Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant, '01Joe Bardin’s essay, “Waiting for It,” was published in Bull Journal.
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Omnium Gatherum: Alumni & Teaching Staff News
Welcome to the Community of Writers Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News. We invite you to find out what our community has been up to recently. You may view by date or by program (see left sidebar). Sign up for monthly updates here.
We also invite alumni and staff to submit your news here. Please note that news must be less than 12 months old, brief and to the point, and may be edited for brevity and/or clarity.
Attended with the help of a scholarship
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshops Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19Her debut novel Italian Love Cake (Bordighera Press, 2021) is named 2023 Distinguished Favorite in General Fiction by the Independent Press Award. Italian Love Cake is available in two French editions, under the title Liberata, Éditions Anne Carrière (2022), and Pocket (2023),
Judy Rowe Michaels
Poetry Participant, '03, '92, '91Her fourth poetry collection This Morning the Mountain was published in March ’23 by Cherry Grove Collections and is available from Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14,'22His multimedia essay “The Harmonium Across Continents and Centuries,” has been published in Serenade magazine. It chronicles the odyssey of a musical instrument, the harmonium, across its 230+ years of existence from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Americas. Embedded music videos provide examples of harmonium music.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22
Andrew Tonkovich
1993His short story, “Three Acts in Three Plays (Plus One)” appears in the print edition of the spring issue of Juked.
Elizabeth Filippouli
Writers Workshops Participant '07, '22Elizabeth Filippouli adapted and produced a play inspired by Alexander the Great that invites audiences to rethink the idea of greatness and re-imagine the personality of the statesman through the eyes of his tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. In this contemporary adaptation the old is intertwined with modern references, making Alexander’s life relevant to today’s context. The hybrid staged reading brought together a modern epic poem by Greek playwright Stamatis A. Filippoulis, art by leading British artist Paul Benney and music by Greek composer Stamatis Spanoudakis that lifted words and visual poetry. Over 500 theatre lovers attended in the British Library in London in February 2023.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, ,22Vishwas Gaitonde’s short story ‘Carabas’ appears in ‘The Journal’ (Issue 46.2, Spring 2023).
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22
Michael Golding
Writer's Workshops Participant, '90, '92Michael Golding’s fourth novel Quick Bright Things — about the Golden Age of Broadway — will be published in April 2023 by Butterfish Press.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant '01, '03, '19She was runner up for the 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. Her collection, Tasting Flight, will be published by Madville Books in 2024. Naked Beside Fish, a chapbook of ekphrastic poems, is also forthcoming (Finishing Line Press, 2023).
Tara Dorabji
Writers Workshop participant '13Her debut novel, Fire, is the grand prize winner for The Simon & Schuster Books Like Us Award.
Carrie Nassif
Poetry Participant, '21Her chapbook, lithopaedion will be released from Finishing Line Press in March 10, 2023. A Greek term translated, literally, to “stone baby”, a lithopaedion is a very rare phenomenon that occurs when, in a failed ectopic or abdominal pregnancy, the fetus cannot be reabsorbed by the mother’s body. Instead, it becomes calcified in order to prevent infection, sepsis, and even death in the mother. Nassif could think of no better metaphor for the sacrifices a parentified child often makes to protect the well-being of its parents, one of the motherhood related themes of this collection.
Attended with the help of Janice Bevilacqua Scholarship
J. David Cummings
Poetry Participant, '88, '89, '92, '02, '11, '15His new book Handling the Bones will be one of three featured in an online reading hosted by Broadstone Books on February 18, 2023, at 1 PM Pacific. Larry Moore, Broadstone publisher and editor, is a terrific reading host and you may enjoy his introductions to the books as much as the poems. Register here.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '71, 72; Teaching Staff '22His seventh novel, The Last of Nico Sombra, was published on February 14, 2023 online in a serialized edition on Substack. Placed in Buenos Aires, it tells of the complicated, perhaps disastrous, love between the crime lord, Nico Sombra, and a daughter of the Argentine aristocracy, Natalia Faustino.
You can find more about the book here.
Lea Aschkenas
Writers Workshops Participant, '02; Art of the Wild Participant, '99Her debut children’s book, Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle, will be published simultaneously in English and in Spanish by Star Bright Books in April, 2023. The Spanish edition was a Junior Library Guild selection.
Ángel García
Poetry Workshop participant '12His poem “Vestiges” was recently featured on the Academy of American Poets’ website as part of their Poem-a-Day series.
Loisa Fenichell
Poetry Participant, '22Her debut collection, originally titled Wandering in All Directions of this Earth, but being changed to A Novel About Feelings Already Known, is forthcoming from Ghost Peach Press, having been selected by Eduardo C. Corral as the Ghost Peach Press prize winner.
Freeman Ng
Writers Workshop participant, '19Bridge Across the Sky, his Young Adult novel-in-verse based on the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900’s, was acquired by Simon & Schuster for publication in Fall of 2024.
Donna Spruijt-Metz
Poetry Participant, '22Her debut poetry collection, General Release from the Beginning of the World, was released on January 1, 2023. Her book was chosen for publication by Brenda Hillman and published by Free Verse Editions, Palette Press.
Beverly Burch
Poetry participant, ‘03Her fourth poetry book, Leave Me a Little Want, was published by Terrapin Books. Her third, Latter Days of Eve, won the John Ciardi Prize.
Peter Scott
Special Guest of Reading Milosz: A Short CourseHis new book, Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope, focuses on Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate for literature. This biography of Czesław Miłosz is a first hand account of the poet’s life and his relationship to the author, beginning in the 1960s. Milosz was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who “voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts”.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant, '04-'06; Staff; Board Vice-ChairHis new novel, The Sons of El Rey, just sold to Simon and Schuster.
Mira Rosenthal
Poetry Participant, '00Her new poetry collection, Territorial, was selected by Terrance Hayes and published in the Pitt Poetry Series in November, 2022.
James D. Richardson
Writers Workshops participant '20The launch of his book The Abolitionist’s Journal: The Memories of an American Antislavery Family about his ancestors’ work on the Underground Railroad, was recently broadcast on C-SPAN; serving a Black Union regiment in the Civil War; and founding a college in Texas for the previously enslaved. Richardson was interviewed at the Beers Books in Sacramento by Ginger Rutland, another alum of the Community of Writers.
Matthew Zapruder
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHis new book, Story of a Poem, a memoir about writing poetry and fathering, is available for pre-order!
“… the luminous, lyrical meditation on wringing from suffering and air, threaded with a singular, moving story about parenting an atypical child. I read it in a single gulp, and you will too.”
—Mary Karr, author of THE LIARS’ CLUB
Joann Gardner
Poetry Participant '91,'96Her new book of poems, Heart’s Core, is now available from Finishing Line Press.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “At the End of the Day” appears in Adelaide Literary Magazine.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story “Fatherhood” is featured on The Razor, a publication from the Gotham Writers Workshop. Accompanying her story is a professional recording from voice actor Alex Shafer.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22His multimedia essay “Bringing in the Sheaves: The Samuels of Chennai,” about a trio of brothers who sing southern gospel in southern India, was published in Serenade magazine, January 2023.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22
Mike Karpa
Writers Workshops Participant, '92, '94Mike Karpa’s novel thriller/suspense novel Criminals, set in Tokyo, received a starred review and was named one of Kirkus Reviews‘ “Best Books of 2022,” Indie edition. It was first workshopped at the Community with Ann Close. His new comic novel about a New York family, The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg (Mumblers Press, 2022), was published Dec 20, 2022.
J. David Cummings
Poetry Participant, '88, '89, '92, '02, '11, '15J. David Cummings has a new collection of poems, Handling the Bones, published in December, 2022 from Broadstone Books.
Christopher Upham
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff ScreenwritingChristopher Upham’s first novel, Daktoum has been published by Cereus Press and is available in all major outlets. Based on Upham’s experience as a medic in Vietnam, Daktoum explores the effects of trauma on masculinity when diverse young Americans are abandoned by their own government on a remote jungle fire base.
Clare Frank
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Clare Frank’s Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire is due out from Abrams Press in May, 2023.
Attended with the help of The Alexander Cushing Locals Scholarship
Yeva Johnson
Poetry Participant, '20, '22Yeva Johnson’s debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, will be published by Nomadic Press in February 2023.
George Berger
Writers Workshop Participant, 2004,2005,2014G. J. Berger’s third novel, a legal thriller titled, Chasing Justice was published in November, 2023. “With Chasing Justice, accomplished historical novelist G.J. Berger makes an impressive debut in the conspiracy thriller genre. In a league with the best of Grisham and Baldacci.” -Dan Pollock, author of Lair of the Fox and Duel of Assassins
Walter Pavlich
Art of the Wild Teaching Staff, '02Sensational Nightingales, the Poems of Walter Pavlich, was edited by David Axelrod, Scott Edward Anderson, and Sandra McPherson (Lynx House Press, 2017). He was loved as a teacher at Art of the Wild. He died unexpectedly in 2002 at age 46.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry Participant, '92,'00,'09,'13,'20Ann Fisher-Wirth’s seventh book of poems, Paradise Is Jagged, will be published February 1, 2023 by Terrapin Books. It’s available for preorder now! It’s also also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshelf. Ann has also received the 2023 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Poetry and Literature from the Mississippi Arts Commission.
Susanne Pari
Writers Workshops Participant, '89, '90, '91Her second novel, In the Time of Our History, about rebellious women in a large Iranian-American family, will be published on January 3rd, 2023. It is a Buzz Books selection and will appear on the January Indie Next list. Amy Tan says, “I fell in love with this jewel of a novel from the first page.’ Rabih Alameddine calls it “both unique and universal, a must-read tile in the new mosaic of American novels.” Publishers Weekly calls it “a luminous multigenerational tale…that navigates the cultural differences between newer Americans and older immigrants and provides a frank look at fraught family dynamics.”
Sandra McPherson
Poetry Teaching Staff '80/'Art of the Wild Teaching Staff 92, '93, '95, '96, '97, '99Two of her collections were published in 2022: Speech Crush (Gunpowder Press, Santa Barbara); and The 5150 Poems (Nine Mile Books, Lafayette, NY).
Molly Fisk
Poetry Participant '92, '95, '98, '04; Art of the Wild ParticipantHer fifth collection of radio commentary, Everything But the Kitchen Skunk, came out in November, 2022. She publishes this series herself; you can order it from your favorite independent book seller through Ingram.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Workshop Participant '97, '02Her new full-length poetry collection, By Light and Hidden Matter, is now out and available online.
Edward Gunawan
Poetry Participant, '22His first prose-poetry chapbook, The Way Back, was published by Foglifter in November, 2022.
Charmaine Craig
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '18; Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98Her novel My Nemesis will be published by Grove Press in February, 2023. Her previous novel, Miss Burma, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Steve Fujimura
Poetry Participant, '97, '99, '16His debut poetry book, Sad Asian Music, was published by Finishing Line Press in October 2022.
Robert Thomas
Poetry Participant, '88His new book of poetry, Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff, will be published in February, 2023, by Carnegie Mellon University Press, and is available for preorder now. 80 nontraditional sonnets explore love and jealousy—the traditional obsessions of sonnets—from nontraditional angles.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14, '22His short story ‘Mardy Gras’ has been published in The MacGuffin, Fall 2022 issue.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship '22
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop participant '04, '05; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis short story, “Detainment,” was included in 2022’s Best American Mystery and Suspense.
Forrest Gander
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHis collection of poetry, Knot, a project in collaboration with photographer Jack Shear, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in November, 2022.
Gretchen McCullough
Writers Workshop participant '06, '08, '19Her novel Confessions of a Knight Errant was recently published by Cune Press. The novel is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a corpse turns up.
Attended with the help of Del Duca Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14, '22His commentary “Wash or Wipe? – That is the Question!” has been published in the inaugural issue of Arasi literary magazine.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship, '22
Anara Guard
Writers Workshops Participant, '16Her debut novel Like a Complete Unknown is a finalist for the Chicago Writers Association’s 2022 Book of the Year in indie fiction.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “Everybody’s Good” appeared in The Gettysburg Review, volume 24, number 1.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Mason Boyles
Writers Workshop participant, '20, '21His debut novel Bark On is will be available through Driftwood Press in February, 2023.
Attended with the help of Robert Stone Memorial Scholarship
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14, '21; Writers Workshops participant '04, '08; Writers Workshop teaching staff '20, '23Her second novel Circa was published by Mariner Books in May, 2022, and her third novel, Midnight at the War, will be published by Mariner Books in 2024. Circa was chosen by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Book Club this summer.
Jamie Cat Callan
Writers Workshops participant '91She has been awarded a fellowship by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Jamie Cat Callan will be among 22 Fellows focusing on their own creative projects at this working retreat for writers, poets, visual artists, and composers. VCCA fellows have received worldwide attention including MacArthur fellowships, Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim fellowships, National Endowment of the Arts awards, Grammy Awards, and Academy Award nominations. Jamie Cat Callan has received several previous fellowships from VCCA as a fiction writer, but this is her first VCCA fellowship as a visual artist.
Charles Harper Webb
Writers Workshops participant '91His novel Ursula Lake was published in Spring 2022 by Red Hen Press.
Margaret Elysia Garcia
Poetry Participant, '21Her fiction debut Graft was released by Tolsun Books on October 11, 2022; her poetry memoir Burn Scars was published July 1, 2022 by Lit Kit Collective. Graft is a collection of short stories set in southeastern Los Angeles/north Orange County and is an across the century response to Nathanael West’s Day of the Locusts–done Chicana noir style. Burn Scars describes the days leading up to and then the burning of Margaret’s adopted hometown of Greenville in the Dixie Fire of 2021 and the aftermath.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff '22; Participant ‘00Her 8th novel, the international bestseller The Postmistress of Paris—a New York Times Editors Choice and GMA Buzz book—is out in paperback. It’s the Costco Book Club pick for October and on the IndieNext New in Paperback list for November. Her book, The Last Train to London, is now out in French, the 18th of the 20 languages it will be published in.
Marjorie Saiser
Poetry Workshop Participant, '00Her most recent book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, won the High Plains Book Award for Poetry.
Lise Haines
Writers Workshops participant '99Her newest, Book of Knives, was published in October, 2022, from Poisoned Pen Press.
Claire Boyles
Writers Workshop Participant '18She was named a 2022 Whiting Award Winner in Fiction, and her short story collection, Site Fidelity, won the 2022 High Plains Book Award for Short Stories.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “Four Years Before the Break-in” was published in the summer 2022 issue of The Main Street Rag.
Jung Hae Chae
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her memoir-in-essays, Pojangmacha People, won the 2022 Graywolf Press Literary Nonfiction Prize (to be published in June 2025).
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21Her poem, “The Miami Cemetery” was selected for The Islandia Journal, issue 4. Santamaria created this experimental poem during her time in the Valley.
Attended with the help of The Ancinas Family Scholarship
Bruce Rettig
Writers Workshops Participant, '12,'15His memoir, Refraction, will be published on November 15, 2022. It has won several writing awards, and is published by Wayfarer Books, an Eco-Lit imprint of Homebound Publications. Homebound is a partner of One Tree Planted, and for every book they sell in their store, a tree is planted.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Her short story, “Pastoral Funkitude”,” appears in Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Fall/Winter 2022 issue.
Marcia Bradley
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her debut novel, The Home for Wayward Girls, will be published by HarperCollins in April, 2023. This work of fiction dives into the Troubled Teen Industry in our country and tells the story of one woman’s escape from a residential program on a ranch west of the Rockies. The novel details abuse, the anxieties she carries on her journey, and ultimately how through her survival she finds hope in the future.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop participant '83; Screenwriters Workshop participant '84Her serialized story Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama has been nominated for the Buchanan Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.
Juliana Roth
Writers Workshops Participant '17, '22She was selected as a 2022-23 Fellow with the Center for Fiction. She is also screening her new short film at Cinema Village on 10/26 at 2PM.
Natalie Harris-Spencer
Writers Workshops Participant, '22She has been chosen as the winner of the 2022 Chestnut Review Stubborn Writers Contest. Her winning story, “Fish Mother,” which she workshopped at this summer’s workshop, will appear in the January 2023 issue.
Daniel Pope
Writers' Workshop participant '19, '21His short story, “Last Stop,” has been published in Issue 43 of the Bellevue Literary Review.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Anuradha Bhowmik
Poetry Workshop participant '18Her newest collection of poetry, Brown Girl Chromatography, was published in October, 2022, by Pitt Poetry Series.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Tawanda Mulalu
Poetry Workshop participant '20His new collection of poetry, Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die, was published in September, 2022, by Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets.
Ama Codjoe
Poetry Workshop participant '15Her newest collection of poetry, Bluest Nudes, was published in September, 2022, by Milkweed.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
Brittany Mishra
Poetry Participant, '22Her poem “In the Mortgage of Desire” was selected for an honorable mention in Spoon River Poetry Review‘s annual contest and will be published in their upcoming Winter 2022 issue.
Caroline Frost
Fiction Participant '17, '21; Published Alumni Reading Series '22Her debut novel Shadows of Pecan Hollow was longlisted by the Center for Fiction for best first novel and shortlisted by the Crook’s Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American south. She will be speaking on panels at the upcoming Texas Book Festival and Tucson Festival of Books.
Terry Shames
Writers Workshop participant '98Her newest, Murder at the Jubilee Rally, a Samuel Craddock mystery, was published in October, 2022.
Janice Obuchowski
Writers Workshop Participant, '08Her story collection The Woods has won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award through the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series and will be published in November, 2022.
Anna V. Q. Ross
Poetry Workshop Participant, '13, '21Her second book, Flutter, Kick, selected by Jeffrey Harrison for the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press, will be published by Red Hen Press on November 8th, 2022.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship, '13
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant '14, '22His essay on the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II, “The Second Elizabeth – A Life Appreciated” was published in Merion West.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story “Women of a Certain Kind” appears in the fall 2022 issue of The Georgia Review.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Alina Grabowski
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Her novel, Women and Children First, will be published by SJPLit/Zando in fall, 2023.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Susan Browne
Poetry Participant, '88, '10, '22She has been awarded the 2021-2022 Five Points James Dickey Prize for Poetry. Her work will be published in the 23.1 issue of Five Points, and she will receive $1,000.
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshop Participant’07, ‘11She has won a mentorship with The Writers Lab – sponsored by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman- to further develop her TV pilot The Plant.
Javier Zamora
Poetry Workshop participant '10His memoir, Solito, was published in September, 2023, and is a New York Times Bestseller.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer third novel, On the Rooftop, was recently selected as Reese’s Book Club pick.
Ananda Lima
Poetry Workshop participant '17Her fiction manuscript-in-progress, Craft, is a finalist for the 2022 Restless Books prize for New Immigrant Writing.
Sharon Olds
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHer newest book, Balladz, is on the long list for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Shelley Wong
Poetry Workshop participant '16Her newest book of poetry, As She Appears, in on the long list for the National Book Awards for Poetry.
Mary Freericks
Poetry Workshop participant '89, '91, '00, '21She has published two new poetry books. The first, Swimming Through the Generations, completes her now five volumes of poetry memoirs. It focuses both on ancestors and grandchildren beginning with Brewster and James Hill, who designed a revolutionary war ship that is on the cover and continues to playing with her granddaughter Rachel and Barbie and Ken dolls. It also includes a poem written at the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop on acceptance. The second is a chap book entitled Pandemic Poetry. The cover, front and back, are abstract collages of Mary’s paintings.
Heidi Seaborn
Poetry Participant, 22Her second collection, An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, which won the [PANK] Poetry Prize (June 2021), has been re-released by [PANK] as Marilyn: Essays & Poems, A Collector’s Edition of an Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe to include essays that Seaborn had previously published in LitHub, Brevity, the Hunger and elsewhere as well as new criticism, photographs and the entire poetry collection.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writer's Workshop, '17She will be a Parent-Writer resident at Mineral School, Washington, this Fall 2022, and will participate in the AWP 2023 panel “Impossible Balance: Re-examining the narrative about writing and parenting” with John Messick, Keema Waterfield, Sean Prentiss, and Ukamaka Olisakwe
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship
Beverly Burch
Poetry Workshop Participant '04Her fourth collection, Leave Me a Little Want, is now available from Terrapin Books.
Jamie Ford
Writers Workshop Participant, '06His latest novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, was named the #1 Indie Next List book for August 2022. It was also chosen for the Today Show’s Read With Jenna book club, and has been optioned for a streaming series by Universal Content Productions.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Participant, '07His poem “Oath Keeper” was published in The New York Times on Sunday, August 14, 2022. It is also available online.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside scholarship recipient
Buffy McKay
Poetry Workshop participant '03Her first full-length poetry collection, Salt & Roses, has been published by Cirque Press.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97; Writers Workshop Teaching StaffShe has two novels coming out in September, 2022: Unleashed (A Publishers Weekly BuzzBook 2022) from Dutton, and Livid from Red Hen Press. These books were sold on the same day within half an hour of each other! Despite having lost her voice to ALS, she is doing her best to get the books into the hands of readers.
Eva Benedikt
Screenwriting participant '10Her feature film, El Ganador (The Winner) was awarded Best Small Budget Film in the 2022 Symbiotic Film Festival (Kyiv, Ukraine), and Official Selection (2022) of Oaxaca Film Fest, Iconic Images Film Festival (Lithuania) and Anatolia International Film Festival (Turkey). In 2021 El Ganador was a finalist in Blue Star International Film Festival (Brazil) and an award winner in the United Latino International Film Festival (USA) in 2019. She is the writer, producer, and director.
Melenie Freedom Flynn
Writers Workshop participant '09, '10She is the recipient of a generous 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowship to support the completion of her memoir about growing up in the backseat of Delilah, her family’s big blue Ford LTD, as they moved back and forth between the Rajneesh Commune in Oregon and Las Vegas during the 1980s.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15, '19His newest, Agoreography, was published by 3: A Taos Press in June, 2022.
Kristin Ohlson
Writers Workshop participant '84Her new book, Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Cooperation and Generosity in Nature, will be released by Patagonia Books on September 6. Publisher’s Weekly says, “Journalist Ohlson (The Soil Will Save Us) pushes back against the Darwinian notion that “competition rules” in this vivid survey. Despite the popular notion that nature is a “vicious and never-ending battle of survival for meager resources,” Ohlson makes a solid case that the opposite is often true…This is as charming as it is enlightening.”
Lynne Thompson
Poetry Participant, '97, '02She was awarded a 2022 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant, '07, '10 '14 '17Her latest poetry collection, No Lunch Among the Day Stars, will be released in October, 2022, by Cold River Press.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshop participant '08 and '10She was recently appointed the Chair of the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts, where she is also an associate professor. Her books include The Bohemians, Song of a Captive Bird, and The Good Daughter.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72, '73; Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis new piece on the Turkish Harem is now live on Substack. It’s more than what you think.
