Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, most recently The Postmistress of Paris, a Good Morning America Buzz pick, People Magazine, IndieNext booksellers, LoanStars librarians, USA Today, Book of the Month Club and Amazon Editors’ pick that the San Francisco Chronicle calls “‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent…powerful.” Her prior novels include the National Jewish Book Award finalist and international bestseller The Last Train to London, and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. Her novels have been published in 23 languages. She has also written more than 100 pieces for major newspapers, magazines, and public radio. She has participated in the Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman sponsored The Writers Lab for screenwriting, mentors in the OpEd Project, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar. http://megwaiteclayton.com/
2022 Writers Workshops Special Guests
Michelle Latiolais is a Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine. She 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 in 2008 by Bellevue Literary Press. She has published writing in three anthologies, Absolute Disaster; Women On The Edge: Writing From Los Angeles; and Woof! Writers on Dogs. Her stories and essays have appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Antioch Review, Western Humanities Review, Santa Monica Review, Iowa Review, Juked, The Kenyon Review, and Northwest Review. Widow, a collection of stories, involutions and essays, was published in 2011 by Bellevue Literary Press. Her most recent book, She, was published in 2016 by W.W. Norton & Company.
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Kris O’Shee spent four decades as a modern dancer and choreographer, including a decade in London, where she cofounded Junction Dance Company and taught at the London Contemporary Dance School. After returning to the US, she taught and performed in the San Francisco Bay Area before taking a position on the dance faculty at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. She then moved to Washington, DC, to live with her husband, Alan Cheuse, and founded O’Shee Dances, through which she continued choreographing and performing. In the last two decades, O’Shee earned a certificate in massage therapy and a graduate degree in psychology. She currently has a private practice in psychotherapy in DC, where she resides. Her memoir, Our Last Blue Moon, was published in 2021 by Watershed Lit Books. www. krisosheeauthor.com
Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother’s expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her 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, all New York Times bestsellers. She is the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins; two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat; and numerous articles for magazines. Ms. Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club and was creative consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated PBS television series for children. She wrote the libretto for the opera based on her novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter. With music composed by Stewart Wallace, the opera had its world premiere in 2008 at the San Francisco Opera. Tan is the subject of the American Masters documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir which premiered at Sundance in 2021. In addition, she is an instructor of a MasterClass on Fiction, Memory, and Imagination.
Photo Credit: Julian Johnson
David L. Ulin is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, which was shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times, he is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary journal Air/Light. Most recently, he has edited Didion: The 1980s and 90s, for the Library of America.
