Amy Elisabeth Davis
Poetry Workshop participant '16, '20; Writers Workshop participant '01Her poem, “As Company,” was recently published in the Southern Humanities Review.
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.
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.