Ramona Reeves
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her debut book of fiction, It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories, won the 2022 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and is available for purchase (release date Oct. 4, University of Pittsburgh Press).
Akil Kumarasamy
Writers Workshop Participant '15Her new novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, was published by Macmillan in August, 2022.
Attended with the help of Eshleman Scholarship
Eddy Ancinas
Her new book, Tracing Inca Trails: An Adventure in the Andes, will be published on September 20, 2022.
Francesca Preston
Poetry Participant, '97, '09, '20Her chapbook If There Are Horns, including four poems written during Community of Writers summer workshops, will be published by Finishing Line Press in October, 2022.
Karen Joy Fowler
Writers Workshop teaching staff '00, '01, '03, '05, '09, '13, '18, '22Her newest book, Booth, was recently long listed for the Booker Prize.
James Richardson
Writers Workshop participant '20His book, The Abolitionist’s Journal: The Memories of an American Antislavery Family, will be published in fall 2022 by High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press. Over the course of more than twenty years, Richardson and his wife, Lori, retraced the steps of his ancestor, George Richardson (1824–1911), revealing his great-great-grandfather Richardson’s involvement in the Underground Railroad, serving as the chaplain to a Black Union regiment in the Civil War and founding a college in Texas for the formerly enslaved. The author raises questions about why this fervent commitment to the emancipation of African Americans was nearly forgotten by his family. More info.
Margaret Allen
Writers Workshop Participant, '16In Swimming with Corpses, published in June, 2022, Margaret Allen has pieced together the early years of a doctor, a soldier, and a nurse, from their 1920s English childhoods in Portsmouth, Manchester, and India to their experiences in the London Blitz, on the D-Day beaches of Normandy, and in the chaos of war-torn Europe. This true story of three people who would probably never have met were it not for the lacerating events of the Second World War illuminates unfamiliar intimacies that occur during conflict and their impact on subsequent relationships. More info
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry ParticipantHer self-published Critters in the Neighborhood Come and See with Me picture book for kids was a Purple Dragonfly Award Winner–Honorable Mention.
Blake Lapin
Poetry Participant, '20His chapbook, I Look at You Instead of the Road (Bottlecap Press), is now available.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis new story collection, San Francisco, was published on June 1, 2022. To order, click here. He is also writing on The Arts on Substack.
Monica Wesolowska
Writers Workshop Participant '95; Art of the Wild Participant '96She has published a debut children’s picture book, Leo + Lea (Scholastic, illustrated by Kenard Pak, August 2022). Leo + Lea is a celebration of math, friendship, and different ways of seeing and being in the world. The words and illustrations follow a math pattern called the Fibonacci sequence (a pattern often found in nature), creating a beautiful metaphor for our connection to each other and the natural world.
Susan Cohen
Poetry Participant, '17Her third collection, Democracy of Fire, is due for release September 30 by Broadstone Books. A finalist for the Washington Prize, Wilder Prize, and Richard Snyder Prize, it includes poems honored by Richard Blanco, Vievee Francis, Kimberly Blaeser, Arthur Sze, and Mark Doty, and several begun at the Community of Writers.
Mary Camarillo
Writer’s Workshop Participant, 05Her debut novel The Lockhart Women is the 2022 WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Multiform Fiction. The WILLA Literary Awards, named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Willa Cather, recognizes the best in literature, featuring women’s or girls’ stories set in the North American West that are published each year.
Farnaz Fatemi
Poetry Participant, '14Her debut poetry collection, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was selected by Tracy K. Smith as winner of the 2021 Wick Poetry Prize and will be published at the end of August, 2022, by Kent State University Press.
Michael Shapiro
Writers Workshop participant, '22Traveler’s Mind: UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center has awarded authors Michael Shapiro and Ethan Watters a grant to study the concept of intellectual humility, the idea that not everything you think is right and not everything you believe is true. During the next 18 months, Shapiro and Watters, both longtime journalists, will be interviewing scientists and travelers to glean how (or if) travel makes us more open-minded. GGSC said there were 150 applicants; just 18 grants in various topics were awarded. Other winners include reporters from NPR and Scientific American – for the full list and more about the award, see link.
Alix Christie
Writers Workshops Participant, '00Her short story “Everychild” won the 2021 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in fiction from The Missouri Review.
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop participant '19Her debut novel, Sirens and Muses, will be published by Penguin Random House in July, 2022.
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant, '07, '10 '14 '17Her chapbook, Ornate Persona, is soon to be released by Clare Songbirds Publishing.
This chapbook features poems influenced by dance, film, art, literature, starring Nijinsky, Apollinaire, Siddhartha, Chagall and others. The poem sequence, “Six Paintings by Miss X,” was started at Community of Writers in 2010 at Kazim Ali’s workshop.
Gina DeMillo Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant, '14Her longform essay “Following Floodlights Instead of the Moon” won the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Prize.
Marilyn Kallet
Poetry Workshop participant '05, '98, '96.Her 19th book, Even When We Sleep, was recently published by Commonwealth Books, Black Widow Press. It is her 8th book of lyric poetry.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '12, '14, '16Her novel-in-progress Proposition has been selected for fiscal sponsorship by Fractured Atlas.
Proposition follows the sex-trafficking epidemic in Oakland from the dual perspective of survivors striving to create a better world for themselves and white-savior activists oblivious to the ways they perpetuate systemic inequality, and is based on her essay, “Dancing on the Blade,” for which she received the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Award for Nonfiction.
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller Scholarship, Carlisle Family Scholarship, Eshleman Scholarship
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop Participant '19Her debut novel Sirens & Muses will be published by Ballantine/Random House on July 12, 2022. She is on tour promoting the book and will be doing events in Minneapolis, Brooklyn, Cape Cod, Stillwater, MN and Northfield, MN. See her website for more details.
Attended with the help of O'Dwyer Scholarship
Tara Betts
Poetry Workshop Participant, '09Her latest full-length poetry collection Refuse to Disappear (Word Works Books, 2022) was selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection and is the June 2022 selection for The Rumpus Poetry Book Club.
Attended with the help of Cave Canem scholarship
Karen Moulding
Writers Workshops Participant, '07,'08,'10Her short story, “We Will Live Here Forever,” has been published in the KGB Bar Online Literary Review and appears in the April 2022 issue.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17She was a finalist in Phoebe’s 2022 short fiction contest. Her story, “We Can’t Live Without the Birds and Animals,” appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Phoebe.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Marilyn Kallet
Poetry workshop participant '96, '98, '05Her eighth book of poems, Even When We Sleep, will be published on June 1st from Commonwealth Books/Black Widow Press, Boston. These are bluesy love poems, songs of healing, poems of Jewish identity. The title comes from Paul Eluard’s line, “Even when we sleep we watch over one another.”
Danny Kraft
Poetry Participant, '19He has started Di Freyd fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word, a free online newsletter of Yiddish poetry in translation.
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction Workshop participant; Fiction workshop teaching staffHis essay on Michelle Latiolais’ novel SHE appears in a new collection, The Many Voices of
the Los Angeles Novel (Cambridge Scholars Press). The essay, “Ariadne’s Thread or Things Befall Apart (Together) in L.A.: She by Michelle Latiolais,” appears alongside laudatory meditations on the work of writers Wanda Coleman, Joan Didion and Carolyn See, among others.
Lawrence Coates
Writers Workshop Participant '18His story “The Ferry and the Road,” which appeared in Story in 2021, was named a Finalist for the 2022 Spur Award in Short Fiction, given by Western Writers of America. The story was workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2018. It is also the first chapter of his novel-in-progress.
Tim Wendel
Fiction Workshop participant '87, '88; Screenwriting Workshop participant '07His latest novel, Escape from Castro’s Cuba, received the Professional Achievement Award for Johns Hopkins University faculty. In addition, the novel was a finalist, and the only work of fiction, selected for the Casey Award, given annually to the best baseball book.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “Around Here Somewhere” appears in the Spring 2022 issue of 34 Orchard.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “In a Burning Volcano” appeared in Salamander, issue #53 (Fall/Winter 2021-2022). It was a finalist for the Salamander 2021 Fiction Prize.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop participant '83; Screenwriting Workshop participant '84Her Palace Drama Fish Shoes has been posted on the story platform Wattpad in episodes. “What happens when the daughter of Emperor Khubilai Khan must persuade her father to listen to her husband, the King of Korea and desist from invading Japan by sea? To read it for free, download the Wattpad app and go to Historical Fiction.
Sands Hall
Fiction Workshop teaching staffHer piece on “finding current relevancy—and outrage—in the accusations of plagiarism that have long haunted a classic of the West: Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose” is out now in Alta.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant '72, '73His fourteenth book, a story collection titled San Francisco, will be published on June 1, 2022. It is so titled because every story takes place in that city. One of the stories, “Crusts of Bread and Such,” will appear in the Fall 2022 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.
Sholeh Wolpé
Writers Workshsop Participant,'04Her most recent book Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse (University of Arkansas Press, March 2022) is hailed by Ilya Kaminsky as a book “that created its own genre—a thrill of lyric combined with the narrative spell.” A short film about the book marries her poetry and voice to music and film: https://youtu.be/0iHMAZwYrhw
Alix Christie
Writers Workshop Participant '00Her short story “Everychild” won the 2022 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in fiction from the Missouri Review and appears in the spring 2022 issue. Her second novel, a family epic of the fur trade set in the 19th century Pacific Northwest, will be published in spring 2023 by High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press. Her latest book, “Toxic: A Daughter’s Memoir of Desertion”, is out on submission.
Gretchen McCullough
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '08, '19Her translation with the poet, Mohamed Metwalli’s book, A Song on the Aegean Sea will be published by Laertes Press, May 2022.
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Workshop participant '21Her “zip ode” was selected as the week 1 spotlight poem for WLRN/ O, Miami Zip Ode Project and featured on air and on instagram for the O, Miami Poetry Festival. She will be reading her poem in the virtual Zip Odes Finale on Wednesday, April 27 at 7 PM ET.
Attended with the help of Ancina Family Scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His short story ‘Vermin’ was published in the 2021 issue of Descant.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops participant '08His essay, “The Wonderful World of Beverly Hills,” was published in the winter 2022 issue of Mason Street Review. In March, 2022, his essay, “The Hamburger,” appeared in Ink, a Hippocampus anthology.
Linda Toren
Poetry Workshop participant '98, '02; Art of the Wild '03Raven Braids the Wind, from Wisdom through Manzanita Writer’s Press (MWP), is her first poetry collection to be published.
Daniel Pope
Writers Workshop participant, '19, '21His short story, “Good Neighbors,” which was chosen as a finalist for the 2021 Narrative 30 Below Contest, was published as a Story of the Week in Narrative Magazine in April 2022.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Participant, '21Her poem was selected for the WLRN/ Zip Odes Project for the O, Miami Poetry Festival.
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship
Anna Hogeland
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her debut novel, The Long Answer, was published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House) on June 21, 2022.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Workshop participant '07His anthology of edited essays, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press this November.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Workshop participant '07He has a new poem “My Mother Is a Garden” in Issue 41 of The Adroit Journal.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside scholarship
Anna Lena Phillips Bell
Poetry participant, '21Her poem “Emerald (a charm for ash)” won the 2021 Winter Anthology Contest, and appears in volume 12 of the Winter Anthology online.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry Workshop participant '92, '00, '09, '13, '20She is retiring in June after nearly 50 years of university teaching. She is currently coediting an anthology of eco-poetry, prose, and art from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and the Southern US for the journal Global South; and coediting a Literary Field Guide to Mississippi. She will be in residence at Storyknife, the women writers’ retreat in Homer, Alaska, in October 2022, where she’ll work on a new book of poems.
Laura Secord
Poetry Workshop Participant '00, '03Her new historical novel-in-verse, An Art, a Craft, a Mystery (Livingston Press, 2022), is
a family saga told in a series of short poems. A hybrid of poetry, historical fiction and feminist literature, it tells the stories of two real women, Lydea Gilbert and Katherine (Kate) Harrison, who lived along the frontier of the Connecticut River in the mid 1600s. They were healers, midwives, farmers and ordinary women who faced the struggles and joys of life in a wild new land. They were women in a puritan culture, women of intuitive genius and healing powers, who lived through times where feminine power and the value of women’s lives was suspect and condemned.
Mary F. Burns
Writers Workshops Participant, '05Her fourth historical mystery in the John Singer Sargent/Violet Paget series is out now! The Eleventh Commandment was dubbed by Kirkus Reviews as “A thrilling whodunit and an edifying work of historical fiction….an exceedingly intelligent and entertaining novel.”
Caroline Kim
Writers Workshops Participant, '18, '19Her short story “Motherhood” appears in the Spring 2022 Issue of STORY Magazine.
Victoria Dalkey
Poetry Participant '92Her poem Making Love I Remember a Dark Wood appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Birmingham Poetry Review number 49.
Sergio Reyes
Poetry Workshop Participant '20, '21In April 2022, Rosebud Magazine published “The Forbidden Kingdom”, a poem selected as finalist in the 2021 Rosebud Poetry Contest.
Sergio wrote this poem, originally entitled “Monday blob” for a Monday morning workshop led by Camille Dungy in 2020. By coincidence, Lester Graves Lennon also attended this workshop. Later that year, he assumed the role of Poetry editor for Rosebud Magazine and judged the poetry contest.
Issue #69 of Rosebud Magazine is currently available at Barnes & Noble bookstores.
Jennifer Egan
Writers Workshop participant '89Her new novel, The Candy House, was published on April 5, 2022 from Scribner’s.
Shelley Wong
Poetry Participant, '16Her debut full-length poetry collection As She Appears (YesYes Books), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize, will be published in May, 2022.
Sharon Olds
Poetry Workshop teaching staffShe is the recipient of the 2022 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry, and will be honored at a benefit put on by the Poetry Society of America on May 12. Named for Robert Frost, and first given in 1930, the Frost Medal is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in American poetry and is awarded annually at the discretion of the PSA’s Board of Governors. Previous winners of the award include Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, and most recently, N. Scott Momaday.
Emily Perez
Poetry Participant, '10, '18Her second full-length book of poetry, What Flies Want, was chosen by judge Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the Iowa Prize. Poet Wayne Miller calls it “a broad and ambitious book well-tuned to the concerns of the present moment as it attends in smart and nuanced layers to sexual violence, constructions of gender, the complexities of race, the disappointments and redemptions of marriage, and the entwined hopes and fears of raising boys in a world where ‘every man’s a ticking bomb.’” The book is available for pre-order on Amazon and the University of Iowa website, and it will be available in May, 2022.
Dan Alter
Poetry Workshop participant '11, '14, '18His newest collection of poetry, My Little Book of Exiles, was recently published by Maida Vale.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His multimedia essay “There Will Always Be Stars In the Sky,” on the life and legacy of Lata Mangeshkar, India’s beloved diva, was published in Serenade magazine, March 2022.
Ellen Bravo
Writers Workshops Participant, '99, '00, '01She has a new novel out, Standing Up: Tales of Struggle, written with her husband Larry Miller. Inspired by five decades of organizing, Standing Up is about those who clean bloody hospital sheets, forge parts for sewer pipes, arrange flights, or process checks — all while caring for kids, holding relationships together and wrestling with multiple forms of oppression. As the characters stand up, slow down, form unions, leave an abusive relationship or just stir up good trouble, they entertain and enlighten and encourage us to love deeply, as we continue the fight for justice. Best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard calls it “Shocking, terrifying, inspiring and deeply felt lives of the unsung.”
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Workshop participant '91, '92, '94; Poetry Workshop teaching staff '16She is being honored at The Poetry Project Gala in New York City on April 8. More details can be found here: https://www.poetryproject.org/gala?token=5de6c2883029110cb33f6ec372915af1ac1545ae
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop participant '18Her short story collection, Proof of Me and Other Stories, is now available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble.com. It will be released by New American Press in Philadelphia on March 24, 2022 during AWP. To preorder: tinyurl.com/5f58mcf4
Rachel Howard
Writers Workshop participant '13; Writers Workshop teaching staff '17, '19Her essay, “The Man with the Poodle: Political Theater in the Time of CRT” was recently featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Dan Alter
Poetry participant, '11, '14, '18His first collection of poetry, My Little Book of Exiles, comes out March 1, 2022 from Eyewear Press, London.
Ruth Kirschner
Writers Workshop Participant '01Her play Whippoorwill is being produced by Centenary Stage Co, March-April 2022, winning the Women Playwrights Series Susan Glaspell Contest. Her most recent play, The Field, has been nominated for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Teresa Burns Gunther
Writers Workshops Participant '15She won the 52nd New Millennium Award for Fiction for her story, War Paint, included in her collection, Hold Off The Night, forthcoming from Bequem Press.
Alicia Hokanson
Poetry Workshop participant '93, '97, '99, '09Her new book, Perishable World, (Pleasure Boat Studio Press, 2021) won the 2021 Grand Prize from the international Eyelands Book Awards.
Emily Pérez
Poetry Participant, '10, '18She co-edited the forthcoming anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. The anthology–a collection of poems, essays, and writing prompts–features work by several members of the Community of Writers, including Diannely Antigua, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Meg Day, Keetje Kuipers, Khadijah Queen, Chelsea Rathburn and others. The book is available for pre-order and will be released by University of Georgia Press in April, 2022.
Patricia Dunn
Writers Workshop Participant, '04Her debut novel for adults, Last Stop on the 6 (Bordighera Press), workshopped during her time at Community Writers, was published in November, 2021.
Juliana Roth
Screenwriting Workshop participant '17Her new short film Final Curtain Call, on Radio City Music Hall’s Chief organist Ray Bohr, is in post-production.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
TN Eyer
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story, “Date of Death”, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appears in Volume 24 of Water~Stone Review.
TN Eyer
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story “A Dying Breed” appears in the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Cathy Wang
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story “ESL” will be published in the ninth issue of Huizache. During the fiction workshops of 2019, her individual conference mentor was founding editor Dagoberto Gilb. Her pen name is Cathy Lue-W.
Karen Joy Fowler
Writers Workshop teaching staff '00, '01, '03, '05, '09, '13, '18, '21Her new novel, Booth, will be published by Penguin in March, 2022.
Sean Marciniak
Writers Workshops Participant, '09, '14His short story, “October in Kauai,” was selected to be in the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022. It originally appeared in the Mystery Tribune, Issue No. 15.
Caroline Frost
Writers Workshop participant '17, '21Her debut novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, was just published by William Morrow! A chapter was workshopped at the Community of Writers Fiction Workshop in 2017.
Kari Flickinger
Poetry Participant, '17Her second collection of poems, Ceiling Fan, was published by Rare Swan Books in February 2022.
Sergio Reyes
Poetry Participant, '20, '21He recently had a poem entitled “EL Silencio” published in the online literary journal TriQuarterly. The first draft of this poem was written for a workshop led by Bob Hass during the 2020 Poetry Workshop.
He almost scrapped the poem after writing the first few lines because he felt that it had nothing to do with the pandemic or was relevant to what everyone was going through during the lockdown. However, he went ahead and wrote it because he needed to turn something in for Saturday session.
Ramona Reeves
Writers Workshops Participant, '18She won the 2022 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her linked short story collection It Falls Gently All Around. It will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2022.
Mark S. Wisniewski
Writers Workshops Participant, '91The inaugural volume of a short story anthology, Coolest American Stories 2022, founded and edited by Mark Wisniewski, has been published and received early praise from Ben Fontain, Lori Ostlund, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and the Santa Fe Reporter. Mark’s goal is to publish “interesting, compelling storytelling that appeals to people from all walks of life,” thus, he hopes, providing a yearly collection of tales that can serve as a common ground for enjoyment rather than divide Americans nationwide.
Claudia Putnam
Writers Workshops participant '12Her debut collection, The Land of Stone and River, won the Moon City Press poetry prize and is now available for preorder, to be published in March, 2022.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staffThe inaugural issue of his newest project, Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Journal of Imagination and Regimagination, features writing by Community of Writers friends Victoria Patterson, Grant Hier, Lisa Alvarez and Mary Camarillo, among OC writers sharing poetry, fiction, and memoir from and about the region.
Claudia Putnam
Writers Workshops '12Her personal essay, Double Negative, won the Split/Lip Press CNF chapbook contest and is forthcoming March 15, 2022. It is available for preorder starting on February 15.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story, “The Girl from Yesterday,” appears in the Hive Avenue Literary Journal.
Robin Dellabough
Writers Workshop participant; Poetry Workshop participant '87, '21Her full length poetry collection, Double Helix, will be published in May, 2022, and is available now for preorder.
Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His new translation of the classical Tamil masterpiece on ethics, power, and love, The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, was published by Beacon Press on January 11, 2022.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Richard Sime
Poetry Participant, '16, '19His second collection of poems, The Next Breath, will soon be his first published book (the first collection is still looking for a home) when Finishing Line Press releases the book this year.
Erin L. McCoy
Poetry Participant, 2016Her poem, “How a lake flash-froze a herd of horses,” was selected by Kaveh Akbar for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021. This is McCoy’s second appearance in the Best New Poets anthology.
Attended with the help of Oakley Hall III Memorial Scholarship
Lester Graves Lennon
Poetry Participant, '99, '01, '03, '05, '07, '09, '11, '13, '15, '17, '19, '20His third book of poetry, Lynchings: Postcards from America, was released the first week of January, 2022. The title section (all started in the Valley) consists of 13 poems that look at 12 lynching photographs, some of which were turned into postcards.
Kelly Houle
Poetry Participant, '20She has poems appearing in the Spring 2022 issues of Press Pause (vol 6), Radar Poetry (Issue 32 XXII), The Round (Issue XXII), Sequestrum (Issue 30), and Visitant (2/23).
Melenie Freedom Flynn
Writers Workshops Participant '09, '10She is the recipient of a generous 2022 Elizabeth George Foundation grant to support the completion of her memoir about growing up in the backseat of Delilah, her family’s big blue Ford LTD, as they moved back and forth between the Rajneesh Commune in Oregon and Las Vegas during the 1980s.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jung Hae Chae
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her essay, “Hole(s),” won the 2021 Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize and appeared in the Winter 2021 issue.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Caroline Frost
Writers Workshop participant '17, '21Her debut novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, was just published by William Morrow. It’s a gritty Texas thriller about a fierce woman and the partner in crime she can’t escape. Caroline workshopped a chapter from her novel at Community of Writers in 2017.
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her newest work of poetry and visual art, Her Read: A Graphic Poem, was published in 2021 by Texas Review Press.
Shangyang Fang
Poetry Workshop participant '19His poetry collection, Burying the Mountain, was recently published by Copper Canyon Press.
