Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (’02) work has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year; and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Her novel Americanah, published around the world in 2013, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and was named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the 2013. She was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2015. Notes On Grief, an essay about losing her father, was published in 2021. Her upcoming novel Dream Count will be published in March 2025 by Penguin Random House. Since she attended the workshops in 2002 she has become an international phenomenon. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She divides her time between the United States and Nigeria. Visit her website here.
Nonfiction & Memoir Notable Alumni
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.
Photo Credit: Trace Ramsey
Belle Boggs (’01, ’17) is the author of The Gulf: A Novel; The Art of Waiting; and Mattaponi Queen: Stories. The Art of Waitingwas a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and was named a best book of the year by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the Globe and Mail, Buzzfeed, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Mattaponi Queen, a collection of linked stories set along Virginia’s Mattaponi River, won the Bakeless Prize and the Library of Virginia Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, the Paris Review, Harper’s, Ecotone, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, where she also directs the MFA program in creative writing.
Photo Credit: Tove Jensen
Colleen Morton Busch (’04, ’15) is the author of the nonfiction book Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire (Penguin Press), named a best book of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Publisher’s Weekly, and Barnes & Noble. She received her M.F.A. in poetry but writes and publishes fiction and nonfiction as well. Her work has appeared in Yoga Journal, where she was a senior editor, Tricycle: A Buddhist Review, the Washington Post, Orion, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous literary magazines.
Jung Hae Chae (’19) is the author of the forthcoming memoir-in-essays, Pojangmacha People (Graywolf Press, 2025), winner of the 2022 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Her work has been distinguished with the 2021 Crazyhorse Prize in Nonfiction, the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest in Nonfiction from Ploughshares, and a 2019 Pushcart Prize in nonfiction. Her writing can be found in AGNI, Guernica, New England Review, Ploughshares, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and in the Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee.
Photo Credit: John Michael Kilbane
Colin Dickey (’06) is the author of five books of nonfiction: Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy; The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained; Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places; Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith; and Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius. He is also the co-editor (with Joanna Ebenstein) of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. He has written on fringe culture, conspiracy belief, the paranormal and the occult, as well as death and dying, for a variety of publications, including The New Republic, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Believer, Slate.com, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and The Smithsonian, among many others.
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.
Clare Frank (’18) served as the State of California’s first and only female Chief of Fire Protection. She began firefighting at age 17 and worked her way through the ranks, handling fire and rescue emergencies and major disasters in both urban and rural settings. Along the way, she earned a spot on an elite state command team, a bachelor’s in fire administration, a law degree, a master’s in creative writing, and several leadership awards. Now, she brings humor and candor to her stories about first responders, lawyers, and life. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN Opinion, Shondaland, FireRescue1, and others. Her first book, Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire is now available at a bookstore near you. She lives near Lake Tahoe with her husband and always a dog or two.
Photo credit: Cynthia Smalley
Eileen Garvin (’16) is the author of the national bestselling novel The Music of Bees and the acclaimed memoir How to Be a Sister. Her new novel, Crow Talk, will be published on April 30 2024. The Music of Bees was named a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick, a People Magazine Best New Book, a Library Reads Pick and many other “best-of” lists. Eileen’s essays have appeared with Medium, The Oregonian, Oregon Humanities Magazine, PsychologyToday.com, and Creative Non-Fiction Magazine. She lives in Oregon.
Glen David Gold (’96, ’97/Staff: ’02, ’04, ’06, ’09, ’10, ’12, ’14, ’18, ’21) is the author of the bestselling novels Sunnyside and Carter Beats The Devil, which have been translated into 14 languages. His essays, memoir, journalism and short fiction have appeared in McSweeney’s, Playboy, Tin House, Wired, Zyzzyva, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Guardian UK and London Independent. He has written Howard the Duck for Marvel Comics, The Spirit for DC and The Escapist for Dark Horse. His essays on the artist Jack Kirby accompanied the landmark Masters of American Comics and Comic Book Apocalypse museum shows. He has co-written episodes of The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Welcome to Nightvale and Unlicensed. His three-part memoir I Will Be Complete became available June 26, 2018.
