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.
Eliot Schrefer’s latest book, Rescued, will be released in April by Scholastic. It is the third book in his series for children about apes. The first two books in the series, Endangered and Threatened, were both finalists for the National Book Award.
Mary Volmer’s second novel, Reliance, Illinois (Soho Press) is out on May 10, 2016.
Mark Maynard’s short story collection, Grind, was selected as the 2016-17 Nevada Reads book by the Nevada State Library and the Nevada Center for the Book. He will be touring the state for readings and other events beginning in October, 2016. Grind was also the recipient of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame 2015 Silver Pen Award. His recent work of flash fiction, “Negative Space,” was published in March, 2016 by The Nottingham Review (UK).
Elana K. Arnold’s latest novel, What Girls are Made Of, will be published in spring 2017 by Carolrhoda Books.
Christine Sunderland’s sixth book, The Fire Trail, will be released by eLectio Publishing May 10, 2016.
Stephen Massimilla’s Cooking With the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare (co-authored with Myra Kornfeld) is forthcoming from Tupelo Press on April 1. This 500-page “coffee table book” comprises a wide-ranging anthology of culinary poems; 150 international recipes; a complete book of new food poems and prose pieces by Massimilla; a guide to healthy, sustainable eating; and 200 color photographs, including many ingredient and market shots by Massimilla. In addition, new poems have appeared in 30 journals, including Barrow Street, Diode, Ducts, Interim, Notre Dame, Poet Lore, RHINO, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Oxford Magazine.
Andrew Roe’s debut novel, The Miracle Girl, now out in paperback, was named a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize (the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction).
Sharon Charde’s chapbook, After Blue, won an honorable mention in Finishing Line Press’s 2014 contest, and her chapbook, Incendiary, won first prize in Arcadia’s 2014 contest. Her poem “Fiftieth Anniversary” won first prize in the 2014 Rash Awards sponsored by Broad River Review, and she has been awarded fellowships to The MacDowell Colony (2015) and The Corporation Of Yaddo (2016).
Lucy Sanna’s debut novel, The Cherry Harvest (WilliamMorrow, 2015), has been published in Dutch. It was also chosen for the 2016 Reader’s Digest Select Editions. The paperback edition of the novel will launch in April 2016.
Aneesha Capur’s second novel (in progress) has been selected as a Finalist for the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, founded by Barbara Kingsolver.
Sally Charette’s poem, “Birthday” will be published in the March 2016 issue of The Sun magazine. http://thesunmagazine.org/
Danielle Farrell’s nonfiction piece, “The Gems of Pala,” was published in the Columbia Journal Online. This is her first published nonfiction piece. She attended the Community of Writers with the help of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Frances Stroh’s Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss will be published by HarperCollins in May 2016.
Risa Nye’s memoir about the Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991, There Was A Fire Here, will be published in spring 2016 by She Writes Press. She is currently writing for Berkeleyside.com and EatDrinkFilms.com.
Leslie Lytle’s new novel Chicken Stock (Hedgehog & Fox, 2015) speaks to rural America’s struggle against corporate agriculture through the eyes of a young woman catapulted to the front lines by her husband’s dying words: “Promise me, Berta, promise me you’ll keep the farm going.”
Elizabeth Enslin’s memoir, While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal (Seal Press, 2014), is a finalist for an Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction. Winners will be announced on April 11, 2016. She attended the Community of Writers with the James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship.
Ann Graham’s short story, “Going Postal,” was published online at Digging Through the Fat this past April and has another, “Vera, Vera,” forthcoming in The Oddville Press.
The dramatisation of John Harvey’s 2014 novel Darkness, Darkness will be staged by Nottingham Playhouse in September. In October, together with the band Blue Territory John shall be performing “Poetry with Jazz” in Nottinghamshire Libraries. John is continuing (with Joy Wilkinson) to dramatise the novels of Qui Xialong for BBC Radio 4 Drama.
Christina Hutchins’ second book of poetry, Tender the Maker, winner of the 2015 May Swenson Award, was published by Utah State University Press / University Press of Colorado in autumn 2015. The book is an elegy both personal and historical, and some of the poems originated among the poets of the Community of Writers.
