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.
2026 Special Guests
Jean Guerrero is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and a visiting professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An award-winning investigative journalist, essayist and speaker, Guerrero is the author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Her first book, Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, won a PEN Literary Award and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice of 2023 and one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018 A former opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times, she has been published in Vanity Fair, Politico, The Nation, Wired, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Best American Essays 2019 by Rebecca Solnit and more. She won the 2022 “Best Commentary” award from the Sacramento Press Club. As an investigative border reporter at KPBS, she won an Emmy, contributed to NPR, the PBS NewsHour and more. Months before Trump’s family separations captured national attention, her PBS reporting on the practice was cited by members of Congress. She started her career at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires as a foreign correspondent in Mexico and Central America. She was named one of the California Chicano News Media Association’s most influential Latina journalists. jeanguerrero.com
Photo credit: Jean Guerrero
Katy Hays is the New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters (Atria, 2022) and Saltwater (Ballantine, 2025). Her books have been selected for Read with Jenna and Barnes & Noble’s book club as well as received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. Her next novel, Becoming Famous in America (Ballantine, 2027), a genre departure, takes a humorous and gimlet look at the way scandal can shape women’s lives in America. Her academic writing has been published by Ashgate, an imprint of Routledge and her humor writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
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 published by W.W. Norton & Company. Recent work is forthcoming in Mississippi Review in 2025. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Michael Spurgeon is the author of the novel Let The Water Hold Me Down. He is a tenured professor of literature, composition, and creative writing at American River College and the Director of the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, an organization with the mission “to create a community of literary artists from across the Americas to foster meaningful connections between people, culture, and the natural world.”
Amy Tan is the international bestselling author of the novels 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, #1 New York Times Best Seller, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, 2024) marks her debut as a nature journalist and bird artist. In 2025, Amy Tan was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She first attended the Community of Writers as a participant in 1985 and has since returned as a staff member and special guest for many years. She now serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.