Katy Hays is The New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters, which was a Read with Jenna Pick. Her new novel, Saltwater, 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. She serves as Board Secretary of the Community of Writers.
Executive Committee of the Board
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. She serves as Board president of the Community of Writers.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On the Rooftop, was a 2022 Reese’s Book Club Pick. 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 has been a Distinguished Visiting Writer in the MFA program at St. Mary’s College of California and she serves as vice president of the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. She lives in Oakland with her family. [F]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
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