Nevada McPherson
Writers Workshop Participant, '08Her novel, Poser, will be published by Outcast Press in February, 2022.
First in a noir series called the Eucalyptus Lane Novels, set in and around Palo Alto, CA, Poser offers a “class-conscious, peeping-Tom gaze into Silicon Valley’s bedrooms and back-alleys, where dreams really do come true and unlikely, life-altering connections are made, for better—or worse.”
Mary Kuryla
Writers Workshop participant '10Her novel Away to Stay comes out with Regal House Press in February, 2022.
Fran Castan
Poetry Participant, '92She won the 2021 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. The award includes publication in The Hippocrates Prize Anthology and 1,000 British pounds. Her poem, “Voice Mail,” was chosen from a record number of entries submitted from 30 countries to The Open Category for Poets. There was a separate division for health professionals and another for young writers of poetry. A video of Fran reading “Voice Mail,” one of a series of poems she wrote while her friend battled pancreatic cancer, can be seen on the society’s website: www.hippocrates-poetry.org.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshops participant, '18Her short story collection, Proof of Me and Other Stories, is now available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble.com. It will be released by New American Press in Philadelphia on March 24, 2022 during AWP. To preorder: tinyurl.com/5f58mcf4
Neysa King
Poetry Participant '20Her first poetry chapbook, Rainbow Body, is now available for purchase. This 12-poem collection tells the story of self-discovery amidst the sex and lights of Miami Beach. You can get your copy at your local bookstore or at any online retailer. Visit www.neysaking.com/rainbow body or follow Neysa on IG @neysaking for more details.
Anara Guard
Writers Workshops Participant, '16Her debut novel, Like A Complete Unknown, will be published in March, 2022 by New Wind Publishing.
Martina Clark
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Her memoir, My Unexpected Life: An International Memoir of Two Pandemics, HIV and COVID-19, has just won an award from POZ Magazine for 2021 Best in Literature. While it holds less literary weight, it does hold high endorsement from the community of people living with HIV which, considering the subject matter of Clark’s memoir and her own life with HIV, it sends a resounding endorsement from a key readership.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry participantHer self-published picture book, The Story of Doves, won Honorable Mention in the 2021 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards for Picture Books 5 & Younger.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant '19His short story “The Sensible Gardener” appears in the December 2021 issue of Anti-Heroin Chic.
Jan Verberkmoes
Poetry Participant, '17Her debut poetry collection, Firewatch, will be published by Fonograf Editions on December 7th, 2021.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Neysa King
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her first chapbook of poetry, Rainbow Body, will be released on December 12, 2021.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His short story, ‘The Queen of Artichoke Hearts’ was published in the inaugural online issue of The Other Side of Hope, a new literary magazine in Britain dedicated to refugee and immigrant writing.
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15,'19His chapbook Eye, Romanov was published in July as one of the James Tate Prize’s shared winners (SurVision Books). His chapbook Bayou Oncology will be published in 2022 with Osmanthus Press.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant '14His commentary “The Queens on the Throne of Kings,” written to mark Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee (70 years on the throne) which falls on Feb 6, 2022, was published in Merion West on November 8.
Molly Giles
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHer fifth story collection, Wife with Knife, won the Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize and is being published both by Leapfrog Press in the US in November 2021 and by Can of Worms Press in the UK in 2022.
A.W. “Tony” Scott
Screenwriting Workshop Participant '12His satirical short film “Representation Matters?” was named “Best Short Film” at the Atman Film Festival in Los Angeles on 10/31/21. The film also garnered nominations for “Best Script”, “Best Actor”, and won for “Best Actress” at the Atman Film Festival. The film has also been screened at the Buenos Aries Film Festival and Osaka International Film Festival, and several other festivals in the United States, earning nominations for “Best Film”, “Best Script” and “Best Director”.
Freeman Ng
Writers Workshop participant '19His debut picture book, a biography of the seminal haiku poet Matsuo Basho (written entirely in haiku, of course!) was released by Stone Bridge Press on October 19, 2021.
A.W. “Tony” Scott
Screenwriting Workshop Participant '12He and his writing partner Jean Su’s pilot script “Leading Edge”, an Asian female-led one hour drama television series set in Silicon Valley, was named “Outstanding Drama Pilot” at the Catalyst Story Institute 2021 Content Festival (formerly ITV Fest) for television and web series content.
Jackie Davis Martin
Writers Workshop Participant '14Her novel Stopgaps was published in May, 2021 and is available through Bookbaby. com or Amazon.com.
Alison Turner
Poetry Participant '10Her debut collection, The Second Split Between, selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2021 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets, was published in November 2021 by Catamaran.
Chelsea B. DesAutels
Poetry Workshop Participant, '18Her first poetry collection, A Dangerous Place, was published by Sarabande Books in October, 2021.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop Participant, '14His short story “New Lives, Old Habits” was published in the Autumn 2021 issue of Spellbinder magazine in the United Kingdom.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop Participant, '19His short story “The Stonecutter’s Wife” appears in Otoliths.
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop participant '19Her debut novel, Sirens and Muses, will be published by Penguin Random House in July, 2022.
Louis Edwards
Writers Workshop teaching staff '06, '10, '22His novel, Ramadan Ramsey, was recently selected by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the 20 best works of fiction of 2021.
T.A. Niles
Memoir and Nonfiction Workshop participant '21A play he co-wrote with Linda C. Lederman, An Attitude of Gratitude, will be performed virtually on November 6. To register for the live performance, visit this link.
Amanda Moore
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her newest book of poetry, Requeening, which was selected by Ocean Vuong as a National Poetry Series winner, was published on October 26, 2021 by Ecco.
Tom Lutz
Writers Workshop teaching staff '17, '19, '21The third volume of his travel series, The Kindness of Strangers, was published in October, 2021.
Holaday Mason
Poetry Workshop participant '00, '06, '19Her work is featured in the upcoming anthology, What Falls Away is Always: Writers Over 60 on Writing and Death. There is an in-person publication reading at Village Well Bookstore this Wednesday, October 27, in Culver City.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant '00Her children’s picture book, Critters in the Neighborhood Come and See with Me, is now available.
Meghan Robins
Writers Workshops Participant, '15Her short essay “Being a Woman is Like Making French Onion Soup” won first place in the WOW! Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest.
Attended with the help of Alexander Cushing Memorial Scholarship for Locals
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writer's Workshop Participant, '17Her piece “On Teaching at the End of the World” was recently published in Literary Hub’s series “Teaching Through a Pandemic” on October 18, 2021.
Attended with the help of Ancinas Scholarship
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry participant '00The sequel to her picture book, The Story of Doves: Part Two, is out now!
Michelle Bitting
Poetry Participant '05She was short-listed for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 Coniston Prize, Ruminate’s “The Waking” Flash Prose Contest, and the 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04; Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '15, '16, '18, '19, '20, '21Her feature in Alta Journal, “The Safe Place That Became Unsafe,” won Folio’s national award in the category of Best Investigative Reporting. This is the story about a predatory pastor who abused generations of Chinese boys and a follow-up to her book, The White Devil’s Daughters.
Tiphanie Yanique
Writers Workshop participant '05; Writers Workshop teaching staff '15, '21Her newest novel, Monster in the Middle, was recently published by Riverhead Books.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant '93; Co-director of the Fiction WorkshopHer short story, “Everyone was Singing Freiheit,” appears in the fall 2021 issue of Air/Light magazine.
Nicholas Nichols
Poetry Workshop participant '19They were recently named the associate editor of The Offing, an online literary magazine that publishes creative writing in all genres and art in all media. “The Offing publishes work that challenges, experiments, provokes — work that pushes literary and artistic forms and conventions.”
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshop participant '14He was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers Studio, in Nottingham, England. His story, ‘The Worth of a Miracle’ was included in the prize anthology Black Lives. An audio recording of the story has been posted on the Nottingham City Libraries website as part of Black History Month (celebrated in October in Britain) & can be accessed here all October.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshop Participant, '92Her collection of stories,The High Price of Freeways, is co-winner of this year’s Tartt Fiction Award. Livingston Press, from the University of West Alabama, will publish this collection in June, 2022.
Rowena Leong Singer
Writers Workshop Participant '19Her novel manuscript, All Manner of Beasts, has been selected as the winner in literary fiction in the 2021 Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest. In this novel, a wife becomes the hero to the husband who thought she needed saving in the midst of Japanese-occupied Philippines during World War II, while soldiers hunt for guerrillas and their supporters, making this couple their target. The excerpt she submitted for this contest is a revised version of the one she submitted for critique at the Community of Writers summer Fiction workshop in 2019.
Mandy Gardner
Writers Workshops Participant '17Her piece, “Recovery from Simultaneous Stroke and Cardiac Arrest,” a humorous take on the traditional medical abstract and based on a true story, was recently published in the Maine Review.
John Foran
Writers Workshop participant '13His newest novel, A Mistaken Hostage, was published in September, 2021.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Her short story, “Dead Eddie” will be in the 150th anniversary anthology of the Elm Leaves Journal out of Buffalo State.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation scholarship
Joshua Ferris
Writers Workshop participant '03His newest novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes, was published in September, 2021, by Little, Brown and Company.
Amanda Moore
Poetry Workshop (Virtual Valley), 2021Amanda Moore’s debut collection, Requeening, selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2020 National Poetry Series was published in October 2021 by HarperCollins/Ecco.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant '92Judy Juanita’s poetry collection, Manhattan My Ass, You’re in Oakland, won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Many of the poems appear in New Verse News online. Her short story collection, The High Price of Freeways, won the Tartt Fiction Prize 2021 at the University of West Alabama [UWA] and will be published by Livingston Press [UWA] in 2022.
Elder Gideon
Poetry '21 (Virtual Valley)Elder Gideon’s debut poetry collection Aegis of Waves was published by Atmosphere Press, with a book launch at the Sacramento Poetry Center in August.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop Participant 1993, 94, 97, Teaching StaffCai Emmons’ fifth book of fiction, the novel Sinking Islands, was published on Sept. 14, 2021. In addition, she has two novels forthcoming in 2022, Unleashed from Dutton, and Hair On Fire from Red Hen Press.
Deborah Dashow Ruth
Poetry Participant. 1991, ‘92, '93, ‘95, ‘98, '00, ‘01, ‘05, ‘08, ‘13, ‘15, ‘17, ‘21A short play by Deborah Dashow Ruth is a winner in the Chameleon Theatre Circle’s 22nd Annual New Play Contest. The play is titled “The Previous Incident Versus a Recent Development,” and will be streamed sometime in the fall. Also, one of her poems was accepted for the debut issue of the Thuya Poetry Review, a new journal.
Tiphanie Yanique
Writers Workshops Participant '05/ Writers Workshops Staff '15, '21Tiphanie Yanique’s new novel, Monster in the Middle, will be published by Riverhead Books on October 19, 2021.
Stella Santamaria
Poetry Workshop Participant (Virtual Valley), 2021Two of Stella Santamaria’s poems were published in The Acentos Review, September 2021 issue after attending Community of Writers, Poetry Program in the Summer of 2021 in the Virtual Valley.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Family Scholarship
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, 1972, 1973Terence Clarke’s latest novel is The Moment Before, was published September 15. Renowned Parisian artist Yvette Roman suffers from epileptic seizures that are preceded by extraordinary visions. Much of her work is based on those visions. While in New York City for an exhibition of her work at The Guggenheim, a painting by Yvette is delivered to her Manhattan gallery. But, Yvette has no recollection of having done it, even though the painting may be her masterwork. Is it hers? Is it a forgery? Is someone trying to destroy Yvette?
This novel is the third of a trilogy. The others are My Father in The Night and When Clara Was Twelve. All three are available everywhere, in print and digital versions.
Martina Clark
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Martina Clark’s memoir, My Unexpected Life: An International Memoir of Two Pandemics, HIV and COVID-19, is being published by Northampton House Press and comes out October 5th, 2021. This memoir was her workshop piece in 2013.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship
Barbara West
Memoir Participant, '21Barbara West interviewed Megan Stielstra for Another Chicago Magazine on the occasion of Northwestern University Press reissuing two of Stielstra’s essay collections. Topics covered include how we take care of ourselves and each other, Moratorium on Shame and Stielstra instructing me to “Please, look at all the asses, Barbara!”
Amanda Moore
Poetry Participant, Virtual Valley '21Amanda Moore’s [Her] debut collection, Requeening, was selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2020 National Poetry Series and will be published in October 2021 by HarperCollins/Ecco.
Lynne A Goldsmith
Poetry Participant.'00Lynne’s has new children’s picture book The Story of Doves was published in 2021.
Debra A. Daniel
Writers Workshops Participant, '01Debra A. Daniel’s novella-in-flash, A Family of Great Falls, was short listed for the Bath Novella-in-flash Award 2021, and was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in the UK. Two of her pieces were also shortlisted for the Smokelong Quarterly Mikey Award, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and long listed for the Reflex Fiction Award.
Attended with the help of Nona Stuck Fiction Scholarship
Andrea Carter Brown
Poetry Participant, '90Andrea Carter Brown’s fourth poetry collection, September 12, was published by The Word Works in September 2021 to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Swathi Desai
Writer's Workshop Participant '17, '18Swathi Desai’s short story, “A Girl, Almost Ten”, was featured in the May 2021 issue of Faultline. https://issuu.com/faultlinejournal/docs/faultline30printfinal
Cathy Park Hong
Staff Poet: 2011, 2016Cathy Park Hong has been included in Time Magazine’s 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2021!
Forrest Gander
Staff Poet: 2010, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021Forrest Gander’s collection Twice Alive, has been long-listed for this year’s National Book Award in Poetry. His poem “Post-Fire Forest,” was published last spring in The New Yorker.
Peggy Dobreer
Poetry Workshop participant '21Her newest book of poetry, Forbidden Plums: Poems in Quarantine, was recently published by Glass Lyre Press. It is a collection of poetry written during the first 40 days of quarantine in 2020.
Rachel Hinton
Poetry Participant, '11Her debut poetry collection, Hospice Plastics, was selected by Emma Bolden as the winner of the Cowles Poetry Prize and will be published by Southeast Missouri State University Press in October, 2021. Mary Szybist called Hospice Plastics “that rare collection that I’ve not been able to stop re-reading.” This somewhat autobiographical collection of poetry focuses on the illnesses and deaths of the poet’s parents during her teen years, centering on palliative care and literal plastics: medical tools and supplies—artificial, grotesquely present, weirdly funny, sublimely comforting.
David Mills
Poetry Participant, '21His poetry collection, Boneyarn, was a June bestseller at Small Press Distribution. This collection is the first book of poems about slavery in New York City, where the oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located. If you are interested in a signed copy, you can email David at edgarallanpoit@yahoo.com. Boneyarn is also available at Small Press Distribution and Amazon.
Attended with the help of Veteran's Poetry Scholarship
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop participant '93, '94, '98; Writers Workshop teaching staff '08, '10Her newest novel, Sinking Islands, will be published by Red Hen Press in September, 2021.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshops Participant, '00; Alumni Reading Series participant '04;Her eighth book, The Postmistress of Paris, has been named a Publisher’s Weekly Notable Book for Fall/Winter 2021. The novel, inspired by the efforts of real-life Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold’s efforts to rescue artists, writers, and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France, will be published by HarperCollins November 30, 2021, and in multiple translations. Her most recent novel, the international bestseller and National Jewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London, has now been published in 17 languages, and will be translated into French, Hebrew, and Turkish in the coming year.
Tory Adkisson
Poetry Workshop participant '11His first book of poems, The Flesh Between Us, selected by Brian Turner as the winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, is forthcoming from SIU Press this October.
Paco Márquez
Poetry Participant, '12He has two new poems in the current issue of The Literary Review.
Antonio Lopez
Poetry Participant '17His debut collection of poetry, Gentefication, is coming out through Four Way Books September 15, 2021. It was selected by Gregory Pardlo as the winner of the 2019 Larry Levis Prize in Poetry.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop participant ‘00; Published Alumni Reading Series ‘03Her most recent novel, The Postmistress of Paris (HarperCollins, November, 2021) was included on Publishers Weekly’s notable literary fiction for fall 2021, and received a starred review praising its “lyrical, thought-provoking prose” and concluding, “This sterling portrait of a complex woman stands head and shoulders above most contemporary WWII fiction.” Meg’s international bestseller and National Jewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London is now forthcoming or published in 20 languages.
Kate Nason
Writer's Workshop Participant '18Her debut memoir, Everything is Perfect, narrated by the author, was released by Audible on August 5th.
Manjula Stokes
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '11Her novel, Celeste & Chris, workshopped at Community of Writers, was recently published.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant 08His essay “Places of Worship” appeared in Penmen Review on June 11, 2021. His essay “One Year After the Break-in” was published by Eclectica Magazine Vol.25, No.3 (July/August 2021).
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “The Saint” was published online in the summer 2021 issue of Baltimore Review, and will be included in the magazine’s annual print anthology. Also published online is an audio recording (check the horizontal black bar at the bottom of the screen) of Gaitonde reading his story, with music by Lydian Nadhaswaram.
Danusha Laméris
Poetry Participant, '00Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award, and was the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant, '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her first novel, Italian Love Cake (Bordighera Press, 2021), about a young Italian American woman struggling to save her family’s store on the eve of WWII, will be translated into French and published by Éditions Anne Carrière, Spring 2022.
Alison Turner
Poetry Participant '10Her manuscript The Second Split Between was selected by Dorianne Laux to be the winner of the 2021 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets. The collection will be published by Catamaran in the fall of 2021.
Barry Garelick
Writers Workshops Participant '92His book Out on Good Behavior: Teaching Math While Looking Over Your Shoulder was published by John Catt Educational, in January, 2021.
Paul Burgoyne
Fiction Workshop participant '10His novel, Two Seasons, workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2010, was recently published and is now available on Amazon.
DeWitt Henry
Writers Workshop Teaching StaffThe concluding collection of his trilogy of memoirs, Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays, was published in April, 2021, by MadHat Press, with an introduction by John Skoyles.
Anne Chadwick
Writers Workshops Participant '02, '04Splitting Heirs, written and illustrated by Anne Chadwick (McCaa Books, July, 2021), reimagines her grandfather’s legal quest to find the rightful heirs of mysterious loner. In 1923, a puritanical lawyer teams with a profligate genealogist on an odyssey from Los Angeles to Paris and Provence, where they encounter characters ranging from grateful to greedy and sympathetic to seductive. This historical courtroom fiction explores multicultural perspectives on families and kinship.
Lynne Thompson
Poetry Participant, '97, '04In February 2021, she was appointed Poet Laureate for the city of Los Angeles by Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Andrew Tonkovich
1993His short story “Bone Saw,” a fantastical political meditation responding to the murder of journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi appears in the recent Technology issue of ZYZZYVA.
Hari B Khalsa
Poetry Participant '03, '06Her chapbook of poems, She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep, won the 2020 Tebot Bach Clockwise Chapbook Contest and was published in July, 2021.
Marcia Meier
Writers Workshop participant, 2019Her latest book, Face, A Memoir (January 2021, Saddle Road Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Eric M. Hoffer Book Award grand prize, and won honorable mention in the memoir category. Her essat, “Skin Craft,” which is about her relationship with her surgeon and derived from the book, was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Short Memoir Prize, and is in the latest edition of Reed Magazine.
Corey Campbell
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “Outside the Mayan” recently appeared in Story Issue 10.
Attended with the help of Isobel English Scholarship
Lawrence Coates
Fiction Workshop participant '17His story “The Ferry and the Road” appeared in the April 2021 issue of Story. An excerpt of this story was workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2017.
Joseph Holt
Writers Workshop Participant, '18His debut story collection, Golden Heart Parade, will be published by Santa Fe Writers Project in September, 2021. Golden Heart Parade was a winner of the SFWP Literary Awards, which were judged by Carmen Maria Machado. In her comments, Machado wrote, “I loved this collection—it’s raw, dark, and surprisingly funny. . . . There’s so much precision and verve in these stories. I was captivated the entire way through.”
Nawaaz Ahmed
Writers Workshops Participant, '11His debut novel, Radiant Fugitives, following three generations of a Muslim Indian family confronted with a nation on the brink of change in Obama-era San Francisco and Texas, was published by Counterpoint Press on August 3, 2021.
Attended with the help of Ford scholarship
Gerald Haslam (1937-2021)
Writers Workshop teaching staff '05, '09, '10He is the winner of the 2021 AASLH Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement, in recognition of his decades-long career.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant; Writers Workshop co-directorHer article “A reading guide to legendary Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez” was recently published in the Los Angeles Times Books section.
Cory Wilson
Writer's Workshop Participant, '15He has signed an agreement with Los Angeles based publisher Mystic Boxing Commission. His debut novel, A Kiss Away, will be released Fall, 2021.
Wendy Voorsanger
Writers Workshops Participant '16 or '17Her historical novel, Prospects of a Woman, published in October, 2020 from She Writes Press, has won 7 awards: 2021 IPPY Awards Gold Winner in Best Regional Fiction-West-Pacific, 2021 Independent Press Awards Winner in Western Fiction, 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in Regional Fiction, 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in First Novel, 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Western Fiction, 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Regional Fiction: West, and 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Book Interior Design: Fiction.
Lester Graves Lennon
Poetry Participant, '99, '01, '03, '05, '07, '09, '11, '13, '15, '17, '19, '20His poem,”Frank Embree Standing on Buggy Facing Camera Fayette, Missouri, July 22,1899 (Photographer Unknown)” which was first written during Poetry Week at the Community of Writers was published by Literary Matters.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshop Participant: '11, '12, '14, '16Her essay “Dancing on the Blade” won the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award in Nonfiction and appears in the spring 2021 issue of Under the Sun.
Attended with the help of 2011: George Pascoe Miller; 2012: Carlisle Family; 2014: Eshleman Scholarship
Diane P Wolff
Writers Workshop Participant '83; Screenwriters Workshop Participant '84She did not win the Buchanan Prize of the Association for Asian Studies for her book, Batu, Khan of the Golden Horde: The Mongol Khans Conquer Russia. As they say in Hollywood, it was an honor to be invited to submit, and there are four more books in her Silk Road Series: The Heirs of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan). She did do a virtual talk for the American Center for Mongolian Studies to launch the book and it has been peer reviewed in Education about Asia, for use as a course book in global history.
David Mills
Poetry Participant '92, '21A finalist for the Crab Orchard Review and Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, his third collection, Boneyarn, came out in April 2021 from Ashland University Press. It is the first book of poems about slavery in New York City where the oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73His new novel, The Moment Before, will be published on September 1, 2021. It is the third of a trilogy. The others are My Father in The Night and When Clara Was Twelve.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop Participant, '17Her short story “Patroness” appears in the latest issue of Pacifica Literary Review.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant '07, '10, '14, '17Her chapbook, Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, won the Heartland Review 2020 chapbook prize.
