Omnium Gatherum: Alumni & Teaching Staff News

Janine Kovac’s book, Brain Changer: A Mother’s Guide to Cognitive Science, links parenting advice with cognitive science. This 78-page primer follows Kovac as she uses cognitive science to cope with the stresses of the newborn intensive care unit after her twins are born three months premature. Lauded as “inspiring and hard to put down” by renowned cognitive scientist and New York Times bestselling author George Lakoff, Brain Changer is available for sale on Amazon and through bookstores by special request. Janine attended the Writers Workshops with the support of a George Pascoe Miller Scholarship (’11), a Carlisle Family Scholarship (’12), and a Dirk Eshleman Scholarship (’14).

Sommer Schafer’s story, “The Gorge,” is out now in Fiction Number 62.

Olga Zilberbourg’s third book of fiction in Russian, Khlop-strana, has appeared in Moscow-based Vremya Press in October 2016. In English, her short story, “Opera at the Ballpark,” was published in the latest issue of the Santa Monica Review. Olga attended the Community of Writers with the support of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.

Judy Juanita’s essay collection, DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland, was published by Equidistance Press in October, 2016. It was a distinguished finalist in OSU’s 2016 Non/Fiction Collection contest. Many of the essays appeared at The Weekling.com where the author is a contributing editor. The essays explore race, sexuality, politics and spirituality through the eyes of a feminist foot soldier. “The Gun as Ultimate Performance Poem” recalls the author’s youthful foray in the Black Panther Party; this essay was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Susan Henderson’s second novel, currently titled Petroleum, has sold to HarperCollins. Susan’s first novel, Up From the Blue, was workshopped at the Community of Writers. She also received two Pushcart nominations this year–one from New World Writing for “Fish with Bent Fins” and the other from SUNY Buffalo’s Elm Leaves Journal for “Dead Eddie”. Susan attended the workshops with the aid of a Lojo Scholarship.

Sam Silvas’ short story collection, Stanton, California, was published in November (Silver Birch Press).

Marilyn Guinnane’s short story, “Ginny Reaper,” was published in October, 2016, by the Scarlet Leaf Literary Magazine, & can be viewed online.

Kelly Luce’s debut novel, Pull Me Under, was released on November 1, 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Elaine Barnard’s short stories appeared in the 2016 issues of Lowestoft Chronicle, Anak Sastra, Kyso-Flash and Green River Review.

Donna Miscolta’s short story collection, Hola and Goodbye: Una familia in stories, was selected by Randall Kenan for the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and is being published November 1, 2016 by Carolina Wren Press.

Vishwas R. Gaitonde’s short story “Pigs is Pigs and Eggs is Eggs” (published in The Iowa Review) has been cited in ‘Best American Short Stories 2016’ [guest editor: Junot Diaz; series editor: Heidi Pitlor] as one of the “Other Distinguished Stories” in the notables list. His story “On Earth As It Is In Heaven” has been published in the Fall 2016 issue of Santa Monica Review.

Ann Graham recently had two stories published in Panther City Review.

Dylan Brie Ducey’s flash piece, “The Talisman”, was published in Pithead Chapel in September 2016. Also in September, her short story, “Even When You Think I’m Not There,” appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs. Another flash, “I Hate Everyone In This Family,” appeared in Cheap Pop in October, 2016. Dylan attended the workshop with the assistance of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.

https://pitheadchapel.com/the-talisman/
http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=626
http://www.cheappoplit.com/home/2016/7/26/i-hate-everyone-in-this-family-dylan-brie-ducey

Sommer Schafer’s novella, Julie Goes North, recently received publication in the anthology, Brewed Awakenings 2.

Greg Hrbek’s Not on Fire, but Burning, published in 2015 by Melville House, is now out in paperback.  It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and an NPR Best Book of 2015.  

Jacqueline Doyle’s flash fiction chapbook The Missing Girl (winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition) is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Two of her stories were nominated for Best of the Net this year: “Nola” by Monkeybicycle, and “Winter Afternoon” by Phoebe Journal. She also has recent creative nonfiction in Catamaran Literary Reader, The Pinch, Electric Literature, Full Grown People, and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (White Pine Press, 2016).

