Tom Barbash is the author of four books as well as reviews, essays, and articles for publications such as McSweeney’s, Tin House, The Believer, Narrative Magazine, ZYZZYVA, and The New York Times. His short story collection Stay Up With Me was nominated for the Folio Prize and picked as a Best Book of the Year by The Independent of London, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. His novel The Last Good Chance was awarded The California Book Award and was a Publishers Weekly and Anniston Star Best Book of the Year. His nonfiction book On Top of the World, about the fate of the bond firm Cantor Fitzgerald on 9/11, was a New York Times Best Seller. A well-regarded speaker, panelist, and interviewer, Barbash teaches the novel, short fiction, and nonfiction at California College of the Arts. His most recent book, the novel The Dakota Winters, was a national bestseller, and named as an Editors Choice by The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Magazine, Rolling Stone and People.
2018 Writers Workshops Staff
Photo Credit: Roy Zipstein
Charmaine Craig (’97, ’98, ’18) is the author of the novels My Nemesis (Grove Press, February 2023); Miss Burma, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction; and The Good Men, a national bestseller. Her writing has been published in a dozen languages and appeared in venues including The New York Times Magazine, Narrative Magazine, AFAR Magazine, and Dissent. Formerly an actor in film and television, she studied literature at Harvard College, received her MFA from the University of California at Irvine, and serves as a faculty member in the Department of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.
Photo credit: Roy Zipstein
Leslie Daniels in the author of the novel, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, published by Simon & Schuster, translated into four languages and optioned for film. Her fiction and essays have been published in literary journals including The Santa Monica Review, Ploughshares, and The Missouri Review. Her background in publishing includes over a decade as a literary agent, as well as serving as the fiction editor for Green Mountains Review. Two of her theatrical pieces have been produced recently. Daniels lives in Ithaca, New York. llesliedaniels.com [F]
Karen Joy Fowler is a novelist and writer of short fiction. Her work ranges from literary to science fiction, from contemporary to historical. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves won the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award, the California Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2014. Her novel Booth was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 2022. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. [F] www.karenjoyfowler.com
Photo credit: Nathan Quintanilla
Glen David Gold (’96, ’97/Staff: ’02, ’04, ’06, ’09, ’10, ’12, ’14, ’18, ’21) is the author of the bestselling novels Sunnyside and Carter Beats The Devil, which have been translated into 14 languages. His essays, memoir, journalism and short fiction have appeared in McSweeney’s, Playboy, Tin House, Wired, Zyzzyva, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Guardian UK and London Independent. He has written Howard the Duck for Marvel Comics, The Spirit for DC and The Escapist for Dark Horse. His essays on the artist Jack Kirby accompanied the landmark Masters of American Comics and Comic Book Apocalypse museum shows. He has co-written episodes of The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Welcome to Nightvale and Unlicensed. His three-part memoir I Will Be Complete became available June 26, 2018.