Tracy Fuad
Poetry Participant '17Her debut collection of poetry, about:blank, was chosen by Claudia Rankine as the 2020 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize and will be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2021. The book is available for pre-sale now.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Alicia Hokanson
Poetry participant '86, '87, '88, '90, '98Her new collection, Perishable World, was published by Pleasure Boat Studio press in May, 2021.
Jen Siraganian
Poetry Workshop participant '12, '14She was recently inducted as the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos in April 2021. Selected by the mayor and members of the Los Gatos Library Board and Arts and Culture Commission after an unanimous vote, she will serve a three-year term promoting poetry and literature in the community.
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshop Participant, ‘07, ‘11Her short story collection, A Place Remote, (West Virginia University Press) has won a Silver IPPY in the Great Lakes – Best Regional Fiction category.
Michelle Ruiz Keil
Writers Workshop participant, 2014Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale “Brother and Sister,” Michelle Ruiz Keil’s second novel, Summer in the City of Roses, follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early ’90s Portland. It will be available July 6, 2021 wherever books are sold.
Lois Rosen
Her new book of poetry, Diving and Rising, was recently published by Finishing Line Press.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshops Participant '87, frequent Writers Workshops Special Guest, Member of Board of DirectorsA new documentary, Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir, recently premiered on PBS. Amy Tan is an intimate portrait of the groundbreaking writer that interweaves archival imagery, including home movies and personal photographs, animation and original interviews to tell the inspiring story of Tan’s life and career. To watch, click here.
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
Poetry Participant, '19An artifact of erasure at once poetry and visual art, Her Read, a graphic poem by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth will be published in full color and hardback by Texas Review Press in June, 2021. In the tradition of reusing canvases, with correction fluid, scalpel & embroidery floss, Steinorth transforms a tome of art criticism, The Meaning of Art by Herbert Read, into feminist verse. Though the maternal body appears with frequency in Read’s illustrated text which spans from prehistory to the modern age, he includes zero female artists. Her Read, a graphic poem, is an excavation of buried voices– a reclamation of bodies framed in gilt & an homage to those whose arts remain unsung.
Attended with the help of I did (blessedly) receive a scholarship, which made attendance possible, but I cannot seem to locate the name!
K.M. English
Poetry Participant, '16Her debut full-length collection, Wave Says, was published by Kore Press on May 15, 2021.
Attended with the help of Cushing Scholarship!
Shangyang Fang
Poetry Participant, '19His poetry collection, Burying the Mountain, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in October, 2021.
Attended with the help of The Sharon Olds Honorary Scholarship
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant 2007, 2010,2014,2017Her chapbook, Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, was awarded the Heartland Review Chapbook Award for Poetry 2020, and recently published. The chapbook was also a Main Street Rag Finalist.
Mary Dixie Carter
Writers Workshops Participant '17Her debut novel The Photographer will be published by Minotaur Books/ St. Martin’s Press (U.S.) on May 25, 2021 and by Hodder Books (UK) on May 13, 2021.
Laura Otis
Writers Workshops Participant, '08, '11She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2021-2022 to work on a book she is calling The Neuroscience of Craft. The book will analyze contemporary fiction-writers’ techniques for helping readers to blend senses in their imaginations.
Stella Beratlis
Poetry Participant, '07, '12Her second poetry collection, Dust Bowl Venus, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in May, 2021.
Pablo J Lopez
Poetry Participant, '08His book Structures the Moment was published by the Los Angeles press Anonymous Energy.
Lynne Goldsmith
poetry participantHer poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Distinguished Favorite in the 2021 Independent Press Awards.
Marc Jampole
Writers Workshop participant '05His first novel, The Brothers Silver, was published by Owl Canyon Press. The Brothers Silver follows the lives of two brothers who grow up in a family haunted by mental illness, drug abuse, and violence.
Anthony S. Abbott
Poetry Participant, '91/'02His new collection Dark Side of North was published in January, 2021 by Press53.
Casey Guerin
Writers Workshop Participant ’19Her short story “What Consumes You” won the 2020 Greensboro Review Robert Watson Literary Prize and appears in the Spring 2021 issue, as well as online.
Claire Boyles
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her debut short story collection, Site Fidelity, is coming June 15, 2021 from W.W. Norton.
Monica West
Writers Workshop participant '09, '12Her novel, Revival Season, will be published by Simon and Schuster on June 15, 2021.
Noel Obiora
Writers Workshops Participant, '09,'10His first novel, A Past That Breathes, will be published by Rare Books, Inc on May 11, 2021.
Chaney Kwak
Fiction, 2012His debut memoir, The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship, comes out from Godine in June, 2021. A tragicomic story about an (almost) sinking cruise ship, The Passenger journeys from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco.
Attended with the help of Scholarship recipient (and I thank The Community's generosity in the book's acknowledgements)
Josephine Ensign
Writers Workshops Participant, 2013Her forthcoming narrative history book, Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City, (August 3, 2021 pub date) from Johns Hopkins University Press is now available for pre-sale.
Danusha Laméris
Poetry Participant, '00She will be reading on May 16th with Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield, Marie Howe, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Donations to this event will benefit the S.H.E. students, young women from the Maasai tribe who have escaped Female Genital Mutilation and early childhood marriage.
Mark Coggins
Writers Workshops Participant 1996, Screenwriting Workshop Participant 2001His newest book, Street Stories, a street photography monograph, will be published by Poltroon Press in May, 2021.
Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Poetry Participant, '19Her new collection, a more perfect Union, (Mad Creek Books, an imprint of Ohio State University Press) was selected by Kathy Fagan for the 2019 OSU Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. It was published in February, 2021 and is available now!
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship
Leslie Hsu Oh
2020, 2019 Writers Workshops ParticipantA chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published in the February 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure.
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship
Stacy D Flood
Writers Workshop Participant, '98An unanchored traveler meets devastating consequences as he searches for a new life in The Salt Fields, a debut work of prose from Stacy D. Flood, a stark and poignant Southern Gothic novella focused on the African American Great Migration after the Second World War, and a work that will leave readers thinking long after the final page.
Attended with the help of Getty Scholarship
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Poetry Participant, '97, '12Her new poetry collection, West: Fire Archive at Jack London State Historic Park was published by the Center for Literary Publishing (Mountain/West Poetry Series) in March 2021
Ron Nyren
Writers Workshops Participant, '94Ron Nyren’s novel The Book of Lost Light was the finalist for the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant, '12His first full-length poetry book, Beyond That Hill I Gather, will be published by Finishing Line Press in May, 2021. The book features portrait poems of notable women.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her novel, Italian Love Cake, is forthcoming from Bordighera Press in May, 2021.
Tamsin Smith
Poetry Participant, '21Her third poetry collection, Displacement Geology, has been published by fmsbw press.
Tamsin Smith
Poetry Participant, '21Her first work of fiction, XISLE, a novel, has been published by fmsbw press.
RONALD ALEXANDER
Summer 1995His story, “Marrow,” appears in the January 2021 issue of The Hong Kong Review. Alexander is an instructor at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program in Los Angeles.
Jenny Pritchett
Writers Workshops Participant '04Her new book, You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood, was published by Running Press/Hachette in May, 2021. An audiobook is also available.
Attended with the help of Walker Foundation Scholarship
Eileen Garvin
Writers Workshop Participant '16Her debut novel, The Music of Bees, will be published on April 27 by Dutton.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '97 , Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer new novel, Sinking Islands, will be published in September, 2021 by Red Hen Press. It has been chosen as the Rumpus Book Club pick for July, and she will be interviewed on A Mighty Blaze by Lisa Genova on April 29.
Tiphanie Yanique
Her new novel, Monster in the Dark, will be published by Penguin in October, 2021.
Kari Flickinger
Poetry Participant '17Her debut poetry collection, The Gull and the Bell Tower, was recently published by Femme Salvé Books.
Katherine Field Rothschild
Writing Workshop Participant, 02Her young adult novel, Wider than the Sky, about sisters in the aftermath of their father’s sudden death who discover family secrets, was published by Soho Teen on January 19, 2021.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant. '00Her poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won Book Excellence Finalist Award.
Lynn Gordon
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Her stories appeared in the spring 2021 issues of Prime Number Magazine and The Louisville Review.
Ananda Lima
Poetry Participant, '17Her poetry collection, Mother/land, winner of the Hudson Prize, is on pre-order (October 21) with Black Lawrence Press. Her fiction chapbook Tropicália, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize is on pre-order with Newfound press. Her micro-chapbook, Amblyopia, was published by Bull City Press as part of their INCH series.
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15, '19His chapbook Prodigal Cocktail Umbrella was recently published by Trainwreck Press. His debut full-length collection, Agoreography, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story ‘The Worth of a Miracle’ was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers Studio, Nottingham, England. His story, along with stories of other winners and finalists, have been published in the anthology Black Lives, in the United Kingdom, available as print and Kindle editions.
Joan Steinau Lester
Writers Workshop Participant '03Her memoir, Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, will be published May 18, 2021, from the University of Wisconsin Press. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker says, “This book is the real deal, the way it was. A good book for folks to grow on. I love it.”
Martin J. Smith
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis newest book, Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads, will be published on April 15 by Bower House Books (hardcover) and Tantor Media (audio). This is longtime staff member Smith’s fifth nonfiction book, in addition to his five suspense novels.
Alma Katsu
Her novel, Red Widow, will be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on March 23.
Carol Edgarian
Her new novel, Vera, was recently published by Scribner.
David Loux
His debut novel, Chateau Laux, will be released in April, 2021.
Yang Huang
Writers Workshops Participant,'19Her third literary novel, My Good Son, won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. It was published on April 29, 2021.
“MY GOOD SON is about a tailor named Mr. Cai in post-Tiananmen China and the dreams he holds for his only son, Feng. Mr. Cai schemes with one of his clients, Jude, a gay American expat, to get his son to the States, and the novel, about parental expectations, social class, and sexuality, highlights both the similarities and differences between Chinese and American cultures.”
Attended with the help of Barbara Hall Memorial Scholarship
Kateema Lee
Poetry Participant, '18Her poem “Last Epistle” won the first place prize in the anthology This is What America Looks Like. Kateema’s new collection of poems, Transcript of the Unnamed, explores the “brief, bright lives” of missing and forgotten black women.
Genevieve Kaplan
Poetry Participant, '18Her new chapbook, I exit the hallway and turn right, was published by above/ground press in December, 2020.
Anthony Cody
Poetry Participant '18His debut collection, Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn), was a 2020 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry, Winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Prize, was recently named a 2020 Southwest Book Award Winner from the Regional Border Library Association, longlisted for The Believer Magazine 2020 Editor’s Award in Poetry, and is now a finalist for the Jean Stein Award from PEN/America.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
JoAnne Tompkins
Writers Workshop Fiction Participant, '06, '10Her debut novel, What Comes After, will be published by Riverhead Books on April 13th, 2021.
Sally Van Doren
Poetry Participant, '01,'03,'06Her drawings are featured in the spring 2021 issue of The 2River View.
Heather Altfeld
Poetry Participant, '08, '10, '12, '15Her second book, Post-Mortem, was released April 2, 2021, by Orison Books after winning their annual poetry contest in 2019.
Arisa White
Poetry Participant, 2010Her new memoir, Who’s Your Daddy, was recently published by Augury Books. Who’s Your Daddy ( is a lyrical, genre-bending coming-of-age tale featuring a queer, Black, Guyanese American woman who, while seeking to define her own place in the world, negotiates an estranged relationship with her father.
“A lyric anthem for the fatherless, for seekers of the places and people that made us, for the artists ready to unearth and reshape their own stories. I gulped this exquisite manual like precious medicine, a spell that made me more myself.” —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me
Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship
Brionne Janae
She was recently awarded the 2020 Cave Canem North Western University Press Poetry Prize for her book, Blessed are the Peacemakers.
Ananda Lima
Her new book, Tropicália, was recently published by Newfound.
Ann Tweedy
Poetry Participant, '97, '00, '04, '07, '12, '15, '20Her hybrid chapbook, A Registry of Survival, was recently published by Last Word Press. The chapbook explores her relationship with her mother and how this relationship has been impacted by her mother’s homelessness and mental health struggles.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop Participant 19, 20An excerpt from her memoir and photographs appear in the February 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure Magazine.
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship
Amy Haddad
Poetry ParticipantShe recently received honorable mention in the Backwaters Press Poetry Prize. She will be awarded $1,000 and her manuscript, An Otherwise Healthy Woman, will be published in the spring of 2022. Haddad is a nurse, ethicist and poet who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University in Omaha, NE for 30 years.
Attended with the help of NA
Laura Cresté
Poetry Participant '20Her chapbook, You Should Feel Bad, was selected by Stephanie Burt for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and was published in November 2020.
Attended with the help of Sharon Olds Honorary Scholarship
Mary Freericks
Poetry Participant '89 / '91 / '09Her new poetry memoir, Furs for a Vegetarian, focuses on her artist mother, Sophie, Sonia Avakian, who was born in Moscow, married to escape the Communists and moved to Iran.
E. Martin Pedersen
Writers Workshops Participant, unsure of year, perhaps 2012He published two books of short poems, Bitter Pills and Smart Pills (Cyberwit.net). His full chapbook, Exile’s Choice, is coming soon from Kelsay Books (March, 2021).
Christine Sunderland
Writers Workshops Participant, '05Her novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock 2020), won Finalist and Inspirational, in the Feathered Quill Book Awards. Set in the present in the hills east of UC Berkeley, the story involves a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a Christian geneticist who search for peace and happiness in a culture of chaos. The importance of history, memory, free speech, and human dignity are some of the themes explored.
Lynne Thompson
1997, 2004She was recently named Poet Laureate of Los Angeles by Mayor Garcetti.
Thompson, an Award-winning poet, is nationally recognized as a trailblazer in contemporary literature.
R.O. Kwon
She is the editor of a new collection of stories, Kink, published by Simon and Schuster on February 9, 2021.
Jasmin Darznik
Writers Workshops Participant '06, '10Her novel The Bohemians was published on April 6, 2021, by Ballantine. The novel imagines the friendship between a young Dorothea Lange and her Chinese American assistant in 1920s San Francisco.
Grant Farley
Writers WorkshopsHis novel, Bones of a Saint, will be published by Soho Press March 16, 2021. The opening chapter to this novel was first treated in workshop at the Community of Writers.
Antonia Angress
Writers Workshop Participant, '19Her debut novel Sirens & Muses will be published by Ballantine/Random House in 2022.
Attended with the help of the O'Dwyer Scholarship
Merridawn Duckler
Writers Workshop participant '07Her short story won the Elizabeth Sloane Tyler Memorial Award from Woven Tale Press, judged by Ann Beattie, and appeared in the 2019 issue of Woven Tale magazine.
Merridawn Duckler
Writers Workshop participant '07Her chapbook Idiom recently won the Washburn Prize from Harbor Review.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshop Participant '08He has recently been named a fellow in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard.
Regina Louise
Writers Workshops Participant '01, '14; Screenwriting Participant, '03Her new book, Permission Granted: Kickass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love, will be published by New World Library in June, 2021. Permission Granted illustrates proven paths from “you couldn’t possibly” to “just watch me!” Regina Louise puts a unique spin on tried-and-true techniques of personal growth, coaching readers to deeply understand who they are and what they have been through. From this self-awareness, they can move into self-compassion and learn to give themselves the care and support they may have lacked.
Attended with the help of UC Riverside Scholarship
Marcia Butler
Writer's Workshop Participant '16Her third book, and second novel, Oslo, Maine, releases on March 2, 2021 from Central Avenue Publishing.
Florencia Milito
Poetry Participant, '18Her bilingual poetry collection, Ituzaingó: Exiles and Reveries, was published by Nomadic Press in February, 2021.
Kate Hope Day
Writers Workshop Participant '16; Published Alumni Reading Series '19Her second novel, In the Quick, will be published by Random House on March 2, 2021.
Andrew Nicholls
Fiction Participant, '14He has a new book, Comedy Writer, about techniques and habits of mind for humor writing. The paperback is half craft, including exercises, and half information about markets. It covers TV, monologue, animation, stage and print, expanding on an undergrad course Andrew taught at UC Davis as Artist in Residence in 2019. Andrew was also the former head writer for Johnny Carson.
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshops Participant, '86-89; Screenwriting, '05His new novel, Escape from Castro’s Cuba, will be published by University of Nebraska Press in March,2021, with endorsements from Daniel Silva, Jane Leavy and former big-league pitcher Luis Tiant. Escape is a sequel to his award-winning novel Castro’s Curveball.
Maw Shein Win
Poetry Participant '02She was recently selected as a Spring 2021 Arts Research Center Poetry & the Senses Fellow at UC Berkeley in cohort with Vethea Cerna Cole, Elizabeth Zhiying Feng, reelaviolette botts-ward, Noah Warren, Ramona Nadoff, Ken Ueno, and Sara Mumolo. Win’s poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House from Omnidawn was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Open Book Award.
Julia B Levine
Poetry Workshop Participant, '95Her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, will be released by LSU Press in March, 2021.
Stephanie Austin
Writer's Workshops Participant, '12Her essay “Something I Might Essay” appears in the February 2021 issue of The Sun magazine.
Hanna Bahedry
Writers Workshop Participant ‘19Her short story “Key Change” was recently published in the Maine Review.
Laura Otis
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '11She has just published The Memory Hive, a novel about a woman struggling to survive with an abusive husband, a demented mother, and a demanding job. In a non-linear way, the story unfolds in 50 interconnected episodes, exploring the way that memory works.
Tom Laichas
Poetry Participant '20He is celebrating two publications: Empire of Eden (The High Window Press) and the chapbook Sixty-Three Photographs from the End of a War (3.1 Press). He’ll be reading from both in a solo show online at Beyond Baroque, Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 6 pm Pacific. The event is free, but reservations are required through Eventbrite.
Chad Michael Lange
Writers Workshop Participant, '99, '02, '07His short story “The Tutor” was published in the Winter 2021 issue of Catamaran.
John B. Roberts II
Writers Workshops Participant '18His book, Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Reelection Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferraro, (McFarland 2020) has been optioned by a major television network for a forthcoming series.
Robert Steven Williams
Writers Workshops Participant, '04, 05,He recently launched Gatsby in Connecticut head-on into the global pandemic thinking the film festival circuit might bring attention to his documentary. The film, starring Sam Waterston and narrated by Keir Dullea, made The New Yorker’s Best Movies List for 2020. According to The New Yorker, the film develops in poignant detail the story of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s wild summer of 1920. Available on Amazon Prime, major cable and other digital platforms in the US/Canada. ROW in 2021. Distributed by Vision Films.
Jade Yeung
Poetry Participant, '20She had the honor of reading alongside Patricia Spears Jones, Ali Black, A. Van Jordan, Janice Lowe, Peter Covino, and Michael Broder this year. You can check out the recording here.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Jessi Phillips
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her short story “Anything You Ask Me To”, was a finalist in the Nimrod Literary Awards and appears in the Fall/ Winter 2020 issue.
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop, '17Her short story “Fatherhood” appears online in the December 2020 issue of Hobart.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Sally Charette
Art of the Wild Participant, 1997Her poem “New Moon” appears in Juxtaprose Magazine, Vol. 25, Fall, 2020.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His two-part multimedia essay “Ode to Beethoven” (illustrated, with embedded videos) to mark the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven, was published by Serenade magazine.
Judy Brackett Crowe
Poetry Workshop participant '08, '12, '15, '18, '20Her poems have recently appeared in New World Writing, The Inflectionist Review, Catamaran, and the anthology California Fire & Water.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His essay “The Milk in Many Lands” appeared in the 2020 issue (No: 3) of the literary magazine, Stonecrop.
Katherine Seligman
Writers Workshops Participant '14Her debut novel, At the Edge of the Haight, which won the 2019 PEN/Bellwether prize, will be published by Algonquin Books in January, 2021.
Monika Rose
Poetry Workshop participant '97; Writers Workshop participant '00; Art of the Wild participant '95, '96She wrote and illustrated an early reader children’s book, Bed Bumps, in 2020, published by Manzanita Writers Press. Bed Bumps is a poetic tale of a little boy grappling with organization issues and a mischievous sister.
Carol Orange
Writers Workshop Participant 2013A Discerning Eye by Carol Orange was published by Cavan Bridge Press in October 2020. An audiobook narrated by Campbell Scott and Kathleen McElfresh was launched in December 2020. The story takes off from the tragic robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Jack Estes
Writers Workshops Participant, '98 & ScreenwritingParticipant, '05Jack Estes’ new novel, Searching for Gurney, which follows the lives of three US Marines and a North Vietnamese soldier during the Vietnam war, was published by O’Callahan Press in November 10, 2020.
Anthony Cody
Poetry Participant '18Anthony Cody’s collection Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), was was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America’s Jean Stein Award, and Anthony was named a 2020 Poets & Writers Debut Poet for that collection. To read about his first book and hear him read form his collection visit www.pw.org or pick up the January/February 2021 edition of Poets and Writers.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Jenn Alandy Trahan
Writers Workshops Participant, '08, '17Jenn Alandy Trahan’s short story, “The Freak Winds Up Again,” is the November 2020 issue (#271) of One Story.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Rhoda Huffey
Writers Workshops Participant, '85/ Writers Workshop staff, 2000 onwardRhoda Huffey’s novel 31 Paradiso will be published by Delphinium Books in the spring of 2022.
Attended with the help of attended on UCI scholarship
Marcia Meier
Writers Workshop Participant, '19; Janet Fitch's Writing from the Senses Workshop, '20Her book, Face, A Memoir, will be published Jan. 12, 2021, by Saddle Road Press.
Lucille Lang Day
Writers Workshop participant '78, '79; Poetry Workshop participant '76Her seventh full-length poetry collection, Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place, was published by Blue Light Press in November, 2020.
Judy Juanita
Writers Workshops Participant, '92Her first collection of poetry, Manhattan My Ass, You’re in Oakland, will be published by EquiDistance Press in December, 2020.
Diane Wolff
Writers Workshop Participant '83; Screenwriting Workshop participant '84She will be giving a talk on her new book Batu, Khan of the Golden Horde: The Mongol Khans Conquer Russia for the Virtual Speakers Series of the American Center for Mongolian Studies in Ulan Batur.
This is the first book in her Silk Road Series, about the successors of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan). The other books in the series are forthcoming.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “How Does Your Garden Grow?” appeared in the 2020 issue of the literary magazine, The Broken Plate.
Lorraine Comanor
Writer’s Workshop participant '09Her essay “Walking with Birds,” published in Boulevard, fall 2019, made the Notables of Best American Essays of 2020.