Anara Guard’s short creative nonfiction piece “Ripening” appears in the 5th anniversary October 2016 issue of Under the Gum Tree 

Dedria Humphries Barker’s essay, “The Girl with The Good Hair” has been accepted for publication in the anthology, The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-first Century.  The anthology is being edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Tara Betts. The publisher is 2Leaf Press, an imprint of The Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars Inc. New York, NY. Dedria’s essay is about how her Detroit neighbors discovered how good her hair was when it was wet.

Josephine Ensign’s medical memoir, Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review section, October 16, 2016.

Dani Burlison’s new zine, Lady Parts, was published in September 2016 and is now available through Pioneers Press. Copies can be ordered here.

Elison Alcovendaz’s essay “A Man’s ABCs of Miscarriage” has been published by The Rumpus. Parts of this essay were treated in workshop at the Community of Writers and read by Jason Roberts. The essay can be read here.

Krys Lee’s novel, How I Became a North Korean, was released by Viking in August of 2016. The novel was inspired by her accidental activism and friendships with North Korean defectors.

Sharon McElhone’s new bilingual column now appears monthly in La Oferta and her fiction is forthcoming in the anthology Basta!

Vanessa Hua’s debut short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, has been getting great advance praise: O, The Oprah Magazine: a “searing debut”; Booklist: “an intriguing collection”; Bustle: “exactly what we need to be reading in this country right now, and probably always”; Nylon: “profoundly moving and impossible to forget.” She’ll be reading throughout the Bay Area, Nevada City, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York this fall. For more information, go to www.vanessahua.com

Joe Bardin’s literary nonfiction, “Body Archeology,” will appear in the Louisville Review in the Fall issue 2016.

Vishwas Gaitonde’s essay “An Ecological Movement Sprouts From Literature”  was published in The Mantle on September 6, 2016.

The second book in David Hagerty’s series of murder mysteries, They Tell Me You Are Crooked, will be released on Sept. 26 by Evolved Publishing. It follows Gov. Duncan Cochrane as he attempts to catch a sniper in Chicago’s most notorious housing project while maintaining the secret of his daughter’s killing.

David owes much of his success and persistence as a writer to Louis B. Jones, who taught him what it takes to make it in this trade.

Natalie Baszile’s 2014 novel, Queen Sugar, has been made into a television drama on the Oprah Winfrey Channel. The series is created, directed and executive produced by Ava DuVernay, who also directed Selma. Oprah Winfrey also serves as an executive producer. Queen Sugar premiered on September 6th, 2016, and has already been renewed for a second season.

David Corbett’s newest work is a selection of short stories, Thirteen Confessions, published in May, 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road. In addition, David will be teaching several workshops and seminars in the Bay Area this fall. More information here.

Janyce Stefan-Cole’s second novel, The Detective’s Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder, will be published September 13; Unbridled Books. www.janycestefan-cole.com

Vishwas Gaitonde’s multi-media essay “The Birth, Death, and Reincarnation of the Harmonium” was published in The Mantle on July 14, 2016. The essay contains representative video-clips of harmonium music to accompany the text.

Fred Andresen’s historical fiction novel, The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan, The Story of the Yusupov Rembrandts, was a Finalist for The Montaigne Medal of The Eric Hoffer Book Award. This is a historical novel about the power of love wielded by a descendent line of courageous women to protect the famous Yusupov Rembrandts from the threat of European and Russian revolutions, obsessive men, and American law — until the portraits find security in an American museum. “Home, we know, is not a place; it is where we belong to each other.”

Aleta George’s book, Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California’s First Poet Laureate (Shifting Plates Press), was awarded the Bronze medal in the Biography category in the 20th Annual, 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award contest.

Meg Waite Clayton’s fifth novel, the Langum Prize-honored national bestseller The Race for Paris, is just out in paperback. It’s the Sacramento Cap Radio Reads for September, as well as an IndieNext Great Read bookseller choice, a Historical Novel Reviews Editors’ Choice, a Bookreporter.com Bets On Selection, and recommended reading by Glamour and the BBC.

Celeste León’s novel, Luck is Just the Beginning, earned a Mariposa Award for Best First Book in the 2016 National Latino Book Awards and Finalist in Multicultural Fiction in the 2016 International Book Awards. The novel, inspired by a true story, was also selected as Book of the Month in August 2016 for the Las Comadres and Friends National Latino Book Club. Celeste was interviewed in Las Comadres’ monthly teleconference series; the interview is now a podcast. To download, visit their website: http://lascomadres.com/latinolit/latino-book-club/portfolio/2016-teleconference/

Luke Tennis’s short story won the Phoebe Short Story Contest judged by novelist Joshua Ferris. This past spring he was awarded a fiction writing grant from the Maryland Arts Council. He has new stories currently up on Phoebe, the Forge, and Pedestal.

Writer and editor Herta B. Feely’s first novel is being released on September 2 in the U.S. and the U.K. Saving Phoebe Murrow encompasses a timeless story addressing the struggles between mothers and their teen daughters with a razor-sharp 21st century twist.

Ramona Ausubel’s new novel, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, was published by Riverhead in June, 2016. It was on must read lists from People, TIME, Travel and Leisure, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, O, The Oprah Magazine, New York Magazine and many others.

Ramona’s story “Fresh Water from the Sea” won the Alice Hoffman Award for the best piece of fiction published in Ploughshares in 2015.

Dedria Humphries Barker published two pieces on Savingplaces.org, the website of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. One, “Preservation, Business, and Sustainability Mark Detroit’s Green Garage,” and Historic Bars feature series, “Stober’s in Lansing, Michigan.”

Cynthia Robinson’s story “Maison des Oiseaux”, a finalist for the Jeffrey L. Smith Editors’ Prize, is out in the Summer issue — “Family Practice” — of The Missouri Review, 39/2 (2016). She also authored a post for TMR’s “Summer Reading” blog series, dispatched from Valladolid between forays into medieval archives, on the latest offerings of Spanish authors Javier Marías and Lola López Mondéjar. http://www.missourireview.com/tmr-blog/ (scroll down to 11 July, or Google).

Wander, a novel by Lori Tobias, was launched by Red Hen imprint Boreal Books on August 29. Set in the 1980’s, Wander is a tale about love, loss and betrayal set in the frigid wild of Alaska, where a young news reporter faces the winter alone, discovering too late that the biggest threat lies not in the harsh landscape around her, but in her own fickle heart.

Jacqueline Doyle’s short story, “Winter Afternoon,” was chosen as a Finalist in Phoebe’s Annual Fiction Contest, judged by Joshua Ferris. The story appears in their Spring 2016 issue. Other recent fiction has been published in Quarter After Eight, The Boiler, The MacGuffin, PANK, and Monkeybicycle (“Nola” in Monkeybicycle was featured on the Ploughshares blog as “The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week”).

Winter Afternoon

Stephanie Taylor has recently published an anthology about water in California with Rita Sudman, formerly with the Water Education Foundation. Featured on 11 NPR stations in Oregon and Northern California, and on Insight in Sacramento, Taylor and Sudman have been giving presentations to water industry and participating in events. Available on Amazon, Water Ed. Foundation, and Sac Bee News in Edu. Foundation.

Richard Peterson, the author of Looking at Painting in Florence, has recently been giving a series of lectures on Renaissance art to varied groups, including Piedmont Center for the Arts, two sold-out performances at Marin County’s Larkspur Theater’s film, Florence and the Uffizi, and the Italian Athletic Club in San Francisco.

