Antonia Angress is the author of the novel Sirens & Muses (Ballantine/Random House, 2022), which was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by Glamour Magazine. She is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow and a 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grantee. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Minnesota. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Costa Rica, she currently resides in Minneapolis with her family. She attended the Community in 2019.
2024 Published Alumni Readers
Ilana DeBare is the author of Shaken Loose, character-driven fantasy set in an unjust and unraveling Hell (Hypatia Press, 2023). She also wrote Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall and Surprising Revival of Girls’ Schools (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004), a social history of women’s education that grew out of her experience helping start the Julia Morgan School for Girls in Oakland, CA. Formerly a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and Sacramento Bee, Ilana also worked as communications director for Golden Gate Bird Alliance (Golden Gate Audubon). Her sequel to Shaken Loose is scheduled for publication in 2025. https://ilanadebare.com
Rita Chang-Eppig’s novel about an infamous Chinese pirate queen, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, was a Barnes & Noble Discover, Indie Next, Indies Introduce, and Good Morning America Buzz pick. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, Clarkesworld, Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Writers Grotto, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.
Jessie Ren Marshall’s debut story collection, WOMEN! IN! PERIL! (Bloomsbury) is an “Indies Introduce” pick for winter/spring 2024. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New England Review, Electric Lit, Joyland, and elsewhere, and her writing has been supported by Millay Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Community of Writers. She lives with her dogs on Hawai’i Island and is writing a novel.
Reid Sherline’s debut fiction, Rapture, won the Harvard Review Chapbook Prize, judged by Lily King. Reid received his MFA from UC Irvine and moved to New York, where, for the next thirty years, he worked in publishing, writing this single story on the side.