Kazim Ali is the author of over twenty books of poetry, fiction, essay, and cross-genre work, most recently Sukun: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2023) and The Man in 119 (Copper Canyon, 2026). His book Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry and Poetics of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions) won the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation. He taught two short courses on the life and poetics of Lucille Clifton for the Writers’ Annex at the Community of Writers. He is a professor of Comparative Literature and Literary Arts and Associate Director of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, San Diego. The Community of Writers has named Kazim as the 2026 Lucille Clifton Honorary Chair.
Notable Samples Both Programs
ALICE ANDERSON’s (’92, ’93, ’08) debut memoir Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away was released by St. Martin’s Press in August, 2017. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Agni and New Letters and is featured in anthologies such as American Poetry and On The Verge. Her second collection of poetry, The Watermark, contains three Pushcart Prize–nominated poems; her first, Human Nature, was published to critical acclaim. The recipient of The Plum Review Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Prize, and The Great Lakes Colleges Best First Book Prize, she also received the Haven Foundation Grant from Stephen King. https://www.aliceandersonauthor.com/
Michael Andreasen (’07) holds a Masters degree in creative writing from University of California, Irvine. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He lives in Southern California. His debut collection, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover, is his first book.
Ramona Ausubel (’07, ’12) is the author of three novels and two story collections. Her new novel, The Last Animal, was published in spring of 2023. Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, she has also been a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, California and Colorado Book Awards and long-listed for the Story Prize, Frank O’Connor International Story Award and the International Impac Dublin Literary Award and New York Times Notable Book selections. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where she won the Glenn Schaeffer Award in Fiction.
Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, The New York Times, NPR’s Selected Shorts, One Story, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, The Oxford American, and collected in The Best American Fantasy and online in The Paris Review. She has been a finalist for the Puschart Prize and a Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Photo Credit: Teo Grossman
Andrea Avery (’10, ’16) is the author of Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano, from Pegasus Books. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares; The Oxford American; and The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior (Oxford University Press). In 2010 she was named the winner of Real Simple’s Life Lessons essay contest, and in 2012 she was a finalist in Glamour magazine’s essay contest.
Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Tara Betts: (’09): Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016), Arc & Hue (Willow Books, 2009), and the chapbook THE GREATEST: An Homage to Muhammad Ali. She is also one of the editors for The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century (2Leaf Press, 2017). In 2010, Essence Magazine named her one of their “40 Favorite Poets”. A Cave Canem alum, she received her Ph.D. in English at Binghamton University and her MFA from New England College. Tara’s work has appeared in journals, online and in several anthologies, including Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, The Break Beat Poets Anthology, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, Gathering Ground, Villanelles, The Incredible Sestina Anthology, Bum Rush the Page, Poetry Slam, These Hands I Know, and both Spoken Word Revolution anthologies, among others. Refuse to Disappear (The Word Works, 2022) is her most recent book.
Marcia Butler’s (’16) has had several creative careers: professional musician, interior designer, documentary filmmaker, and author. During her thirty-year musical career, she performed as a principal oboist and soloist on the most renowned of New York and international stages, with many high-profile musicians and orchestras – including pianist Andre Watts and composer/pianist Keith Jarrett. The New York Times hailed her as a “first rate artist”. Her interior designs projects have been published in numerous shelter magazines and range up and down the East coast, from Boston to NYC to Miami. The Creative Imperative, her documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, was premiered at The New York Society Library and is now available on YouTube. As an author, Marcia’s nationally acclaimed memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, was one of the Washington Post’s “Top ten noteworthy moments in classical music in 2017”. Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, was hailed by Michael Schaub of NPR. “Surprising and audacious, Pickle’s Progress succeeds because of Butler’s willingness to take risks and her considerable charisma. She’s a gifted storyteller with a uniquely dry sense of humor and a real sympathy for her characters.” Her third book, Oslo, Maine, draws on indelible memories of performing for many years at a chamber music festival in central Maine. While there, Marcia came to love the majestic moose who roam at their perpetual peril among the humans. Bethanne Patrick of Literary Hub noted, “The author’s deep compassion for a different species means that you will wonder why more writers don’t choose to include all manner of beasts in their narratives.” Marcia’s writing has been published in The Washington Post, Literary Hub, PANK Magazine, Psychology Today, Aspen Ideas Magazine, Catapult, Bio-Stories, Kenyon Review, and others. She was a 2015 recipient of a Writer-in-Residence through Aspen Words and the Catto Shaw Foundation and was a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2018 and 2019. After four decades in New York City, Marcia now calls New Mexico home.
