Eddy Ancinas (’72, ’13) grew up the Bay Area, received her BA at the University of Colorado and moved to the mountains in 1962, where she lives with her husband, Osvaldo, near Olympic Valley. She is a non-fiction writer specializing in travel and ski-history. Her award-winning book on the history of two ski areas (now one), Tales form Two Valleys ~ Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows, was published in 2013. A travel memoir of her adventures with two other women in Peru will be published in 2023. Eddy’s articles on travel in Argentina, Chile and Peru have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, LA Times, Atlantic Monthly, as well as six editions of Fodor’s Argentina Guide. Her story of a cattle round up in Elko, Nevada won the 2010 Nevada Magazine Writers’ Contest. Eddy has been a Board member, participant and attendee of the Community of Writers for over 40 years. She is also VP of the SNOW (Sierra Nevada Olympic Winter-sports) Museum Board.
Board of Directors
Reagan Arthur is Executive Vice President, Publisher of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, which she joined in February of 2020, after nearly 20 years at Little, Brown. Writers she’s worked with include Kate Atkinson, Ian McEwan, Tina Fey, Ian Rankin, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Joshua Ferris, Nathan Hill, and Bono. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
Photo credit: Brett Hall Jones
Michael Carlisle began his career as a secretary in the literary department at William Morris Agency. Eighteen years later he left as a vice-president to start Carlisle & Company. Born in Paris, of Russian heritage, he graduated with honors from Yale College and holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School. The son of two writers, he brings a background of international law to his career. His best-selling authors have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pulitzer Prizes, The Man Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction and non-fiction), the Templeton Prize, the British Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the PEN Award for first non-fiction, the NAACP Image Award for Literary Fiction, and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; one even has an asteroid named for her. A former director of the AAR, a not-for-profit organization of independent literary and dramatic agents, and a member of PEN, and the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael headed the non-fiction program at the Community of Writers until 2023, and serves on its Board of Directors.
Nancy Cushing Evans is CEO of the Castle Ridge Management Company; Trustee of the Naval War College Foundation and Trustee of the Preservation Society of Newport County. For many years she was the Chairman and CEO of Squaw Valley Ski Corporation.
Diana Fuller is a freelance curator, editor, and producer of Rift, Racing to Zero, Once Was Water. She I is the on-going director of the Screenwriting Program at the Community of Writers. She is the editor of Art/Women/California 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections, published in 2004, by University of California Berkeley Press. She has been curator for contemporary art exhibitions for 40 years. She serves on the Boards of the Community of Writers, the The Artists in Residence Program at Recology and the Conflict Awareness Project. She was the last president of the Film Arts Foundation and past Chair of the Roxie non-profit theater.
KEN HAAS (’08, ’11, ’13, ’16, ’19, 20, ’22, ‘24) has spent his career as a hi-tech CEO and biotech venture capitalist. His poetry has appeared in over 50 respected journals and numerous anthologies. He has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award and has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. Ken’s first full poetry collection, Borrowed Light, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, won a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Rubery Book Award. He received an AB in History and Literature from Harvard College, and an MA in English literature from the University of Sussex, U.K. https://kenhaas.org/
Katy Hays is The New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters, which was a Read with Jenna Pick. Her new novel, Saltwater, which will be published by Ballantine in March 2025. In addition to writing, Katy works as an adjunct Art History Professor, teaching rural students from Truckee to Tecopa. She holds an MA in Art History from Williams College and pursued her PhD in Art History at UC Berkeley. Her academic writing has been published by Ashgate, an imprint of Routledge. [Fiction]
Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction; and the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, ZYZZYVA, The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review and Huizache, among others. Her most recent work is Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California, a fictionalized account of the life of African American historian and scholar Delilah Beasley. Born and raised in and around Los Angeles, she is a professor of English at the University of Southern California. [F] www.danajohnsonauthor.com
Photo credit: Brett Hall Jones
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
LESTER GRAVES LENNON is the poetry editor for Rosebud magazine and an investment banker whose career in public finance exceeds 40 years. His first book of poetry, The Upward Curve of the Earth and Heavens, can be found in 70 public and university libraries including the Los Angeles Public Library, Yale, Oxford and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he received his B.A. in English. His second book of poetry, My Father Was A Poet, was published in 2013. His third book, Lynchings: Postcards From America, will be published in January, 2022. Mr. Lennon sits on the board of directors of the Community of Writers and is a member of the Board of Visitors for the English Department at the University of Wisconsin. He is a past member of the board of directors for Red Hen Press and the Poetry Center at West Chester University. Then Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa credited Mr. Lennon with the idea of a Poet Laureate for Los Angeles. He was a founding member of the Mayor’s Poet Laureate Task Force and lives with his family in the Los Angeles megalopolis.
CARLIN NAIFY has extensive nonprofit board experience. She is a Board Member of the Sacramento Region Community Foundation and is the Past Chair of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. She served on the Board of the Crocker Art Museum Association for eight years where she served as Chair of Collections and Acquisitions from 2009-2011 and as Secretary from 2010-2011. She served on the Sacramento Public Library Foundation Board for many years and was President for two of them. In other capacities she has also served as President of the Crocker Art Museum Docent Council, President of the National Charity League and Chair of a Sacramento City Unified School District Leadership Council.
Jim Naify, PhD, is the owner of a 76 year old bookstore in Sacramento, Beers Books. He, and his wife Carlin, are principles in their real estate holding company Naify Enterprises. Jim is a retired academic who continues his teaching passion as an adjunct professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College. He also serves on other local and statewide non-profit boards. Jim Naify is an accomplished amateur woodworker and an energetic world traveler. He serves as President of the Board of Directors.
Sameer Pandya is the author of the novel Members Only, a finalist for the California Book Award and an NPR Best Books of 2020, and the story collection The Blind Writer, longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award. His forthcoming novel Our Beautiful Boys will be published in 2025 by Ballantine/Random House in the US and Bloomsbury in the UK. His cultural criticism has appeared in a range of publications, including the LA Review of Books, The Atlantic, Salon, and Sports Illustrated. He is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. [Fiction]
Steve Rempe is a retired businessman and contractor. He is living in northern California where he has been active in his community and has served on the boards of several nonprofits with positions ranging from board president to financial committee chair; often as part of the fundraising efforts for the organizations.
His poem “Imaginary Friends” was used as the prologue for the play Cry Love at the New York Summerfest in 2018. Currently he is collaborating with a friend that is a writer and filmmaker to utilize his poetry in a new project in the development stages.
Steve participated in the Community of Writers Poetry Workshops in ’98, ’03, ’09, ’11 & ’23, subsequently founding the Galway Kinnell Scholarship Fund.
Currently he is working with the Board developing the Strategic Plan update, working on the finance committee, and doing outreach in the community to meet our fundraising goals.
Jason Roberts is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent book is Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, published this year by Random House. His previous book, A Sense of the World: How Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler, was a national bestseller and a finalist of the National Book Critics Circle Award. [NF]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Clyde Rodriguez is a technologist committed to responsible innovation and the founder of Ascend Logic, a technology firm advising C-level executives on AI technology strategy, governance, product development, and leadership. He has advised the UN on the use of technology for global development and contributed to product development across multiple sectors, including AI, cloud, social media, operating systems, finance, and semiconductors, and government. His leadership has contributed to the success of early-stage startups and Fortune 20 companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Bank of America developing services used by billions of customers.
He serves on the boards of academic organizations dedicated to helping individuals advance in their personal and professional lives, as well as supporting technology policy efforts in service to society. He is a Trustee for the UC Berkeley Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Boards for Berkeley’s College of Engineering and the Goldman School of Public Policy’s Center for Security in Politics. He served on the Board of MIT’s One Laptop Per Child initiative, the Open Networking Foundation, the Open-Source Security Foundation, New York City FIRST Robotics, and First Place School, an organization dedicated to serving homeless children in Seattle. He became an Aspen Institute Technology Policy Fellow in March 2024 and has advised the White House on open-source software security and the use of AI for public services.
Clyde delivered the 2023 UC Berkeley Computer Science Commencement keynote, sharing observations from his career and the ethical implications of AI. He is working on a memoir focused on reinvention as a means of survival, chronicling a journey from extreme poverty to the heights of Silicon Valley, and the personal cost of relentless ambition. Clyde lives in the Bay Area with his wife, a Juilliard-trained classical pianist, and their young daughter who since the age of eighteen months has been obsessed with the music of John Coltrane.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On The Rooftop, was a September 2022 Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. Her second novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National. Book Award. She lives in Oakland with her family. [F] margaretwilkersonsexton.com
Photo Credit: Smeeta Mahanti
Julia Flynn Siler is an award-winning author and journalist. A former London-based staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, her writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her books are The White Devil’s Daughters (Knopf), The House of Mondavi (Gotham/Penguin), and Lost Kingdom (Grove/Atlantic). She serves on the Board of Directors and is also the co-director of the Community of Writers’ Narrative Nonfiction Program. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she is a competitive rower and mountain biker. She will be a visiting scholar at Oxford University in 2025. www.juliaflynnsiler.com [Nonfiction]
Photo credit: Stephanie Mohan
Christopher Sindt is Professor of English, Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Studies and Dean of the Kalmanovitz School of Education at Saint Mary’s College of California. He is the former director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing and has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for his poetry, including the James D. Phelan award and fellowships at the Macdowell Colony and the Blue Mountain Center. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Land of Give and Take, and most recently, The Bodies. Sindt has served on the Advisory Board of WritersCorps, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools.
Photo courtesy of Saint Mary’s College
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 bestseller, The Backyard Bird a Chronicles (Knopf, April 2024) marks her debut as a nature journalist and bird artist.
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.
Photo Credit: Kim Newmoney
Nancy Weaver Teichert is a national award winning investigative journalist for 30 years. Her reporting on inadequate public schools garnered the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Jackson, MS, Clarion-Ledger. At the Denver Post and Sacramento Bee, she exposed public corruption, racism, poverty, elder abuse, and the deaths of children under county care which culminated in a six year legal battle to make public the circumstances of their deaths. An active community volunteer, she is a former board member of the public television KVIE, a mentor for 40 years for a young girl she met through Big Brothers and Big Sisters, a supporter of the Boys and Girls Club, and a member of the Rotary Club of Sacramento. Her husband, Fred, created a scholarship in her name for local students who want to become investigative reporters. A board member for the Community since 2013, she now writes historical and creative nonfiction.
Oscar Villalon is the editor of the award-winning literary journal ZYZZYVA, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2025. His writing has been published in The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, Alta, Lit Hub, and other publications. He lives in San Francisco with his family.