Sands Hall is the author of the award-winning memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint); Blackstone Audio produced the audio book, read by the author. Her novel, Catching Heaven, is a Willa Award finalist. Her award-winning essays and stories have appeared in such journals as Alta Journal, New England Review, Iowa Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She co-directs the Nonfiction/Memoir program at the Community of Writers. sandshall.com [F/NF/M]
Photo Credit: Tracy Hall
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (’11) is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir (Harper Collins, 2020); Cenzontle (BOA editions, 2018), which Brenda Shaughnessy selected as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. Prize; and Dulce (Northwestern University Press, 2018), winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize. His work has been adapted to opera through a collaboration with the composer Reinaldo Moya. Additionally, Castillo is the translator of work from the Argentinian modernist poet, Jacobo Fijman, and is currently at work translating the poems of the contemporary Mexican Peruvian poet Yaxkin Melchy.
Castillo is a founding member of the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S., and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writer Award. He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and lives in Northern California where he serves as the poet laureate of Yuba and Sutter Counties.
Castillo currently teaches at St. Mary’s College of California and in the Ashland University low-residency MFA program. He is the Guest Editor of Poem-a-Day for October 2022. He attended the Community of Writers as a participant in 2011 with the Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship. marcelohernandezcastillo.com
Rachel Howard is the author of a novel, The Risk of Us, and a memoir, The Lost Night. Her stories and essays have appeared in StoryQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. She served as Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow and Interim Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College and teaches nonfiction and novel writing at Stanford Continuing Studies. For more than 20 years she has written dance criticism for the San Francisco Chronicle. [F/NF] rachelhoward.com
Photo Credit: Emmet Cullen
Elizabeth Kadetsky is the author of a memoir, First There Is a Mountain, (Little Brown, 2004), a story collection, The Poison that Purifies You, (C&R Press, 2014) and a novella, On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World, (Nouvella Books, 2015). Her fiction has been included in Glimmer Train, Antioch Review, the Pushcart Prizes, Best New American Voices, and the Best American Short Stories notable citations, and her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Antioch Review, and elsewhere. She is assistant professor of creative writing at Penn State, and attended the Community of Writers in 1997 and 2004. elizabethkadetsky.com
Chaney Kwak is a Korean-American writer whose first book, The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship, was published 2021 and garnered praise from The Washington Post, Afar, and many other publications.
Chaney Kwak has written for publications such as The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, and a number of National Geographic anthologies. His fiction has appeared in Zyzzyva, Catamaran Literary Review, Gertrude, and other literary journals, earning a special mention from the Pushcart Prize.
He teaches nonfiction writing at the Stanford Continuing Studies program.
Dr. Lester is the author of six critically acclaimed books. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Ebony, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Black Issues Book Review, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Common Dreams, and Huffington Post, among others.
Recognitions include the National Lesbian and Gay Siegenthaler Award for Commentary on NPR, a Finalist Award for the PEN/Bellweather Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (for Mama’s Child), and the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Finalist Award for her Fannie Lou Hamer essay (adapted in her blog). Her memoir Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White won the PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, was a Finalist for the Story Circle Sarton Award and the Foreword Indie Award, won the Montaigne Medal for the Eric Hoffer Awards, and was nominated for the Northern California Book Award.
The San Francisco’s Women’s Heritage Museum selected Taking Charge as a Best Women’s Book. Amazon named Taking Charge one of its “10 Best Business Books for Women” and the Washington Post included Fire In My Soul in its top-listed, “What Washingtonians are Reading.” Her books have been excerpted in publications as varied as Essence, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ebony, Executive Female, and numerous anthologies.
