Phillip Barron
Poetry Participant, '12Phillip Barron’s first book of poetry, What Comes from a Thing, won the 2015 Michael Rubin Book Award and will be published in November by Fourteen Hills 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.
Sandy Yang
Writers Workshop Participant, '12Sandy Yang’s short story, “The Future Is,” was published in the Fall 2015 issue of South Dakota Review, and her story “The Desert Museum” was published in Juked in April 2015.
Julie Morin
Writer's Workshop Participant, '03Julie Morin’s short story, “How To Disappear”, was published in March, 2015 in Pacifica Literary Review.
R.T. Jamison
Writers Workshops Participant, '15R.T. Jamison won UCLA’s James Kirkwood Literary Prize in Creative Writing in 2014. His winning story appears in the current issue (Autumn 2015) of the Bellevue Literary Review.
Lauri Maerov
Writers Workshop Participant, '04, '09Lauri Maerov’s short story, “River”, appears in the Fall 2015 issue of The Raleigh Review.
Jacqueline Doyle
Writers Workshop Participant, '14Jacqueline Doyle was awarded a Notable Essay citation in Best American Essays 2015, ed. Ariel Levy for her essay “Who’s Your Stepdaddy?” in Jabberwock Review. This past year she also published creative nonfiction in Ghost Town, Under the Sun, Grist: The Online Companion, Lunch Ticket, Cold Mountain Review, Waccamaw, Switchback, and Southern Humanities Review (nominated for a Pushcart).
Malcolm Margolin
Special Guest, '15After forty-one years at the helm, Heyday founder and publisher/executive director Malcolm Margolin is retiring. Heyday has begun the search for a successor, and information about the position is available at https://heydaybooks.com/executive-search/
Dawn Dorland Perry
Writers Workshops Participant '14Dawn Dorland was named a Visiting Artist for six weeks this fall by the Regional Cultural Center in New York Mills, MN. Earlier this summer she regrettably had to decline a full scholarship to the Writers Workshops ’15 in order to have surgery: Dawn also became a living kidney donor this year.
Sojourner Kincaid Rolle
Poetry Participant, '94, '97Sojourner Kincaid Rolle has been installed Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, CA for a two-year term (2015-2017).
Lisa Alvarez
Writers Workshops Participant, '91,'93,'94, and StaffLisa Alvarez’s poem was published in the Fall 2015 Issue of Huizache.
Benito Vergara
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Benito Vergara’s short story, “Stone, Well, Girl,” including an interview with the author, appeared in Issue Forty-Nine of SmokeLong Quarterly (September 2015).
Christine Gosnay
Poetry Participant, '13Christine Gosnay’s poem “Listening to Townes Van Zandt” appears in the October 2015 issue of Poetry Magazine.
Martin J. Smith
Writers Workshops Teaching Staff & Participant, '91“The Million Dollar Duck,” a documentary film based on Martin J. Smith’s 2012 nonfiction book The Wild Duck Chase, will premiere in early 2016. In addition, Diversion Books will release Smith’s latest suspense-thriller, Combustion, in early 2016.
Mark Coggins
Writers Workshops Participant, '96; Screenwriting Program Participant, '01Mark Coggins published No Hard Feelings, the sixth novel in the August Riordan crime fiction series.
Meg Waite Clayton
Writers Workshops Participant, '00Meg Waite Clayton’s fifth novel, The Race for Paris — the story of two female journalists hoping to be the first to report the liberation of Paris in the summer of 1944 — was published by HarperCollins in August, and is a national bestseller and an Indie Next pick, as well as recommended reading by Glamour and the BBC, and a Historical Novel Reviews Editors’ Choice. Meg also published seven opinion pieces in the past year, in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and the San Jose Mercury News.
Claudia Rankine
Poetry Teaching Staff & Participant, '93Claudia Rankine, whose book, Citizen: An American Lyric, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2015, has joined the English department at USC Dornsife as Aerol Arnold Chair of English.
Lynn Freed
Writers Workshops Teaching StaffLynn Freed’s story, “The Way Things Are Going”, published in Harper’s, has been awarded the O. Henry Prize.
Christopher Upham
Screenwriting Teaching StaffChristopher Upham’s film, Return to Dak To, had its Bay Area premier in April, 2015, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
Matthew Fogarty
Writers Workshops Participant, '11,'14Matthew Fogarty’s debut collection of short stories, Maybe Mermaids & Robots are Lonely, and a novella will be published in Fall 2016 by George Mason University’s Stillhouse Press.
Elizabeth Rosner
Poetry Participant, '99, Writers Workshop Staff & Participant, '82,'83,'87Elizabeth Rosner’s latest novel, Electric City, was released in paperback in late September, and was named as one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio.
CB Follett
Poetry Participant, '91,'93,'95,'00,'04CB Follet’s latest book, Quatrefoil, Poems by CB Follett, published by Many Voices Press, is due out in two weeks. Quatrefoil is a collection of four unpublished chapbooks on trees, dogs, red rocks and various ‘gathering’ words, such as a Murder of Crows, An Ostentation of Peacocks, etc.
Audrey Taylor Gonzalez
Poetry Participant, '06,'07Audrey Taylor Gonzalez published her first novel, South of Everything, this September 2015.
