Frances Dinkelspiel (’03, ’04) is an award-winning journalist and author who co-founded Cityside, the nonprofit news organization behind Berkeleyside and The Oaklandside. She’s contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Beast, People, and AARP. She got her start in the news business as a staff writer at the Syracuse Newspapers and then at the San Jose Mercury News. Frances is the author of two books, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, which was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, one of the Chronicle’s best books of the year, and won a Golden Poppy award from the Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Association. Her second book, Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and was named a best wine book of the year by the Wall Street Journal and Food and Wine magazine.
Photo Credit: Nathan Phillips
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.
Debra Gwartney is the author of two book-length memoirs, Live Through This, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and I Am a Stranger Here Myself, winner of the RiverTeeth Nonfiction Prize and the Willa Award for Nonfiction. Debra has published in such journals as Granta, The Sun, Tin House, American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, VQR, and others. She is the recipient of two Pushcart prizes and her essay, “Fire and Ice,” was recently selected for Best American Essays. She is co-editor, along with her husband Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. She lives in Western Oregon. [M] www.debragwartney.com
Sands Hall is the author most recently of the award-winning memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint Press). Blackstone Audio produced the audio book, read by the author. Her novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine), is a Willa Award finalist. Her prize-winning essays and stories have appeared in such journals as Alta Journal, New England Review, Iowa Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Sands co-directs the Nonfiction/Memoir Program at the Community of Writers. [F/NF] sandshall.com
Photo Credit: Tracy Hall
Lauren Markham is a writer based in California whose work has appeared in outlets such as Guernica, Harper’s, Orion, Freeman’s, Lithub, Best American Travel Writing, The New Republic, Narrative, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. Lauren is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, which was awarded the Northern California Book Award, The California Book Award Silver Medal, and the Ridenhour Prize. She teaches in the MFA programs at Ashland University and the University of San Francisco. www.laurenmarkham
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Gregory Pardlo is an essayist and Pulitzer Prize-winning for poet. His most recent book is Air Traffic, a memoir in essays. His poetry collection Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts for translation. His first poetry collection Totem won the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007. He is Poetry Editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and Director of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden. www.pardlo.net
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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, 2019), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a nonfiction finalist for the California Book Award. Her other books are The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, 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. A graduate of Brown University (American Studies) and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Siler also earned an MBA at night from Northwestern University. A veteran journalist and National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar” fellow, Siler was a foreign correspondent based in London and has been a guest commentator on PBS, the BBC, CNBC, and CNN. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. She will be a fellow at Stanford University’s Distinguished Careers Institute in 2024-2025. She serves as the co-director of the nonfiction program at the Community of Writers. juliaflynnsiler.com
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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
Grace Talusan’s is the author of The Body Papers, winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction, the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. She was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. She is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the Fannie Hurst writer-in-residence at Brandeis University. www.gracetalusan.com
Photo credit: Alonso Nichols