She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.joanlester.com
Marcia writes poetry and nofiction. Her latest book, Face, A Memoir, was published in January 2021 by Saddle Road Press. Face was shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award grand prize and won honorable mention in the memoir category. Her anthology, Unmasked, Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After Fifty, co-edited with Kathleen A. Barry, Ph.D., was published in 2018. Her other books include Ireland, Place Out of Time (Weeping Willow Books, 2017), Heart on a Fence, (Weeping Willow Books, 2016), Navigating the Rough Waters of Today’s Publishing World, Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders (Quill Driver Books, 2010) and Santa Barbara, Paradise on the Pacific, (Longstreet Press, 1996).
Wayétu Moore is the author of the novel She Would Be King (2018), and a memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women ( 2020) both published by Graywolf Press. She is the recipient of the 2019 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction and the 2022 William Saroyan Prize for Nonfiction. She Would Be King was named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist & Entertainment Weekly. The novel was a Sarah Jessica Parker Book Club selection, a BEA Buzz Panel Book, a #1 Indie Next Pick and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award. The Dragons, The Giant, The Women was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book, Time Magazine 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, Publishers Weekly Top 5 Nonfiction Books of 2020, was longlisted for the ALA Andrew Carnegie medal for excellence in nonfiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Moore is a graduate of Howard University, University of Southern California and Columbia University. [Fiction/Memoir]
Kate Nason is a writer who earned her BA in Art History from the University of California at Los Angeles. After graduation she moved to Florence, Italy, where she planned to live forever. After two blissful years, she reluctantly returned to Los Angeles to enjoy a rewarding career in the LA contemporary art scene while simultaneously making dreadful choices in men.
In 1994, she moved to Portland, Oregon where she started her own design business, divorced her second husband, and raised two children as a happily-single mother. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her beloved husband—proof that two wrongs do make a right. Kate returns to Florence every chance she gets.
Photo Credit: Chris Hardy
Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the novel, Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln, which was a Finalist for an LA Times Book Prize, and the memoir, The Russian Word for Snow. Her latest novel, A Master Plan for Rescue, was released in 2015. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and her travel writing has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Backpacker. She lives in San Francisco, where she is a member of the SF Writers’ Grotto and teaches classes in creative writing. She attended the Community of Writers in 1997, 1998 and 2001 and returned in 2009 to serve on the staff.
www.janiscookenewman.com
Emi Nietfeld is the author of Acceptance (Penguin Press ‘22), a memoir of her journey through foster care and homelessness, interrogating the true meanings of resilience, ambition, and success. After graduating from Harvard in 2015, she worked as a software engineer, an experience she wrote about in her viral New York Times essay, “After Working At Google, I’ll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again.”
She’s passionate about mental health, helping young people navigate their careers, and the connection between engineering and creativity. A dynamic, sought-after speaker, she can be found on podcasts, leading conference keynotes, and speaking at universities and companies alike.
Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, Fortune, The Information, and other publications, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, noted in The Best American Essays, and taught in classrooms from high schools to MFA programs.
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.