Kristin FitzPatrick
Writers Workshops Participant, '11Kristin FitzPatrick’s short story collection, My Pulse is an Earthquake, was published by West Virginia University Press in September 2015. She will be reading from her book at Lit Crawl LA in October 2015 with other Squaw Valley alumni, and at Book Passage in Corte Madera in January 2016.
Henry Rappaport
Poetry Participant, '09Henry Rappaport’s poem “Sotto Voce,” was just published in Diverse Voices Quarterly. “Word on the Street” will be published by The Mayard in October, and “Otis” will appear in The Cincinnati Review winter issue.
Gabrielle Myers
Poetry Participant, '07Gabrielle Myers’ memoir, Hive-Mind, was just published by Lisa Hagan Books.
Kenji Liu
Poetry Participant, '14Kenji’s forthcoming poetry collection, Map of an Onion, was the 2015 national winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and shortlisted as a finalist for the Hong Kong University International Poetry Prize.
Paula Priamos
Writers Workshop Participant, '97Paula Priamos’s literary thriller, Inside V: A Novel, will be published by Rare Bird Books in 2016.
Troy Jollimore
Poetry Participant, '12,'15Troy Jollimore’s third book of poems, Syllabus of Errors, was published in September 2015 by Princeton University Press.
David Hagerty
Writer Workshop Participant, '04This year David Hagerty’s debut novel, They Tell Me You Are Wicked, a murder mystery, was published by Evolved Publishing. The first in a series of three, the next novels will appear in 2016 and 2017.
Terence Clarke
Writers Workshop, '72, '73, Poetry Workshop, and Writers Workshop StaffTerence Clarke’s novel, The Notorious Dream of Jesús Lázaro, was published by Astor & Lenox in 2015.
Melissa DeCarlo
Writer's Workshops Participant, '14Melissa DeCarlo’s debut novel, The Art of Crash Landing, was published in 2015 by Harper Paperbacks/HarperCollins.
Vanessa Hua
Writers Workshop Participant, '08Vanessa Hua received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her short story collection, winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize in Literature in Prose, will be published in the fall of 2016. This summer, an excerpt of her novel-in-progress won the San Francisco Litquake Writing Contest. Her essay about genes, generations, and her father’s cross-cultural funeral appeared in the New York Times. She will travel to Ecuador in October on fellowship sponsored by the International Journalism Project. (Photo credit: Rossa Cole)
Leland Cheuk
Writers Workshops Participant, '01, '02Leland Cheuk’s first novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong is will be published by CCLaP Publishing in November 2015.
Lisa Espenmiller
Poetry Participant, '95Lisa Espenmiller’s haiku have been published in the following print and online haiku journals: Modern Haiku (Volume 46.1 Winter-Spring 2015), bones (Issue 6, March 15, 2015), bottle rockets (Issue 32 Winter 2015), is/let (December 21, 2014; January 3, 2015), Issa’s Untidy Hut – Wednesday Haiku feature (April 8, 2015; June 10, 2015).
Jonah Charney-Sirott
Writers Workshops Participant, '10Jonah C. Sirott’s debut novel, This is the Night will be published by Little A in November.
Paul Watsky
Poetry Participant, '07,'09,'11,'13Paul Watsky’s second poetry collection, Walk-Up Music (Fisher King Press) was published in April and received a Recommended Review from Kirkus.
Sandra Giedeman
Writers Workshop Participant '93, '96, '07Sandra Giedeman’s poetry collection, In This Hour was published by Green Tara Press, Los Angeles, 2015.
Trent Robert Pridemore
Writers Workshops in Nonfiction, '10, '11Trent Pridemore: A feature article and photo essay will by published in the 2015 Holiday issue of Sierra Heritage Magazine where he has published other features. He also writes feature articles and has the “Stillwater” (fly fishing lakes) column and the “Foraging Angler” (food, wine, travel and outdoor cooking) column for California Fly Fisher. The magazine has also run chapters from his memoir project, “Chasing Rainbows…Tales of a Well-Traveled Fly Fisherman.” Related work includes lecturing on fly fishing, conservation biology and as a Special Outreach Ambassador for Bear Yuba Land Trust. He recently signed a contract to lecture for International Sportsman’s Expositions.
Judy Rowe Michaels
Poetry Participant, '91, '92 & Writing the Medical Experience Participant, 2002Judy Rowe Michaels’s chapbook, Ghost Notes, appeared from Finishing Line Press June 2015. The New Ohio Review published two of her poems, spring, 2015, and two appeared on Verse Daily in August and September, 2015. Her poem “Spring Rain” won the NJ Poetry Prize for 2014 , and “Concentration: Chiura Obata, Painter” won the Daniel Varoujan Prize from the New England Poetry Club (2014). Her collection This Morning I Wanted to Tell You was a May Swenson finalist in 2014. She will be reading at the Abroad Writers Conference in Dublin this December.
Sara Wallace
Poetry Participant, '06Sara Wallace’s poetry collection, The Rival, published by The University of Utah Press in 2015, was awarded The Agha Shadhid Ali Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Edge, was published in 2014 by The Center for Book Arts.
Megan Gannon
Poetry Participant, '04Megan Gannon had two books published by Apprentice House in 2014. The first, White Nightgown, is a book of poems. The second, Cumberland, is a novel.