Lisa Alvarez’s debut collection of short fiction, Some Final Beauty and other Stories is forthcoming from the University of Nevada Press, as part of their New Oeste series. Her poetry and prose have appeared in journals including Air/Light, Anacapa Review, Huizache, So It Goes, and in anthologies including most recently, Rumors, Secrets and Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice (Anhinga Press) and Dear California: The Golden State in Diaries and Letters (Stanford University Press) edited by David Kipen. She has edited three anthologies including Why to These Rocks: 50 years of Poetry from the Community of Writers (Heyday). She teaches at Irvine Valley College where she co-directs the Puente Program. She co-directs the Writers Workshops at the Community of Writers and serves as Assistant to the Poetry Director.
2017 Writers Workshops Staff
Photo Credit: Jonathan Sprague
Natalie Baszile (’17) has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Natalie has had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and the Djerassi Resident Arts Program where she received the SFFILM and the Bonnie Rattner Fellowships. Her non-fiction work has appeared in Lenny Letter, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Rumpus.net and a number of anthologies. For two years, she was Writer in Residence at Saint Mary’s College where she taught a fiction workshop in the MFA Program. Natalie is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and lives in the Bay Area.
Photo Credit: Trace Ramsey
Belle Boggs (’01, ’17) is the author of The Gulf: A Novel; The Art of Waiting; and Mattaponi Queen: Stories. The Art of Waitingwas a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and was named a best book of the year by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the Globe and Mail, Buzzfeed, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Mattaponi Queen, a collection of linked stories set along Virginia’s Mattaponi River, won the Bakeless Prize and the Library of Virginia Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, the Paris Review, Harper’s, Ecotone, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, where she also directs the MFA program in creative writing.
Mark Childress is the author of seven novels, three books for children, several screenplays, and many articles, reviews and essays. His books include A World Made of Fire, V for Victor, Tender, Crazy in Alabama, Gone for Good, One Mississippi, and Georgia Bottoms. He has participated in the Community of Writers since 1980. [F] markchildress.com
John Daniel’s books of prose, including Rogue River Journal and Looking After, have won three Oregon Book Awards for Literary Nonfiction and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award; and have been supported by fellowships from Literary Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Daniel has taught as a writer-in-residence at colleges and universities across the country. Gifted, his first novel, came out in Spring 2017 from Counterpoint. He lives with his wife, Marilyn Daniel, in the Coast Range foothills west of Eugene, Oregon. https://www.johndaniel-author.net/
Photo credit: Alexandra Shyshkina
Alex Espinoza’s (’04, ’05) debut novel, Still Water Saints, was published to wide critical acclaim. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was the winner of a 2014 American Book Award. He is the author of the nonfiction book Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime and has written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, VQR, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR. His short story “Detainment” was selected for inclusion in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories. His latest novel is The Sons of El Rey (Simon and Schuster, June 2024). Alex lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair and Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.
Janet Fitch (’17) is the author of the #1 national bestseller White Oleander, a novel translated into 24 languages, an Oprah Book Club book and the basis of a feature film, Paint It Black, also widely translated and made into a 2017 film, and her epic novels of the Russian Revolution, The Revolution of Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. Additionally, she has written a young adult novel, Kicks, short stories, essays, articles, and reviews, and contributed to anthologies. She taught creative writing for 14 years in the USC Master of Professional Writing program, as well as VCFA’s Writing and Publishing program, A Room of Her Own (AROHO), the UCLA Writer’s Program, and Pomona College. She lectures frequently on fiction writing. Fitch was a 2009 Likhachev Cultural Fellow to St. Petersburg, Russia, a Helen R. Whiteley Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Huntington Library and a Moseley Fellow at Pomona College.