Evan I. Schwartz
Screenwriting Workshop participant '12His debut novel, Revolver, will be published in 2021 by the Concord Free Press.
Swathi Desai
Writers Workshop Participant, '17, '18Her short story “Lady: Part I” appears in the November 2020 issue of the literary magazine Orca.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis short story and novella collection, Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations, was published in November, 2020, from What Books Press. The collection features eight short stories which appeared originally in Ecotone, Juked, Orange Coast Review, Faultline and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and a novella featuring the famous alpine lake. Realism and absurdism, unrealism and political autobiography all mixed up for our weird moment. Cover art by the legendary Gronk.
Colleen Morton Busch
Writers Workshops Participant, '04, '15Her piece about her family’s deliberations over what to do about her father’s Michigan mail-in ballot when it arrived one day after he died in September 2020 appeared in The Washington Post. Her piece about Jane Hirshfield’s latest collection, Ledger, was featured in Orion and Wild Hope earlier this year.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09She judged the 2020 High Plains Book Award for Fiction (winner: Joe Wilkins’ Fall Back Down When I Die). She taught workshops for Hampton Roads Convergence of Writers and the Brandeis National Committee. And she was recently interviewed by Sean Murphy, Executive Director of 1455 Literary Arts, about books, the writing process, and more.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Darien Hsu Gee
Writers Workshop participant '99She will have two new titles published this year: Other Small Histories (Poetry Society of America, 2019 Chapbook Fellowship winner), and Allegiance: Micro Essays, in which she dissects her beliefs and navigates the complexity of family dynamics in search of her identity–– What does it mean to be Chinese American? How are we reflected in the people we love, and us in them? What obligation do we have to those who share our blood, and how does a woman claim her life as her own?
Ellery Akers
Art of the Wild teaching staff '94Her new poetry book, Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, was recently featured in The New York Times Magazine; Naomi Shihab Nye, the NYT editor, described the book as “powerful.”
Amy Elisabeth Davis
Poetry Workshop participant '16, '20; Writers Workshop participant '01Her poem, “As Company,” was recently published in the Southern Humanities Review.
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild, Participant, '92His book-length poem, Azorean Suite/ Suite Açoriana, was published in a bilingual (English/Portuguese) edition by Letras Lavadas in October, 2020.
Natasha Saje
Poetry Participant '93Her memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place, was published by Trinity UP in November, 2020. The chapters contain arguments about immigration, nationality, gender, race, sexual orientation, class, and religion.
Lyndsey Ellis
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Her debut novel, Bone Broth, will be published by Hidden Timber Books in spring 2021. Her short story, “Jazz & Other Words for Love,” appeared in issue 2 of the Community of Writers’ new online literary journal, Omnium Gatherum Quarterly.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship (Waimea Williams)
Ron Nyren
Writers Workshops Participant, '94His debut novel, The Book of Lost Light, won the 2019 Big Moose Prize and will be published by Black Lawrence Press on November 16, 2020. It’s the story of Joseph Kylander, his obsessive photographer father, and the impulsive young cousin helping to raise him, as they take refuge with a group of artists in the Berkeley hills after the 1906 earthquake.
David Kerns
Writers Workshop Participant, '07His novel, Fortnight on Maxwell Street, recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for the best general fiction book of 2018, has been released as an audiobook performed by Chicago voice and stage actor Doug MacKechnie. The novel is a reluctant hero’s journey of fear and courage set in Chicago in the spring of 1968. 24-year-old medical student Nick Weissman spends two weeks delivering babies in the kitchens and bedrooms of the inner-city’s slum tenements. Over his head medically, and unprotected in one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, his character and resourcefulness are tested in the extreme when a national tragedy intervenes.
Jacquelyn Stolos
Writers Workshops Participant '14, '19Jacquelyn Stolos’ debut novel, Edendale, will be published by Creature Publishing on October 20, 2020.
Jessica O’Dwyer
Writers' Workshop Participant '06, '16, '18Her debut novel, Mother Mother, was published by Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press on October 1, 2020.
Josh Folan
Screenwriting Workshop participant, '13His new cynical indie filmmaking case study joint, Still Filmmaking, the Hard Way, is available on Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Scribd, and all the other places humans read things.
Maria Espinosa
Writers Workshop Participant '93Her latest novel, Suburban Souls, was published on October 15, 2020, by Tailwinds Press.
Jesse Nathan
Poetry Workshop Participant, '15, '18His interview with Robert Hass in the Paris Review appeared in the Summer 2020 issue. It is #108 in their “Art of Poetry” series.
Kazim Ali
Poetry Workshop Participant ;98, Poetry Workshop teaching staff '10, '12, '16, '18His newest collection of poetry, The Voice of Sheila Chandra, was published by Alice James Books in October, 2020.
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “The Hardy Girls” appeared in the 2020 spring/summer issue of Maryland Literary Review. His Essay “My Father and Me Too” was published in Green Hills Literary Lantern’s GHLL XXXI (2020).
Alison Turner
Poetry Workshop Participant '10Her long poem, “from the Covid Notebooks,” appears in the 2020 Summer/Fall issue of the American Journal of Poetry.
Mary Kuryla
Fiction Participant, '10; Published Alumni Reading Series '19Her novel, Away to Stay, will be published by Regal House Press in September, 2021.
Thomas Allbaugh
Writers Workshops Participant '13His chapbook, The View from January, was published by Kelsay Books in January, 2020.
Sherah Bloor
Poetry Participant, '18She is the new editor of Peripheries, a Journal of Word and Image published annually by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. The new 2020 issue includes work by Poetry Teaching Staff members, Sharon Olds and Evie Shockley, and Poetry Participants ’18, Brionne Janae, KT (Katie Taylor), and Eden Werring.
Jabari Jawan Allen
Poetry Workshop participant '18He will be teaching an advanced poetry workshop on Wednesdays, November 4 – 18, 2020 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. MST on Zoom with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
Over three sessions, students will explore the erotic god, subversion versus abolition in form, and the contemporization of the sonnet through the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Wanda Coleman, Malachi Black, Phillip B. Williams, Natasha Oladokun, and more. Registration is $109. Learn more and register today at https://piper.asu.edu/classes/jabari-allen/advanced-poetry-workshop
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship Recipient
Paul Watsky
Poetry Participant, '20His work, 4 poems and a short personal essay, appeared in the September 8 Litbreak.
Holiday Reinhorn
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her short story, “Sagrada Familia,” (workshopped at the Community of Writers Summer Workshop in ’17) was featured as ‘Story of The Week’ at Narrative Magazine and appeared in the Fall 2020 issue. Other stories by Holiday are upcoming in the Fall 2020 issue of Ploughshares and the Spring 2021 issue of American Short Fiction.
Andrew Tonkovich
Writers Workshop participant '93; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis short story and novella collection, Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations, arrives in November, 2020, from What Books Press. The collection features eight short stories which appeared originally in Ecotone, Juked, Orange Coast Review, Faultline and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and a novella featuring the famous alpine lake. Realism and absurdism, unrealism and political autobiography all mixed up for our weird moment. Cover art by the legendary Gronk.
Dorothea Bonneau
Writers Workshop Participant '12Her historical fiction, Once in a Blood Moon, was a 2020 American Fiction Winner for the African American Category. The novel is also a 5 Star Reader’s Choice pick.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop Participant, '72,'73A translation of his novel, The Splendid City, to Spanish by Chilean novelist, Jaime Collyer, will be published on December 1, 2020.
Joan Baranow and David Watts
Their documentary film, The Time We Have, is an Official Selection in five festivals and will screen online November 13-14 as part of the UK Film Review Festival.
Wendy Voorsanger
Writers Workshop participant '16Her debut novel, Prospects of a Woman, is available October, 2020 from She Writes Press. A gripping and illuminating window into life in the Old West, Prospects of a Woman is the story of one woman’s passionate quest to carve out a place for herself in the liberal and bewildering society that emerged during the California gold rush frenzy. Featured in BuzzFeed as “New Historical Fiction Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down This Fall.” Favorable Early Reviews: “The author’s language is evocative and beautiful.”—Kirkus. “A lusty, intelligent, and captivating portrait of a woman in early California.”—Foreward. “A fascinating, complex, dark, and beautiful novel.”—Douglas Glover
Lauren Barbato
Writers Workshop participant '17Her essay “What Would You Call It?” appears online at North American Review.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Michelle Latiolais
Writers Workshop teaching staff, special guestHer short fiction will appear in the LA Issue of ZYZZYVA, issue no. 119, due November, 2020.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop '19His short story “A Trip to the Store: A Memoir” appears in VOICES 2020, a themed issue of Dreams, Desires & Delusions from Cold River Press.
Troy Jollimore
Poetry Workshop Participant, '11, '15His poem, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” originally published in ZYZZYVA, was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2020, edited by Paisley Rekdal. His fourth poetry collection, “Earthly Delights,” will appear in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in 2021.
Oakley Hall
Co-Founder of the Community of Writers and Writers Workshops Staff Member.His classic proto-postmodern novel Warlock, is featured in Library of America’s new anthology, The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s & 50, edited by Ron Hansen (September, 2020). The book also includes The Ox-Bow Incident (Van Tilburg Clark), Shane (Schaefer), The Searchers (Le May).
Read Thomas Pynchon’s 1965 review of Warlock.
Aida Salazar
Writers Workshop participant '07Her second novel, Land of the Cranes, was published in September, 2020, from Scholastic Press. It is about a little girl and her pregnant mother who are caged in an immigration detention facility. The book has already gained a starred review from KIRKUS who called it, “powerful… lyrical… soaring…” and another starred review by Publisher’s Weekly who called it “Lyrical, passionate, and all-too timely.” It was a BookCon 2020 Middle Grade Buzz Book and was featured on the Cultural Frontline on the BBC’s World Service’s program Cultural Impact.
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff; Writers Workshop Participant, '91, '92Her poem “On the Origin of Karl Marx” appears in So It Goes, the annual literary journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship and Ancinas scholarship
Claudia Rankine
Poetry Workshop participant '93; Poetry Workshop teaching staff '07Her new book, Just Us: An American Conversation, was recently published by Graywolf Press.
Threa Almontaser
Poetry Workshop participant '19Her upcoming book of poetry, The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press, April, 2021), was recently awarded the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Gwen Goodkin
Writers Workshops Participant, '07, '11Her short story collection, A Place Remote, was published in September, 2020, by West Virginia University Press.
Tyler McAndrew
Writers Workshop Participant, '19His short story, “The Storyteller,” recently appeared on The Baffler.
Attended with the help of Gill Dennis Memorial Scholarship
Caitlin McCarthy
Screenwriters Workshop Participant, '13Her feature screenplay Wonder Drug is now in the works with producer Stephen Nemeth, who she met at the Community of Writers Screenwriters Workshop when he was a featured guest speaker. Director Tom Gilroy will direct the film.
Kimberly Sheridan
Writers Workshop Participant ‘19Her essay, “Restoration,” was published by Entropy Magazine.
Inderjeet Mani
Writers Workshops Participant, '00His novel, Toxic Spirits (Calumet Editions, 2019), set in Thailand, is now being translated into multiple languages. Reviews have included “A complex and enthralling international intrigue with a treasure of remarkable detail” (Frederick Barthelme) and “Mani tells his story in taut, highly descriptive prose, capturing his Thai setting’s cornucopia of sights and tastes” (Kirkus).
Lev Grossman
Writers Workshop Participant '94His novel for children, The Silver Arrow, was published in September by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Mariya Zilberman
Poetry Workshop Participant '20Her poem, “Against Temporality,” won the 2020 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest and will appear in the Winter 2020-2021 issue.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Writers Workshop teaching staff '18, '19; Writers Workshops in the Virtual Valley special guest '20She was recently awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction published in 2019 for her novel The Revisioners.
Donna Miscolta
Writers Workshop Participant '98Her third book, Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, was published by Jaded Ibis Press in September, 2020. It was listed in Ms. Magazine’s September 2020 Reads and Parade Magazine’s 20 New Fall Books From Latinx Writers.
Linda Olson
Writers Workshop Participant, '13Her debut memoir, Gone, will be published on October 27, 2020, from She Writes Press.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His essay “Lydian Nadhaswaram: From Musician to Actor – and Back” (on a child music prodigy in India making his movie debut) was published in Serenade magazine on Sep 3, 2020.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Poetry Participant, '97, '12Her new biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, was published in September, 2020, by University of Oklahoma Press. Charmian Kittredge London (1871–1955) was the epitome of a modern woman. Free-spirited and adventurous, she defied modern expectations of femininity. Today she is best known as the wife of the famous American author Jack London, yet she was a literary trailblazer in her own right. This biography is the first book to tell the complete story of Charmian’s life—freed from the shadow cast by her famous husband. In this biography, Iris Jamahl Dunkle draws the reader into Charmian’s private and public worlds, underscoring her literary achievements and the significant role she played in promoting her husband’s legacy.
Lucinda Watson
Poetry Workshop Participant '91, '92, '96, '98, '02, '04Her first book of poems, The Favorite, was published by Golden Antelope Press in September, 2020.
A.R. Taylor
Her new novel, Jenna Takes The Fall, was published September 1, 2020 from She Writes Press.
Caroline Kim
Poetry Workshop participant '18, '19Her short story collection, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, winner of the 2020 Drue Heinz Prize in Literature, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2020.
Swathi Desai
Writers Workshop Participant ‘17, ‘18Her short story, “The Big Men”, appears in the June 30th, 2020 issue of Prometheus Dreaming.
Magdalena Montagne
Poetry Workshop Participant '97Magdalena Montagne (formerly Mary Renga) is happy to announce that her first collection of poems, Earth, My Witness, will be published in August, 2020, by Finishing Line Press.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshop participant '11, '12, '14, '16Her essay “Destination: Okay” will be featured in a new anthology What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories about Premature Birth, due out November, 2020, from Melville House and available now for pre-orders. Subject matter from this essay—specifically the science of language acquisition— was originally workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2011.
Attended with the help of 2011: George Pascoe Miller Memorial Scholarship; 2012: Carlisle Family Scholarship; 2014: Eschelman Scholarship
Rashaan Alexis Meneses
Writers Workshop Participant '17She was recently honored as a 2020 Bainbridge Resident for The Seventh Wave, where her latest essay, “Foreign Domestic” is featured in their 11th Issue.
Attended with the help of The Ancinas Scholarship
John Roberts II
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Part memoir, part detective story and part political thriller, his non-fiction book Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Reelection Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferraro was published by McFarland & Company, Inc. in July, 2020.
Armen Davoudian
Poetry Workshop participant '18His chapbook, Swan Song, won the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook competition and is available for pre-order from Bull City Press.
Attended with the help of Barbara E. Hall Memorial Scholarship
lynne goldsmith
Poetry Workshop Participant '00Lynne Goldsmith’s poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Finalist Award in the International Book Awards.
Barbara B Ristine
Writers Workshops Participant '18Her novel, Faces of War, has been selected as a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s 2020 RISING STAR Award for Unpublished Women’s Fiction.
Barbara Fischkin
Writer's Workshop Participant '95Her piece on “Autism in the Time of Covid” was published in Statorec, as part of a 31-author series on the Pandemic – so that we won’t forget.
Jeff W. Bens
Writers Workshop participant '93His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out September 15, 2020, from Blackstone Publishing.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “At Home and Away,” set against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent memory, the Sri Lanka civil war, was published in the Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Epiphany.
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction Participant '93His short story “Metonymy” was a finalist in the Solstice Summer Fiction Contest, and appears in the magazine’s current issue.
Jeff Bens
Writers Workshop participant '93His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.
Lori Tobias
Writers Workshop participant '94, '95Her memoir, Storm Beat: A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast, is due out in September, 2020, from Oregon State University.
Khadijah Queen
Poetry Workshop participant '09Her new book of poetry, Anodyne, will be published by Tin House Books in August, 2020.
Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship
Joanna Solfrian
Poetry Workshop participant '06Her second book of poems, The Mud Room, was released by MadHat press in April, 2020.
Judy Batalion
Writers Workshop participant '11Her new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, will be published by HarperCollins in June, 2020.
Alice Jones
Poetry Participant, '88, '89; Teaching Staff, Writing the Medical ExperienceHer book, Vault, was published on July 1, 2020, by Apogee Press.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop participant '18Her short story, “The Duck Walk” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Phoebe Journal.
Cornelius Eady
Poetry Workshop Teaching Staff '92, '99, '01, '04He was interviewed for Yale University’s Beinecke Library Corona Series. He discussed the on-going music project he is working on remotely with his folk trio (himself, with guitarists Lisa Liu and Charlie Rauh). Check it out here.
Lise Haines
Writers Workshop participant '99She has an essay up on the Broad Street Blog.
Penny Cagan
Poetry Participant '92, '93; Writers Workshop participant '92She has entered into a 7 1/2 year cycle called Daf Yomi, where people around the world read the same portion of the Talmud each day. She has been writing daily about the readings from a literary perspective in the Times of Israel. Her blog can be found here.
Lorraine Comanor
Writers Workshop participant '09Her essay “Walking with Birds” was published in the Fall 2019 issue of Boulevard.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop participant '14, '19She recently received 2 gold medals from the NATJA Travel Media Awards. “Painting the Next Chapter,” published in Adventure Journal won gold in Lifestyle, Personality & Profiles and “What It’s Like to Break Bread in the Desert” in Saveur Magazine won gold in Family Travel.
Attended with the help of The O’Dwyer Scholarship
Grace Talusan
Writers Workshops Participant '98; Published Alumni Reading Series '19The paperback of her memoir, The Body Papers, was published by Restless Books in March 2020 with a new afterword, reading guide, and interview. Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan’s memoir The Body Papers bravely explores her experiences with sexual abuse, depression, cancer, and life as a Filipino immigrant, supplemented with government documents, medical records, and family photos. The memoir is on the Must Reads (long list) for the 20th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards.
Anthony Cody
Poetry Participant '18His debut Borderland Apocrypha was recently published in April 2020 with Omnidawn. The collection was the winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Prize by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. In her citation Berssenbrugge writes, “Intense feeling, empathy, rage, compassion swerves language, torques the page. History and data inflict. Intelligence composes, sequence wrestles with violence. It must be witnessed, expressed. The love is expression. Witness is form.” The collection is now available for purchase.
Attended with the help of Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholarship
Vonetta Young
Writers Workshops Participant, ‘18Her short story, “Sand and Salt,” from which she began the novel chapter she workshopped at the Community of Writers, was published in the anthology, Furious Gravity in May, 2020. She also published another short story, “As Far Away,” in Gargoyle issue 71.
Ann Tweedy
Poetry Participant, '20, '15, '12, '07, '04, '00, '97Her chapbook Beleaguered Oases, first published in 2010 by tcCreativePress, was republished in Seven Kitchens Press’s Rebound Series in April 2020.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09She has an essay in the upcoming anthology, Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19, published by Central Avenue. All net profits will be donated to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, helping indie booksellers in need.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation scholarship
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14He was a finalist in The Chautauqua Institution’s 2020 Janus Prize “for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.”
Kris Newby
Writers Workshop participant '17She was recently awarded a Nautilus Award (Silver) for her book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. With a Kirkus starred review, it was also listed as one of the “best books of 2019” by Bookworm and Stanford Medicine, as well as the #1 book in public health by BookAuthority.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Sarah Maclay
Poetry Participant, '97, '06, '19Her poem “A Mirror of Leaves” appears in the Winter 2020 volume of Hotel Amerika.
Erin L. McCoy
Poetry Participant, '16She recently won second place in the 2019–2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest, judged by CAConrad, for her poem, “How a lake flash-froze a herd of horses.”
Kristi Maxwell
Poetry Participant, ‘02Her seventh book of poems, My My, was published by Saturnalia Books in May, 2020.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19Her personal essay “Wanting Warhol: My Connections to Andy Warhol” appears in the June 2020 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.
Alice Jones
Poetry Participant, '88, '89. Teaching Staff, Writing the Medical experienceHer newest collection, Vault, was recently published by Apogee Press. A poem in the book, “Spell,” won the first annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “Kismet” was published in Pembroke Magazine, Issue No 52, 2020.
Lyndsey Ellis
Writers Workshop participant '17Her debut novel, Bone Broth, will be published in spring 2021 by Hidden Timber Books.
Ken Haas
Poetry Workshop participant '08, '11, '13, '16, '19His first full-length poetry collection, Borrowed Light, was recently published by Red Mountain Press, and won the 2020 Red Mountain Discovery Award.
Wayétu Moore
Writers Workshop participant 2009; Published Alumni Reading Series 2019Her memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, was published June 2, 2020, by Graywolf Press.
Maxima Kahn
Poetry Participant, '07; Writers Workshops Participant '06, '10Her first full-length collection of poems, Fierce Aria, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in summer 2020.
Attended with the help of Mary Turnbull Scholarship
Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Her novel, Copy Boy, will be published by She Writes Press, June, 2020.
Meryl Natchez
Poetry Participant, '87...2013Her second book of original poetry, Catwalk, is forthcoming in June, 2020, from Longship Press. Preorders available here.
Christina Adams
Writers Workshop participant '00She was recently awarded the Nautilus Book Award for her book Camel Crazy: A Quest for Miracles in the Mysterious World of Camels.
Scott Edward Anderson
His book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was recently awarded the First Literary Prize from Letras Lavadas, in conjunction with PEN Azores.
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Writers Workshop Participant '04Her short story, “The Runaway,” appeared in The Broadkill Review, January – February 2020 issue. An essay, “How I Lost My Vegan,” appeared in the February 2020 issue of Literary Veganism; Editions Bibliotekos.
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshops Participant, '97,'98,'99,'02,'03,'19Her novel, Italian Love Cake, will be published by Bordighera Press, April 2021. Italy and America collide in this story of feminism and political awakening in late 1930’s America.
Eileen Garvin
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her novel Bee Music was purchased at auction by Dutton for publication in 2021. The novel chronicles the story of three lonely residents in a rural Oregon town, each struggling to deal with one of life’s curveballs — a teenager who has just become paraplegic after a freak accident, a middle-aged widow suffering from panic attacks, and a young man with social anxiety — who come together on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing and maybe even a second chance. Eileen is the author of How to be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism and has written for PsychologyToday.com, The Oregonian and Creative Nonfiction Magazine (forthcoming).
Susan Starbird
Writers Workshop Participant '04Nonfiction fragmentologist Susan Starbird launched the fifth issue of Susan The Magazine, with the theme of Varmints. Prior issues focused on water, women, work, and cars. All are available from Amazon, findable if you search the author’s name.
Richard Tayson
Poetry Participant, '93His poem, “Antigone’s Dream,” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Colorado Review.