Photo Credit: Victoria Smith
Mauro Javier Cardenas (’02, ’17) grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. He’s the author of American Abductions (Dalkey, 2024), Aphasia (FSG, 2020) and The Revolutionaries Try Again (Coffee House Press, 2016). In 2016 he received a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and in 2017 the Hay Festival included him in Bogota 39, a selection of the best young Latin American novelists. His fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, The Antioch Review, Guernica, Witness, ZYZZYVA and BOMB. He’s the recipient of the 2016 Joseph Henry Jackson Award.
Michael Chabon (’86, ’87, ’00, ’02) is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, A Model World, Werewolves in their Youth, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Summerland, The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Maps & Legends, Gentlemen of the Road, Telegraph Avenue, Moonglow, the picture book The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man, and Wonder Boys, which was made into a film starring Michael Douglas. In 2007, he won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and in 2008, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Photo Credit: Emma McIntyre
Jade Chang (’10, ’17) is the author of the novel The Wangs vs. the World, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and recently longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. She has worked as an arts and culture journalist and editor for publications like the BBC, Metropolis, Glamour, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine. She was recently an editor at Goodreads. Jade is the recipient of a Sundance Arts Journalist fellowship, the AIGA/Winterhouse Design Criticism Award. She also writes for film and TV and was recently a staff writer on The Baby-Sitter’s Club (Netflix).
Photo Credit: Laura Duldner
Laurie Ann Doyle’s (’09, ’14) collection of stories, World Gone Missing (Regal House Publishing: October, 2017) was named a top book pick at The East Bay Express. Winner of the Alligator Juniper National Fiction Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee, her stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Jabberwock Review, and Under the Sun, among many other literary journals, and anthologized in Speak and Speak Again (Pact Press). She teaches creative writing at the San Francisco Writers Grotto and UC Berkeley.
Carole Firstman (’07, ’13) is the author of Origins of the Universe and What It All Means: A Memoir (Dzanc, 2016). Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, South Dakota Review, Watershed Review, Lifestyle Magazine, The Valley Voice, and many other places. Honors include a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and two Notables in Best American Essays. She teaches writing at California State University, Fresno.
Janet Fitch is the bestselling author of White Oleander, an Oprah Book Club selection and chosen as a Winter ’26 California Book Club selection; Paint it Black, adapted and directed for the screen by Amber Tamblyn; and a duet of novels set during the Russian Revolution, The Revolution of Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. Her short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies including Los Angeles Noir and Palm Springs Noir, and a film of her noir story “The Method,”was recently released as “The Long Game” starring Kathleen Turner. Longtime faculty with the Community of Writers, Fitch hosts her popular Writing Wednesdays writing series on YouTube.
Photo Credit: Lawrence Kim
Jamie Ford is the author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which spent two years on The New York Times bestseller list and won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His other bestselling novels include Songs of Willow Frost, and more recently, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy. His work has been translated into 35 languages. Jamie is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer, Min Chung, who emigrated from Hoiping, China to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. [Fiction]
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.
