiku, Seed Kites, was published by Red Moon Press.

KB Ballentine

Poetry Participant, '15

Her 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 Staff

His 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

https://www.unnamedpress.com/books/book?title=Story+of+a+Poem

Andrew Tonkovich

Writers Workshop Participant: '93

As 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: '16

Her 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: '00

Her 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: `19

Her 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, '22

His short story ‘Swayamvara’ has been published in Brink literary magazine (Issue 5, Spring 2023).

https://twitter.com/weareji
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship. '22

A.R. Taylor

Writers Workshop Participant, '13

Her 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.

Natasha Saje

Poetry Participant '92

Natasha Saje’s book of poems, The Future Will Call You Something Else, will be published by Tupelo Press in May 2023.

http://www.natashasaje.com

Andrew Kaufman

Poetry Participant: '01 and '08

His 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, '17

She 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.

https://blackspringpressgroup.com/

Melinda Palacio

Poetry Participant: '08

She 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: '13

She 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: '22

She 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: '17

Michelle Bracken’s short story, “The Crush,” was published in Across the Margin.

James Davis May

Poetry participant: '09

His second poetry collection, Unusually Grand Ideas, was published by LSU Press in February.

Chuck Joy

Writing the Medical Experience Participant

His new collection of new poems called Vinyl, was published by What Why Aesthetics (Erie PA).

Parul Kapur Hinzen

Writers Workshop Participant: '19

Her 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,

http://www.lukasguides.com

Kazim Ali

Poetry Participant: '98; Poetry Staff: '10, '12, '16, '18, '21, '23

Sukun: New and Selected Poems, by Kazim Ali, will be published by Wesleyan University Press in September 2023.

Jasmin Iolani Hakes

Writers Workshops Alumni: '19

Hula, 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: '01

Joe 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, '19

Her 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),

http://gailreitano.com

Judy Rowe Michaels

Poetry Participant, '03, '92, '91

Her 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,'22

His 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.

https://india.serenademagazine.com/music-education/the-birth-death-and-reincarnation-of-the-harmonium/
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22

Andrew Tonkovich

1993

His short story, “Three Acts in Three Plays (Plus One)” appears in the print edition of the spring issue of Juked.

http://www.juked.com/print/18/

Elizabeth Filippouli

Writers Workshops Participant '07, '22

Elizabeth 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.

http://www.alexanderthegreat.live

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshop Participant, '14, ,22

Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story ‘Carabas’ appears in ‘The Journal’ (Issue 46.2, Spring 2023).

http://thejournalmag.org/archives/21716
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22

Michael Golding

Writer's Workshops Participant, '90, '92

Michael Golding’s fourth novel Quick Bright Things — about the Golden Age of Broadway — will be published in April 2023 by Butterfish Press.

http://michaelgoldingwriter.com

Carrie Nassif

Poetry Participant, '21

Her 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.

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/lithopaedion-by-carrie-nassif/
Attended with the help of Janice Bevilacqua Scholarship

J. David Cummings

Poetry Participant, '88, '89, '92, '02, '11, '15

His 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.

https://www.broadstonebooks.com/new

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshop Participant, '71, 72; Teaching Staff '22

His 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.

https://terenceclarke.substack.com/p/a-new-novelthe-last-of-nico-sombra.

Lea Aschkenas

Writers Workshops Participant, '02; Art of the Wild Participant, '99

Her 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.

http://www.leaaschkenas.com

Ángel García

Poetry Workshop participant '12

His poem “Vestiges” was recently featured on the Academy of American Poets’ website as part of their Poem-a-Day series.

Loisa Fenichell

Poetry Participant, '22

Her 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.

http://https://birdcoatquarterly.com/press/

Freeman Ng

Writers Workshop participant, '19

Bridge 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.

http://www.AuthorFreeman.com

Donna Spruijt-Metz

Poetry Participant, '22

Her 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.

https://www.donnasmetz.com/poetry-reviews

Beverly Burch

Poetry participant, ‘03

Her fourth poetry book, Leave Me a Little Want, was published by Terrapin Books. Her third, Latter Days of Eve, won the John Ciardi Prize.

http://www.beverlyburch.com

Peter Scott

Special Guest of Reading Milosz: A Short Course

His 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”.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538172438/Ecstatic-Pessimist-Czeslaw-Milosz-Poet-of-Catastrophe-and-Hope

Alex Espinoza

Writers Workshop Participant, '04-'06; Staff; Board Vice-Chair

His new novel, The Sons of El Rey, just sold to Simon and Schuster.

Mira Rosenthal

Poetry Participant, '00

Her new poetry collection, Territorial, was selected by Terrance Hayes and published in the Pitt Poetry Series in November, 2022.

http://upittpress.org/books/9780822966968/

James D. Richardson

Writers Workshops participant '20

The 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.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?523452-1/the-abolitionists-journal&fbclid=IwAR1mW_9AZKiWAsmk50RxnmZF-e4IY7v_X4Bcp_so_axG0QUgY9T6TkKAOL0

Lauren Barbato

Writers Workshop Participant, '17

Her 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

Mike Karpa

Writers Workshops Participant, '92, '94

His 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.

http://mumblerspress.com

Christopher Upham

Writers Workshop Teaching Staff Screenwriting

Christopher 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.

http://christopherupham.com

Clare Frank

Writers Workshop Participant, '18

Clare Frank’s Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire is due out from Abrams Press in May, 2023.

https://www.therealclarefrank.com/
Attended with the help of The Alexander Cushing Locals Scholarship

Yeva Johnson

Poetry Participant, '20, '22

Yeva Johnson’s debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, will be published by Nomadic Press in February 2023.

https://bit.ly/YJohnson

George Berger

Writers Workshop Participant, 2004,2005,2014

G. 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

http://www.gjberger.com

Walter Pavlich

Art of the Wild Teaching Staff, '02

Sensational 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,'20

Ann 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.

http://annfisherwirth.com

Susanne Pari

Writers Workshops Participant, '89, '90, '91

Her 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.”

http://susannepari.com

Sandra McPherson

Poetry Teaching Staff '80/'Art of the Wild Teaching Staff 92, '93, '95, '96, '97, '99

Two 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 Participant

Her 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.

http://www.mollyfisk.com

Lynne Goldsmith

Poetry Workshop Participant '97, '02

Her new full-length poetry collection, By Light and Hidden Matter, is now out and available online.

https://lynneagoldsmith.com

Charmaine Craig

Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '18; Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98

Her 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.

http://charmainecraig.com

Robert Thomas

Poetry Participant, '88

His 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.

https://robertthomaspoems.com

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14, '22

His short story ‘Mardy Gras’ has been published in The MacGuffin, Fall 2022 issue.

https://twitter.com/weareji
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22

Alex Espinoza

Writers Workshop participant '04, '05; Writers Workshop teaching staff

His short story, “Detainment,” was included in 2022’s Best American Mystery and Suspense.

Forrest Gander

Poetry Workshop Teaching Staff

His 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, '19

Her 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, '22

His commentary “Wash or Wipe? – That is the Question!” has been published in the inaugural issue of Arasi literary magazine.

https://arasimag.weebly.com/
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22

Anara Guard

Writers Workshops Participant, '16

Her 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, '18

Her 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, '21

His 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, '23

Her 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.

http://devislaskar.com

Jamie Cat Callan

Writers Workshops participant '91

She 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.

http://www.JamieCatCallan.com

Charles Harper Webb

Writers Workshops participant '91

His novel Ursula Lake was published in Spring 2022 by Red Hen Press.

http://Charlesharperwebb.com

Margaret Elysia Garcia

Poetry Participant, '21

Her 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.

https://tolsunbooks.com/shop/graft

Meg Waite Clayton

Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '22; Participant ‘00

Her 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.

https://megwaiteclayton.com

Marjorie Saiser

Poetry Workshop Participant, '00

Her most recent book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, won the High Plains Book Award for Poetry.

http://www.poetmarge.com/

Lise Haines

Writers Workshops participant '99

Her newest, Book of Knives, was published in October, 2022, from Poisoned Pen Press.

Claire Boyles

Writers Workshop Participant '18

She 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.

http://claireboyleswrites.com

Bruce Rettig

Writers Workshops Participant, '12,'15

His 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.

https://brucerettig.com
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Judy Juanita

Writers Workshops Participant, '92

Her short story, “Pastoral Funkitude”,” appears in Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Fall/Winter 2022 issue.

http://www.judyjuanita.com

Marcia Bradley

Writers Workshops Participant, '19

Her 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.

https://marciabradley.com/
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship

Diane Wolff

Writers Workshop participant '83; Screenwriters Workshop participant '84

Her serialized story Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama has been nominated for the Buchanan Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.

Natalie Harris-Spencer

Writers Workshops Participant, '22

She 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.

https://natalieharrisspencer.com/

Daniel Pope

Writers' Workshop participant '19, '21

His short story, “Last Stop,” has been published in Issue 43 of the Bellevue Literary Review.

https://blreview.org/table-of-contents/issue-43/
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Anuradha Bhowmik

Poetry Workshop participant '18

Her 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 '20

His 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 '15

Her newest collection of poetry, Bluest Nudes, was published in September, 2022, by Milkweed.


Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship

Caroline Frost

Fiction Participant '17, '21; Published Alumni Reading Series '22

Her 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 '98

Her newest, Murder at the Jubilee Rally, a Samuel Craddock mystery, was published in October, 2022.

Janice Obuchowski

Writers Workshop Participant, '08

Her 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.

http://janiceobuchowski.com

Anna V. Q. Ross

Poetry Workshop Participant, '13, '21

Her 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.

http://https://www.annavqross.com/books
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship, '13

Lauren Barbato

Writers Workshop Participant, '17

Her short story “Women of a Certain Kind” appears in the fall 2022 issue of The Georgia Review.

https://thegeorgiareview.com/shop/issues/fall-2022/
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship

Alina Grabowski

Writers Workshops Participant, '17

Her novel, Women and Children First, will be published by SJPLit/Zando in fall, 2023.

http://www.alinagrabowski.com
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Javier Zamora

Poetry Workshop participant '10

His memoir, Solito, was published in September, 2023, and is a New York Times Bestseller.

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Writers Workshop Teaching Staff

Her third novel, On the Rooftop, was recently selected as Reese’s Book Club pick.

Ananda Lima

Poetry Workshop participant '17

Her fiction manuscript-in-progress, Craft, is a finalist for the 2022 Restless Books prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Sharon Olds

Poetry Workshop Teaching Staff

Her newest book, Balladz, is on the long list for the National Book Award for Poetry.

Shelley Wong

Poetry Workshop participant '16

Her 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, '21

She 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.

http://maryfreerickspoet.yolasite.com

Heidi Seaborn

Poetry Participant, 22

Her 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.

http://heidiseabornpoet.com

Rashaan Alexis Meneses

Writer's Workshop, '17

She 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

https://rashaanalexismeneses.com/
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship

Jamie Ford

Writers Workshop Participant, '06

His 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.

https://www.bookweb.org/news/august-2022-indie-next-list-preview-1628177

Cai Emmons

Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff

She 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.

http://www.caiemmonsauthor.com

Eva Benedikt

Screenwriting participant '10

Her 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, '10

She 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.

https://massculturalcouncil.org/artists-art/artist-fellowships/funding-list/
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Kristin Ohlson

Writers Workshop participant '84

Her 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.”

http://kristinohlson.com

Jasmin Darznik

Writers Workshop participant '08 and '10

She 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.

/https://portal.cca.edu/people/jdarznik//

Ramona Reeves

Writers Workshops Participant, '18

Her 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).

http://www.ramonareeves.com

Akil Kumarasamy

Writers Workshop Participant '15

Her new novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, was published by Macmillan in August, 2022.

https://akilk.com/
Attended with the help of Eshleman Scholarship

Eddy Ancinas

Her new book, Tracing Inca Trails: An Adventure in the Andes, will be published on September 20, 2022.

Karen Joy Fowler

Writers Workshop teaching staff '00, '01, '03, '05, '09, '13, '18, '22

Her newest book, Booth, was recently long listed for the Booker Prize.

James Richardson

Writers Workshop participant '20

His 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, '16

In 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 Participant

Her self-published Critters in the Neighborhood Come and See with Me picture book for kids was a Purple Dragonfly Award Winner–Honorable Mention.

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshops Teaching Staff

His 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 '96

She 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.

http://www.monicawesolowska.com

Susan Cohen

Poetry Participant, '17

Her 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.

https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/democracy-of-fire-poems-by-susan-cohen

Mary Camarillo

Writer’s Workshop Participant, 05

Her 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.

https://www.womenwritingthewest.org/awards/the-willa-literary-award/

Farnaz Fatemi

Poetry Participant, '14

Her 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.

http://www.farnazfatemi.com

Michael Shapiro

Writers Workshop participant, '22

Traveler’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.

https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/who_we_are/news/announcement/meet_the_ggscs_intellectual_humility_grant_winners

Alix Christie

Writers Workshops Participant, '00

Her short story “Everychild” won the 2021 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in fiction from The Missouri Review.

https://alixchristie.jimdo.com/

Antonia Angress

Writers Workshop participant '19

Her debut novel, Sirens and Muses, will be published by Penguin Random House in July, 2022.

Jeanine Stevens

Poetry Participant, '07, '10 '14 '17

Her 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.

www.claresongbirdspub.com

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.

http://marilynkallet.com

Janine Kovac

Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '12, '14, '16

Her 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.

https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/project-niner
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller Scholarship, Carlisle Family Scholarship, Eshleman Scholarship

Antonia Angress

Writers Workshop Participant '19

Her 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. 

http://antoniaangress.com
Attended with the help of O'Dwyer Scholarship

Tara Betts

Poetry Workshop Participant, '09

Her 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.

https://wordworksbooks.org/product/refuse-to-disappear/
Attended with the help of Cave Canem scholarship

Karen Moulding

Writers Workshops Participant, '07,'08,'10

Her short story, “We Will Live Here Forever,” has been published in the KGB Bar Online Literary Review and appears in the April 2022 issue.

http://kgbbarlit.com

Lauren Barbato

Writers Workshop Participant, '17

She 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.

http://phoebejournal.com/we-cant-live-without-the-birds-and-animals/
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship

Marilyn Kallet

Poetry workshop participant '96, '98, '05

Her 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.”

https://marilynkallet.com/

Danny Kraft

Poetry Participant, '19

He has started Di Freyd fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word, a free online newsletter of Yiddish poetry in translation.

https://danielkraft.substack.com/

Andrew Tonkovich

Fiction Workshop participant; Fiction workshop teaching staff

His 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 '18

His 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.

https://westernwriters.org/2022/03/2022-spur-award-winners-announced/

Tim Wendel

Fiction Workshop participant '87, '88; Screenwriting Workshop participant '07

His 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.

http://www.timwendel.com

Corey Campbell

Writers Workshops Participant, '18

Her 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 '84

Her 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.

http://www.dianewolff.com

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshop Participant '72, '73

His 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.

http://www.terenceclarke.org

Sholeh Wolpé

Writers Workshsop Participant,'04

Her 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

http://youtu.be/0iHMAZwYrhw

Alix Christie

Writers Workshop Participant '00

Her 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.

http://gutenbergsapprentice.com

Gretchen McCullough

Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '08, '19

Her translation with the poet, Mohamed Metwalli’s book, A Song on the Aegean Sea will be published by Laertes Press, May 2022.

https://www.laertesbooks.org/egret-chapbooks

Stella Santamaria

Poetry Workshop participant '21

Her “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, '14

His short story ‘Vermin’ was published in the 2021 issue of Descant.

https://twitter.com/weareji

Anthony J. Mohr

Writers Workshops participant '08

His essay, “The Wonderful World of Beverly Hills,” was published in the winter 2022 issue of Mason Street Review. In March, 2022, his essay, “The Hamburger,” appeared in Ink, a Hippocampus anthology.

Daniel Pope

Writers Workshop participant, '19, '21

His 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.

https://www.danielpopewrites.com/
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Stella Santamaria

Poetry Participant, '21

Her 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, '19

Her debut novel, The Long Answer, was published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House) on June 21, 2022.

http://www.annahogeland.com
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship

Ruben Quesada

Poetry Workshop participant '07

His 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 '07

He has a new poem “My Mother Is a Garden” in Issue 41 of The Adroit Journal.

https://rubenquesada.com/
Attended with the help of UC Riverside scholarship

Ann Fisher-Wirth

Poetry Workshop participant '92, '00, '09, '13, '20

She 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, '03

Her 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.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laura-secord/an-art-a-craft-a-mystery/

Mary F. Burns

Writers Workshops Participant, '05

Her 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.”

https://www.maryfburns.com

Caroline Kim

Writers Workshops Participant, '18, '19

Her short story “Motherhood” appears in the Spring 2022 Issue of STORY Magazine.

http://www.carolinekim.net

Victoria Dalkey

Poetry Participant '92

Her 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, '21

In 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 '89

Her new novel, The Candy House, was published on April 5, 2022 from Scribner’s.

Sharon Olds

Poetry Workshop teaching staff

She 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, '18

Her 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.

http://www.emilyperez.org

Dan Alter

Poetry Workshop participant '11, '14, '18

His newest collection of poetry, My Little Book of Exiles, was recently published by Maida Vale.

Ellen Bravo

Writers Workshops Participant, '99, '00, '01

She 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.”

http://www.ellenbravo.com

Patricia Spears Jones

Poetry Workshop participant '91, '92, '94; Poetry Workshop teaching staff '16

She 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 '18

Her 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

Dan Alter

Poetry participant, '11, '14, '18

His first collection of poetry, My Little Book of Exiles, comes out March 1, 2022 from Eyewear Press, London.

http://danalter.net

Ruth Kirschner

Writers Workshop Participant '01

Her 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.

https://njtheatrealliance.org/productions/whippoorwill

Alicia Hokanson

Poetry Workshop participant '93, '97, '99, '09

Her new book, Perishable World, (Pleasure Boat Studio Press, 2021) won the 2021 Grand Prize from the international Eyelands Book Awards.

http://eyelands awards.com

Emily Pérez

Poetry Participant, '10, '18

She 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.

http://www.emilyperez.org

Patricia Dunn

Writers Workshop Participant, '04

Her debut novel for adults, Last Stop on the 6 (Bordighera Press), workshopped during her time at Community Writers, was published in November, 2021.

http://patriciadunnauthor.com

Juliana Roth

Screenwriting Workshop participant '17

Her new short film Final Curtain Call, on Radio City Music Hall’s Chief organist Ray Bohr, is in post-production.

http://tinyurl.com/letsplayray
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

TN Eyer

Writers Workshops Participant, '19

Her 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, '19

Her short story “A Dying Breed” appears in the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Cathy Wang

Writers Workshops Participant, '19

Her 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, '21

Her new novel, Booth, will be published by Penguin in March, 2022.

Caroline Frost

Writers Workshop participant '17, '21

Her 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.

Sergio Reyes

Poetry Participant, '20, '21

He 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.

https://www.triquarterly.org/issues/issue-161/el-silencio

Ramona Reeves

Writers Workshops Participant, '18

She 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.

https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/texas-writer-ramona

Mark S. Wisniewski

Writers Workshops Participant, '91

The 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.

http://www.coolestamericanstories.com///

Andrew Tonkovich

Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staff

The 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.

http://citricacid.ink

Claudia Putnam

Writers Workshops '12

Her 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.

https://www.splitlippress.com/double-negative

Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His 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.

https://thomaspruiksma.com/kural
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Richard Sime

Poetry Participant, '16, '19

His 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, 2016

Her 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.

https://erinlmccoy.com/blog/best-new-poets-anthology-mccoy-poem
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, '20

His 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.

https://www.wordtechweb.com/lennon_postcards.html

Kelly Houle

Poetry Participant, '20

She 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).

https://www.kellymhoule.com/poetry.html

Melenie Freedom Flynn

Writers Workshops Participant '09, '10

She 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

Caroline Frost

Writers Workshop participant '17, '21

Her 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.

http://carolinefrost.com

Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

Poetry Workshop participant '19

Her 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 '19

His poetry collection, Burying the Mountain, was recently published by Copper Canyon Press.

Nevada McPherson

Writers Workshop Participant, '08

Her 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.”

https://www.outcast-press.com/published-works

Fran Castan

Poetry Participant, '92

She 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.

http://www.hippocrates-poetry.org

Neysa King

Poetry Participant '20

Her 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.

http://www.neysaking.com/rainbowbody

Anara Guard

Writers Workshops Participant, '16

Her debut novel, Like A Complete Unknown, will be published in March, 2022 by New Wind Publishing.

http://www.anaraguard.com

Martina Clark

Writers Workshops Participant, '13

Her 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.

http://https://www.poz.com/article/poz-awards-2021-winners
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Lynne Goldsmith

Poetry participant

Her 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 '19

His short story “The Sensible Gardener” appears in the December 2021 issue of Anti-Heroin Chic.

https://tinyurl.com/y32rhmep

Neysa King

Poetry Workshop participant '19

Her first chapbook of poetry, Rainbow Body, will be released on December 12, 2021.

Jon Riccio

Poetry Participant, '15,'19

His 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.

https://survisionmagazine.com/books.htm

Molly Giles

Writers Workshops Teaching Staff

Her 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.

mollygiles.com

A.W. “Tony” Scott

Screenwriting Workshop Participant '12

His 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”.

https://vimeo.com/397089319

Freeman Ng

Writers Workshop participant '19

His 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.

https://www.BashoPB.com

A.W. “Tony” Scott

Screenwriting Workshop Participant '12

He 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.

https://www.catalystories.org/award-winners

Jackie Davis Martin

Writers Workshop Participant '14

Her novel Stopgaps was published in May, 2021 and is available through Bookbaby. com or Amazon.com.

Chelsea B. DesAutels

Poetry Workshop Participant, '18

Her first poetry collection, A Dangerous Place, was published by Sarabande Books in October, 2021.

Jeff Adams

Writers Workshop Participant, '19

His short story “The Stonecutter’s Wife” appears in Otoliths.

https://tinyurl.com/4nsjahv7

Antonia Angress

Writers Workshop participant '19

Her debut novel, Sirens and Muses, will be published by Penguin Random House in July, 2022.

Louis Edwards

Writers Workshop teaching staff '06, '10, '22

His 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 '21

A 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 '19

Her 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, '21

The third volume of his travel series, The Kindness of Strangers, was published in October, 2021.

http://tomlutzwriter.com

Holaday Mason

Poetry Workshop participant '00, '06, '19

Her 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.

Rashaan Alexis Meneses

Writer's Workshop Participant, '17

Her 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.

https://lithub.com/on-teaching-at-the-end-of-the-world/
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship

Michelle Bitting

Poetry Participant '05

She 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.

http://www.michellebitting.com

Julia Flynn Siler

Writers Workshop participant '03, '04; Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '15, '16, '18, '19, '20, '21

Her 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, '21

Her newest novel, Monster in the Middle, was recently published by Riverhead Books.

Lisa Alvarez

Writers Workshop participant '93; Co-director of the Fiction Workshop

Her short story, “Everyone was Singing Freiheit,” appears in the fall 2021 issue of Air/Light magazine.

Nicholas Nichols

Poetry Workshop participant '19

They 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.”

https://theoffingmag.com/contributor/nicholas-nichols/

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshop participant '14

He 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.

https://www.nottinghamcitylibraries.co.uk/blacklives/

Rowena Leong Singer

Writers Workshop Participant '19

Her 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.

https://bookpipeline.com/shop/unpublished-contest

Mandy Gardner

Writers Workshops Participant '17

Her 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.

https://mainereview.com/recovery-from-simultaneous-stroke/

John Foran

Writers Workshop participant '13

His newest novel, A Mistaken Hostage, was published in September, 2021.

Joshua Ferris

Writers Workshop participant '03

His newest novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes, was published in September, 2021, by Little, Brown and Company.

Amanda Moore

Poetry Workshop (Virtual Valley), 2021

Amanda Moore’s debut collection, Requeening, selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2020 National Poetry Series was published in October 2021 by HarperCollins/Ecco.

https://amandapmoore.com/

Judy Juanita

Writers Workshops Participant '92

Judy 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.

http://https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/judy-juanita/manhattan-my-ass-youre-in-oakland/

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.

http://eldergideon.com

Cai Emmons

Writers Workshop Participant 1993, 94, 97, Teaching Staff

Cai 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.

http://caiemmonsauthor.com

Deborah Dashow Ruth

Poetry Participant. 1991, ‘92, '93, ‘95, ‘98, '00, ‘01, ‘05, ‘08, ‘13, ‘15, ‘17, ‘21

A 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.

http://deborahdashowruth.com

Tiphanie Yanique

Writers Workshops Participant '05/ Writers Workshops Staff '15, '21

Tiphanie Yanique’s new novel, Monster in the Middle, will be published by Riverhead Books on October 19, 2021.

https://www.tiphanieyanique.com/

Stella Santamaria

Poetry Workshop Participant (Virtual Valley), 2021

Two 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.

http://www.acentosreview.com/September2021/
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Family Scholarship

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshops Participant, 1972, 1973

Terence 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.

https://terenceclarke.substack.com/p/why-write-a-trilogy

Martina Clark

Writers Workshops Participant, '13

Martina 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.

http://martina-clark.com
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship

Barbara West

Memoir Participant, '21

Barbara 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!”

https://anotherchicagomagazine.wordpress.com/2021/08/31/13582/

Amanda Moore

Poetry Participant, Virtual Valley '21

Amanda 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.

http://amandapmoore.com

Debra A. Daniel

Writers Workshops Participant, '01

Debra 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.

http://adhocfiction.com
Attended with the help of Nona Stuck Fiction Scholarship

Andrea Carter Brown

Poetry Participant, '90

Andrea 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.

http://www.andreacarterbrown.com

Peggy Dobreer

Poetry Workshop participant '21

Her 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, '11

Her 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.

http://www.semopress.com/books/hospice-plastics/

David Mills

Poetry Participant, '21

His 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.

https://www.spdbooks.org/Pages/Item/60066/Poetry-Bestsellers-June-2021.aspx
Attended with the help of Veteran's Poetry Scholarship

Cai Emmons

Writers Workshop participant '93, '94, '98; Writers Workshop teaching staff '08, '10

Her 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.

https://megwaiteclayton.com/

Tory Adkisson

Poetry Workshop participant '11

His 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.

http://siupress.com/books/978-0-8093-3842-9

Antonio Lopez

Poetry Participant '17

His 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.

https://fourwaybooks.com/site/gentefication/
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship

Meg Waite Clayton

Writers Workshop participant ‘00; Published Alumni Reading Series ‘03

Her 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.

http://megaiteclayton.com

Kate Nason

Writer's Workshop Participant '18

Her debut memoir, Everything is Perfect, narrated by the author, was released by Audible on August 5th.

http://www.katenasonwrites.com

Manjula Stokes

Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '11

Her novel, Celeste & Chris, workshopped at Community of Writers, was recently published.

http://manjulastokes.com

Anthony J. Mohr

Writers Workshops Participant 08

His 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).

http://

Vishwas R Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His 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.

https://baltimorereview.org/summer_2021/contributor/vishnas-r-gaitonde

Danusha Laméris

Poetry Participant, '00

Her 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, '19

Her 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.

https://gailreitano.com

Alison Turner

Poetry Participant '10

Her 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.

catamaranliteraryreader.com/catamaran-poetry-prize-2021

Barry Garelick

Writers Workshops Participant '92

His 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 '10

His novel, Two Seasons, workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2010, was recently published and is now available on Amazon. 

https://paulburgoyne.ca/

DeWitt Henry

Writers Workshop Teaching Staff

The 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.

http://www.dewitthenry.com

Anne Chadwick

Writers Workshops Participant '02, '04

Splitting 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.

https://www.annechadwick.com/writing.html

Lynne Thompson

Poetry Participant, '97, '04

In February 2021, she was appointed Poet Laureate for the city of Los Angeles by Mayor Eric Garcetti.

http://lynnethompson.us

Andrew Tonkovich

1993

His 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.

http://

Hari B Khalsa

Poetry Participant '03, '06

Her 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.

http://haribpoet.com

Marcia Meier

Writers Workshop participant, 2019

Her 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.

http://www.marciameier.com/books

Corey Campbell

Writers Workshops Participant, '18

Her short story “Outside the Mayan” recently appeared in Story Issue 10.


Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship

Lawrence Coates

Fiction Workshop participant '17

His 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.

https://faulknersociety.org/

Joseph Holt

Writers Workshop Participant, '18

His 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.”

https://www.holt.ink

Nawaaz Ahmed

Writers Workshops Participant, '11

His 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.

https://www.nawaazahmed.com
Attended with the help of Ford scholarship

Gerald Haslam (1937-2021)

Writers Workshop teaching staff '05, '09, '10

He 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-director

Her 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, '15

He has signed an agreement with Los Angeles based publisher Mystic Boxing Commission. His debut novel, A Kiss Away, will be released Fall, 2021.

https://sparringartists.com

Wendy Voorsanger

Writers Workshops Participant '16 or '17

Her 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.

https://wendyvoorsanger.net/

Janine Kovac

Writers Workshop Participant: '11, '12, '14, '16

Her 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.

https://underthesunonline.com/wordpress/2021/dancing-on-the-blade/
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 '84

She 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.

http://dianewolff.com/disc.htm

David Mills

Poetry Participant '92, '21

A 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.

https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780912592862/boneyarn.aspx

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73

His 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.

http://www.terenceclarke.org

Jeanine Stevens

Poetry Participant '07, '10, '14, '17

Her chapbook, Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, won the Heartland Review 2020 chapbook prize.

Tracy Fuad

Poetry Participant '17

Her 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.

https://upittpress.org/books/9780822966685/
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship

Alicia Hokanson

Poetry participant '86, '87, '88, '90, '98

Her new collection, Perishable World, was published by Pleasure Boat Studio press in May, 2021.

http://pleasureboatstudio.com

Gwen Goodkin

Writers Workshop Participant, ‘07, ‘11

Her short story collection, A Place Remote, (West Virginia University Press) has won a Silver IPPY in the Great Lakes – Best Regional Fiction category.

http://gwengoodkin.com

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 Directors

A 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, '19

An 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.

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680032284/her-read;https://www.jennifersperrysteinorth.com/her-erasure-read
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, '16

Her debut full-length collection, Wave Says, was published by Kore Press on May 15, 2021.

http://www.kmenglishpoet.com
Attended with the help of Cushing Scholarship!

Jeanine Stevens

Poetry Participant 2007, 2010,2014,2017

Her 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.

http://

Mary Dixie Carter

Writers Workshops Participant '17

Her 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.

http://marydixiecarter.com

Laura Otis

Writers Workshops Participant, '08, '11

She 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.

http://

Lynne Goldsmith

poetry participant

Her poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Distinguished Favorite in the 2021 Independent Press Awards.

http://

Marc Jampole

Writers Workshop participant '05

His 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.

http://thebrotherssilver.jampole.com/

Casey Guerin

Writers Workshop Participant ’19

Her 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.

http://www.caseyguerin.com/

Claire Boyles

Writers Workshop Participant '18

Her debut short story collection, Site Fidelity, is coming June 15, 2021 from W.W. Norton.

http://claireboyleswrites.com

Monica West

Writers Workshop participant '09, '12

Her novel, Revival Season, will be published by Simon and Schuster on June 15, 2021.

Noel Obiora

Writers Workshops Participant, '09,'10

His first novel, A Past That Breathes, will be published by Rare Books, Inc on May 11, 2021.

http://apastthatbreathes.com

Chaney Kwak

Fiction, 2012

His 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.

http://chaneykwak.com/passenger
Attended with the help of Scholarship recipient (and I thank The Community's generosity in the book's acknowledgements)

Josephine Ensign

Writers Workshops Participant, 2013

Her 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.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/skid-road

Danusha Laméris

Poetry Participant, '00

She 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.

http://https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/MTEwNDM5

Mark Coggins

Writers Workshops Participant 1996, Screenwriting Workshop Participant 2001

His newest book, Street Stories, a street photography monograph, will be published by Poltroon Press in May, 2021.

https://www.markcoggins.com/street-stories/

Teri Ellen Cross Davis

Poetry Participant, '19

Her 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!

https://www.poetsandparents.com/a-more-perfect-union
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship

Leslie Hsu Oh

2020, 2019 Writers Workshops Participant

A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published in the February 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure.

http://www.lesliehsuoh.com
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship

Stacy D Flood

Writers Workshop Participant, '98

An 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.

https://lanternfishpress.com/catalog/the-salt-fields
Attended with the help of Getty Scholarship

Gail Reitano

Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19

Her novel, Italian Love Cake, is forthcoming from Bordighera Press in May, 2021.

https://linktr.ee/reitanogail

RONALD ALEXANDER

Summer 1995

His 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.

http://hollyridgepress.com

Jenny Pritchett

Writers Workshops Participant '04

Her 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.

https://www.jennytrue.com/
Attended with the help of Walker Foundation Scholarship

Eileen Garvin

Writers Workshop Participant '16

Her debut novel, The Music of Bees, will be published on April 27 by Dutton.

http://www.eileengarvin.com

Cai Emmons

Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97 , Writers Workshop Teaching Staff

Her 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.

http://caiemmonsauthor.com

Tiphanie Yanique

Her new novel, Monster in the Dark, will be published by Penguin in October, 2021.

Kari Flickinger

Poetry Participant '17

Her debut poetry collection, The Gull and the Bell Tower, was recently published by Femme Salvé Books.

http://kariflickinger.com

Lynne Goldsmith

Poetry Participant. '00

Her poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won Book Excellence Finalist Award.

Lynn Gordon

Writers Workshops Participant, '11

Her stories appeared in the spring 2021 issues of Prime Number Magazine and The Louisville Review.

Ananda Lima

Poetry Participant, '17

Her 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.

https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/mother-land/

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His 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.

https://smile.amazon.com/Black-Lives-Nottingham-Writers-Anthology-ebook/dp/B08ZS5TX1L/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=black+lives+nottingham&qid=1616685723&sr=8-1

Joan Steinau Lester

Writers Workshop Participant '03

Her 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.”

http://www.JoanLester.com

Martin J. Smith

Writers Workshops Teaching Staff

His 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.

http://www.martinjsmith.com

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.

Yang Huang

Writers Workshops Participant,'19

Her 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.”

https://www.yanghuang.com/goodson
Attended with the help of Barbara Hall Memorial Scholarship

Kateema Lee

Poetry Participant, '18

Her 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.

http://kateemalee.com

Anthony Cody

Poetry Participant '18

His 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.

https://pen.org/literary-awards/2021-pen-america-literary-awards-finalists/
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship

Heather Altfeld

Poetry Participant, '08, '10, '12, '15

Her second book, Post-Mortem, was released April 2, 2021, by Orison Books after winning their annual poetry contest in 2019.

www.heatheraltfeld.com

Arisa White

Poetry Participant, 2010

Her 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

https://arisawhite.com/about/
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, '20

Her 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.

https://www.lastwordpress.com/product/registry-survival

Amy Haddad

Poetry Participant

She 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.

http://
Attended with the help of NA

Laura Cresté

Poetry Participant '20

Her chapbook, You Should Feel Bad, was selected by Stephanie Burt for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and was published in November 2020.

https://poetrysociety.org/shop/chapbooks/you-should-feel-bad
Attended with the help of Sharon Olds Honorary Scholarship

Mary Freericks

Poetry Participant '89 / '91 / '09

Her 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.

http://www.maryfreerickspoet.yolasite.com

E. Martin Pedersen

Writers Workshops Participant, unsure of year, perhaps 2012

He 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).

http://emartinpedersenwriter.blogspot.com

Christine Sunderland

Writers Workshops Participant, '05

Her 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.

http://www.ChristineSunderland.com

Lynne Thompson

1997, 2004

She 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.

http://youtube.com/poetry.la/lynnethompson

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, '10

Her 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.

https://jasmindarznik.com/bohemians

Grant Farley

Writers Workshops

His 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.

http://bonesofasaint.com

Antonia Angress

Writers Workshop Participant, '19

Her debut novel Sirens & Muses will be published by Ballantine/Random House in 2022.

http://antoniaangress.com
Attended with the help of the O'Dwyer Scholarship

Merridawn Duckler

Writers Workshop participant '07

Her 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.

Regina Louise

Writers Workshops Participant '01, '14; Screenwriting Participant, '03

Her 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.

https://www.iamreginalouise.com/
Attended with the help of UC Riverside Scholarship

Marcia Butler

Writer's Workshop Participant '16

Her third book, and second novel, Oslo, Maine, releases on March 2, 2021 from Central Avenue Publishing.

http://marciabutlerauthor.com

Kate Hope Day

Writers Workshop Participant '16; Published Alumni Reading Series '19

Her second novel, In the Quick, will be published by Random House on March 2, 2021.

http://www.katehopeday.com

Andrew Nicholls

Fiction Participant, '14

He 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.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QM15ZYQ?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Tim Wendel

Writers Workshops Participant, '86-89; Screenwriting, '05

His 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.

http://www.timwendel.com

Maw Shein Win

Poetry Participant '02

She 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.

http://mawsheinwin.com

Julia B Levine

Poetry Workshop Participant, '95

Her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, will be released by LSU Press in March, 2021.

http://lsupress.org

Stephanie Austin

Writer's Workshops Participant, '12

Her essay “Something I Might Essay” appears in the February 2021 issue of The Sun magazine.

https://www.stephanieaustin.net/

Laura Otis

Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '11

She 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.

https://www.iuniverse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/790977-the-memory-hive

Tom Laichas

Poetry Participant '20

He 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, '07

His short story “The Tutor” was published in the Winter 2021 issue of Catamaran.

http://catamaranliteraryreader.com/

John B. Roberts II

Writers Workshops Participant '18

His 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.

http://jbrobertsauthor.com

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.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/what-to-stream-an-amateur-filmmaker-takes-on-the-great-gatsby-and-its-scholars

Sally Charette

Art of the Wild Participant, 1997

Her poem “New Moon” appears in Juxtaprose Magazine, Vol. 25, Fall, 2020.

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His essay “The Milk in Many Lands” appeared in the 2020 issue (No: 3) of the literary magazine, Stonecrop.

https://twitter.com/weareji

Katherine Seligman

Writers Workshops Participant '14

Her debut novel, At the Edge of the Haight, which won the 2019 PEN/Bellwether prize, will be published by Algonquin Books in January, 2021.

http://www.katherineseligman.com

Monika Rose

Poetry Workshop participant '97; Writers Workshop participant '00; Art of the Wild participant '95, '96

She 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.

https://manzapress.com

Carol Orange

Writers Workshop Participant 2013

A 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.

http://www.carolorange.com

Jack Estes

Writers Workshops Participant, '98 & ScreenwritingParticipant, '05

Jack 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.

http://jackestes.com

Anthony Cody

Poetry Participant '18

Anthony 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.

https://www.pw.org/content/a_life_in_poetry_our_sixteenth_annual_look_at_debut_poets
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship

Rhoda Huffey

Writers Workshops Participant, '85/ Writers Workshop staff, 2000 onward

Rhoda Huffey’s novel 31 Paradiso will be published by Delphinium Books in the spring of 2022.

http://
Attended with the help of attended on UCI scholarship

Marcia Meier

Writers Workshop Participant, '19; Janet Fitch's Writing from the Senses Workshop, '20

Her book, Face, A Memoir, will be published Jan. 12, 2021, by Saddle Road Press.

http://www.marciameier.com

Lucille Lang Day

Writers Workshop participant '78, '79; Poetry Workshop participant '76
Her seventh full-length poetry collection, Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place, was published by Blue Light Press in November, 2020.

Diane Wolff

Writers Workshop Participant '83; Screenwriting Workshop participant '84

She 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.

https://twitter.com/ACMSMongolia/status/1324286624356687872

Vishwas R Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His short story “How Does Your Garden Grow?” appeared in the 2020 issue of the literary magazine, The Broken Plate.

https://twitter.com/weareji

Lorraine Comanor

Writer’s Workshop participant '09

Her essay “Walking with Birds,” published in Boulevard, fall 2019, made the Notables of Best American Essays of 2020.

http://

Evan I. Schwartz

Screenwriting Workshop participant '12

His debut novel, Revolver, will be published in 2021 by the Concord Free Press.

http://www.revolvernovel.com

Swathi Desai

Writers Workshop Participant, '17, '18

Her short story “Lady: Part I” appears in the November 2020 issue of the literary magazine Orca.

https://orcalit.com/lady-part-i/

Andrew Tonkovich

Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staff

His 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, '15

Her 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.

http://www.colleenmortonbusch.com

Susan Henderson

Writers Workshop Participant, '09

She 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.

https://youtu.be/WsKXArIen5k
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship

Darien Hsu Gee

Writers Workshop participant '99

She 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?

http://www.dariengee.com

Ellery Akers

Art of the Wild teaching staff '94

Her 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.”

http://www.elleryakers.com

Scott Edward Anderson

Art of the Wild, Participant, '92

His book-length poem, Azorean Suite/ Suite Açoriana, was published in a bilingual (English/Portuguese) edition by Letras Lavadas in October, 2020.

https://www.scottedwardanderson.com/

Natasha Saje

Poetry Participant '93

Her 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.

http://www.natashasaje.com

Ron Nyren

Writers Workshops Participant, '94

His 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.

https://www.ronnyren.com/

David Kerns

Writers Workshop Participant, '07

His 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.

http://fortnightonmaxwellstreet.com/audiobook

Jacquelyn Stolos

Writers Workshops Participant '14, '19

Jacquelyn Stolos’ debut novel, Edendale, will be published by Creature Publishing on October 20, 2020.

http://www.jacquelynstolos.com/

Jessica O’Dwyer

Writers' Workshop Participant '06, '16, '18

Her debut novel, Mother Mother, was published by Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press on October 1, 2020.

https://jessicaodwyer.com/

Josh Folan

Screenwriting Workshop participant, '13

His 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.

https://nyehentertainment.com/sfthw

Jesse Nathan

Poetry Workshop Participant, '15, '18

His interview with Robert Hass in the Paris Review appeared in the Summer 2020 issue. It is #108 in their “Art of Poetry” series.

https://www.theparisreview.org/back-issues/233

Kazim Ali

Poetry Workshop Participant ;98, Poetry Workshop teaching staff '10, '12, '16, '18

His newest collection of poetry, The Voice of Sheila Chandra, was published by Alice James Books in October, 2020.

http://http://www.kazimali.com/chandra.html

Anthony J. Mohr

Writers Workshops Participant '08

His essay “The Hardy Girls” appeared in the 2020 spring/summer issue of Maryland Literary Review. His Essay “My Father and Me Too” was published in Green Hills Literary Lantern’s GHLL XXXI (2020).

Mary Kuryla

Fiction Participant, '10; Published Alumni Reading Series '19

Her novel, Away to Stay, will be published by Regal House Press in September, 2021.

 

http://marykuryla.com/

Thomas Allbaugh

Writers Workshops Participant '13

His chapbook, The View from January, was published by Kelsay Books in January, 2020.

http://thomasallbaugh.com

Sherah Bloor

Poetry Participant, '18

She 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.

https://www.peripheriesjournal.com/

Jabari Jawan Allen

Poetry Workshop participant '18

He 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

https://piper.asu.edu/classes/jabari-allen/advanced-poetry-workshop
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship Recipient

Paul Watsky

Poetry Participant, '20

His work, 4 poems and a short personal essay, appeared in the September 8 Litbreak.

Holiday Reinhorn

Writers Workshop Participant '17

Her 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.

Instagram @holidayreinhorn Instagram @stay.home.stories

Andrew Tonkovich

Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staff

His 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 '12

Her 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.

http://www.dorotheabonneau.com

Terence Clarke

Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73

A translation of his novel, The Splendid City, to Spanish by Chilean novelist, Jaime Collyer, will be published on December 1, 2020.

http://www.terenceclarke.org

Wendy Voorsanger

Writers Workshop participant '16

Her 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

http://www.wendyvoorsanger.net

Lauren Barbato

Writers Workshop participant '17

Her essay “What Would You Call It?” appears online at North American Review.

https://northamericanreview.org/
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship

Michelle Latiolais

Writers Workshop teaching staff, special guest

Her short fiction will appear in the LA Issue of ZYZZYVA, issue no. 119, due November, 2020.

Jeff Adams

Writers Workshop '19

His 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, '15

His 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. 

https://www.loa.org/books/631-the-western-four-classic-novels-of-the-1940s-50s

Aida Salazar

Writers Workshop participant '07

Her 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.

http://www.AidaSalazar.com

Lisa Alvarez

Writers Workshops Teaching Staff; Writers Workshop Participant, '91, '92

Her poem “On the Origin of Karl Marx” appears in So It Goes, the annual literary journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.

https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/ninth-edition-contributors/
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship and Ancinas scholarship

Claudia Rankine

Poetry Workshop participant '93; Poetry Workshop teaching staff '07

Her new book, Just Us: An American Conversation, was recently published by Graywolf Press.

http://claudiarankine.com/

Threa Almontaser

Poetry Workshop participant '19

Her 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, '11

Her short story collection, A Place Remote, was published in September, 2020, by West Virginia University Press.

https://www.gwengoodkin.com/a-place-remote

Inderjeet Mani

Writers Workshops Participant, '00

His 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).

https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Spirits-Mani-ebook/dp/B07WSXR5PM

Mariya Zilberman

Poetry Workshop Participant '20

Her poem, “Against Temporality,” won the 2020 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest and will appear in the Winter 2020-2021 issue.

https://twitter.com/pshares/status/1304136321276010497
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 '20

She was recently awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction published in 2019 for her novel The Revisioners.

Donna Miscolta

Writers Workshop Participant '98

Her 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.

http://https://donnamiscolta.com/

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Poetry Participant, '97, '12

Her 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.

https://oupress.com/books/15901268/charmian-kittredge-london

Lucinda Watson

Poetry Workshop Participant '91, '92, '96, '98, '02, '04

Her first book of poems, The Favorite, was published by Golden Antelope Press in September, 2020.

http://lucindawatson.com

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, '19

Her 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, ‘18

Her short story, “The Big Men”, appears in the June 30th, 2020 issue of Prometheus Dreaming.

https://www.prometheusdreaming.com/

Magdalena Montagne

Poetry Workshop Participant '97

Magdalena 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.

http://www.poetrycirclewithmagdalena.com

Janine Kovac

Writers Workshop participant '11, '12, '14, '16

Her 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.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647234/what-we-didnt-expect-by-melody-schreiber/
Attended with the help of 2011: George Pascoe Miller Memorial Scholarship; 2012: Carlisle Family Scholarship; 2014: Eschelman Scholarship

Rashaan Alexis Meneses

Writers Workshop Participant '17

She was recently honored as a 2020 Bainbridge Resident for The Seventh Wave, where her latest essay, “Foreign Domestic” is featured in their 11th Issue.

https://theseventhwave.co/foreign-domestic/
Attended with the help of The Ancinas Scholarship

John Roberts II

Writers Workshops Participant, '18

Part 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.

https://www.jbrobertsauthor.com/

lynne goldsmith

Poetry Workshop Participant '00

Lynne Goldsmith’s poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Finalist Award in the International Book Awards.

Barbara B Ristine

Writers Workshops Participant '18

Her 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.

Vishwas R Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His 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.

https://twitter.com/weareji

Andrew Tonkovich

Fiction Participant '93

His short story “Metonymy” was a finalist in the Solstice Summer Fiction Contest, and appears in the magazine’s current issue.

https://solsticelitmag.org/content/metonymy/

Jeff Bens

Writers Workshop participant '93

His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.

Lori Tobias

Writers Workshop participant '94, '95

Her memoir, Storm Beat: A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast, is due out in September, 2020, from Oregon State University.

http://loritobias.com

Khadijah Queen

Poetry Workshop participant '09

Her new book of poetry, Anodyne, will be published by Tin House Books in August, 2020.


Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship

Judy Batalion

Writers Workshop participant '11

Her 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.

Penny Cagan

Poetry Participant '92, '93; Writers Workshop participant '92

She 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.

https://brokentabletsfrompennycagan.me

Lorraine Comanor

Writers Workshop participant '09

Her essay “Walking with Birds” was published in the Fall 2019 issue of Boulevard.

Leslie Hsu Oh

Writers Workshop participant '14, '19

She 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.

http://www.lesliehsuoh.com
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship

Grace Talusan

Writers Workshops Participant '98; Published Alumni Reading Series '19

The 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.

https://bookshop.org/books/the-body-papers-a-memoir/9781632060242?aid=3919

Anthony Cody

Poetry Participant '18

His 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.

https://www.omnidawn.com/product/borderland-apocrypha/
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship

Vonetta Young

Writers Workshops Participant, ‘18

Her 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.

http://www.vonettayoung.com

Susan Henderson

Writers Workshop Participant, '09

She 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.

http://LitPark.com
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation scholarship

Vishwas Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

He was a finalist in The Chautauqua Institution’s 2020 Janus Prize “for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.”

https://twitter.com/weareji

Kris Newby

Writers Workshop participant '17

She 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.

http://www.krisnewby.com
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Gail Reitano

Writers Workshop Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19

Her personal essay “Wanting Warhol: My Connections to Andy Warhol” appears in the June 2020 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.

https://gailreitano.com

Alice Jones

Poetry Participant, '88, '89. Teaching Staff, Writing the Medical experience

Her newest collection, Vault, was recently published by Apogee Press. A poem in the book, “Spell,” won the first annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize.

http://www.apogeepress.com

Vishwas R Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant, '14

His short story “Kismet” was published in Pembroke Magazine, Issue No 52, 2020.

https://twitter.com/weareji

Lyndsey Ellis

Writers Workshop participant '17

Her debut novel, Bone Broth, will be published in spring 2021 by Hidden Timber Books.

Ken Haas

Poetry Workshop participant '08, '11, '13, '16, '19

His 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 2019

Her memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, was published June 2, 2020, by Graywolf Press.

Maxima Kahn

Poetry Participant, '07; Writers Workshops Participant '06, '10

Her first full-length collection of poems, Fierce Aria, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in summer 2020.

https://brilliantplayground.com
Attended with the help of Mary Turnbull Scholarship

Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Writers Workshops Participant, '04

Her novel, Copy Boy, will be published by She Writes Press, June, 2020.

http://shelleyblantonstroud.com

Meryl Natchez

Poetry Participant, '87...2013

Her second book of original poetry, Catwalk, is forthcoming in June, 2020, from Longship Press. Preorders available here.

http://www.merylnatchez.com

Christina Adams

Writers Workshop participant '00

She 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 '04

Her 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.

www.janycestefan-cole.com

Gail Reitano

Writers Workshops Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19

Her 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.

https://gailreitano.com

Eileen Garvin

Writers Workshop Participant '17

Her 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).

http://www.eileengarvin.com

Susan Starbird

Writers Workshop Participant '04

Nonfiction 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.

http://susanthemagazine.com

Elison Alcovendaz

Writers Workshop participant '16

His 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.

http://elisonalcovendaz.com
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Christine Sunderland

Writers Workshops Participant, ‘05

Her 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).

http://www.ChristineSunderland.com

Lynne Goldsmith

Poetry Participant '00

Her book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Human Relations Indie Book Award for poetry.

Leah Naomi Green

Poetry Participant '08

Her 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.

https://www.leahnaomigreen.com/

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/coronavirus-california-homeless-population.html?fbclid=IwAR1F0_9_qXX-YansNsLaTbUeHOYbLAWhr-VVGLTlKzl-bcUdSpBPKLA-A6A

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stone_(novelist)

Ryan Ridge

Writers Workshop participant '10

His 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, '14

Her newest collection of poetry, Spring and a Thousand Years, winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, was recently published by University of Arkansas Press.

Julia Flynn Siler

Writers Workshop participant '03, '04; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '15, '16, '18, '19

Her 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, '19

His new novel, Born Slippy, was published by Repeater Books/Penguin Random House in January, 2020.

Diannely Antigua

Poetry Workshop participant '16

She 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.”

https://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/diannely-antigua#/

Elizabeth Kadetsky

Writers Workshop Participant, '98, '04; Alumni Reader, '04

Her 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.

https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Eaters-Juniper-Creative-Nonfiction/dp/162534502X
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship

David Koehn

Poetry Workshop participant '04, '06, '14

His new book of poetry, Scatterplot, will be published by Omnidawn in April, 2020.

John Murillo

Poetry Workshop participant '10

His new collection of poetry, Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, was published by Four Way Books in March, 2020.

Edan Lepucki

Writers Workshop participant '07; Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '18

She edited the upcoming book, Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them, which is due out April, 2020, from Abrams Image. 

Beatrice Bowles

Poetry Workshop participant '91

Her new storybook, Spider Grandmother’s Web of Wonder, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. It will be published April 30, 2020.

Leah Naomi Green

Poetry Workshop participant '08

Her new book, The More Extravagant Feast, will be published by Graywolf Press in April, 2020.

https://www.leahnaomigreen.com/

Brenda Hillman

Director of the Community of Writers Poetry Program

She was recently awarded the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This award goes to a poet of progressive, original, and experimental tendencies.

Ann Keniston

Poetry Workshop participant '96, '03, '08, '13

Her new collection of poetry, Somatic, is now available for preorder. It will be published by Terrapin Books this spring.

Michele Karas

Poetry Participant '17

She has joined the editorial staff of the new online poetry journal The Night Heron Barks, and her poem, “Tulip Cuttings,” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Mid-American Review.

http://michelekaras.com

Devi S. Laskar

Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14; Writers Workshop participant '04, '15; Published Alumni Reading Series '19

Her novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, recently won the Award for Literature in Adult Fiction from the Asian/ Pacific American Library Association.

Elana K. Arnold

Arnold, Elana K.

Her new children’s book, An Ordinary Day, was published in March, 2020, by Beach Lane Books.

Eliot Schain

Poetry Participant, '98, '02, '07, '11, '16; Writers Workshops Participant, '99

His second book of poetry, The Distant Sound, will be published in April 2020 by Sixteen Rivers Press.

http://sixteenrivers.org

Alia Volz

Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '14

Her debut memoir, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2020.

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780358006091
Attended with the help of Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship; Oakley "Tad" Hall Prose Scholarship

Alma Katsu

Writers Workshop participant '03

Her new book, The Deep, was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in March, 2020.

John DeSimone

Writers Workshop participant '11, '12

His new novel, The Road to Delano, was recently published by Rare Bird Books in March, 2020.

Don Mee Choi

Poetry Workshop Staff '14

Her newest book of poetry, DMZ Colony, forthcoming from Wave Books in April, 2020, recently received the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Monica Sok

Poetry participant '15

Her debut collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, was published by Copper Canyon Press in February, 2020.

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Writers Workshop teaching staff '18, '19

Her novel, The Revisioners, recently won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction.

Elizabeth Tallent

Writers Workshop teaching staff '16, '18

Her new memoir, Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism, was published in February, 2020, by HarperCollins.

Lisa Alvarez

Writers Workshop participant; Co-Director of the Fiction Workshop.

Her poem, “Imagining my Grandmother on the Laredo Bridge, 1917,” was recently published in the Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review.

Shira Dentz

Poetry Workshop Participant '05

Her fifth book, Sisyphusina (PANK Books), a cross-genre collection of prose, poetry, visual art, and improvisatory music centered on female aging is available now. By deviating from formal classical construction, and using the recurring image of a rose, Sisyphusina circles around conventions of beauty, questioning traditional aesthetic values of continuity, coherence, and symmetry. The interweaving of multi-media collaborations, the author’s voice and voices from other sources imbue this book with a porous texture, and reimagines the boundary of THE BOOK as a membrane. Advance praise from Jenny Boully, M. NourbeSe Philip, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Carla Harryman, & artist Kay Rosen.

https://pankmagazine.com/shop/sisyphusina/

April Dávila

Writers Workshop participant '18

Her new novel, 142 Ostriches, was published in February, 2020, by Kensington.

Jeff Bens

Writers Workshop Participant

His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.

Danusha Lameris

Poetry Workshop participant '00

Her new collection of poetry, Bonfire Opera, was published in March, 2020, by University of Pittsburgh Press.

Cai Emmons

Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97, Teaching Staff 2010

Her short story collection, Vanishing, won the 2019 Leapfrog Fiction Contest, and was published in March, 2020. Sinking Islands, the sequel to her novel Weather Women, will be published in early 2021. She is pleased to be an Authors Guild ambassador for the new Portland, Oregon chapter.

http://caiemmonsauthor.com

Monica Sok

Poetry Workshop participant '15

Her poem “Ode to the Boy Who Jumped Me” was featured on Poets.org‘s Poem-A-Day on February 20, 2020

Bill Pieper

Writers Workshop Participant '10

His new book, Borders and Boundaries, was published by Cold River Press in March, 2020.

Jessica Guzman

Poetry Participant, '18

Her collection Adelante was chosen by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2019 Gatewood Prize and was published by Switchback Books in March, 2020.

https://www.jgapoet.com/

Susan M. Gaines

Writers Workshop Participant '94; Alumni Reading Series (Carbon Dreams) '01

Her new novel, Accidentals, was published by Torrey House Press in March, 2020.

http://susanmgaines.com
Attended with the help of Scholarship

Anthony Mohr

Writers Workshop Participant '08

His essay “The Fairest of the Fair” appeared in Streetlight Magazine.

Andrew Altschul

Writers Workshops Participant, '97

His third novel, The Gringa, was published in March, 2020, by Melville House.

http://andrewaltschul.com

Cathy Park Hong

Poetry Workshop Teaching Staff '11, '16

Her new book, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, will be published by One World on February 25, 2020.

Aimee Liu

Writers Workshop participant '94

Her new novel, Glorious Boy, which will be published by Red Hen Press in May, 2020, was recently selected by Good Housekeeping as one of the best books of 2020.

Meryl Natchez

Poetry Workshop participant '13, '09, '05, '00, '88

Hew new book of poetry, Catwalk, will be published by Longship Press in June, 2020.

Lynne Thompson

Poetry Workshop participant '97, '02

Her poem “She Talk Like This ‘Cause Me Mum Born Elsewhere, Say!” was recently selected by Paisley Rekdal for 2020 Best American Poetry. 

Khadijah Queen

Poetry Workshop participant '09

Her new book of poetry, Anodyne, will be published by Tin House Books in August, 2020.


Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship

Christine Hemp

Poetry Workshop participant '06

Her forthcoming memoir, Wild Ride Home: Love, Loss, and a Little White Horse, was published by Arcade/Skyhorse Publishing on February 4th, 2020.

http://https://www.amazon.com/dp/1950691241

Dani Burlison

Writers Workshop Participant, '12

Her short story collection, Some Places Worth Leaving, was published by Tolsun Books in February 2020.

https://tolsunbooks.com/books-1

Jami Macarty

Poetry Workshop participant '10, '14, '17

Her new book of poetry, The Minuses, was published by University Press of Colorado in February, 2020.

Chelsea B. DesAutels

Poetry Participant, '18

Her poem “Why I Think of Jungle Crows” will be published in the Winter 2019-20 issue of Ploughshares. Chelsea B. DesAutels’s work appears or is forthcoming in the Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, The Adroit Journal, Pleiades, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. Natasha Trethewey named Chelsea’s manuscript, Metastasis, the finalist for the AWP Award Series Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Chelsea received an MFA from the University of Houston, where she served as Poetry Editor of Gulf Coast. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature.

https://www.pshares.org/issues/winter-2019-20

Christine Sunderland

Writers Workshops Participant, 05

Her seventh novel, Angel Mountain, has been contracted to be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in 2020. Set on Mount Diablo in the present day, the story involves a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a faithful geneticist who meet in a world of earthquake, fire, and mob violence. Themes include human dignity and free speech, history and memory, faith and science.

http://www.christinesunderland.com

Clancy McGilligan

Writers Workshop Participant '17

His novella, History of an Executioner, was published in January, 2020, by Miami University Press after winning the 2019 Novella Prize.

https://www.clancymcgilligan.com/novella
Attended with the help of SpringCreek Foundation Scholarship

Amanda Eyre Ward

Writers Workshop participant '92

Her new novel, The Jetsetters, was published by Ballantine Books in February, 2020.

Joann Gardner

Poetry Workshop participant '91, '96

Her chapbook of poetry, The Deaf Island, was published in July, 2019, and was recently named the winner of the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Award.

Jami Macarty

Poetry Participant, '10, '14, '17

Her full-length collection of poetry, The Minuses, is forthcoming in the Mountain West Poetry Series by The Center For Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, February 2020.

https://jamimacarty.com/

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Poetry Workshop participant '11

His memoir, Children of the Land, was published in January 2020 from HarperCollins.

Devi S. Laskar

Writers Workshop participant '04, '15; Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14

Her novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, was recently awarded the Crook’s Corner Book Prize.

https://www.devislaskar.com/

Michele Karas

Poetry Workshop Participant '17

The San Diego Poetry Annual has nominated Michele Karas’ poem “For First Wives Who Have Considered Suicide” for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry.

http://michelekaras.com

Ann Fisher-Wirth

Poetry Participant

Her sixth book of poems, The Bones of Winter Birds, was published by Terrapin Books in February, 2020.

http://annfisherwirth.com

Lisa Braver Moss

Writers Workshop Participant, '03

Her novel Shrug has won first prize in YA historical fiction in the 2019 Moonbeam Awards, and was a finalist in the 2019 “Best Book” awards.

http://www.lisabravermoss.com

Valyntina Grenier

Poetry Workshop participant '05

Her new book, Fever Dream/ Take Heart, was published in January, 2019, from Cathexis North West Press.

http://valyntinagrenier.com

Christine Hemp

Poetry Workshop participant '06

Her memoir, Wild Ride Home: Love, Loss, and a Little White Horse, will be published by Arcade in February, 2020.

Janine Kovac

Writers Workshops Participant '11, '12, '14, '16

Hers memoir, Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home, workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016, was awarded the 2019 National Indie Excellence Award for memoir.

https://www.janinekovac.com/spinning
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller Scholarship ('11), Carlisle Family Scholarship ('12), Eshleman Scholarship ('14)

Jeff Kingman

Poetry Participant '12

For those in the Bay Area, the book launch for Jeffrey Kingman’s poetry chapbook ON A ROAD will be at Alibi Bookshop, 624 Marin St. in Vallejo, CA on Sunday, January 5th at 3:30pm. Jeff’s book borrows language and places from Kerouac’s On the Road.

http://jeffkingman.com

Joy Ma

Writers Workshops, 2004

Her new book, The Deoliwallahs, was published by Pan Macmillan India in December. It is a non-fiction account of her family and the stories of several Chinese Indians who were interned after the war between India and China in 1962. An essay about it appears on Scroll.In.

Max Byrd

His newest book, Pont Neuf, has just been released as an Amazon Audible Original, and will be published in hardback July, 2020.

Laurel Blossom

Poetry Participant '77

Her new chapbook, Un-, a series of short prose poems concerning the search for one of Esther Williams’s understudies and other lost and unsung beauties of 1950s Hollywood, can be pre-ordered now from Finishing Line Press. It will be published on March 13, 2020.

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/un-by-laurel-blossom/

Vanessa Hua

Writers Workshop participant '08, '17; Writers Workshop teaching staff '19

Her book of short stories, Deceit and Other Possibilities, recently rereleased with three additional tales, received a starred review from Kirkus.

June Sylvester Saraceno

Poetry Workshop participant '05

Her third collection of poetry, The Girl From Yesterday,  will be released in January 2020 from Cherry Grove Collections.

Yiskah Rosenfeld

Poetry Workshop participant '01, '03, '19

She was recently named runner up for the 2019 Kallisto Gaia Poetry Prize for her poem “Poetry Submission Guidelines,” which will be published in the next issue of the Ocotillo Review. She will be giving a reading together with Lisa Wenzel (Poetry Workshop alum ’19), whom she met while carpooling to the workshop. The reading will be January 6 at 7:30 at Vanne Bistro in Berkeley.

https://www.kallistogaiapress.org/

David Watts

Poetry Workshop participant '90, '91, '92, '93, '97, '99, '02, '04, '13

His memoir, Christmas in Georgepatch, was rereleased this December in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Nancy Kelly

Screenwriting Workshop participant '83, '00; Writers Workshop participant '06, '16

The new digital restoration of her film, Thousand Pieces of Gold, enjoyed several screenings at the Rafael Film Center in November, 2019. 

Joan Baranow

Poetry Workshop participant '90, '91, '92, '93, '97, '99, '01, '03, '06, '08, '11, '18

Her poetry collection, In the Next Life, was published this year by Poetic Matrix Press. She has poems in recent issues of Blackbird and The Gettysburg Review. Her documentary, The Time We Have, won a nomination for Best Biographical Film at the 2019 New Hope Film Festival. Her film presents an intimate portrait of a teenager facing terminal illness.

http://wolfridgepress.com

James Cagney

Poetry Workshop participant '17

He was recently awarded one of the 30th Annual PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Awards for his book Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory, published by Nomadic Press in 2018.

Patrick Smith and Jane Smith

Poetry Workshop participant

Jane Smith is relaunching Pancake Press, a website devoted to the works of her late husband painter and poet, Patrick Smith. in order to locate new places to exhibit her Patrick’s work, and to identify an institution that will accept a donation of his hospice portraits.

http://pancakepress.com/

Katherine Rothschild

Writers Workshop participant '03

Her YA novel on sisterhood in an untraditional family, Hope and Other Feathered Things, will be published by Soho Teen in early 2020.

https://www.katherinerothschild.com/

Rosa De Anda

Poetry Participant '18

She is the recipient of the Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellowship from the University of San Francisco.

Lynne Goldsmith

Poetry Participant '00

Her book, Secondary Cicatrices, which won the Halcyon Poetry Prize, just got picked as a “Finalist” for the American Book Fest Awards.

Jane Ciabattari

Writers Workshops teaching staff, '16

Her new story collection in progress was a finalist for the 2018 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize. New stories include “Swarm,” upcoming in The Slag Review print edition (published online in March 2020), and “Acqua Alta,” published online in BigOther in September, 2019.

https://bigother.com/2019/09/27/acqua-alta-by-jane-ciabattari/

Elaine Barnard

Writers Workshop participant '11

Her short stories have won the first, third and fourth Strands International short story competitions.

http://elainebarnard.net

Sally Abbott

Writers Workshop participant '85, '01, '03, '06, '13

Her novel Miami in Virgo was published by Woodbine Odyssey in October, 2019.

Sharon Olds

Poetry Workshop staff

Her newest book, Arias, was recently published by Penguin Random House.

Veronica Golos

Poetry Workshop participant '09

Her new book of poetry, Girl, was recently published by 3: A Taos Press.

Mame Ekblom Cudd

Writers Workshop Participant '09, '11

Her short story, “Into a Neat Line,” was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Contest. Her novel, Shooting Rockets at The Moon, was a finalist in the Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner Society’s 2019 Novel-in-Progress category.

Erica Plouffe Lazure

Writers Workshop Participant '18

Her short story “The Ghost Rider,” workshopped at the Community of Writers, took the editor’s choice award for Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver short story contest and appears alongside an interview in the 2019 fall issue of Carve.

https://www.carvezine.com/story/2019-fall-lazure

Andrew Roe

Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '04

His short story “Is Someone Going to Say Something to the Woman Crying on BART?” will appear in the Winter 2019 issue of ZYZZYVA.

http://www.andrewroeauthor.com/

Merridawn Duckler

Writers Workshop participant '07

Her chapbook of poems, Interstate, was recently published by from Dancing Girl Press.

http://www.merridawnduckler.com

Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, Devi Laskar

Tamika Thompson Writers Workshop participant '15; Pallavi Dhawan Writers Workshop participant '15, Devi Laskar Writers Workshop participant '04, '15, Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14

Community of Writers alums Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, and Devi Laskar have co-edited a new anthology called POC United: Graffiti, released on October 15 and available now through Aunt Lute Books.

https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781879960985/graffiti.aspx

Charles H Halsted

Poetry Participant, '18

His first full book of poetry Extenuating Circumstances has been published by Finishing Line Press and is available through FLP and Amazon Books. Many of its poems were first conceived and written at the 2018 Poetry workshop. This publication follows his published chapbook Breaking Eighty.

Sharon McElhone

Writers Workshops Participant '06

An excerpt from her memoir entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein” appears in the Fall 2019 Volume IX issue of Label Me Latina/o.

http://https://labelmelatin.com/

Marianne Villanueva

Writers Workshop Participant, July 2014

Her memoir-in-flash, A Prayer Answered, was in Signs, a special themed issue of Jellyfish Review: September 2019. Her story “Tu-an Ju” was in the Otherworld/Underworld of University of Hawai’i – Manoa’s e-zine vice-versa. Her story “Things She Can Take” was in the Prairie Schooner Winter 2018 special issue on Opioids.

http://jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2019/09/23/a-prayer-answered-by-marianne-villanueva/

Kathleen O’Toole

Poetry '01,' 03, '05, '09, '11

Her latest poetry collection This Far was released in October, 2019. Her poems have recently been featured in Antiphon, Smartish Pace and are forthcoming in The MacGuffin and Public Poetry.

https://kathleenotoolepoetry.com

David Corbett

Writers Workshop participant '88, '89, 91, '99; Screenwriting Workshop participant '01

His new book, The Compass of Character: Creating Complex Motivation for Compelling Characters in Fiction, Film, and TV,  was published in November, 2019, by Writer’s Digest Books. 

https://www.davidcorbett.com/

Eddy Ancinas

Writers Workshop participant '72

The 70th Anniversary Edition of her SKADE Award-Winning book, Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys, was published in October, 2019.

Scott Edward Anderson

Art of the Wild participant, ‘92

His newest book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was published by Homebound Publications as part of its Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.

https://homeboundpublications.com/se-anderson/

Anara Guard

Writers Workshops Participant '16

Her new book of poetry, Hand on My Heart, will be published by New Wind Publishing on November 1, 2019.

http://newwindpublishing.com/book/hand

Ashley Wurzbacher

Writers Workshop participant '19

Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published by University of Iowa Press in October, 2019.


Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Ashley Wurzbacher

Writers Workshop participant '19

She was recently named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, a prize that aims to “recognize young, debut fiction writers whose work promised to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published on October 15, 2019 from University of Iowa Press.

https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/5-under-35-2019/
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Jung Hae Chae

Writers Workshop participant '19

Her essay “Pojangmacha People” recently won an emerging writers contest at Ploughshares. She brought a version of this essay to the Writers Workshop this past summer.

Kyce Bello

Poetry Participant '19

Her debut collection, Refugia, winner of the inaugural Test Site Poetry Series Prize, was published in September, 2019, by University of Nevada Press.

Fellow Community of Writers Poetry alum Danny Kraft reviewed Refugia over at Ecotheo Review. Check it out here: http://www.ecotheo.org/2019/08/god-is-the-apple/

http://kycebello.com

Laurie Ann Ann Doyle

Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '14. Published Alumni Reading Series '17

Her book World Gone Missing: Stories is the winner of 2018 Nautilus Book Prize silver medal in fiction.

http://www.laurieanndoyle.com

Marjorie Saiser

Poetry Participant, '00

Her newest full-length collection, Learning to Swim, forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin State University Press, is a hybrid of memoir and poems.

http://poetmarge.com

Vishwas R Gaitonde

Writers Workshops Participant '14

His essay, “Has India Had Its Stonewall Moment?” has been published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, to mark the first anniversary of the decriminalization of the LGBT community in India. June 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York. Gaitonde looks at both.

http://www.themantle.com/international-affairs/has-india-had-its-stonewall-moment

Patricia Spears Jones

Poetry Teaching Staff

A selection of her poems will be featured in Persimmon Tree. Poems are forthcoming in Plume and The New Yorker.

http://www.psjones.com

Elaine Barnard

Writers Workshop Partcipant '11

She won the 2019 Strands International Flash Fiction first and third competitions with her stories “Howie” and “The Library.”

Arthur Solway

Poetry Participant '19

He wont the 2019 Tupelo Press Broadside Competition for his poem “Night School.”

https://conta.cc/32gusuu

Gail Reitano

Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19

Her novel Italian Love Cake will be published by Bordighera Press in Fall 2020; a personal essay, “Beneath Snowy Foothills,” appears online in the July 2019 issue of Ovunque Siamo.

http://www.gailreitano.com

Ashley Wurzbacher

Writers Workshops Participant, '19

Her short story collection, Happy Like This, won Iowa’s 2019 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and will be released on October 15, 2019.

https://ashleywurzbacher.com/
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Melissa Fondakowski

Poetry Workshop Participant, '02

Her second book-length work, The Sci-Fi Story With the Cat in It – Short Stories, will be published by Balut Press in September 2019.

https://melissafondakowski.com/

C Pirloul

Poetry Workshop participant '01, '05, '17

Riga Pine, a poem with audio, appears in Interim’s current issue, Carrying Across: Crossing Disciplines as a Form of Translation. 

https://www.interimpoetics.org

Victoria Dalkey

Poetry Participant '92

Her poem “Watching the Olympics on Morphine” was a finalist for the Bellevue Literary Review’s Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize and appeared in BLR‘s Issue 36, Spring/Summer 2019.

Victoria Dalkey

Poetry Participant '92

A selection of her poems are included in Tough Enough: Poems from the Tough Old Broads Ann Menebroker, Victoria Dalkey, Viola Weinberg, Kathryn Hohlwein, A Lake House Publication, released by Cold River in March 2019.

Robin Page

Writers Workshop participant '02

Her new book, Small Silent Things, was recently published by HarperCollins.

Jeffrey Kingman

Poetry Participant '12

His poem, “A Posterity Conceived and Born of Conscious Love,” is published on the Poydras Review blog. The title is a quote from early 20th century birth control activist Margaret Sanger, who went on to be a founder of Planned Parenthood.

https://poydrasreview.com/blog

Jenn Alandy Trahan

Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '17

Her short story, “They Told Us Not to Say This,” published in Harper’s Magazine in September 2018, was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019.

http://
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship

Colette Sartor

Writers Workshop participant '00

Her collection of short stories, Once Removed, will be published in September, 2019, by University of Georgia Press. It recently received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Mark Coggins

Writers Workshops Participant, '96; Screenwriting Program Participant, '01

His newest, The Dead Beat Scroll, the seventh novel in the August Riordan crime fiction series, was recently released from Down & Out Books.

https://www.markcoggins.com/the-dead-beat-scroll/

Caitlin McCarthy

Screenwriting Workshop '13

Her screenplay Wonder Drug has advanced into the Semifinal Round of the 2019 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, one of only 149 entries to advance from the Quarterfinal Round. During the Semifinals, four Academy members, drawn from a variety of branches, will read Wonder Drug. From 10 to 15 Semifinalists will be selected as Finalists. All Semifinalists will be included in the Nicholl contact list that is forwarded in the fall to agents, development executives, managers, and producers who request it.

https://tinyurl.com/y5qhmout

Charles Halsted

Poetry Participant, '18

His first full length book, Extenuating Circumstances, which contains three of the six poems written at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, is due for publication on October 4, 2019. A second full length book is in preparation.

Meg Waite Clayton

Writers Workshop Participant, ‘00

Her newest book, The Last Train to London, a novel based on the true story of the Vienna Kindertransports and the extraordinary woman who led the rescues, will be published by HarperCollins and HarperCollins-Canada September 10, and in translation in fifteen languages.

http://www.megwaiteclayton.com/books/the-last-train-to-london/

Jeffrey Thomas Leong

Poetry Participant, '97, '00, '02

His recent book, Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, was awarded the 2019 Northern California Book Award for translation in poetry.

https://jeffreythomasleong.com/awards/

Maurya Simon

Writers Workshop Participant '84

Her 10th volume of poetry, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2018, and was recently awarded a gold medal from the Benjamin Franklin Independent Book Awards. Her recent work has appeared in the The Georgia Review and The Gettysburg Review.

http://www.mauryasimon.com

Caitlin McCarthy

Screenwriting Workshop participant '13

Her scientific drama Wonder Drug advanced to the quarterfinals in the prestigious 2019 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition, one of only 365 entries to emerge from the First Round (out of 7,302 scripts entered). Wonder Drug, a Sloan script at the Hamptons Screenwriters Lab, was also a Bitch List honoree and “Featured Script” on the Black List website. In more Nicholl news, Caitlin’s thriller A Native Land placed among the Top 10% of all entries in this year’s competition. Semifinalists will be announced in August.

http://www.caitlinmccarthy.com

Claire Boyles

Writers Workshop Participant, '18

Her essay, “Riding Ditch”, was recently published in the Summer 2019 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review. Her short story, “Lost Gun, $1000 Reward, No Questions”, won Boulevard’s Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers and will appear in the Fall 2019 issue.

http://claireboyleswrites.com

Lisa Rappoport

Writers Workshop participant '94, Poetry Workshop participant '00

Her new book of poetry, Penumbra, was recently published by Longship Press.

http://littoralpress.com/web/

Dedria Humphries Barker

Writers Workshop participant ‘08, 15

She featured in a July 2019 Facebook Live event “Poets in Pajamas,” sponsored by Sundress Publications.

http://dedriabarker.com

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Poetry Workshop participant '11

His memoir, Children of the Land, will be released in January, 2020 from HarperCollins.

Lester Graves Lennon

Poetry Workshop participant '99, '01, '03, '05, '07, '09, '11, '13, '15, '17, '19

He recently became the poetry editor for Rosebud Magazine. 

http://www.rsbd.net/NEW/

Harryette Mullen

Poetry Workshop teaching staff '06, '14

A poem of hers was chosen for poets.org’s Poem-a-Day by Ruth Ellen Kocher and Francisco Marquez. It will be featured on August 2, 2019.

https://poets.org/poem-a-day

Lorraine Comanor

Writers Workshop participant '09

Her essays have recently appeared in The Gold Man Review and Ruminate ( shorts). Two are in press for the Euonia Review and Boulevard.

Danusha Laméris

Poetry Participant, '00

Her second book, Bonfire Opera, will be released by the University of Pittsburgh Press in spring 2020. She has also recently been named the 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award.

http://www.danushalameris.com

Yoav Potash

Writers Workshops Participant, '05, '08

The American Jewish Press Association is honoring Yoav Potash with a Simon Rockower Award for Best Personal Essay, for his piece titled “How I learned all Israelis are not my father,” published by J. The Jewish News of Northern California. The American Jewish Press Association bills the Rockower Awards as “the Jewish Pulitzers.”

https://www.jweekly.com/2018/04/05/broke-israels-thorny-exterior-tasted-sweet-center/
Attended with the help of Entrenkin Foundation Scholarship

Max Byrd

Writers Workshop participant '83, Writers Workshops teaching staff '18, '15, '13, '12, '11, '10, '09, '08, '06, '05, '04, '03, '02, '01, '00, '99, '98, '97, '96

His newest novel, The Sixth Conspirator, will be released in August 2019 by Post Hill Press.

Andrew Tonkovich

Fiction participant '94; Writers Workshop teaching staff

His new book, The Dairy of Anne Frank (and More Wish Fullfilment in the Noughties) is out now. Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review and host of Bibiocracy Radio, a weekly books show on Pacifica’s KPFK in Southern California.

Janet Fitch

Writers Workshop participant '93, Poetry Workshop participant '17, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '01, '02, '04, '06, '08, '09, '13, '15, '17

Her newest novel, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, the  sequel to her best-selling novel The Revolution of Marina M., was published by Little, Brown & Co. in July, 2019.

https://www.janetfitchwrites.com/

Heather Altfeld

Poetry Workshop participant '08, '10, '12, '15

She has recently been awarded the 2019 Orison Poetry Prize for her manuscript Post-Mortem. She will receive a cash prize and publication of her manuscript by Orison Books.

Mary Freericks

Poetry Workshop participant '89, '91, '00

Her second poetry book, Cheer for Freedom, with illustrations of her paintings of her Armenian and Russian family in Iran has been published this year.

http://www.maryfreericksartworks.yolasite.com

Alia Yunis

Writers Workshops Participant '04

Her documentary feature, The Golden Harvest, which she wrote and directed, debuted at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in March, 2019, a top 10 international film festival, and was selected as “Best of the Fest” at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in April, 2019.

http://www.goldenharvestfilm.org

Jane Ciabattari

Writers Workshops teaching staff, '16

Her new short story collection-in-progress, Arabella Leaves & Other Stories, was a finalist for the Dzanc Short Fiction Award. Her short story “Swarm” was published in The Slag Review on March 1, 2019. Her short story “Brooklyn After the Fall” was included in a flash anthology commissioned for Independent Bookstore Day in 2018, and also published in The Literary Hub.

https://slagreview.com/2019/03/01/swarm/

Peter Marcus

Poetry Workshop participant '89, '90, '91, '92, '95, '11

His new book of poetry, Dark Square, was recently published by Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press.

Susan Henderson

Writers Workshop Participant, '09

Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, (HarperCollins, 2018) won the Western Writers of America Spur Award, in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award.

http://LitPark.com
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship

Jeanine Stevens

Poetry Participant '07, '10, '14, '17

Her newest book of poems, Limberlost, was released by Future Cycle Press, 2019. Her chapbook of poems, Citadels, is soon to be released by Folded Word Press.

Sharon McElhone

Writers Workshop Participant '06

Her first chapter from her collection of personal essays on childcare and immigrant issues is forthcoming in the Label Me Latina/o Fall 2019 issue. The first chapter is entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein.

Lauren K. Alleyne

Poetry Workshop Participant '08

She published her second collection of poems, Honeyfish, in April with New Issues Press (US), and in July, with Peepal Tree Press (UK).

http://laurenkalleyne.com

Forrest Gander

His newest book, Be With, was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Shira Dentz

Her new book of poetry, the sun a blazing zero, is one of SPD’s May Handpicks.

Julia Flynn Siler

Writers Workshops Participant, '03, '04, Writers Workshops Teaching Staff

She was interviewed by KQED Forum host Michael Krasny about her new book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Knopf, May 2019). The book was also reviewed in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook section, which called it “meticulously researched and inspiring.”

http://juliaflynnsiler.com/events/

Janet Fitch

Poetry Workshop participant '17; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '01, '02, '04, '06, '08, '09, '13, '15, '17

She recently celebrated the 2oth anniversary of the publication of White Oleander. It was released in May, 1999 from Back Bay Books.

Alex Espinoza

Writers Workshop Participant '04, '05, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '13, '15, '17

His newest book, Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, will be published in June, 2019, by Unnamed Press.

http://www.alexespinoza.com/

Varley O’Connor

Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '04, '12; Participant '88, '89

Her fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in May 2019.

http://www.varleyoconnor.com/

Karen Stefano

Writers Workshop Participant '08

Her debut memoir, What A Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath, will be published by Rare Bird Books in June 2019.

http://www.stefanokaren.com

C. Pirloul

Poetry Workshop participant '17

Two poems first drafted at the Poetry Workshop are included in a group of poems in the 2019 issue of Volt (#25).

Allison DeLauer

Poetry Participant, '10, '16

Her essay “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” appeared in the collection, Playing Shakespeare’s Characters, Book 1. Playing Shakespeare’s Lovers examines Shakespeare’s romantic characters from multiple perspectives. Contributing actors, directors, educators and scholars bring diverse and wide-ranging insights into the motives, context, history and challenges of performing Shakespeare’s “infinite variety” of lovers. The volume begins with an introductory essay, followed by brief essays and interviews, on various characters within the world of Shakespeare’s lovers.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/65885

Karen Laws

Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '16

Her story “Shadows Under Trees” is in the current issue of The Antioch Review (Volume 76, No. 4).
Karen’s essay on working with asylum seekers at the border is in the online journal Cagibi, Issue 6.

https://cagibilit.com/on-the-ground-in-tijuana/