Tamsin Smith
Poetry Participant, '21Her third poetry collection, Displacement Geology, has been published by fmsbw press.
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.
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.