Patricia Dove Miller will be reading from her debut memoir, Bamboo Secrets: One Woman’s Quest through the Shadows of Japan (Illuminated Owl Press, May 2016), at two separate book release events in Grass Valley and the Bay Area. Hosted by the Nevada County Arts Council, the Grass Valley book release will take place on Thursday June 16th at 5:00 PM at the Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce at 128 E. Main Street. The Bay Area book release is at Book Passage in Corte Madera on June 11th at 7:00 PM. Bamboo Secrets will be available to purchase at these events, or from your local bookseller, online retailers, or directly from the author at illuminatedowlpress@oro.net.

Vanessa Hua’s debut short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, won the Willow Books Grand Prize in Literature and will be published in September 2016. Ballantine acquired her two novels, and she became a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She attended the Writers Workshop with the assistance of the Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Scholarship

Carole Firstman’s Origins of the Universe and What It All Means: A Memoir will be released by Dzanc Books in August. An excerpt workshopped at Squaw Valley went on to be a Notable in Best American Essays and then became part of her book. Carole attended the workshop with the assistance of the Carlisle Family Scholarship.

Mauro Javier Cardenas’ debut novel, The Revolutionaries Try Again, will be published by Coffee House Press on September 6th, 2016.

Paulette Boudreaux’s novel, Mulberry, won the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Silver medal for Best Regional Fiction–South. Mulberry’s cover design won a Bronze medal for Best Cover Design–National.

Elaine Barnard’s short story, “Emperor of Nuts,” appears in the 2016 issue #25 of Lowestoft Chronicle. “Great Satan Meets the Axis of Evil” will appear in issue #26 of Lowestoft Chronicle.

Joe Bardin’s essay, “Buying Time: Art, Entrepreneurship and Owning Your Value as a Writer,” was published in Eclectica.

Alix Christie’s short story “The Dacha” is one of six finalists for the Sunday Times Short Story Award (UK). She’s in pretty good company, too: http://shortstoryaward.co.uk/shortlists/2016. Her novella, Motherland, was the runner-up in the 2015 Novella Award (UK). The publication streak started with the 2014 launch of her debut novel, Gutenberg’s Apprentice, published by Harper Books, which was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award, short-listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and has been translated into eight languages so far.

Dylan Brie Ducey had a story in the February issue of Foliate Oak, another in The 3288 Review in March (Vol. 1.3), and another forthcoming this summer in Gargoyle (#65). She received the Carlisle Family Scholarship.

Mark Rauzon’s new book, Isles of Amnesia: History, Geography and Restoration of America’s Forgotten Pacific Islands, was published by University of Hawaii Press in 2016.

Heather Donnell wrote, directed, and produced a narrative feature film called Mom, Murder & Me. This murder mystery comedy is about a mother and daughter who must team up to become amateur sleuths.

Michael Golding’s novel, A Poet of the Invisible World, has just been nominated for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award.

Vishwas Gaitonde’s essay, “With No Inkling of the Contents: Viewing Narnia Through A Hindu Lens,” was published in March 2016 in The Mantle. C.S. Lewis’ much beloved The Chronicles of Narnia have their roots in Christianity; here, Gaitonde examines these classic literary works via Hinduism.

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.

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).

Christine Sunderland’s sixth book, The Fire Trail, will be released by eLectio Publishing May 10, 2016.

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).

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.

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.

Joel’s novel, The View North from Liberal Cemetery, was shortlisted for the 2015 Quebec Writers Federation’s Concordia University First Book Prize.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Judy Batalion’s debut, White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess in Between, was published by NAL/Penguin in January.

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.

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.

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.

Kathy Walters became a regular contributing columnist for the Nevada Appeal (a daily newspaper distributed from Reno to Gardnerville, NV).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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.

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).

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.

Benito Vergara’s short story, “Stone, Well, Girl,” including an interview with the author, appeared in Issue Forty-Nine of SmokeLong Quarterly (September 2015).

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. 

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.

Paula Priamos’s literary thriller, Inside V: A Novel, will be published by Rare Bird Books in 2016.

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.

Leland Cheuk’s first novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong is will be published by CCLaP Publishing in November 2015.

Jonah C. Sirott’s debut novel, This is the Night will be published by Little A  in November.

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.