Elizabeth Rosner (’82, ’83, ’87, ’99) is a novelist, poet, and essayist living in Berkeley, California. Her book of nonfiction, published in September 2017, is entitled Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. It was chosen as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice. Interviews with Ms. Rosner have been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and in The New York Times. Her most recent novel, Electric City, was named one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio. Her highly praised autobiographical poetry collection, Gravity, was published by Atelier26 Books in Fall 2014. The Speed of Light, her debut novel of 2001, was translated into nine languages, and won several literary prizes in both the US and Europe, including the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, the Prix France Bleu Gironde, and the Great Lakes Colleges Award in Fiction. It was short-listed for the prestigious Prix Femina in 2002, and picked as the “One City One Book” choice of Peoria, IL that same year. BlueNude, her second novel, was named among the best books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.elizabethrosner.com/
Photo credit: Judy Dater
Julia Scheeres is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Jesus Land. Her second book, A Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Jonestown, was published in 2011. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and two daughters and teaches narrative nonfiction at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and throughout Stanford online. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.juliascheeres.com
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) and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a nonfiction finalist for the California Book Award. Her other books include The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty (Gotham Books, Penguin Random House), 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 (Grove/Atlantic). She co-directs the Nonfiction/Memoir program at the Community of Writers, and a contributor to National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle, a juror for the Commonwealth Club’s California Book Awards, and directs a 2026 literary series at Oxford University. She has spoken at TEDX, Google, and Harvard University, and was named a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. She is currently at work on a book of narrative nonfiction that explores the world of polar exploration. juliaflynnsiler.com [NF]
Photo credit: Stephanie Mohan
Jordan Fisher Smith spent 21 years as a park ranger in California, the Rocky Mountains, and Alaska. His fear of what climate change and extinction were doing to the places he loved spurred him to start writing for magazines, drawing on his experiences on the edge between civilization and nature. His first book Nature Noir—a cross between true crime, nature writing, and history—was an Audubon Editor’s Choice, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2005 pick, and a Wall Street Journal, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and American Booksellers Association summer reading selection when it came out in paperback. Jordan’s second book, Engineering Eden, won a California Book Award and was longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. Jordan has also written for The New Yorker, Men’s Journal, Orion, Discover, and other outlets. He appeared in and narrated a documentary about Lyme disease, “Under Our Skin,” which was shortlisted for the 2010 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and three other films. Jordan writes, speaks, and coaches writers from his base in the Gold Rush town of Nevada City, California.
Martin J. Smith is the author of five crime novels and five nonfiction books including Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads, a finalist for a 2022 Colorado Book Award. The veteran journalist and magazine editor has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards, and his novels have been short-listed for three of the publishing industry’s most prestigious honors, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award. He is a former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine and Orange Coast Magazine. [F/NF] martinjsmith.com
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.
Photo Credit: Kim Newmoney
Alia Volz is the author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Guernica, The Threepenny Review, and many other publications. Her unusual family story has been featured on Snap Judgement and NPR’s Fresh Air. She is grateful to have received the Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship and other support from the Community of Writers, as well as fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. https://aliavolz.com/
Photo Credit: Dennis Hearne
Gina DeMillo Wagner is an award-winning journalist and author. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Memoir Magazine, Modern Loss, Self, Outside, CRAFT Literary, and other publications. She is a winner of the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award, and her memoir was longlisted for the 2022 SFWP Literary prize. Gina has a master’s degree in journalism and is cofounder of Watershed creative writing and art workshops. She lives and works near Boulder, Colorado.
Photo Credit: Kyle Zimmerman
Dora-Linda Wang has won a Lannan Foundation Writers Residency, a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and the Pfeiffer Visiting Scholar Award form Stanford University. She studied English literature at UC Berkeley, where she earned an MA. She is the author of short works published in the Asian Pacific American Journal, and a literary memoir, The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing in a Changing World (Riverhead), about how medical care devolved into a for-profit industry. She is President of the American Psychiatric Association Caucus of Asian American Psychiatrists. doracalottwang.com
Javier Zamora (’89, ’05) was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. When he was a year old, his father fled El Salvador due to the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). His mother followed her husband’s footsteps in 1995 when Javier was about to turn five. Zamora was left at the care of his grandparents who helped raise him until he migrated to the US when he was nine. His first poetry collection, Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, September 2017), explores some of these themes.
In his debut New York Times bestselling memoir, SOLITO (Hogarth, September 2022), Javier retells his nine-week odyssey across Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually through the Sonoran Desert. He travelled unaccompanied by boat, bus, and foot. After a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Javier managed to make it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants.
Zamora is the winner of a 2024 Whiting Fellowship and the 2022 LA Times-Christopher Isherwood Prize. He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University (Olive B. O’Connor), MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation (Ruth Lilly), Stanford University (Stegner), and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University, a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize, the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign.