Lisa Alvarez’s debut collection, Some Final Beauty and Other Stories, was published in August 2025 by the University of Nevada Press, as part of their New Oeste imprint which promotes Latinx writers of the American West. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely including About Place Journal, Air/Light, Citric Acid, Huizache, Santa Monica Review, and in anthologies such as Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America (Norton) and most recently, Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond (Gunpowder Press). Devoted to promoting the writing of California, she has edited three anthologies including Orange County: A Literary Field Guide (Heyday) and Why to These Rocks: Fifty Years of Poems from the Community of Writers (Heyday). She teaches at Irvine Valley College, where she co-directs the PUENTE program.
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. His latest work, a collection of poetry called Lighted Distances: Four Seasons on Goodlow Rim, wass published in April 2023. 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 is the bestselling author of White Oleander, an Oprah Book Club selection and chosen as a Winter ’26 California Book Club selection; Paint it Black, adapted and directed for the screen by Amber Tamblyn; and a duet of novels set during the Russian Revolution, The Revolution of Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. Her short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies including Los Angeles Noir and Palm Springs Noir, and a film of her noir story “The Method,”was recently released as “The Long Game” starring Kathleen Turner. Longtime faculty with the Community of Writers, Fitch hosts her popular Writing Wednesdays writing series on YouTube.
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 award-winning memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint); Blackstone Audio produced the audio book, read by the author. Her novel, Catching Heaven, is a Willa Award finalist. Her award-winning essays and stories have appeared in such journals as Alta Journal, New England Review, Iowa Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She co-directs the Nonfiction/Memoir program at the Community of Writers. sandshall.com [F/NF/M]
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 three works of fiction in the Rainey Royal Cycle set in 1970s Greenwich Village: List of All Possible Desires, a novel in stories; the novel Rainey Royal, a New York Times Editors’ Choice; and the novel in stories Normal People Don’t Live Like This. Her work has appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and she has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction. She lives in Los Angeles. dylanlandis.com [F]
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Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean, and the translator of I Hear Your Voice and the story collection Diary of a Murderer by Young-ha Kim. She received 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, and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. She currently teaches creative writing at Yonsei University, Underwood International College in Seoul, South Korea. kryslee.com [F/M]
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, as well as a brief memoir, Whale Vision. He teaches in and directs the program for creative writing at Eastern Washington University. gregoryspatz.com [F]
Photo credit: Julia Graff
Andrew Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the West Coast literary arts journal the Santa Monica Review and founding editor of Citric Acid, an online Orange County, California quarterly. He hosts a weekly books show, Bibliocracy Radio, on Pacifica’s KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California. He co-edited the landmark anthology Orange County: A Literary Field Guide with Lisa Alvarez and is the author of two collections, The Dairy of Anne Frank and More Wish Fulfillment in the Noughties and Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations. His short stories, book reviews, essays, and journalism have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, Faultline, Solstice, Journal of the Plague Years, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Best American Nonrequired Reading. For many years he was a regular contributor to the OC Weekly. [F]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Josh Weil is the author of the novels What Came West and The Great Glass Sea, the novella collection The New Valley, and the story collection The Age of Perpetual Light. A Fulbright fellow, he has been awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation, among others. He has taught widely—including in graduate programs at Columbia University, UC Irvine, and the University of Leipzig. joshweil.com [F]
Photo credit: Brett Hall Jones
