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.
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.
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.