Lynn Freed’s books include seven novels, a collection of stories, and two collections of essays. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, among numerous others. She is the recipient of the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two O. Henry Awards for fiction, and has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Guggenheim Foundation, among others. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Northern California. [F] http://www.lynnfreed.com/
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Sands Hall is the author of the memoir Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint). Blackstone Audio produced the audio book, read by the author. Other books include the novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Random House Reader’s Circle selection and Willa Award Finalist (Woman Writing the West); and a book of essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. Her stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Alta, New England Review, Iowa Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Professor Emeritus at Franklin & Marshall College, she lives in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada. www.sandshall.com [Fiction/Memoir]
Photo Credit: Tracy Hall
Paul Harding is the author of two novels, Enon and Tinkers, which won a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard. He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown MA. [F] www.tinkerspulitzer.com/
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Rachel Howard is the author of a novel, The Risk of Us, and a memoir, The Lost Night. Her stories and essays have appeared in StoryQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. She served as Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow and Interim Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College and teaches nonfiction and novel writing at Stanford Continuing Studies. For more than 20 years she has written dance criticism for the San Francisco Chronicle. [F/NF] rachelhoward.com
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Michael Jaime-Becerra is a writer from El Monte, California, a working-class suburb east of East Los Angeles. He is the author of This Time Tomorrow, a novel awarded an International Latino Book Award, and Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, a story collection that received the California Book Award for a First Work of Fiction. Recent essays of his have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, ZYZZYVA, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Louis B. Jones is the author of five novels, three on The New York Times annual list of Notable Books. A Fellow of the NEA and the MacDowell Colony, he has published stories and essays in ZYZZYVA, Santa Monica Review, and The Threepenny Review. He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis and Wichita State University; and has for many years helped run the Community of Writers. [Admin/Fiction]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Dylan Landis is the author of a novel in stories, Normal People Don’t Live Like This, and a novel, Rainey Royal, a New York Times Editors Choice. Her books are linked, both set in 1970s New York, and a chapter in Rainey Royal appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories. Before Dylan started writing fiction at age 40 she covered interior design for magazines, writing six books on decorating along the way–so the subject of place and setting is dear to her. https://www.dylanlandis.com/ [F]
Photo Credit: Dean Baquet
Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean, and the translator of two books by Young-ha Kim. She is the recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, the Honor Title in Adult Fiction Literature from the Asian/Pacific American Libraries Association, a Granta New Voices pick, and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. She teaches creative writing at Yonsei University, Underwood International College. www.kryslee.com
Photo Credit: Matt Douma
Photo Credit: David Walter Banks
Christopher Monger is a writer/director in film and television who has directed eight feature films and written over thirty screenplays. He was born in Wales but has lived in Los Angeles since the mid 80’s. He is best known for his film The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down a Mountain and his screenplay for the Emmy Award-winning HBO film, Temple Grandin, which was also nominated for an Academy Award. For writing and directing, his many awards include, the Christopher Award for the film Seeing Red and the Hollywood Film Festival Award for the Girl From Rio. Currently, here is writing a miniseries for HBO and a feature film for Amazon Films.
He will teach the special Adaptation Class this summer on Film and TV Adaptation, (five 90-minute afternoon sessions). The class will be a practical approach to adapting a novel into a screenplay or miniseries. There will be an overview of the fundamentals of screenwriting as well as an analysis of the specific skills for a successful adaptation. We will explore the crucial differences between the mediums, their respective strengths and weaknesses, and examine a handful of adaptations, comparing and contrasting the films with the original material. Indicate your interest in the application form. $250 fee.
Photo credit: Betsy Zajko
Martin J. Smith is the author of five crime novels and five nonfiction books including Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads, a finalist for a 2022 Colorado Book Award. The veteran journalist and magazine editor has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards, and his novels have been short-listed for three of the publishing industry’s most prestigious honors, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award. He is a former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine and Orange Coast Magazine. [F/NF] martinjsmith.com
Gregory Spatz’s most recent book publications are the novel Inukshuk and the collection of interconnected novellas and stories What Could Be Saved. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, New England Review, Santa Monica Review, ZYZZYVA and in many other publications. Among other honors and awards, he’s the recipient of a Washington State Book Award and an NEA Fellowship. A new novel, The Vivaldi Church, and collection of short fiction, Brake For Miracles, are both forthcoming in 2026. He teaches in and directs the program for creative writing at Eastern Washington University. [Fiction]
Photo Credit: Julia Graff
Andrew Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review and founding editor of Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination. His writing has appeared widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Orange County Register, ZYZZYVA, Ecotone, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Los Angeles Times, Faultline, and Juked. He was for many years a contributing writer to the OC Weekly on books and politics. He is the author of two fiction collections, The Dairy of Anne Frank and More Wish Fulfillment in the Noughties and Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations. With Lisa Alvarez, he co-edited the landmark anthology Orange County: A Literary Field Guide. He taught at UC Irvine for twenty-five years, serving as president and grievance steward of the union representing adjunct faculty. Tonkovich hosts a weekly books show and podcast, Bibliocracy Radio, which airs on Pacifica Radio KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California, and edits the Community of Writers’ OGQ. [Fiction]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Josh Weil is the author of the novel The Great Glass Sea, the novella collection The New Valley, and story collection The Age of Perpetual Light. A Fulbright Fellow and National Book Foundation 5-under-35 honoree, he has been awarded The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ First Fiction Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the GrubStreet National Book Prize, the Library of Virginia Literary Award, the California Book Award, and a Pushcart. A writing teacher for over a decade, he has most recently taught in the MFA program at U.C. Irvine and at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. www.joshweil.com
Photo credit: Brett Hall Photography
