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, a founder of InkWell Management, has been involved with the Community of Writers for many years. His fiction and nonfiction client list includes prize-winning as well as debut authors. A former director of the Association of Author’s Representatives, a not-for-profit organization of independent literary and dramatic agents, Michael is an active member of PEN. He directs the Nonfiction Program of the Community of Writers and serves on the Board of Directors. http://inkwellmanagement.com/staff/michael-v.-carlisle
Alex Espinoza’s (’04, ’05) debut novel, Still Water Saints, was published to wide critical acclaim. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was the winner of a 2014 American Book Award. He is the author of the nonfiction book Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime and has written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, VQR, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR. His short story “Detainment” was selected for inclusion in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories. His latest novel is The Sons of El Rey (Simon and Schuster, June 2024). Alex lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair and Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.
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 ‘s (’08, ’11, ’13, ’16, ’19, 20, ’22) poetry has appeared in over 50 journals and anthologies. He has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 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 serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. https://kenhaas.org/
Katy Hays is the author of The Cloisters, a New York Times and Sunday Times best seller, as well as Read with Jenna Pick. 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.
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 Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine and Director of the Programs In Writing. 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, as was Widow, a collection of stories, Involutions and essays, released in January 2011. She was released in May 2016 by W.W. Norton & Company. Recent work has appeared in ZYZYVVA and the Santa Monica Review.
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.
Steve Rempe lives in his native northern California where he has worked for himself doing construction of high quality homes and renovations for over 40 years. As an active member of his community he has served on the Board of the North Marin Community Services in various capacities since 1985. While there he has held many positions such as president, and served on most committees including fundraising & programs. He is now on the Advisory Board. Steve has been actively working on City Planning committees regarding permit processing, redevelopment of main street, the Chamber of Commerce for Novato & San Rafael, and as president of the board for the Novato Theater Restoration Committee to bring the arts back to downtown.
His poem “Imaginary Friends” was used as the prologue for the play Cry Love at the New York Summerfest in 2018. Steve participated in the Community of Writers Poetry Workshops in ’98, ’03, ’09, & ’11. He has been active with CoW by founding the Galway Kinnell Scholarship Fund and helping with other fundraising efforts.
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
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 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
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’s 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. 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, 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 sits 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. A board member since 2013, she now writes creative nonfiction.
Oscar Villalon is the editor of ZYZZYVA, a recipient of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. His work has been published in several publications, including The Believer, Stranger’s Guide, Alta, and Lit Hub, where he is a contributing editor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their son.