Barbara Falconer Newhall’s book, Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith, published 2015 by Patheos Press, earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Nonfiction work-shoppers might recall Barbara’s struggle to transform 16 sprawling oral histories into engaging first-person narratives (a Buddhist, an atheist, a Witch, a progressive Muslim). They may also remember the challenge she faced in figuring out how to present her own — rocky — spiritual journey with detachment and humor.
Jade Chang’s debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October 2016. She workshopped the first chapter the Writers Workshop in Squaw Valley in 2010, which she attended with the assistance of the James D. Houston Scholarship.
Sheila Thorne’s short story, “We’re Standing on a Shallow Sea,” was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize and appears in The Lascaux Prize 2015. Stories were also published in the 2015 issue of Emrys Journal and the summer issue of Chiron Review.
Veronica Golos’s new poetry book, Rootwork, was published by A Taos Press in spring of 2015.
Molly Giles new book of short fiction, All The Wrong Places, was published by Lost Horse Press in July of 2015.
David Corbett’s latest novel, The Mercy of the Night, was published in April, 2015 by Thomas & Mercer.
Michelle Latiolais’s new novel, She, will be published by W.W. Norton & Company in May, 2016.
Joel’s novel, The View North from Liberal Cemetery, was shortlisted for the 2015 Quebec Writers Federation’s Concordia University First Book Prize.
“The Million Dollar Duck,” the documentary film based on Martin J. Smith’s 2012 book The Wild Duck Chase, about the strange and wonderful world of competitive duck painting, will have its world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January 2016. In addition, Diversion Books will release his fifth crime novel, Combustion, in 2016 as well.
Her novel The Race for Paris (HarperCollins, 2015) has received Honorary Mention for the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize for American Historical Fiction.
“SHOW ME THE ALIENS!” a comedy feature film produced by Steve Hermanos, was just released on Vimeo.com. It is the tale of Jared Pilvis, an appealing-yet-wacky British man, who vaguely recalls being abducted by extraterrestrials when he was ten years old. Determined to get to the bottom of the entire phenomenon of extraterrestrials, Jared hires a ragtag film crew and goes on a quest through the USA, interviewing people who claim to have been abducted, and getting entangled in their personal lives.
Aleta George was interviewed about her book Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California’s First Poet Laureate for C-SPAN’s Cities Tour focus on Oakland, CA.
Julie Chibbaro’s young adult novel, Into the Dangerous World, was published in August, 2015 by Viking. It received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and was a Junior Library Guild selection. She attended the Community of Writers with the Byrd Scholarship.
Phillip Barron’s new book of poetry, What Comes from a Thing, (Fourteen Hills Press, 2015) is now available through Small Press Distribution.
Laurel Leigh’s essay, “Nursey,” appears in the Winter 2015 issue of Clover, A Literary Rag and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her story “Two Houses Down” was published in the Summer 2015 issue of the same journal.
On a recent trip to Florence, Richard Peterson found that his book, Looking at Painting in Florence (Polistampa, 2014), has become a best seller throughout the city’s bookstores, including the Uffizi Galleries. It is also in the libraries of most of the prominent universities and museums in the U. S. and Europe.
Lisa Braver Moss’s latest book, Celebrating Brit Shalom (Notim Press, 2015), is the first-ever resource for Jewish families who have chosen not to circumcise, but who would like to hold welcoming ceremonies for their newborns. Co-authored with Rebecca Wald, the book offers services (in English, with some Hebrew and transliteration), background information about the growing trend known as brit shalom, a checklist for holding a ceremony, a glossary—and original music created to accompany the ceremonies. (Produced recordings of these songs are available on iTunes.)
Deborah Dashow Ruth’s first poetry book, Joyriding on an Updraft, was published by Sugartown Publishing in July. Two of her short plays were given staged readings in San Francisco, co-sponsored by the Dramatists Guild.
Gordon Jack’s young adult novel, The Boomerang Effect, will be published by HarperCollins in the fall of 2016.
Joe Bardin’s personal history essay, “Blacksheep”, was published in the Winter issue of Rock & Sling.
Her poem, “Letter to Galway From Tahoe” was published in ZYZZYVA No. 105, Winter Issue and appeared on their website on December 28.
Judy Bebelaar’s chapbook, Walking Across the Pacific, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2014. Her work has been included in The Widows’ Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival (foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, published by Kent State University Press in 2014) and River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the 21st Century (ed. Diane Frank, published by Blue Light Press in 2015).
