Greg Bills (’93, ’94) received his B.A. from the University of Utah, his home state, and then graduated with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His first novel, Consider This Home, published by Simon & Schuster in 1994 was a Literary Guild alternate selection and was published in England by Marion Boyars. Fearful Symmetry, his second novel, was published by Dutton/Penguin and also in trade paperback from Plume. His stories and essays have appeared in various journals and reviews, including an essay “Jack and The Giant,” which was featured in Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales. Other recent work includes fiction in the Santa Monica Review and a retelling of the Ridinghood story in the Red Issue of Fairy Tale Review. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing and Coordinator of the Visiting Writers Series at the University of Redlands.
2019 Writers Workshops Special Guests
Katharine Dion is the author of the novel The Dependents, which has been translated into four languages. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She is also a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in Emeryville, California. The Dependents is her first novel. www.katharinedion.com
Photo Credit: Terri Loewenthal
Daniel Halpern is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently Something Shining. For 25 years, he edited the international literary magazine Antaeus, which he founded in Tangier with Paul Bowles. He is the editor of many anthologies, including The Art of the Tale, The Art of the Story, On Nature, and Reading the Fights (with Joyce Carol Oates); and the co-author of The Good Food: A Cookbook of Soups, Stews & Pastas. Halpern has received numerous grants and awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, as well as the 1993 PEN Publisher Citation. In 2009, he received the first “Editor’s Award,” given by Poets and Writers, which recognizes a book editor who has made an outstanding contribution to the publication of poetry or prose over a sustained period of time. He has taught in the graduate writing program of Columbia University, The New School and Princeton University. And in 1978, with James Michener, he founded The National Poetry Series. He is publisher and president of Ecco.
Photo Credit: Lily Halpern
Michelle Latiolais is the author of the novel, Even Now, which received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. Her second novel, A Proper Knowledge, was published by Bellevue Literary Press, as was Widow, a collection of stories, involutions and essays. Her novel She was released in 2016 by W.W. Norton & Company. Recent work is forthcoming in Mississippi Review in 2025.
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. Her most recent novel is A Book of American Martyrs. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Beth Ruyak has worked in television and radio for over 30 years. An Emmy-Award winner, she has covered news, sports, science, health, arts and entertainment and worked as a reporter, anchor, producer, and writer. She has hosted daytime television, magazine shows, special events and live coverage, sideline-reported from 5 Olympic Games and Super Bowl XXV, traversed Europe for 3 Tour de France bicycle races (becoming the first woman television journalist to cover the event), co-hosted “The Home Show,” and guest co-hosted “Good Morning America.” In her current role as host of Capital Public Radio’s morning show “Insight” Beth interviews everyone in the community including artists, writers, public officials, emergency personnel, politicians, and other members of the Community. She has become a central figure in the region as she brings to the community through radio the stories of so many in the Sacramento Region and throughout Northern California.
Amy Tan’s novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and Valley of Amazement. She is the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins; and two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat. Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club and creative consultant for the PBS television series, Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat. She wrote the libretto for the opera The Bonesetter’s Daughter and is the subject of the American Masters documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir. Tan is an instructor of a MasterClass on Fiction, Memory, and Imagination. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, April 2024) marks her debut as a nature journalist and bird artist. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.