Jimin Han (’95) was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in New York, Rhode Island, and Ohio. She attended Cornell University and Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing can be found online at NPR’s Weekend America, Poets & Writers Magazine, Entropy, The Rumpus, Hyphen Magazine, Kartika Review, KoreanAmericanStory, and elsewhere. A Small Revolution is her first novel, and her latest novel, Dreamt I Found You, will be published by Little, Brown and Company in April 2026. She teaches at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. www.jiminhan.com
Photo credit: Janice Chung
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
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship, among others. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. Her novel, El Nido, is forthcoming. [Fiction/Nonfiction]
Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, educator, cultural activist, anthologist, and recipient of 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize. She is the author of The Beloved Community, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, and three other full-length collections and five chapbooks. In 2023, she was appointed New York State Poet (2023-2025) and received the Walt Whitman Citation. She co-edited the anthology, Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women (1978) and THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). Her poems are most notably anthologized in Best American Poetry, 2023; Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin; and African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song. She has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Goethe Institute, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2024, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Porter Fund.
Photo Credit: Fay Chiang
Patricia Spears Jones (’91/’92/’94 / Staff Poet: 2016): Patricia Spears Jones is the 2023 New York State Poet, as well as playwright, anthologist, educator, and cultural activist. She is the winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers and the author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems. Her work is anthologized in African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song; Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin; and BAX 2016: Best American Experimental Writing. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, The Ocean State Review, Ms., and Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts. Patricia Spears Jones edited THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat and Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women. Mabou Mines commissioned and produced her plays Mother and Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting. Her fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, was published in September 2023.
Patricia Spears Jones co-curated the Wednesday Night Series for St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project. She has taught graduate and undergraduate creative writing at Hollins University, Adelphi University, Hunter College, and Barnard College. She leads poetry workshops for the 92nd Street Y, The Workroom, Hugo House, Community of Writers, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, Gemini Ink, and Brooklyn Poets. She organizes the American Poets Congress and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Black Earth Institute. In 2024, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Porter Fund.
Photo Credit: Holaday Mason
David Koehn’s (’04, ’06, ’14) first full-length book of poetry, Twine, won the 2013 May Sarton Poetry Prize. His poetry and translations were previously collected in two chapbooks, Tunic, (speCt! books 2013) and Coil (University of Alaska, 1998), the winner of the Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest. David edited and drove the release of Compendium, a collection of Donald Justice’s take on prosody, (Omnidawn Publishing 2017). David’s second full-length collection, Scatterplot, was released in the spring of 2020. His writing has appeared in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, NYQ, Volt, Carolina Quarterly, Diagram, The Greensboro Review, and in many other publications. davidkoehn.com
Mary Kuryla’s collection Freak Weather: Stories was selected by Amy Hempel for the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and was published by University of Massachusetts Press in November 2017. Her stories have received The Pushcart Prize, as well as the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Prize, and have appeared in Epoch, Shenandoah, Denver Quarterly, Witness, Greensboro Review, Pleiades, The New Orleans Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. Her award-winning shorts and feature films have premiered at Sundance and Toronto. She has written screen adaptations for United Artists and MGM. Kuryla has co-written three picture books with Eugene Yelchin for HarperCollins Children’s Books. She teaches film studies and screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University. She attended the Community of Writers in 1995 (Screenwriting) and 2010 (Fiction). www.marykuryla.com
Photo credit: Eugene Yelchin
Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean, and the translator of I Hear Your Voice and the story collection Diary of a Murderer by Young-ha Kim. She received the Rome Prize in Literature and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, the Honor Title in Adult Fiction Literature from the Asian/Pacific American Libraries Association, and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. She currently teaches creative writing at Yonsei University, Underwood International College in Seoul, South Korea. kryslee.com [F/M]
Photo Credit: Matt Douma
Kenji C. Liu (劉謙司) (’14) is a book designer and author of Monsters I Have Been (Alice James Books 2019), finalist for the 2020 California and Maine Book Awards for poetry, and Map of an Onion, national winner of the 2015 Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize. His writing can be found, among other places, in American Poetry Review, Anomaly, Ecotone, The Feminist Wire, Gulf Coast, Split This Rock’s poem of the week series, several anthologies, and two chapbooks, Craters: A Field Guide (2017) and You Left Without Your Shoes (2009). An alumnus of Kundiman, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the Community of Writers, he lives on unceded Tongva land, Los Ángeles. https://www.kenjiliu.com/
Photo Credit: Holaday Mason & DH Dowling
Sarah Maclay (’97/’07) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The “She” Series: A Venice Correspondence (What Books, 2016), a braided collaboration with poet Holaday Mason; Music for the Black Room (UT Press, 2011); and The White Bride (UT Press, 2008), a book of prose poems. Her poetry, criticism and theatre pieces have appeared in well over 100 publications. Among them are The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, Hotel Amerika, The Writer’s Chronicle, Pool, ZZYZYVA, lyric, Ninth Letter, The Laurel Review, The Journal, Manoa, Scenarios: Scripts to Perform, The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present (Scribner), Slope 47, Poetry Daily, VerseDaily and Poetry International, where she also served as Book Review Editor for a decade, as well. The recipient of a Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXI, she teaches at LMU and conducts workshops at The Ruskin Art Club and Beyond Baroque.