Marci Vogel’s first collection of poetry, At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody, won the inaugural Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize and was published in September, 2015. New poetry, translations, and essays appear or are forthcoming in Zócalo Public Square, Jacket2, Drunken Boat, The Critical Flame, Matter Monthly, InTranslation, and Lunch Ticket. She recently organized a public reading at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook as part of a new campaign to bring poetry to California State Parks.
Carla Trujillo’s new novel Faith and Fat Chances, a PEN Finalist for Socially Engaged Fiction, was published by Curbstone Books/Northwestern U. Press. On December 19, Los Angeles Review of Books ran an extensive interview with her.
Mark Wisniewski’s third novel, Watch Me Go (Penguin Random House Putnam, January 2015), has been praised by Salman Rushdie, Ben Fountain, Daniel Woodrell, and Rebecca Makkai.
“Remembering Dr. Solomon” – Vishwas Gaitonde’s article on Dr. Suniti Solomon, India’s HIV pioneer and savant (the physician who played a pivotal role in India’s averting a major AIDS catastrophe of the kind that hit several African nations) was published in The Hindu, a leading newspaper in India, on Dec 1, 2015, to mark World AIDS Day.
Judy Batalion’s debut, White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess in Between, was published by NAL/Penguin in January.
Troy Jollimore’s collection Syllabus of Errors is one of the ten poetry books noted in this New York Times Best of 2015 List. David Orr writes: ” ‘Jollimore’s third collection is intelligent, soulful and amusingly self-aware. One poem begins, ‘Is there anything anywhere in this world / that is free from possession, that is not owned / by anyone?’ The next sentence, of course, is: ‘If there is, I want it.’ “
Her memoir, Mysteries of Love and Grief, was published in September, 2015 by Texas Tech University Press. An excerpt from the book was won the Narrative Magazine Spring Contest.
After 15 years as editor of Home Energy Magazine, Jim Gunshinan was inducted into the Building Performance Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement by the Building Performance Institute.
Susan Starbird launched Susan The Magazine with “The Intertidal Issue,” her addition to the rich cult literature of kayaking. She has continued to explore the postmodern art of fragments and lists. Her essay “Commuting in the Valley of Shadows” appeared in West Marin Review Vol. 6.
Olga Zilberbourg’s short story, “The Green Light of Dawn,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Epiphany Journal. Olga attended the Community of Writers thanks to the Carlisle Family Scholarship.
Jane Ciabattari’s flash fiction, “My Celebrity Goat,” appears in New Flash Fiction Review (2015). The Rumpus published an interview with her in December 2015, just in time for the first anniversary two-hour ‘Flashathon” of the [Flash Fiction Collective] reading series she co-founded with Grant Faulkner and Meg Pokrass at Alley Cat Books in San Francisco. (Twelve readers in two hours, including Molly Giles, Ethel Rohan, Kirstin Chen, Cornelia Nixon, Jane McDermott.)
The Penguin paperback edition of Natalie Baszile’s novel Queen Sugar, was published in 2015. The book will soon to be adapted for televison by writer/director Ava DuVernay of “Selma” fame, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey for OWN, Oprah’s television network.
Frances Dinkelspiel’s nonfiction book Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, landed on the New York Times bestseller list in November.
Matt Sumell’s novel, Making Nice was published by Henry Holt & Company in 2015. He was featured on National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition, Saturday.” The New York Times included Making Nice, in their “The Best Book Covers of 2015” list (cover designed by Gray318); and it was included in The Fiction Advocate’s The 10 Best Books of 2015 list among others.
Marian Palaia’s critically acclaimed debut novel, The Given World, published in April by Simon and Schuster has been longlisted for the PEN/Bingham first novel prize. Shorter works have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly and Joyland.
Celeste León’s debut novel, Luck is Just the Beginning, is inspired by a true story just and was released by Floricanto Press. The book is available from Amazon and Floricanto Press, as well as Tahoe’s local book store, The Bookshelf.
Gwen Goodkin’s short story, “How to Hold it All In,” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Atticus Review.
Dasha Kelly’s novel, Almost Crimson, was published by Curbside Splendor Publishing in May, 2015. Slate Magazine Book Review named her in their “23 Best Lines from 2015” list. The line is from Almost Crimson: “She never wanted to forget this moment, this smell, these exact shades of sunshine, lemon, maize, construction hat, yolk, taxi, sunflower, bumblebee, mustard.”