Elison Alcovendaz
Writers Workshop participant '16His flash fiction piece, “The Assimilation of Boyboy Santos” (originally published in Lost Balloon magazine), was selected for inclusion in the Best Small Fictions 2020 anthology.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Christine Sunderland
Writers Workshops Participant, ‘05Her seventh novel, Angel Mountain, has been published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. Set on Mount Diablo in the present day, the story is about a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a Christian geneticist who search for peace and happiness in a culture of chaos. Themes include history and memory, faith and science, human dignity and free speech. “In Angel Mountain, Christine Sunderland has created a gripping and theologically rich novel, in which four remarkable people make their way through a shifting cultural landscape ringed with apocalyptic fire, revolutionary politics, and end-times expectancy.” Wilfred M. McClay, University of Oklahoma (jacket endorsement).
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant '00Her book, Secondary Cicatrices, won a Human Relations Indie Book Award for poetry.
Leah Naomi Green
Poetry Participant '08Her essay “Return, Investment, Return” appeared in The Paris Review in April 2020 around the debut of her book The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press), selected by Li-Young Lee for the 2019 Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets.
Jesse Bedayn
His article, “Inside the Bay Area’s Geriatric Homeless Shelter,” was recently published in the New York Times. Jesse has been a Poetry Elf during our summer writing workshops for the last four years, and is currently getting his Masters in Journalism, with a focus in narrative writing, at University of California, Berkeley.
Robert Stone
The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction is a vast collection of Robert Stone’s nonfiction, from war reporting to literary criticism, and was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in March, 2020. Stone was a staff member from the very early years, and a longtime friend of the Community of Writers
Ryan Ridge
Writers Workshop participant '10His new collection of short stories, New Bad News, will be published by Sarabande Books in May, 2020.
Judy Halebsky
Poetry Workshop participant '06, '09, '11, '14Her newest collection of poetry, Spring and a Thousand Years, winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, was recently published by University of Arkansas Press.
Ksenia Lakovic
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her short story “A Man at the End of the Hallway” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It was published in Scoundrel Time, in October 2019.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '15, '16, '18, '19Her newest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was recently awarded two Golden Poppy Awards, in the Regional Book and Non-Fiction categories. The Golden Poppy Awards honor books published each year by Northern California authors and artists chosen by independent booksellers throughout Northern California.
Tom Lutz
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '17, '19His new novel, Born Slippy, was published by Repeater Books/Penguin Random House in January, 2020.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop participant '14, '19Her two short stories were recently awarded gold medals at the NATJA Travel Media Awards in the Family Travel and Profile categories.
Diannely Antigua
Poetry Workshop participant '16She was recently awarded the Whiting Award in Poetry for her debut collection, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019). The judges said her poems “layer lyricism, religious language, and the tactile materials of daily life to build altars of affection for the people and things of her world,” each “meticulously shaped by a formal and aesthetic vision that already feels authoritative.”
Elizabeth Kadetsky
Writers Workshop Participant, '98, '04; Alumni Reader, '04Her fourth book, The Memory Eaters, winner of the first Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in March 2020. She is currently undertaking her second Fulbright fellowship to India.
Attended with the help of UCI scholarship
David Koehn
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '06, '14His new book of poetry, Scatterplot, will be published by Omnidawn in April, 2020.
John Murillo
Poetry Workshop participant '10His 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, '18She edited the upcoming book, Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them, which is due out April, 2020, from Abrams Image.
Paco Márquez
Poetry Participant, '12His poems “…a petrel” & “Leaf on Water” appear in Fence, Issue #36, Winter 2020.
Beatrice Bowles
Poetry Workshop participant '91Her 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 '08Her new book, The More Extravagant Feast, will be published by Graywolf Press in April, 2020.
Brenda Hillman
Director of the Community of Writers Poetry ProgramShe 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, '13Her new collection of poetry, Somatic, is now available for preorder. It will be published by Terrapin Books this spring.
Michele Karas
Poetry Participant '17She 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.
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14; Writers Workshop participant '04, '15; Published Alumni Reading Series '19Her novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, recently won the Award for Literature in Adult Fiction from the Asian/ Pacific American Library Association.
Elana K. Arnold
Arnold, Elana K.Her new children’s book, An Ordinary Day, was published in March, 2020, by Beach Lane Books.
Eliot Schain
Poetry Participant, '98, '02, '07, '11, '16; Writers Workshops Participant, '99His second book of poetry, The Distant Sound, will be published in April 2020 by Sixteen Rivers Press.
Alia Volz
Writers Workshops Participant, '11, '14Her debut memoir, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2020.
Attended with the help of Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship; Oakley "Tad" Hall Prose Scholarship
Alma Katsu
Writers Workshop participant '03Her new book, The Deep, was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in March, 2020.
John DeSimone
Writers Workshop participant '11, '12His new novel, The Road to Delano, was recently published by Rare Bird Books in March, 2020.
Don Mee Choi
Poetry Workshop Staff '14Her 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 '15Her 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, '19Her novel, The Revisioners, recently won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction.
Elizabeth Tallent
Writers Workshop teaching staff '16, '18Her 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 '05Her 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.
April Dávila
Writers Workshop participant '18Her new novel, 142 Ostriches, was published in February, 2020, by Kensington.
Jeff Bens
Writers Workshop ParticipantHis new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.
Danusha Lameris
Poetry Workshop participant '00Her 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 2010Her short story collection, Vanishing, won the 2019 Leapfrog Fiction Contest, and was published in March, 2020. Sinking Islands, the sequel to her novel Weather Women, will be published in early 2021. She is pleased to be an Authors Guild ambassador for the new Portland, Oregon chapter.
Genevieve Kaplan
Poetry Participant '18Her new book of poems, (aviary), was released in March, 2020, by Veliz Books.
Monica Sok
Poetry Workshop participant '15Her 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 '10His new book, Borders and Boundaries, was published by Cold River Press in March, 2020.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop participant '72, '73His newest novel, the second in a trilogy, When Clara was Twelve, was published in March, 2020.
Jessica Guzman
Poetry Participant, '18Her collection Adelante was chosen by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2019 Gatewood Prize and was published by Switchback Books in March, 2020.
Susan M. Gaines
Writers Workshop Participant '94; Alumni Reading Series (Carbon Dreams) '01Her new novel, Accidentals, was published by Torrey House Press in March, 2020.
Attended with the help of Scholarship
Anthony Mohr
Writers Workshop Participant '08His essay “The Fairest of the Fair” appeared in Streetlight Magazine.
Andrew Altschul
Writers Workshops Participant, '97His third novel, The Gringa, was published in March, 2020, by Melville House.
Cathy Park Hong
Poetry Workshop Teaching Staff '11, '16Her new book, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, will be published by One World on February 25, 2020.
Aimee Liu
Writers Workshop participant '94Her new novel, Glorious Boy, which will be published by Red Hen Press in May, 2020, was recently selected by Good Housekeeping as one of the best books of 2020.
Meryl Natchez
Poetry Workshop participant '13, '09, '05, '00, '88Hew new book of poetry, Catwalk, will be published by Longship Press in June, 2020.
Lynne Thompson
Poetry Workshop participant '97, '02Her 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 '09Her new book of poetry, Anodyne, will be published by Tin House Books in August, 2020.
Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship
Caroline Kim
Writers Workshops Participant, '18, '19Her short story collection, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, won the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2020.
Christine Hemp
Poetry Workshop participant '06Her forthcoming memoir, Wild Ride Home: Love, Loss, and a Little White Horse, was published by Arcade/Skyhorse Publishing on February 4th, 2020.
Jeff Adams
Writers Workshop '19His short story, “The Citron Tree,” will appear in the Spring 2020 issue of The McNeese Review.
Dani Burlison
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Her short story collection, Some Places Worth Leaving, was published by Tolsun Books in February 2020.
Jami Macarty
Poetry Workshop participant '10, '14, '17Her new book of poetry, The Minuses, was published by University Press of Colorado in February, 2020.
Chelsea B. DesAutels
Poetry Participant, '18Her 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.
Christine Sunderland
Writers Workshops Participant, 05Her seventh novel, Angel Mountain, has been contracted to be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in 2020. Set on Mount Diablo in the present day, the story involves a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a faithful geneticist who meet in a world of earthquake, fire, and mob violence. Themes include human dignity and free speech, history and memory, faith and science.
Clancy McGilligan
Writers Workshop Participant '17His novella, History of an Executioner, was published in January, 2020, by Miami University Press after winning the 2019 Novella Prize.
Attended with the help of SpringCreek Foundation Scholarship
Meg Day
Poetry Workshop participantThey are the Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for January 2020.
Cameron Walker
Writers Workshops Participant, '02, '04His essay collection, Points of Light, won the 2019 Tamaqua Award from Hidden River Arts Press.
Amanda Eyre Ward
Writers Workshop participant '92Her new novel, The Jetsetters, was published by Ballantine Books in February, 2020.
Joann Gardner
Poetry Workshop participant '91, '96Her 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.
Gretchen McCullough
Writers' Workshop, '06, '08, '19Her essay “Alexandria Melodies” about Alexandria, Egypt and its writers was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books in December, 2019.
Jami Macarty
Poetry Participant, '10, '14, '17Her 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.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Poetry Workshop participant '11His 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, '14Her novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, was recently awarded the Crook’s Corner Book Prize.
Robert Hass
Poetry Workshop Program DirectorHis newest volume of poetry, Summer Snow, and his first collection of poems since 2010, was published by HarperCollins in January, 2020.
Michele Karas
Poetry Workshop Participant '17The San Diego Poetry Annual has nominated Michele Karas’ poem “For First Wives Who Have Considered Suicide” for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry ParticipantHer sixth book of poems, The Bones of Winter Birds, was published by Terrapin Books in February, 2020.
Lisa Braver Moss
Writers Workshop Participant, '03Her novel Shrug has won first prize in YA historical fiction in the 2019 Moonbeam Awards, and was a finalist in the 2019 “Best Book” awards.
Valyntina Grenier
Poetry Workshop participant '05Her new book, Fever Dream/ Take Heart, was published in January, 2019, from Cathexis North West Press.
Christine Hemp
Poetry Workshop participant '06Her memoir, Wild Ride Home: Love, Loss, and a Little White Horse, will be published by Arcade in February, 2020.
Susan Browne
Poetry Participant '88, '10Her third collection, Just Living, won the Catamaran Poetry Prize, 2019, and was published in November, 2019.
Janine Kovac
Writers Workshops Participant '11, '12, '14, '16Hers memoir, Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home, workshopped at Squaw Valley in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016, was awarded the 2019 National Indie Excellence Award for memoir.
Attended with the help of George Pascoe Miller Scholarship ('11), Carlisle Family Scholarship ('12), Eshleman Scholarship ('14)
Jeff Kingman
Poetry Participant '12For 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.
Joy Ma
Writers Workshops, 2004Her new book, The Deoliwallahs, was published by Pan Macmillan India in December. It is a non-fiction account of her family and the stories of several Chinese Indians who were interned after the war between India and China in 1962. An essay about it appears on Scroll.In.
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 '77Her 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.
Vanessa Hua
Writers Workshop participant '08, '17; Writers Workshop teaching staff '19Her book of short stories, Deceit and Other Possibilities, recently rereleased with three additional tales, received a starred review from Kirkus.
June Sylvester Saraceno
Poetry Workshop participant '05Her 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, '19She 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.
David Watts
Poetry Workshop participant '90, '91, '92, '93, '97, '99, '02, '04, '13His memoir, Christmas in Georgepatch, was rereleased this December in both paperback and Kindle editions.
Sean Marciniak
Writers Workshop participant '09, '14His short story, “Bridge of the Hallelujahs”, appeared in the autumn 2019 issue of Orca, and was nominated for a Pushcart prize.
Nancy Kelly
Screenwriting Workshop participant '83, '00; Writers Workshop participant '06, '16The new digital restoration of her film, Thousand Pieces of Gold, enjoyed several screenings at the Rafael Film Center in November, 2019.
Joan Baranow
Poetry Workshop participant '90, '91, '92, '93, '97, '99, '01, '03, '06, '08, '11, '18Her 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.
James Cagney
Poetry Workshop participant '17He 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 participantJane 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.
Katherine Rothschild
Writers Workshop participant '03Her YA novel on sisterhood in an untraditional family, Hope and Other Feathered Things, will be published by Soho Teen in early 2020.
Lisa D Alvarez
Writers Workshop participant, '92, '93; Staff since '96.Her poem “9 Line Cento for Now” was recently published by “What Rough Beast.”
Attended with the help of UCI and the Ancinas scholarship
Rosa De Anda
Poetry Participant '18She is the recipient of the Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellowship from the University of San Francisco.
Betsy Thorne
Poetry Participant, '10Her poetry collection, Measured Words, was published in December 2019 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Participant '00Her 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, '16Her 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.
Lawrence Coates
Writers Workshop Participant '18His book of short fiction, Bank Run, has been published by Ascent Literary Journal. This is part of the same novel-in-progress he workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2018.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop participant '11Her short stories have won the first, third and fourth Strands International short story competitions.
Sally Abbott
Writers Workshop participant '85, '01, '03, '06, '13Her novel Miami in Virgo was published by Woodbine Odyssey in October, 2019.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant '01, '03, '19She has new poems in the current issues of Glintmoon and 2River View. Two were generated at the Community of Writers Poetry workshop. Her poem “Arterials” appears in the Fall 2019 issue of The Bitter Oleander.
Sharon Olds
Poetry Workshop staffHer newest book, Arias, was recently published by Penguin Random House.
Veronica Golos
Poetry Workshop participant '09Her new book of poetry, Girl, was recently published by 3: A Taos Press.
Mame Ekblom Cudd
Writers Workshop Participant '09, '11Her short story, “Into a Neat Line,” was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Contest. Her novel, Shooting Rockets at The Moon, was a finalist in the Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner Society’s 2019 Novel-in-Progress category.
Erica Plouffe Lazure
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her short story “The Ghost Rider,” workshopped at the Community of Writers, took the editor’s choice award for Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver short story contest and appears alongside an interview in the 2019 fall issue of Carve.
Andrew Roe
Writers Workshops Participant, '97, '04His short story “Is Someone Going to Say Something to the Woman Crying on BART?” will appear in the Winter 2019 issue of ZYZZYVA.
Joy J Ma
Writers Workshop Participant '04Her new book, The Deoliwallahs, will be published by Pan Macmillan India in December. It is a non-fiction account of her family and the stories of several Chinese Indians who were interned after the war between India and China in 1962.
Diane Schenker
Poetry Participant, '14, '19She has two poems coming out in Pen + Brush In Print No. 4. She will be participating in the launch party and reading on November 6, 2019 at Pen + Brush in New York City.
Merridawn Duckler
Writers Workshop participant '07Her chapbook of poems, Interstate, was recently published by from Dancing Girl Press.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant '12His chapbook, On A Road, wherein he borrows words and phrases from Kerouac’s On the Road and adapts them for his own purposes, will be published November 22, 2019, by Finishing Line Press. This is Jeff’s first book publication.
Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, Devi Laskar
Tamika Thompson Writers Workshop participant '15; Pallavi Dhawan Writers Workshop participant '15, Devi Laskar Writers Workshop participant '04, '15, Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14Community of Writers alums Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, and Devi Laskar have co-edited a new anthology called POC United: Graffiti, released on October 15 and available now through Aunt Lute Books.
Charles H Halsted
Poetry Participant, '18His 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 '06An excerpt from her memoir entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein” appears in the Fall 2019 Volume IX issue of Label Me Latina/o.
Marianne Villanueva
Writers Workshop Participant, July 2014Her memoir-in-flash, A Prayer Answered, was in Signs, a special themed issue of Jellyfish Review: September 2019. Her story “Tu-an Ju” was in the Otherworld/Underworld of University of Hawai’i – Manoa’s e-zine vice-versa. Her story “Things She Can Take” was in the Prairie Schooner Winter 2018 special issue on Opioids.
Kathleen O’Toole
Poetry '01,' 03, '05, '09, '11Her 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.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop participant '88, '89, 91, '99; Screenwriting Workshop participant '01His new book, The Compass of Character: Creating Complex Motivation for Compelling Characters in Fiction, Film, and TV, was published in November, 2019, by Writer’s Digest Books.
Eddy Ancinas
Writers Workshop participant '72The 70th Anniversary Edition of her SKADE Award-Winning book, Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys, was published in October, 2019.
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild participant, ‘92His newest book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was published by Homebound Publications as part of its Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His essay, “Gandhi and the Mantle of the Mahatma” written to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary (October 2nd) was published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, New York.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant '01His essay collection, Outlier Heart: Essays From My Life As An Immortalist, was published by IFERS Press.
Anara Guard
Writers Workshops Participant '16Her new book of poetry, Hand on My Heart, will be published by New Wind Publishing on November 1, 2019.
Evan Brooke
Writers Workshop Participant '16His essay, “The Incredible Shrinking Sentence,” was recently published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Threepenny Review.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Workshop participant '00Her new book, Secondary Cicatrices, was recently named winner of 2018 Halcyon Poetry Prize.
Deborah Casillas
Poetry Participant, '09, '12Her new book of poetry, Quiet at the Edge, has just been published by Finishing Line Press.
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshop participant '19Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published by University of Iowa Press in October, 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshop participant '19She was recently named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, a prize that aims to “recognize young, debut fiction writers whose work promised to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published on October 15, 2019 from University of Iowa Press.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Jessica Lee
Poetry Workshop participant '18Her poem “Lust Must Have Struck for the First Time” that was written for Sharon’s workshop during the 2018 Poetry program was recently published in the September 2019 issue of The New Yorker.
Jung Hae Chae
Writers Workshop participant '19Her essay “Pojangmacha People” recently won an emerging writers contest at Ploughshares. She brought a version of this essay to the Writers Workshop this past summer.
Kyce Bello
Poetry Participant '19Her 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/
Monica Sok
Poetry Participant, '15Her debut poetry collection A Nail the Evening Hangs On forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in February 2020 is now available for pre-order.
June Sylvester Saraceno
Poetry Participant '05Her novel, Feral, North Carolina, 1965, from Southern Fried Karma Press, hits bookstores on September 17, 2019.
Laurie Ann Ann Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '14. Published Alumni Reading Series '17Her book World Gone Missing: Stories is the winner of 2018 Nautilus Book Prize silver medal in fiction.
Olga Zilberbourg
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Her English-language debut Like Water and Other Stories was published by WTAW Press in September, 2019, and received a glowing review from The Moscow Times.
Attended with the help of The Carlisle Family Scholarship
Marjorie Saiser
Poetry Participant, '00Her newest full-length collection, Learning to Swim, forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin State University Press, is a hybrid of memoir and poems.
Michele Karas
Poetry Participant, '17Her poem, “Rose Marie Bentley’s Aberrant Vena Cava,” is published in the Autumn 2019 issue of Rust+Moth. The poem was inspired by the real-life Rose Marie Bentley, who lived to be 99 with organs in all the wrong places.
Vishwas R Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant '14His essay, “Has India Had Its Stonewall Moment?” has been published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, to mark the first anniversary of the decriminalization of the LGBT community in India. June 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York. Gaitonde looks at both.
Patricia Spears Jones
Poetry Teaching StaffA selection of her poems will be featured in Persimmon Tree. Poems are forthcoming in Plume and The New Yorker.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Partcipant '11She won the 2019 Strands International Flash Fiction first and third competitions with her stories “Howie” and “The Library.”
Arthur Solway
Poetry Participant '19He wont the 2019 Tupelo Press Broadside Competition for his poem “Night School.”
Gail Reitano
Writers Workshop Participant '97, '98, '99, '02, '03, '19Her novel Italian Love Cake will be published by Bordighera Press in Fall 2020; a personal essay, “Beneath Snowy Foothills,” appears online in the July 2019 issue of Ovunque Siamo.
Ashley Wurzbacher
Writers Workshops Participant, '19Her short story collection, Happy Like This, won Iowa’s 2019 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and will be released on October 15, 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Melissa Fondakowski
Poetry Workshop Participant, '02Her second book-length work, The Sci-Fi Story With the Cat in It – Short Stories, will be published by Balut Press in September 2019.
Aaron D. Graham
Poetry Workshop Participant '14, '17His newest book of poetry, Blood Stripes, was published by Sundress Publications, which won the publisher’s Fall 2018 first place poetry prize.
C Pirloul
Poetry Workshop participant '01, '05, '17Riga Pine, a poem with audio, appears in Interim’s current issue, Carrying Across: Crossing Disciplines as a Form of Translation.
Victoria Dalkey
Poetry Participant '92Her 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 '92A 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 '02Her new book, Small Silent Things, was recently published by HarperCollins.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant '12His 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.
Jenn Alandy Trahan
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '17Her short story, “They Told Us Not to Say This,” published in Harper’s Magazine in September 2018, was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Colette Sartor
Writers Workshop participant '00Her collection of short stories, Once Removed, will be published in September, 2019, by University of Georgia Press. It recently received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Mark Coggins
Writers Workshops Participant, '96; Screenwriting Program Participant, '01His newest, The Dead Beat Scroll, the seventh novel in the August Riordan crime fiction series, was recently released from Down & Out Books.
Caitlin McCarthy
Screenwriting Workshop '13Her 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.
Charles Halsted
Poetry Participant, '18His 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.
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild Participant, '92His new book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, is being published by Homebound Publications as part of their Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop Participant, ‘00Her newest book, The Last Train to London, a novel based on the true story of the Vienna Kindertransports and the extraordinary woman who led the rescues, will be published by HarperCollins and HarperCollins-Canada September 10, and in translation in fifteen languages.
Jeffrey Thomas Leong
Poetry Participant, '97, '00, '02His recent book, Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, was awarded the 2019 Northern California Book Award for translation in poetry.
Maurya Simon
Writers Workshop Participant '84Her 10th volume of poetry, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2018, and was recently awarded a gold medal from the Benjamin Franklin Independent Book Awards. Her recent work has appeared in the The Georgia Review and The Gettysburg Review.
Caitlin McCarthy
Screenwriting Workshop participant '13Her 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.
Claire Boyles
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Her essay, “Riding Ditch”, was recently published in the Summer 2019 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review. Her short story, “Lost Gun, $1000 Reward, No Questions”, won Boulevard’s Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers and will appear in the Fall 2019 issue.
Lisa Rappoport
Writers Workshop participant '94, Poetry Workshop participant '00Her new book of poetry, Penumbra, was recently published by Longship Press.
Dedria Humphries Barker
Writers Workshop participant ‘08, 15She featured in a July 2019 Facebook Live event “Poets in Pajamas,” sponsored by Sundress Publications.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Poetry Workshop participant '11His 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, '19He recently became the poetry editor for Rosebud Magazine.