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
Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and of the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, ZYZZYVA, The Paris Review, Callaloo, and The Iowa Review, among others, and was anthologized in On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library, Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest, Shaking the Tree: A Collection of New Fiction and Memoir by Black Women, and California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century. Recent work includes Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California, a fictional account of the life of historian and newspaper columnist Delilah Beasley. Collaborations include WE, with Los Angeles artist Susan Silton, whose etchings accompany Dana’s short story, “We See It Differently, You and I”, and UC Irvine’s dance theater production of The Story of Biddy Mason, produced by Annie Loui, artistic director of Counter-Balance Theater. Dana Johnson serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. danajohnsonauthor.com [F]
Photo credit: Brett Hall Jones
Louis B. Jones is the author of five novels, three on The New York Times 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, and been included in the Pushcart Prize Stories and Best American Essays. 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. [Fiction]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Photo credit: Ralph Palumbo
Edie Meidav is the author of Kingdom of the Young, a collection of short fiction with a nonfiction coda; as well as the novels Lola, California, Crawl Space, and The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon. She also coedited Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance. Her work has been recognized with the Bard Fiction Prize, the Kafka Prize for Best Novel, and year-end editors’ picks, as well as support from the Fulbright Program, the Howard Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and more. She is a senior editor at the journal Conjunctions and teaches in the UMass Amherst MFA program, where she founded and advises the Radius MFA project. She has served as a judge for the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Award, the Juniper Prize, Howard, the PEN/Bingham Prize, and elsewhere. https://www.ediemeidav.com/
Photo Credit: Joanna Morrisey
Peter Orner is the author of eight books, most recently the novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, named one of the best books of 2025 by the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, as well as the essay collections, Still No Word from You, a finalist for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay, and Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His story collection Maggie Brown and Others was a New York Times Notable Book. Other books include Love and Shame and Love (Winner of the California Book Award) Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), and Esther Stories. A recipient of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Orner is also the editor of three books of oral history for the Voice of Witness series, and co-editor with Laura Lampton Scott of a new oral history series from McSweeney’s called “Dispatches.” His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, the Paris Review and has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. With Yvette Benavides, he’s the co-host of the Lonely Voice Podcast on Texas Public Radio. Orner recently led short courses on James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Melville’s Moby-Dick for the Community of Writers/Writers’ Annex. He teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. [F/NF]
Photo: Brett Hall Jones
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of The Five Wounds, which won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her collection, Night at the Fiestas, won the John Leonard Prize from the NBCC and a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation. Kirstin has received Guggenheim and Lannan Fellowships, a Rome Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and a Stegner Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She teaches at Princeton. [Fiction/Memoir]
Photo Credit: Holly Andres (c)2020
Jason Roberts is a writer of nonfiction and fiction. His most recent book, Every Living Thing, was honored with the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for biography, as well as the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing award. His previous book, A Sense of the World, was a national bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the international Guardian First Book Award. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers, and lives in Oakland and Montreal. [F/NF]
Photo Credit: Christopher Michel
Elizabeth Rosner (’82, ’83, ’87, ’99) is a novelist, poet, and essayist living in Berkeley, California. Her book of nonfiction, published in September 2017, is entitled Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. It was chosen as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice. Interviews with Ms. Rosner have been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and in The New York Times. Her most recent novel, Electric City, was named one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio. Her highly praised autobiographical poetry collection, Gravity, was published by Atelier26 Books in Fall 2014. The Speed of Light, her debut novel of 2001, was translated into nine languages, and won several literary prizes in both the US and Europe, including the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, the Prix France Bleu Gironde, and the Great Lakes Colleges Award in Fiction. It was short-listed for the prestigious Prix Femina in 2002, and picked as the “One City One Book” choice of Peoria, IL that same year. BlueNude, her second novel, was named among the best books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.elizabethrosner.com/
Photo credit: Judy Dater
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On The Rooftop, was a September 2022 Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. Her second novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National. Book Award. She lives in Oakland with her family. [F] margaretwilkersonsexton.com
Photo Credit: Smeeta Mahanti
Julia Flynn Siler is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist. Her most recent book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Knopf) and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a nonfiction finalist for the California Book Award. Her other books include The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty (Gotham Books, Penguin Random House), a finalist for a James Beard Award and a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished reporting, and Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure (Grove/Atlantic). She co-directs the Nonfiction/Memoir program at the Community of Writers, and a contributor to National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle, a juror for the Commonwealth Club’s California Book Awards, and directs a 2026 literary series at Oxford University. She has spoken at TEDX, Google, and Harvard University, and was named a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. She is currently at work on a book of narrative nonfiction that explores the world of polar exploration. juliaflynnsiler.com [NF]
Photo credit: Stephanie Mohan
Elizabeth Tallent’s essays and stories have appeared in the O. Henry Prize Award, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She has published five story collections including, most recently, Mendocino Fire. Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism will appear in February 2020. She teaches in Stanford’s Creative Writing Program.
Photo Credit: Dierdre Lamb
Andrew Winer is the author of the novels The Marriage Artist (Henry Holt) and The Color Midnight Made (Simon & Schuster). He also publishes philosophical and literary essays and conducts conversations with fellow authors, most recently with Colm Toibin and Geoff Dyer. He is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, author Charmaine Craig, and their daughters. [F] www.andrewwiner.com