Elisa Adler’s second book, Home Place, has just been released by Floating Island Publications. Parts of it were first read during an Art of the Wild workshop. A love story about a particular valley in the northern Sierra Nevada, Home Place tells the story of a place and the spirits that shape it.
Long-time Community of Writers staff naturalist, David Lukas, has just published a book called Language Making Nature, a toolkit of techniques and insights into the highly imaginative process of word making, with a particular focus on creating new words for speaking of the natural world. This book is designed for writers, artists, and thinkers of all types, and to be a tool for creative writing programs and writing workshops at all levels.
William Petersen’s short story, “Satisfaction”, will appear in the Fall/Winter 2015 edition of Solstice.
(Available online in December.)
Linda González recently published personal essays in Huizache, La Tolteca ‘Zine, and raisingmothers.com.
Dorothy Rice’s first book, The Reluctant Artist: Joe Rice 1918 – 2011, has been published by Shanti Arts Publishing. The author’s father, Joe Rice, was an art teacher in the San Francisco public schools and a little-known artist in his own right. An art book/memoir, The Reluctant Artist includes over 70 full color illustrations of his paintings, ceramics and jewelry, work created over a forty-year period. The senior Rice eschewed any recognition for his art; his reticence and abiding humility inspired his daughter to write about him and to share his work more broadly.
Duet, A Conversation of Word and Image was released in 2014 by Arctos Press. It features poems of CB Follett talking to photographs of Ginna Fleming, which reflect back.
Kathy Walters became a regular contributing columnist for the Nevada Appeal (a daily newspaper distributed from Reno to Gardnerville, NV).
Stella Beratlis’s first collection of poems, Alkali Sink, was published in April 2015 by Sixteen Rivers Press.
b: william bearhart’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bloom (Issue 10), North American Review (Fall 2015), Plume (Issue 50), Prairie Schooner (Winter 2015), and Tinderbox Poetry Journal (December 2015). He is poetry co-editor for Mud City, an online lit journal from the Institute of American Indian Arts Lo Rez MFA program, which launched its first issue this past August. He is also working as poetry editor on the next issue of About Place Journal (May 2016) with Metta Sama, editor.
Christine Hemp was the Anthony Hecht Poetry Scholar at the 2015 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her poems are forthcoming from 32 Poems and Christian Century.
Herta Feely’s novel, tentatively titled Saving Phoebe Murrow, has been accepted for publication by Upper Hand Press in the US and Twenty7 Books (an imprint of Bonnier Fiction UK) in the UK. It’s due out in September 2016.
The Sound of Murder, the second book in Cindy Brown’s Ivy Meadows theater mystery series, was published by Henery Press in October 2015. Macdeath, the first in the series, was published (also by Henery Press) in January 2015.
Ray Hadley’s poems have appeared in the Suisun Valley Review, the MacGuffin, Poet Lore and Danse Macabre. He is poetry editor of Edge, a literary magazine published in Lake Tahoe, and welcomes submissions from members of the Community of Writers. He owns Keynote, a used record and bookstore on Lake Tahoe’s South Shore.
The paperback of Janis Cooke Newman’s second novel, A Master Plan for Rescue, will be released by Riverhead in May 2016.
Mark Maynard is the recipient of the 2015 Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award. The award is presented “to recognize writers who are in mid-career and have already shown substantial achievement. The award is designed to honor their talent and encourage other emerging and mid-career writers.” The award will be presented at the University of Nevada, Reno on November 19th. Novelist Laura McBride will also be receiving a Silver Pen, and Ellen Hopkins will be inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
Five of Allison DeLauer’s poems were recently published in eleven eleven ( #19), themaynard.org (Fall 2015), and Catamaran Literary Reader (Spring 2015). Middle Earth Editions selected her poem, “Habitat,” from Catamaran to produce a limited edition run of 51 broadsides.
Nayomi Munaweera’s novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, was published by St. Martin’s Press in September 2014. Also, her op-ed piece, “The Real Enemy Is Fundamentalism and It Doesn’t Belong Exclusively to Islam,” was published in The Huffington Post in January, 2015.
Scott Allan Morrison’s debut novel, Terms of Use, will be released on Jan. 1, 2016 by Thomas & Mercer. For more information, please visit his website and blog.
Michael Golding’s novel, A Poet of the Invisible World, was published by Picador in October. Michael will be reading from his book at the Miami Book Fair International in late November and speaking at the Search for Meaning Book Festival in Seattle in February 2016.
Margaret C. Murray, novelist and independent grassroots literary publisher, has published her third novel, Spiral, the prequel to Sundagger.net set in the Southwest of the Native American Anasazi.
Elizabeth Kadetsky’s novella, On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World, was published by Nouvella in 2015, and her short story collection, The Poison that Purifies You, by C&R Press in 2014. She has recent personal essays and short stories in New England Review, Antioch Review, and Glimmer Train. She is assistant professor of creative writing/English at Penn State, and she gave birth to her healthy and happy baby boy, Alexander, in June 2014.
Andrew Roe’s debut novel, The Miracle Girl, was published by Algonquin Books in April 2015.
Tim Wendel received an Excellence in Teaching Award from Johns Hopkins University for the 2014-2015 academic year.
Sharon McElhone’s mini short story is forthcoming in the anthology BASTA! 100 Latinas Write on Violence Against Women being published by the University of Reno, Nevada’s Latino Research Center.
Justin McFarr recently had two of his short stories published, one in Wild Quarterly, the other in The East Bay Review. Both can be read from the journals online.
Marian Palaia’s debut novel, The Given World, was published in April 2015 by Simon and Schuster. It is an Indie Next pick and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.
Dina Rabadi has published her debut short story collection titled Peter’s Moonlight Photography and Other Stories.
Curt Last has three poems based on his experiences as a Navy Corpsmen in Afghanistan in the upcoming Chiron Review (Fall 2015). Included is “The Double Amp Lieutenant’s Wife,” which was written and workshopped at Squaw Valley Poets in 2013.
The LaoGai Museum in Washington, D. C., has featured Diane Wolff on their website (laogai.org) in regards to her book, The Lamborghini and the LaoGai: The Two Faces of China’s Rise. She has also done a television interview with Radio Free Asia about a roadmap for Tibet’s future. They posted the interview on their website: www.rfa.org.
Maureen Duffy received a writing residency grant from the Vermont Studio Center for November 2015.
Stephanie Kegan’s novel, Golden State, published by Simon & Schuster in 2014, was named a “People’s Pick” by People Magazine, a “Must Read” by Entertainment Weekly, “Best in the West” by Los Angeles Magazine, and one of the 15 Best Fiction Books of 2015 (So Far) by Paste Magazine. Simon & Schuster published the paperback version of Golden State in 2015.
John Matthew Fox was a finalist for the 2015 Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, which comes with a $1000 prize and publication in the newspaper.
Laura Otis’s new academic book, Rethinking Thought: Inside the Minds of Creative Scientists and Artists, has just been published by Oxford University Press. Rethinking Thought compares creative people’s personal insights into their thinking with recent findings by cognitive neuroscientists. Otis has also started earning a low residency MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College.
Liz Brown’s nonfiction book, Twilight Man: The Strange Life and Times of Harrison Post, will be published by Viking in 2016.
Jonathan Cohen received the Excellence in Volunteerism Award from the Orange County Board of Supervisors in September, 2015 for his work with the adult literacy group READ/OC.
Joe Bardin’s creative nonfiction is published in Pithead Chapel.
Sheila Webster Boneham’s poem, “Spin”, appears in 27 Views of Wilmington, released in October by Eno Publishers, Durham, NC.
Heather Young’s debut novel, The Lost Girls, which she workshopped during her week in Squaw Valley, will be published in summer 2016 by William Morrow/HarperCollins.
Monica Sok’s chapbook, “Year Zero”, is the winner of the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship 30 and Under, selected by Marilyn Chin (forthcoming in Spring 2016). Her poem (written at Squaw Valley), “The Woman Who Was Small, Not Because The World Expanded,” is a finalist for the Narrative Magazine Seventh Annual Poetry Contest.
Patricia Spears Jones published A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems (White Pine Press); edited “The Future Imagined Differently” for About Place Journal for Black Earth Institute, where she is a Senior Fellow. She was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art by Elizabeth Alexander to create a poem in response to Jacob Lawrence’s famous and beloved Migrations Series–along with nine other poets including Rita Dove and Tyehimba Jess. The Poetry Suite is part of the exhibition’s catalogue and the readings are archived at MoMA. She reads December 9 at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church.
Claudia Reder has two poems published in the anthology River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the 21st Century, ed. Diane Frank, Blue Light Press, 2015.
HarperCollins/Walden Pond Press has bought two books in the BAT Chronicles, a middle grade series by Elana K. Arnold. In the spirit of Clementine and Ramona, the books follow Bixby Alexander Tam – nicknamed BAT – a third-grader on the autism spectrum, and his funny, unexpected, authentic experiences at home and at school. The first book, A Boy Called BAT, is set to publish in 2017; Rubin Pfeffer at Rubin Pfeffer Content brokered the deal for world English rights.
Jacqueline Derner Tchakalian’s first book of poetry, The Size of Our Bed, was released by Red Hen Press in September, 2015.
Michael Homolka’s manuscript, Antiquity, was selected by Mary Ruefle for the 2015 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and is forthcoming from Sarabande Books.
Charlene Caruso’s essay, “Burying Things,” appears in Issue 32 of 34th Parallel Magazine. She originally workshopped that piece at the Writers Workshop in 2014.
Ronald Alexander’s stories appeared in Shadowgraph Quarterly (Fall 2014) and Glitterwolf Magazine (Winter 2015). He is the author of the novels The War on Dogs in Venice Beach and Below 200, published by Hollyridge Press.
A staged reading of Delphin and the Children of Amphitrite, by Kathy Gilbert, a one act play commissioned by the sfolympians festival, will be presented November 18, 2015 at the Exit Theater in San Francisco. The festival runs three weeks, from November 1-21.
Marjorie’s short story, “The Gleaners,” was published by the Santa Fe Writers Workshop in Sept. of 2014. As a result of readers wanting to know what happened to the protagonist and her brother, she decided to expand it into a novel. Since the story continues in France, she applied for and received a Research Residency from the University of Chicago to work at their Center in Paris. She researched and conducted interviews in French for expanding and is now writing it while teaching classes at UC Irvine.
CB has a book collection published called Boxing the Compass. The four books are Compass Points, Compass Rose, True North, and Wind Rose. Each booklet is 5″ x 5″ and contains four persona poems of people from history.
Renee Thompson’s short story, “Recovery,” appeared in Western Press Books’ 2015 Anthology Manifest West. Her story “Brilliance” appeared in Cactus Heart in June.
Gail Reitano’s memoir vignettes, “Growing Up (Italian) in the New Jersey Pine Barrens,” will appear in the
Fall 2015 anthology, Songs of Ourselves, America’s Interior Landscape, from Blue Heron Book Press
The Military Writers Society of America (MWSA) announced the award of the 2015 Gold Medal – Historical Fiction, to John J. Gobbell at their annual meeting September 26, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. The award was for his latest novel, Edge of Valor, published by the United States Naval Institute Press. Edge of Valor is the fifth novel in the Todd Ingram stand-alone series.
Anthony J. Mohr’s essay, “The Angry Red Planet,” appeared in issue 8 of Mojo. His essay, “Rainy Day Schedule,” is upcoming in DIAGRAM, and his essay, “The Candied Children,” is upcoming in Common Ground Review. He is a reader for Hippocampus and for Fifth Wednesday Journal.
Stephanie Ford’s first poetry collection, All Pilgrim, has been published by Four Way Books (October 2015).
Paco Marquez has a poem in the current issue of LiVE MAG!, which is available both in print and online.
Leza Lowitz’s debut memoir, Here Comes the Sun, on finding motherhood across two oceans, two decades, and two thousand yoga poses, has been published by Stone Bridge Press of Berkeley, CA. Excerpts appeared in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Shambhala Sun, Best Buddhist Writing 2011, Yoga Journal, Yoga Journal Japan, Wanderlust.com, Elephant Journal, and the Manifest-Station.
Erich launched Left Coast magazine. “Revealing our culture, improving our lives, advancing our secret agenda.”
Christian Kiefer’s new novel, The Animals, was released by Liveright/W.W. Norton in March. He is also the winner of a Pushcart Prize for his story, “Hollywood and Toadvine,” originally published in Santa Monica Review.
Will Allison, a contributing editor and author at One Story, will be teaching an online class for the Brooklyn-based literary magazine entitled “Become Your Own Best Editor,” which will guide students through a case study of a One Story debut, “Claire, the Whole World,” by Jonathan Durbin.
Alexander Booth’s translations of Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker are forthcoming in A Public Space; his translation, together with You Nakai, of Berlin’s literary Wunderkammer “Museum of Unheard (of) Things” is forthcoming with Already Not Yet press. In addition, his translations of German Book Prize (2014)-winning poet Lutz Seiler’s collection of poems, in field latin, will be published in March 2016 by Seagull Books as will his translation of the young German writer Gunther Geltinger’s novel, Moor, that autumn. Some of his poems most recently appeared in the online journal H_NGM_N.
Sommer Schafer’s short story, “A Final Affair,” was published in the inaugural issue of The 3288 Review.
Alex Wilson’s short story, “Fence,” appears in the Fall 2016 issue of the Southwest Review.
A. R. Taylor’s novel, Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion, received the IPPY Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction 2015. One of her new short fiction stories was performed Wednesday, October 21st as part of Lit Crawl L. A.
Suzanne Berube Rorhus has short stories in the Flash and Bang anthology, out in October 2015, and in Memphis Noir, which will come out in November, 2015.
Gwen Goodkin had two short stories published in July – “One From Many” by Witness and “How to Hold it All in” published as part of Atticus Review’s Tales from the VFW series.
Berwyn Moore won the 2015 James Dickey Poetry Award from Five Points Journal. She has also had poems appearing in Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Measure A Review of Formal Poetry, Briar Cliff Review, and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review.
Norman Minnick has just finished editing and designing Work Toward Knowing: Beginning with Blake by Jim Watt, which will be published in November by Kinchafoonee Creek Press out of Athens, GA.
Caitlin McCarthy’s spec for “The Good Wife” has reached the finals at the 2015 Austin Film Festival in the “Teleplay – One-Hour Spec” category. The winner will be announced on October 31. Also, “Women and Hollywood” nominated Caitlin for the 2016 Fox Writers Intensive. Additionally, Caitlin’s spec for “Elementary” made the quarterfinals of the Final Draft Big Break writing competition; the semifinalists will be announced in October. Lastly, producer Anton L. Nel is attached to Caitlin’s feature screenplay Wonder Drug.
Stephanie Austin is a new monthly contributor at The Nervous Breakdown.
This summer Nina won the 2015 Beacon Street Prize for her essay “I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry.” It will be printed in the fall issue of Redivider. Her upcoming publications include “The Tuesday Evening Train,” which will appear in Volume 8 of The Los Angeles Review this fall, and “What I Know,” which will appear in the spring 2016 issue of Puerto del Sol.
Katie Ford’s poem, “Still-Life,” which she composed at Squaw Valley in 2012, will be printed in the forthcoming textbook The Norton Introduction to Literature, Fuller and Shorter editions.
Celeste’s León’s novel, Luck is Just the Beginning, will be released in November, 2015 by Floricanto Press. For more information and to read reviews by fellow Squaw Valley alumni and staff, please visit her website and blog.
Elise Blackwell’s fifth novel, The Lower Quarter, was published in October by Unbridled Books, and received a starred review in Kirkus.
Carol Lee Hall became a Grand Prize Winner in the New York Screenplay Contest for her television concept based on Shelley Adina’s young adult steampunk adventure novel series Magnificent Devices. She and Shelley won cash, software, and an award certificate.
Charlotte Reiter co-authored Taking Control of Your Seizures: Workbook, recently released by Oxford University Press in their Treatments That Work series.
Paulette Boudreaux’s debut novel, Mulberry, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize, was released by Carolina Wren Press on October 1, 2015.
Jackie Davis Martin read her short story “In the Heat” at the book launch of the anthology, Love on the Road (Liberties Press), in Dublin, Ireland in 2015. Her short story “Knife” (one-on-one consultant, Michael Jaime Beccera) won first prize in fiction from New Millennium Writings and will be published in Fall, 2015. In 2015, other stories appeared in Thrice Publishing, 100 Word Story, Bethlehem Writers Group, Bluestockings Magazine, On the Premises, Infective Ink, Halfway Down the Stairs, and a poem in The Best American Poetry Show.
Sheila Webster Boneham’s essay, “A Question of Corvids”, appears in the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology edited by Rebecca Skloot. In 2014, the essay won the Prime Number Magazine Creative Nonfiction Award judged by Ned Stuckey-French and appeared in the October 2014 issue of the magazine and in the 2014 Press53 Annual Anthology (Durham, NC: Press53, 2014).
Lorraine Comanor’s memoir segment, “In The Shadow of Parsenn,” was published in the April 2015 issue of The New England Review.
Sheila Boneham is pleased to announce the release of Shepherd’s Crook, the fourth installment of her award-winning Animals in Focus mystery series from Midnight Ink.
Jan Stites’s novel, Reading the Sweet Oak, was published September 2015 by Lake Union Publishing, a full-service, mainstream novel imprint of Amazon (not self-publishing).
Albert Garcia has published his third collection of poetry, A Meal Like That, with Brick Road Poetry Press.
Jami Macarty has completed editing the Fall 2015 issue of the online poetry journal The Maynard. The issue goes live with 32 poets and 45 poems on October 15. Look for two poems by Community of Writers sister and housemate, Allison Delauer, ’10. Submit your poems!
JJ Strong’s short story “People You’ve Been Before” will appear in the Fall 2015 issue of Fifth Wednesday. He also has two professional play productions upcoming: one in October at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego and one in January 2016 at the LaBute New Theater Festival in New York.
Maureen O’Leary Wanket’s short stories appear in Gold Man Review, Issue 5, and Shade Mountain Press’ anthology The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women, both released November 2015. She is the recipient of Heyday Books’ Sacramento Valley Writing Contest best-of-category prize in poetry, and her work will appear in a forthcoming book about the environment and people of the region.
Lois Rosen’s new collection of poems, Nice and Loud, was published by Tebot Bach in October, 2015. Her chapbook Layer Cake appeared in January.
Josh Weil’s novel, The Great Glass Sea, won the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Mira Rosenthal’s translation of Polish poet Tomasz Różycki’s Colonies won the Northern California Book Award and was shortlisted for numerous other prizes, including the prestigious International Griffin Poetry Prize. She has new poems, essays, and translations in Oxford American, Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, Kenyon Review Online, and American Poetry Review. This fall, she started a new position as the Director of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.
Robert Thomas’ novel Bridge (BOA Editions, Ltd.) won the PEN Center USA 2015 Literary Award for Fiction. https://penusa.org/2015-award-winners-finalists
Phillip 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.
Sandy 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’s short story, “How To Disappear”, was published in March, 2015 in Pacifica Literary Review.
R.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’s short story, “River”, appears in the Fall 2015 issue of The Raleigh Review.
Jacqueline 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).
After 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 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 has been installed Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, CA for a two-year term (2015-2017).
Lisa Alvarez’s poem was published in the Fall 2015 Issue of Huizache.
Benito 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’s poem “Listening to Townes Van Zandt” appears in the October 2015 issue of Poetry Magazine.
“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 published No Hard Feelings, the sixth novel in the August Riordan crime fiction series.
Meg 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, 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’s story, “The Way Things Are Going”, published in Harper’s, has been awarded the O. Henry Prize.
Christopher Upham’s film, Return to Dak To, had its Bay Area premier in April, 2015, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
Matthew 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’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 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 published her first novel, South of Everything, this September 2015.
Kristin 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’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’ memoir, Hive-Mind, was just published by Lisa Hagan Books.
Kenji’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’s literary thriller, Inside V: A Novel, will be published by Rare Bird Books in 2016.
Troy Jollimore’s third book of poems, Syllabus of Errors, was published in September 2015 by Princeton University Press.
This 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’s novel, The Notorious Dream of Jesús Lázaro, was published by Astor & Lenox in 2015.
Melissa DeCarlo’s debut novel, The Art of Crash Landing, was published in 2015 by Harper Paperbacks/HarperCollins.
Vanessa 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’s first novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong is will be published by CCLaP Publishing in November 2015.
Lisa 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 C. Sirott’s debut novel, This is the Night will be published by Little A in November.
Paul Watsky’s second poetry collection, Walk-Up Music (Fisher King Press) was published in April and received a Recommended Review from Kirkus.
Sandra Giedeman’s poetry collection, In This Hour was published by Green Tara Press, Los Angeles, 2015.
Trent 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’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’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 had two books published by Apprentice House in 2014. The first, White Nightgown, is a book of poems. The second, Cumberland, is a novel.