Harryette Mullen
Poetry Workshop teaching staff '06, '14A 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.
Holly Payne
Screenwriting Workshop participant '08She was recently featured in Forbes, discussing her company Booxby and what led her to founding the Saas cloud platform that uses artificial intelligence to help publishers optimize the acquisition and marketing of their books.
Lorraine Comanor
Writers Workshop participant '09Her essays have recently appeared in The Gold Man Review and Ruminate ( shorts). Two are in press for the Euonia Review and Boulevard.
Danusha Laméris
Poetry Participant, '00Her 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.
Yoav Potash
Writers Workshops Participant, '05, '08The American Jewish Press Association is honoring Yoav Potash with a Simon Rockower Award for Best Personal Essay, for his piece titled “How I learned all Israelis are not my father,” published by J. The Jewish News of Northern California. The American Jewish Press Association bills the Rockower Awards as “the Jewish Pulitzers.”
Attended with the help of Entrenkin Foundation Scholarship
Max Byrd
Writers Workshop participant '83, Writers Workshops teaching staff '18, '15, '13, '12, '11, '10, '09, '08, '06, '05, '04, '03, '02, '01, '00, '99, '98, '97, '96His newest novel, The Sixth Conspirator, will be released in August 2019 by Post Hill Press.
Andrew Tonkovich
Fiction participant '94; Writers Workshop teaching staffHis new book, The Dairy of Anne Frank (and More Wish Fullfilment in the Noughties) is out now. Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review and host of Bibiocracy Radio, a weekly books show on Pacifica’s KPFK in Southern California.
Janet Fitch
Writers Workshop participant '93, Poetry Workshop participant '17, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '01, '02, '04, '06, '08, '09, '13, '15, '17Her newest novel, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, the sequel to her best-selling novel The Revolution of Marina M., was published by Little, Brown & Co. in July, 2019.
Heather Altfeld
Poetry Workshop participant '08, '10, '12, '15She 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, '00Her second poetry book, Cheer for Freedom, with illustrations of her paintings of her Armenian and Russian family in Iran has been published this year.
Alia Yunis
Writers Workshops Participant '04Her documentary feature, The Golden Harvest, which she wrote and directed, debuted at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in March, 2019, a top 10 international film festival, and was selected as “Best of the Fest” at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in April, 2019.
Adair McPherson
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Her debut picture book, Roadkill abc, was published by Xlibris Press in September, 2018.
Frances Badgett
Fiction Participant '99, '00, '02Her story “Half Hitch” that was published in Salamander in the Summer ’18 edition has been selected for Best of Small Fictions.
Jane Ciabattari
Writers Workshops teaching staff, '16Her new short story collection-in-progress, Arabella Leaves & Other Stories, was a finalist for the Dzanc Short Fiction Award. Her short story “Swarm” was published in The Slag Review on March 1, 2019. Her short story “Brooklyn After the Fall” was included in a flash anthology commissioned for Independent Bookstore Day in 2018, and also published in The Literary Hub.
Peter Marcus
Poetry Workshop participant '89, '90, '91, '92, '95, '11His new book of poetry, Dark Square, was recently published by Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshop Participant, '09Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, (HarperCollins, 2018) won the Western Writers of America Spur Award, in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award.
Attended with the help of Lojo Foundation Scholarship
Jeanine Stevens
Poetry Participant '07, '10, '14, '17Her 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 '06Her first chapter from her collection of personal essays on childcare and immigrant issues is forthcoming in the Label Me Latina/o Fall 2019 issue. The first chapter is entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein.
Lauren K. Alleyne
Poetry Workshop Participant '08She published her second collection of poems, Honeyfish, in April with New Issues Press (US), and in July, with Peepal Tree Press (UK).
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshop participant '08His essay “Super Summer Spectacular” was reprinted in Air (A Hippocampus anthology).
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 StaffShe was interviewed by KQED Forum host Michael Krasny about her new book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Knopf, May 2019). The book was also reviewed in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook section, which called it “meticulously researched and inspiring.”
Janet Fitch
Poetry Workshop participant '17; Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '01, '02, '04, '06, '08, '09, '13, '15, '17She recently celebrated the 2oth anniversary of the publication of White Oleander. It was released in May, 1999 from Back Bay Books.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant '04, '05, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '13, '15, '17His newest book, Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, will be published in June, 2019, by Unnamed Press.
Natalie Serber
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '16Children Are Magic, a story from her novel-in-progress, was just published by One Story.
Varley O’Connor
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '04, '12; Participant '88, '89Her fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in May 2019.
Karen Stefano
Writers Workshop Participant '08Her debut memoir, What A Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath, will be published by Rare Bird Books in June 2019.
C. Pirloul
Poetry Workshop participant '17Two 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, '16Her 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.
Karen Laws
Writers Workshop Participant, '06, '16Her story “Shadows Under Trees” is in the current issue of The Antioch Review (Volume 76, No. 4).
Karen’s essay on working with asylum seekers at the border is in the online journal Cagibi, Issue 6.
Amy Tan
Writers Workshop participant '87, Screenwriting Workshop participant '90, Writers Workshop teaching staff '99-'18The Joy Luck Club is celebrating its 30th birthday! A part of the manuscript was workshopped at the Community of Writers when Amy was first a participant.
Molly Fisk
Poetry Workshop participant '92, '95, '98, '04She is the recipient of one of 13 Inaugural American Poet Laureate Fellowships. With the $75,000 she receives, she plans to launch “California Fire & Water,” a statewide teaching, anthology, and public reading project addressing the state’s recent devastating fires.
Rachel Howard
Writers Workshop participant '13, Writers Workshop teaching staff '17, '19Her new novel, The Risk of Us, was released from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April, 2019.
Kris Newby
Writers Workshop participant '17Her new book, Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, will be released in May, 2019, from HarperCollins.
Varley O’Connor
Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press on May 7, 2019.
Clancy McGilligan
Writers Workshop Participant '17His novella History of an Executioner won the 2019 Novella Prize from Miami University Press, and will be published in 2020.
Attended with the help of SpringCreek Foundation Scholarship
Nathania Seales Oh
Writers Workshops Participant '18Her essay, “Orange is the No Black” was published in the September 2018 issue of Coast Magazine and online at the Orange County Register.
Ramona Reeves
Writers Workshop Participant '18Her short story won the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors Prize and appears in the Summer 2018 (Sept.) issue of Jabberwock Review. Another short story was runner-up in the Barry Hannah Prize for Fiction and appears in the Winter 2019 issue of Yalobusha Review.
Katherine Factor
Poetry Participant '10Her first children’s book, Choose Your Own Adventure SPIES: Mata Hari, is forthcoming from Choose CO on May 1, 2019. An interactive game novel, this title stars YOU as a real-life historical spy in an interactive, multiple-ending book with historically accurate events and characters.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop '93, '94, '98, Teaching Staff 2010Her novel Weather Woman has won a Nautilus Book Award. The sequel to Weather Woman, called Sinking Islands, has just been sold and will be published in the spring of 2021. Her short story collection, Vanishing, won the 2018 Leapfrog Fiction Contest and will come out in 2020.
Sheldon Gleisser
Screenwriting Participant '14His short story “The Money Shot” was published in the latest issue of the literary magazine Rosebud, issue #65.
Lorraine Comanor
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her essay “The Year There Were No Mushrooms” appeared in November 2018 issue of The Goldman Review. Two pieces of flash non-fiction “The Lost Patient” and “That Which Saves Us” appeared in spring 2018 and recent 2019 issues of Ruminate.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant '01His essay, “The Inclusion Orthodoxy,” was published in Literary Yard, his essay, “Big Art,” was published in Image Journal: Good Letters, his short play, Intermission, is being performed at Winding Road Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, and his essay “Drinking from the Air” was selected for inclusion in the Transhumanism Handbook (Springer).
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant '14His trilogy of multimedia essays on India’s 13-year-old music prodigy Lydian Nadhaswaram was published in Serenade magazine in March 2019. Lydian Nadhaswaram won the CBS international talent show The World’s Best, which had competitors from all fields of arts & entertainment from 36 countries.
Amanda Fields
Writers Workshops Participant, '09She co-edited the essay collection, My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After, which will be published by The Experiment Press on May 1, 2019.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04, Writers Workshop teaching staff '14, '15, '16, '18Her newest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, will be published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing in May, 2019.
Renato Rosaldo
Poetry Workshop participant '00, '02, '07His newest book of poetry, The Chasers, will be published by Duke University Press.
Nettie Reynolds
Writers Workshop Participant '99Her new ten minute play, “Detecting Obstacles” will be produced as part of the annual “Out of Ink” Scriptworks festival in May. Nettie is currently working on her memoir as well, entitled, This is How You Start Over which details her leaving her PR career to become a spiritual death and dying chaplain.
Keetje Kuipers
Poetry Participant, '05Her third collection of poems, All Its Charms, was published this spring by BOA Editions. It contains poems that appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry Anthologies, as well as Narrative, Tin House, The Believer, New England Review, and Orion.
Jeffrey Thomas Leong
Poetry Participant, '97, '00, '02His book, Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, was published by Calypso Editions in 2018, and is the first new translation in almost 40 years of the iconic immigrant wall poems found carved on the walls of this detention center. His new poetry chapbook, Writ, published by Eastwind Books in March 2019, converses with the translations in WGS, interrogating the interrogators and seeking redemption in his father’s story.
Stephen Long
Writers Workshop participant '95, '06His newest book, All Hat, was recently released from Handin Hand Publishing.
Holaday Mason
Poetry Workshop participant '00, '06Her newest book of poetry, The Weaver’s Body, is forthcoming from Tebat Bach Books.
Stephen Massimilla
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '06His adaptation of a Montale poem recently received a Der-Hovanessian prize citation from The New England Poetry Club.
Stephen Massimilla
Poetry Participant '04, '06His multi-genre Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo), recently won new awards, including the Living Now Award, the IAN Book of the Year Award in Nonfiction, the Apple Award in Cross-Genre, and others. The latest reviews of the book have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Poetry International, Colorado Review, Five Points, The US Review of Books, USA Today, The Northwest Indiana Times, The Food Poet, Gluten-Free Magazine, Catering Magazine, Green Living, Vital Nutrition, and elsewhere.
Grace Shuyi Liew
Poetry participant '16Her debut collection of poetry, Careen, was published by Noemi Press in April 2019.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Memorial scholarship
Renee Thompson
Writers Workshops Participant, '03, '07, '09Her short story “The Winterist” won second prize in Narrative’s Fall 2018 Story Contest. This is Renee’s third appearance in the magazine; two previous stories appeared as “Stories of the Week.”
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry participant 2004, 2008, 2014 fiction participant 2004, 2015Her debut novel, The Atlas Of Reds And Blues, has been picked up abroad, and is being published by Fleet (an imprint of Little, Brown) in the UK and commonwealth countries and by Hachette India in the subcontinent.
Mark Fitzgerald
Poetry Participant, '06His second book of poems, Downburst, was published by Cinnamon Press in March. The second edition of his first collection, By Way of Dust and Rain, was also recently published by Cinnamon Press.
Shira Dentz
Poetry ParticipantHer fourth book, the sun a blazing zero, is now out from Lavender Ink/Diálogos.
Attended with the help of Scholarship
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13His short story collection, Controlled Chaos, was published by Wheeler Street Press in April, 2019.
Donna DiGiuseppe (Matcovich)
Writers Workshops Participant, '13Her biographical novel, Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance, was published in January 2019 by ACMRS/Univ of Arizona. This historical fiction dramatizes the life of Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola, whose work will be a major exhibit at the Prado, Madrid in October 2019.
Martina Newhook
Writers Workshop '15Her essay, “The Lonely Hours Before Supper,” was published in Meat For Tea (March 2019; V.13 (1)).
C Pirloul
Poetry Participant, '01, '04, '17Excerpts of her map-poem appear in Lana Turner 11. Poems and recordings are forthcoming in The Santa Fe Telepoem Project.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Poetry Workshop participant '11His book of poetry, Cenzontle, was awarded the Northern California Book Award and the NCIBA Golden Poppy Book Award, and was recently named a finalist for the Thom Gunn award for poetry and the Lambda Literary Award.
Kenji Liu
Poetry Workshop participant '14His newest book of poetry, Monsters I Have Been, will be released from Alice James Books in April, 2019.
Colleen Morton Busch
Writers Workshop ‘04, ‘15She narrated the audiobook version of her nonfiction book, Fire Monks, the story of how five Zen monks saved a California monastery from a wildfire with a combination of hard work, aplomb, and wisdom. Blackstone released the audiobook in March 2019.
Vishwas R. Gaitonde
Writers Workshop '14His essay “Jaya He! The Story of India’s National Anthem” was published by The Mantle in January 2019. It delves into the history and controversies swirling around the anthem composed by Nobel laureate & polymath Rabindranath Tagore – and also highlights the largely hidden role of an Irish woman’s contribution to the music. You can read it here: http://www.mantlethought.org/arts-and-culture/jaya-h%C3%A9-story-india%E2%80%99s-national-anthem
Anthony J. Mohr
Writers Workshops Participant '08His essay “Nixon for President” appeared in North Dakota Quarterly (Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter 2018). His essay “Love North of Sunset” appeared in Saint Ann’s Review (Winter 2019). His essay “The Last Honors Class” appeared in Glint Literary Journal (Winter 2018).
Kelly Cass Falzone
Poetry Participant, '03She was awarded the 2018 Bea Gonzalez Prize for Poetry for a group of three poems published in Stone Canoe: A Journal of Art, Literature and Social Commentary, published by the Downtown Writers Center, a program of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, NY.
Susan Henderson
Writers Workshops Participant, '09Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award. She was additionally awarded a Hawthornden International Fellowship and will spend a month writing at the Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland.
Attended with the help of Lojo Scholarship
Max Byrd
Writers Workshop participant '83, Writers Workshops Teaching StaffHis newest novel, The Sixth Conspirator, will be published in August 2019 by Post Hill Press.
Marcia Butler
Writers Workshop Participant '15Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, will be published on April 9, 2019. Recent praise from Richard Russo: “The four main characters in Pickle’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed. That’s because their creator, Marcia Butler, possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence to match.”
Grant Hier
Writers Workshops Participant, ’93; AOW ’95; Poetry Participant '98His book of historical flash fiction, California Continuum, co-written with John Brantingham, Poet Laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, is forthcoming in March, 2019.
Juan Alvarado Valdivia
Writers Workshops Participant '13His short story collection, Ballad of a Slopsucker, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in February 2019.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Kate Hope Day
Writers Workshop Participant '15Her debut novel If, Then is forthcoming from Random House March 12, 2019. It has been optioned by Heyday Television. She will be joining us this summer as part of our Published Alumni Reading Series.
Renee Moffett Thompson
Her story, “The Winterist” took second place in Narrative’s Fall 2018 Story Contest.
Juliana Roth
Writers Workshops Participant, '17Her screenplay for her film in independent development, What We Know, which follows a sexual assault survivor as she navigates the Title IX process, is a semifinalist in the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival’s Screenplay Competition and a finalist in the 2019 Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York. The crowdfunding campaign for the film is accepting donations until mid-March on Seed & Spark.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Bethanie Humphreys
Poetry Participant, '15Her debut poetry collection, Dendrochronology, is available for preorder through Finishing Line Press February 11 – April 12, 2019.
Aida Salazar
Non-Fiction Workshop 2007Her debut book, The Moon Within, a middle grade novel in verse, will be released on February, 2019, by Arthur A. Levine Books / Scholastic. The book was called “A worthy successor to Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” in a Kirkus starred review.
Emily Pérez
Poetry Participant '10, '18Her new chapbook Made and Unmade, a limited edition, hand bound, letterpress, tragi-comic exploration of growing up female in a patriarchy, is now available from Madhouse Press.
Rowan Sharp
Poetry participant, ‘12She has new work in the Beloit Poetry Journal 69.1 (Spring 2019).
Judy Crowe
Poetry Workshop participant '08, '12, '15, '18, Writers Workshop participant '87, '88, '90Her new book of poetry, Flat Water: Nebraska Poems, was recently released from Finishing Line Press.
Ramtin Arablouei
Writer's Workshop participant '05He is the co-host, along with Rund Abdelfatah, of NPR’s first history podcast, Throughline.
Samiya Bashir
Poetry Workshop participant '09She was recently featured on Blue Flower Arts, A Literary Speakers Agency. To check out the profile, click here.
Claudia March Reder
Poetry Participant '08Her book of poems, How to Disappear, was recently published by Blue Light Press.
Sharon Olson
Poetry Participant, '97Her second poetry collection Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in February 2019.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop participant '88, '89, '91, '99, Screenwriting Workshop participant '01His latest novel, The Long-Lost Love Letters Of Doc Holliday, has been nominated for the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery. The winner will be announced on March 30th at Left Coast Crime in Vancouver, BC.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant, '12His poetry manuscript, Beyond that Hill I Gather, won the Eyelands Book Award (Greece) for best unpublished poetry book. The poems in the collection are mostly portraits of notable women.
Chelsea Rathburn
Poetry Participant, '09Her third poetry collection, Still Life with Mother and Knife, was published by LSU Press in February.
Michelle Bracken
Writers Workshop Participant '17Her essay “When Your Writing Comes Through The Ether” was published in The Superstition Review.
Kate Wisel
Writers Workshop Participant '16Her first book of short stories, Driving in Cars With Homeless Men, has won the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which includes a substantial cash prize and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She was selected by judge Min Jin Lee.
Attended with the help of Carlisle Family Scholarship
Caitlin McCarthy
Screenwriting Workshop '13Her crime thriller screenplay A Native Land has been named an Official Selection at the 2019 Beverly Hills Film Festival. It has also advanced to the quarterfinals in the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition. Caitlin is represented by Barry Krost of Barry Krost Management (BKM).
Jeanne Foster
Poetry Workshop participant '88, Writers Workshop participant '89, '92Her poem “Letters to Peter” appears in the Winter 2019 issue of The Southern Review. You can also hear her read the poem in TSR Audio Gallery.
Stephanie Austin
Writer's Workshop Participant, '12Her short story “Carrion” will be in the spring 2019 issue of Pembroke Magazine. Her flash fiction piece “Stray” will appear in the June issue of the Jellyfish Review.
Attended with the help of Joe Heinrich Scholarship
Noah Blaustein
Poetry Workshop participant '07, '11His book of poetry, After Party, will be published on February 15th by the University of New Mexico Press.
His poems have appeared in the last year in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Harvard Review, The Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Greensboro Review, and The Southampton Review. His review of Christopher Merrill’s Self Portrait in Dogwood was featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books. He was one of one hundred poets selected by the Harvard Review to contribute lines to Renga for Obama, a book length Renga for and presented to President Barack Obama. Most recently he was an AIR fellow with the National Park Service, teaching poetry to homeless youth in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Matthew Murrey
Poetry Participant, '95His debut poetry collection, Bulletproof, was published by Jacar Press in February 2019. It was selected in 2018 by Marilyn Nelson who described it as “A generous range of thought-worthy subjects, approached with simplicity, wisdom, and a deft use of language.”
Karen Moulding
Writers Workshops Participant, '07, '08, '10Her novel, The Naked Shopper, has been selected First Runner Up by Red Hen Press in the Quill Prose Award contest. An excerpt from The Naked Shopper was published in January 2019 in the Capra Review.
Alex Luke
Writers Workshops Participant, '18Her short story “Sweet Blood” was published in Issue 18 of SAND Journal, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Attended with the help of Maat Scholarship
Denise Nicholas
Writers Workshop Participant '01The 10th Anniversary edition of her novel, Freshwater Road, was recently named in Pacific Standard’s “A Martin Luther King Jr. Day Civil Rights Reading List.”
Kathryn Machi
Screenwriting Participant '04 and '10, Fiction Workshop Participant '18.Her “Me, Too” dance thriller Buzz was recently sold as a TV movie to MarVista Entertainment in Los Angeles.
Cynthia Arrieu-King
Poetry Participant, '13Cynthia Arrieu-King’s project, Futureless Languages, is available now from Radiator Press. In it she wrestles with what is happening to the planet and to its nations. It is elegy on language as a home, whiteness, and what matters most to us in life.
Ann Tweedy
'97, '00, '04, '07, '12, '15A poem first written at the Community of Writers Poetry session entitled “The Aspen” was awarded second place in San Antonio Writers’ Guild’s annual contest in 2018. The poems “Anatomy of a Name” and “An Instant” and the creative non-fiction pieces “Rental Property” and “Storm” are forthcoming in the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, and Pride, to be published by Minnesota Historical Society Press in May 2019.
Dedria A. Humphries Barker
Writers Workshop Participant, '08, '15Dedria Humphries Barker’s creative nonfiction book, Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, a Colored Man’s Widow, will be published in April 2019 by 2Leaf Press (distributed by The University of Chicago Press). In which four generations of black women recall their daring 19th century white matriarch, it is the story of Barker’s great-grandmother, Alice Donlan Johnson.
Attended with the help of a community of writers tuition waiver.
Aida Salazar
Writers Workshop Participant '07Her debut novel, The Moon Within, was acquired by Nick Thomas at AALB/Scholastic. This free verse middle grade novel tells the story of 11-year-old Celi, whose life swirls with questions about her changing body, her first attraction to a boy, her best friend’s exploration of what it means to be genderfluid, and her mother’s insistence she have a Chicana moon ceremony for her first menses. Publication is slated for spring 2019; Marietta B. Zacker of the Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency negotiated the deal for North American English and Spanish rights.
Devi S. Laskar
Poetry Workshop participant '04, '08, '14, Writers Workshop participant '04, '15Her new novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blue, was published by Counterpoint Press in February, 2019.
Emmalie Dropkin
Writers Workshop participant '18She is the co-editor, along with Edie Meidav, of the new anthology Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance. It will be released from the University of Massachusetts Press in March, 2019.
Edie Meidav
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '16, '18She is the co-editor, along with fellow Community of Writers alum Emmalie Dropkin, of the new anthology Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance. It will be released from the University of Massachusetts Press in March, 2019.
Cynthia Arrieu-King
Poetry Workshop participant '13Her book Futureless Languages was recently released by Radiator Press
Ella Martinsen Gorham
Writers Workshop Participant, '18Her short story, Protozoa, appears in the winter 2018 issue of New England Review.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop Participant '00Her newest novel, The Last Train to London, will be published later this year as part of a two book deal with HarperCollins.
R.O. Kwon
Her essay “On Being A Woman in America While Trying to Avoid Being Assaulted,” was recently published by The Paris Review.
Danusha Lameris
Poetry Participant, '00Her poems are currently out, or forthcoming in: The New Ohio Review, The Gettysburg Review, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review. As of September 2018, she has served as the Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.
Lex Williford
Screenwriting Workshop Participant '97, '04His novella, Balsa and Tissue Paper, is forthcoming as an ebook and in the forthcoming 2019 Solos issue of Ploughshares.
Jami Macarty
Poetry Participant, '10, '14, '17Instinctive Acts, her third chapbook came into the world via Nomados Literary Publishers in October 2018. Her first chapbook, Landscape of the Wait, was reviewed by Michelle Mitchell-Foust in Drizzle Review. And, sixteen additional poems appeared in the Canadian, American, and Australian journals: EVENT, Contemporary Verse 2, The Paddock Review, Light: A Journal of Photography & Poetry, Otoliths, and descant.
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Poetry Participant, '92, '00, '09, '13Her sixth book of poems, The Bones of Winter Birds, was chosen from several hundred submissions and will be published by Terrapin Books in February 2019. Ann’s fifth book, Mississippi, is a poetry/photography collaboration with Maude Schuyler Clay (Wings Press 2018). From May 11-18, 2019, Ann will lead the poetry workshop at Longleaf Writers Conference, in Seaside, Florida.
Berwyn Moore
Poetry Participant '90, '92Her third poetry collection, Sweet Herbaceous Miracle, winner of the 2017 John Ciardi Poetry Prize, has been released by BkMk Press.
Charles Halsted
Poetry Participant, '18.His first chapbook collection of poems, Breaking Eighty, has now been published by Finishing Line Press. A full poetry book Extenuating Circumstances will be published in 2019.
Judy Bebelaar
Poetry Participant, '08, '10She has been named, along with her co-author Ron Cabral, 2019 Library Laureates by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library for their book, And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown, about the students they came to know when Jim Jones sent all the Temple teenagers to the small school where they taught. Bebelaar and Cabral will join other laureates, including Dave Eggers, Samin Nasrat and Wendy McNaughton, Amy Freed, and Tongo Eisen-Martin at the benefit gala on March 8, 2o19.
Marci Vogel
Writers Workshop participant '05, Poetry Workshop participant '17Her new novel, Death and Other Holidays, was recently published by Melville House.
Michael Chabon
Writers Workshop participant '86, '87, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '00, '02His newest book, Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros, will be published by HarperCollins in January, 2019.
Molly Fisk
Poetry participant, '92, '95, '97, '01Her fourth book of radio commentary, Naming Your Teeth: Even More Observations from a Working Poet, came out in November, 2018, containing 50 three-minute essays that originally aired on KVMR-FM Nevada City, CA.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshops Participant, '72, '73His 11th book, The Splendid City, was published in February 2019.
Michelle Brittan Rosado
Poetry Participant, '16Her debut poetry collection, Why Can’t It Be Tenderness, won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. It was published in November 2018 by University of Wisconsin Press.
Paul Watsky
Poetry Participant '07, '09, '11, '13, '17.His poem “What Mattered About The Wind,” begun and set in the Valley, appears in the current issue of The Moth (#35, December 2018).
Terry Shames
Writers Workshop participant '98Her newest Samuel Craddock mystery, A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary, will be published in January, 2019, by Seventh Street Books.
Janet Fitch
Writers Workshop participant '93, Poetry Workshop participant '17, Writers Workshop Teaching StaffHer newest novel, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, the sequel to her best-selling novel The Revolution of Marina M., will be published by Little, Brown & Co. in July, 2019.
James Jordan
Writers Workshop participant '09His debut novel, The Speed of Life, was published in November, 2018, by Turning Leaf Books.
Charles Harper Webb
Poetry Participant, '91His 12th collection of poetry, Sidebend World, was published in October 2018.
Matthew M. Monte
Writers Workshop Participant '11, '15His debut poetry collection, The Case of the Six-Sided Dream, was recently published by Blue Light Press. It won the 2017 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize.
Owen Prell
Screenwriters Participant '02, '04; Screenwriters Panel (various)His debut novel, Chance to Break, was published in 2018 in both U.S. (North Loop Books) and U.K. (The Book Guild) editions. The next author event will be a reading at Depot Bookstore in Mill Valley on November 30.
Charles Halsted
Poetry Participant, 18His first full length poetry book Extenuating Circumstances has been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press. It will contain three of the poems written at the Poetry Workshop.
Lynne Thompson
Poetry Participant, `97, `02She won the 2018 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize, selected by Jane Hirshfield, for her manuscript Fretwork, which will be published in 2019. Thompson’s essay “The Family Stories of Jane Cooper” will be published the anthology Jane Cooper: A Radiance of Attention, forthcoming in 2019.
Maxima Kahn
Poetry Participant, '07, Writers Workshops Participant, '06, '10Her poems have appeared this year or are forthcoming in Sweet, The Louisville Review and Orbis Journal, and she was nominated for Best of the Net. Her essays appeared in Just How Cool Is That, The Creative Penn, Tiny Buddha and Positively Positive.
Attended with the help of Mary Turnbull Scholarship 2010
Sally Van Doren
Poetry Workshop participant '01, '03, '06Her poem “Housewife as Poet” from her 2017 book, Promise, was featured on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column sponsored by the Poetry Foundation on November 12, 2018.
Liz González
Poetry Participant, '00Her mixed genre book, Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds: Poems y Cuentos New and Selected, was published by Los Nietos Press in July 2018. Her poem “Fall in the Chaparral” appeared in the anthology Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, 2018 released by Scarlet Tanager Books in October 2018. Her poem “Menudo vs. Hotdogs” appeared in the August 2018 issue of Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature and Arts Magazine.
Leland Cheuk
Writers Workshop participant '01, '02His newest novel, No Good Very Bad Asian, is forthcoming from C&R Press in 2019.
Tom Barbash
Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '16, '18His newest novel, The Dakota Winters, will be published in December, 2018, by HarperCollins.
Joe Bardin
Writers Workshop Participant '01His essay, “In the Name of Not Repeating”, was published in Eclectica.
Katherine Rothschild
Writer’s Workshop participant, ‘03Her YA novel on sisterhood in an untraditional family, Hope and Other Feathered Things, will be published by Soho Teen in early 2020.
Francisco Marquez
Poetry Workshop participant '18As the inaugural recipient of the Letras Latinas Poetry Scholarship to the Community of Writers, Marquez was interviewed by former staff poet Francisco Aragón on the Letras Latinas blog.
D. P. Medina
Writers Workshops Participant, '85, '86His novel, The Madness of the Brave, was published by Moonshine Cove Publishing in Summer 2018. A unique character-driven thriller, the novel is set in the late 70s’ world of political activism, a world of shifting alliances, faceless informants and betrayal and challengeson some of our most fundamental beliefs.
Julia Flynn Siler
Writers Workshop participant '03, '04, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '14, '15, '16, '18Her newest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, will be published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing in May, 2019.
Jessica Rae Bergamino
Poetry Workshop participant '11Her new novel, Unmanned, was published in November, 2018, by Noemi Press.
Evie Shockley
Poetry Workshop participant '99, Poetry Workshop teaching staff '9, '10, '13, '15, '18Her book semiautomatic won the Legacy Award for Poetry from the Hurston/ Wright Foundation.
Cerrissa Kim
Writers Workshops Participant, '13She served as editor and contributor to the anthology Mixed Korean: Our Stories. From the struggles of the Korean War, to the modern dilemmas faced by those who are mixed race, comes an assortment of stories that capture the essence of what it is to be a mixed Korean. With common themes of exclusion and recollections of not looking Korean enough, black enough, white enough, or “other” enough, this powerful collection features works by award-winning writers, poets, and scholars, alongside voices of literary newcomers. Mixed Korean: Our Stories is a testament to the courage, strength and resilience of all mixed people. Proceeds will be donated to 325Kamra and KoreanAmericanStory.org.
Alma Katsu
Writers Workshop participant '03Her horror novel, The Hunger, published in March, 2018, by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, was recently named one of the “5 Horror Novels to Read by Women Right Now” by The Writer.
Beverley Bie Brahic
Poetry Workshop participant '08Her fourth collection of poetry, The Hotel Eden, was published in September, 2018, by Carcanet Press (UK).
Cynthia Robinson
Writers Workshop participant '13, '14Her debut novel, Birds of Wonder (Standing Stone Books, 2018), has been named one of four finalists for the 2018 CNY Awards in the fiction category by judge Stephanie Dickson. The winner will be announced on November 8.
Debra Kang Dean
Poetry Participant, '93, '96Her third collection of poetry, Totem: America, was published by Tiger Bark Press in October 2018.
Catherine Staples
Poetry Workshop participant '18Her recent work has been published in The Southern Review and Terrain.
Michelle Bitting
Poetry Participant '05, '06She won the 2018 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, and her fourth collection, Broken Kingdom, recently won the 2018 Catamaran Prize.
Tim Foley
Writers Workshop Participant, '99, '01, '02His recent short story publications include: “Some Pages From the Journal of James Morris,” in A Book of the Sea (Egaeus Press.) and “Aneurism,” in Morpheus Tales: The Best Weird Fiction, Number 7. His essay on Ambrose Bierce, “Night-Doings in Victorian England: The Sojourn of Ambrose Bierce,” has appeared in Wormwood 30 (Tartarus Press, 2018).
Angel Garcia
Poetry Workshop Participant '12His new book of poetry, Teeth Never Sleep, was published in November, 2018, by University of Arkansas Press.
Attended with the help of the UC Riverside Scholarship.
Ruben Quesada
Poetry Workshop Participant '07His new book of poetry, Revelations, will be published in November, 2018, by Sibling Rivalry Press.
Attended with the help of he UC Riverside Scholarship.
Gordon Jack
Writers Workshops Participant '03, '08His second novel, Your Own Worst Enemy, will be published by HarperTeen on November 13, 2018.
Alexander Payne Morgan
Writers Workshop participant '10, '13His new book of poems, Loneliness Among Primates, was published by Kelsay Books/ Aldrich Press in September, 2018.
Kenji Liu
Poetry Workshop Participant '14His new collection of poetry, Monsters I Have Been, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in April 2019.
Attended with the help of the Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship.
Vickie Vértiz
Poetry Participant, '14Her book, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, won the 2018 PEN America prize for poetry. The prize is for an outstanding book of poetry published in 2017 west of the Mississippi River. Read more in the LA Times feature here.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Scholarship (Writers Workshops) and Lucille Clifton Scholarship (Poetry Workshop).
Christine Granados
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her second book of fiction, Fight Like a Man and Other Stories We Tell Our Children, which was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2017, won the 2017 Writer’s League of Texas Fiction Discovery Prize in April 2018. The book received Honorable Mention for Best Latino Focused Fiction Book in English from the 2018 International Latino Book Award. Fight Like a Man was also the winner of the 2018 NACCS Tejas Foco Fiction Book Award.
Attended with the help of the Ancinas Family Scholarship.
Sheila Thorne
Writers Workshops Participant, '04Her story, “The Horses,” appeared in the 2018 fall issue of Raleigh Review.
Yiskah Rosenfeld
Poetry Participant, '01, '03She currently serves as final judge of the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award for poems on the Jewish experience (through Poetica Magazine).
Charles Halsted
Poetry Participant '18His first chapbook, Breaking Eighty, was accepted by Finishing Line Press and will be published in November.
Alex Espinoza
Writers Workshop Participant '04, '05, Writers Workshop Teaching Staff '13, '15, '17His newest book, Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, will be published in June, 2019, by Unnamed Press.
Attended with the help of the UC Irvine Scholarship for MFAs.
Lynne Goldsmith
Poetry Workshop Participant '00Her newest book of poems, Secondary Cicatrices, won the Halcyon Poetry Book Contest. It will be published in early 2019 by Middle Creek Publishing.
Jon Riccio
Poetry Participant, '15His recent work appears in A-Minor Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, COAST | noCOAST, The Ekphrastic Review, and E·ratio. He was a 2018 Lambda Poetry Fellow.
Alicia Upano
Writers Workshop participant '12She won the 2018 James Jones First Novel Fellowship Competition for her novel, Big Music.
Attended with the help of the Mohr Scholarship.
Michelle Bitting
Poetry Participant '05Her fourth collection, Broken Kingdom, was recently published. It received the 2018 Catamaran Poetry Prize.
Vishwas Gaitonde
Writers Workshops Participant, '14His short story “Faith” will appear in the Fall 2018 issue of Santa Monica Review. This is the journal’s 30th anniversary of publication, and the issue will be launched on October 14 at The Edye in Santa Monica. Gaitonde has been invited to read at the event. The attached poster has more details.
Adela Najarro
Poetry Participant, '16She placed as a semi-finalist for The Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and her poem “Chantico Swings” will appear in the Nimrod International Journal upcoming award issue, October 2018. Adela entered the contest with the volcano poems she started at the Community of Writers.
Jenn Stroud Rossmann
Writers Workshop Participant, '99Her debut novel, The Place You’re Supposed to Laugh, will be published by 7.13 Books in November, 2018.
Kirsten Whatley
Writers Workshops Participant, '06Kirsten Whatley’s short nonfiction piece, “Only Moths,” appeared in PANK‘s Spring/Summer 2018 online issue, and was subsequently translated into Italian. Two of her Hawaii-based food stories recently appeared in AFAR (May 2018) and Saveur (Fall 2018).
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Scott Edward Anderson
Art of the Wild Participant, '92His new book, Dwelling: an ecopoem, which received an honorable mention for The Hopper Poetry Prize last year, has just been published by Shanti Arts of Brunswick, Maine. A sequence of poems and prose questions about the nature of our dwelling, place, home and our relationship with the other species with which we share this planet, Dwelling: an ecopoem has been called “a phenomenology of how we live on the Earth,” by Alison Hawthorne Deming.
DeWitt Henry
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98.His new collection, Sweet Marjoram: Notes and Essays, will be published this October by Plume Editions/Mad Hat Press.
Kate Hope Day
Writers Workshop participant '15Her debut novel If, Then is forthcoming from Random House March 12, 2019. It has been optioned by Heyday Television.
Elaine Barnard
Writers Workshop Partcipant (11)Elaine Barnard will be reading from the collection of stories from her travels in Asia, Emperor of Nuts at 7pm on Oct.11 at the famous KGB bar in NYC. The event is sponsored by her publisher New Meridian Arts.
Jeffrey Kingman
Poetry Participant, '12He was a finalist in Inlandia Institute’s 2018 Hillary Gravendyk Prize poetry book competition.
Margaret C. Murray
Screenwriters Workshop, '87In late September, she launched her 4th novel, Pillow Prayers—Love Ruined, Love Reborn after the Summer of Love, at Fourth Street Fine Art Cooperative in Berkeley, CA where much of her story takes place.
Attended with the help of National Endowment for the Arts
Tim Wendel
Writers Workshop participant '86, '87, '88, '89. Screenwriters Workshop participant '05A writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, Tim Wendel’s latest book is a memoir, Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors and the Quest to Cure Childhood Leukemia. He read the audiobook and is now doing voice skills for the company working with the Amazon Echo. In addition, work continues on the documentary of his book Summer of ’68, which was named a notable book by the State of Michigan.
Jen Beagin
Writers Workshop participant '11She recently made the short list for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Attended with the help of the UC Irvine Scholarship for MFAs.
Wayétu Moore
Writers Workshop Participant '09Her new novel, She Would Be King, was released from Graywolf Press on September 11, 2018. She will be joining us next summer for our Published Alumni Reading Series.
Attended with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
David Paul
Writers Workshops Participant, '17,'18His short story ‘Barbed Wire’ appears in the Fall 2018 issue of ZYZZYVA.
Emily Jungmin Yoon
Poetry Workshop, 2015Her first full-length collection of poetry, A Cruelty Special to Our Species, will be published by Ecco Books in September, 2018.
Attended with the help of the W C & F Scholarship.
Cai Emmons
Writers Workshop Participant '93, '94, '98Her new novel, Weather Woman, will be published on October 9, 2018, by Red Hen Press.
Grant Hier
Writers Workshop Participant ’93, Art of the Wild ’95, Poetry Participant ’98His new poetry collection, The Difference Between, was published by Pelekinesis in April 2018. A book of Flash Fiction, co-written with the Poet Laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon Parks, John Brantingham, is forthcoming in February, 2019.
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
Poetry Participant, '00, '03Her new co-edited book, Arts-based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice, was recently published by Routledge in 2018.
Joanna Solfrian
Poetry Participant, '06Her second collection, The Mud Room, will be published by MadHat Press in 2019.
Attended with the help of a scholarship and and a work-waiver.
Ama Codjoe
Poetry Participant, '15Her poem “Etymology of a Mood” was selected by Natasha Trethewey for the Georgia Review‘s Loraine Williams Poetry Prize.
Attended with the help of Lucille Clifton Scholarship
Anne Ray
Writers Workshop Participant, '06Her story “Weekend Trip”, originally published in Gettysburg Review, won a 2018 Pushcart Prize. Her story “Black Feather” is forthcoming in Indiana Review.
Leslie Hsu Oh
Writers Workshop Participant ,'14Her essay “K’E YIL YAL TX’I: SAYING SOMETHING,” first published in Alpinist Magazine and a Bronze medalist in the Family Travel category of the 2018 Solas Awards, was selected for Waymaking, an anthology of prose, poetry and artwork by women who are inspired by wild places, adventure and landscape, available now from Vertebrate Publishing. Her story “On the Line” was selected for Grace in Darkness, an anthology of metro D.C. women, available now from American University.
Attended with the help of The O'Dwyer Scholarship
Sean Marciniak
Writers Workshop Participant, '09, '14His short story, Sanctuary, was published in the Spring 2018 edition of J Journal.
Randy White
Poetry Participant, '16His company, Blue Oak Press, is publishing Lisa Dominguez Abraham’s first book of poems Coyote Logic in Fall 2018. Randy is also publishing Karst Mountains Will Bloom: The Collected Poems of Pos Moua during Winter 2018. Moua is considered by many to be the father of Hmong poetry. Blue Oak Press has also begun compiling poems for the anthology They Will Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets which will be released in Spring 2020.
Lynn Gordon
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Her stories are appearing this year in J Journal and The Examined Life.
Charles Halsted
Poetry Participant '18His first 30-poem chapbook, Breaking Eighty, will be published by Finishing Line Press on November 16, 2018. Orders can be placed at:
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/breaking-eighty-by-charles-halsted/
Julia Park Tracey
Writers Workshops Participant '16, '18Her in-depth feature on San Francisco Bay Area author and activist Kate Schatz was the cover story for Alameda Magazine in August 2018, and a major feature in Oakland Magazine August 2018.
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Writers Workshop '04Her short tale, “Clowns,” is included in the The Open Space, issue 21, “Things That Matter”.
Justin McFarr
Writers Workshops Participant, '13His collection of 4 short stories – which feature the main characters from his first novel, The Bear Who Broke the World – was published as a Kindle exclusive by Wheeler Street Press in August, 2018.
David Stallings
Poetry Participant, '11He recently published his second book of poetry, Risking Delight (Aldrich Press, Kelsay Books, 2018).
Louis B. Jones
Writers Workshops Participant '89, Writers Workshops StaffHis short story, Everybody’s Long-Term Welfare, appears in the Fall, 2018 issue of ZYZZYVA.
giovanni singleton
Her new book of poetry, American Letters: Works on Paper, was recently published by Canarium Books.
Vanessa Hua
Writers Workshop Participant '08Her new novel, A River of Stars, was recently published by Ballantine Books.
David Corbett
Writers Workshop Participant '88, '89, '91, '99, Screenwriting Workshop Participant '01His newest book, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, is now available from Black Opal Press.
Penelope Moffet
Poetry Workshop Participant '87, '17Her new book of poems, It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You, is now available from Arroyo Seco Press.
Norma Liliana Valdez
Poetry Participant '16Her chapbook manuscript, Preparing the Body, is forthcoming by YesYes Books. Her essay, “Inheritance”, was recently published in The Rumpus as part of the “Mothering Outside the Margins” series.
Robert Schladale
Writer's Workshop '16, '17His story, “Life in the Littoral Waters,” appears in the most recent issue of Redivider (February 2018).
Robert Rorke
Writers Workshop Participant, '11Harper Collins published his first novel, Car Trouble, on September 11, 2018.
Marilyn Kallet
Poetry participant, '96, '98, '00In June, she was inducted as Poet Laureate of Knoxville, Tennessee. Mayor Madeline Rogero made the proclamation.
Marcia Butler
Writer's Workshop Participant '15Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, will be published on April 9, 2019. Recent praise from Richard Russo: “The four main characters in Pickle’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed. That’s because their creator, Marcia Butler, possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence to match.”
Dedria Humphries Barker
Writing Workshop Participant '08, '15She won a Tier 1 writing residency award to Can Serrat, El Bruc, Barcelona, Spain, and was in residence March – May, 2018.
Gina DeMillo Wagner
Writers Workshops Participant '14Her essay, Mourning the Loss of a Sibling Rival, was featured in the Ties column of the New York Times.
Regina Louise
Writers Workshop Participant ‘02, '15, Writers Workshop Alum Reading ‘03, Screen Writing Workshop ‘09Her new book, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe: A Case History of Love, was published on July 10 by Agate Publishing. The film adaptation of her memoir, Someone’s Somebody, wrapped principal photography June 27th.
Kristi Maxwell
Poetry Participant '02Her sixth book of poems, Bright and Hurtless, was recently published by Ahsahta Press.
Amber Flora Thomas
Poetry Participant '92, '99, '01, '03, '05, '13Her book Red Channel in the Rupture: Poems will be published in August, 2018, by Red Hen Press.
Forrest Gander
Poetry Workshop Teaching StaffHis new collection, Be With, will be published by New Directions in August 2018.
Brenda Rickman Vantrease
Writers Workshop Participant '02Her new historical fiction series entitled Broken Kingdom from Severn House. Vol. I: The Queen’s Promise was released August 1, 2018, with Vol. 2: A Far Horizon to follow in February of 2019.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshop Participant '00Her new novel, Beautiful Exiles, was published August 1, 2018, by Lake Union Publishing.
R.O. Kwon
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Her first novel, The Incendiaries, was published on July 31, 2018 by Riverhead in the U.S. and by Virago/Little Brown in the U.K. It’s about Phoebe Lin, a Korean American woman who gets involved with a fundamentalist cult with ties to North Korea. Kwon was recently profiled in the New York Times as a writer to watch.
Samantha Thornhill
Poetry Workshop, 2009Her third children’s book, A Card for My Father, was published in May, 2018, by Penny Candy Books.
Attended with the help of Cave Canem Scholarship
Blas Falconer
Poetry Workshop Participant '12, '16His new book of poetry, Forgive the Body This Failure, will be released late this summer by Four Way Books.
Regina Louise
Writers Workshop participant '01, '14Her memoir, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe, will be released by Agate Bolden in July, 2018.