Anne Rice is a best-selling author of over 30 novels, the first of which, Interview With A Vampire, she brought to the Community of Writers as a manuscript. Her most recent novels include The Wolves of Midwinter (2013), Prince Lestat (2014), Beauty’s Kingdom (2015), Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016), and Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra (2017). She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years until his death from cancer in 2002. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history. She attended the Community of Writers in 1979. www.annerice.com
Brian Rogers is the author of The Whole of the Moon (University of Nevada Press, 2017). A former stand-up comedian, he has been the recipient of the Gold Medal prize for Best Novel-in-Progress from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and the George Bennett Fellowship (Writer-in-Residence) from Phillips Exeter Academy. His short play Come Back, Burt Lancaster has been featured in a number of festivals and showcases. He is the author of Inhabitants of the Earth, a chapbook of flash fiction. Brian attended the graduate writing program at San Francisco State University. He attended the Community of Writers in 1995 and 2002. www.brianerogers.com
Photo credit: Tisha Rogers
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
Eliot Schrefer is the author most recently of Threatened, a finalist for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. It joins Endangered, also a National Book Award Finalist, as the second entry in a planned quartet of novels about the great apes. His books have won the Green Earth Book Award, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and have appeared on the NPR “Best Books” and ALA “Best Books for Young Adults” list and been “Editor’s Choice” in The New York Times. Schrefer is on the Creative Writing MFA faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he teaches the young adult fiction track. He attended the Community of Writers in 2007. www.eliotschrefer.com
Poet & scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we (NAACP Image Award; National Book Award Finalist), semiautomatic (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Pulitzer Prize finalist), and the new black (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). She publishes widely and has been translated into French, Polish, Slovenian, and Spanish. Among the honors for her body of work are the Academy Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Henderson Award. Her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
She has been named the 2025 Lucille Clifton Honorary Poetry Chair of the Community of Writers Poetry Program.
Photo Credit: Stéphane Robolin
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
Photo Credit: Timothy Archibald
Frances Stroh was born in Detroit and raised in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her M.A. from Chelsea College of Art in London as a Fulbright Scholar. She practiced as an installation artist, exhibiting in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London before turning to writing. She is the award-winning author of Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss (HarperCollins), which chronicles her coming of age as an artist in the midst of the Stroh’s Beer family’s decline coupled with the unraveling of Detroit. She has published in The Common, Literary Hub, and the Detroit Metro Times, among others. Frances is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and the curator of the Stranger Than Fiction reading series. www.francesstroh.com
JJ Strong’s debut novel, Us Kids Know, was published in Fall 2017 by Razorbill, an imprint at Penguin Random House. His writing has also appeared in Fifth Wednesday, the Santa Monica Review (Fall 2010 and Spring 2012) and LA Weekly. His plays have been produced throughout the country, including in Los Angeles, San Diego, St. Louis, and New York. He currently teaches in the undergraduate writing program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and son. He attended the Community of Writers in 2013. www.jjstrong.com
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 Chronicles (Knopf, April 2024) marks her debut as a nature journalist and bird artist. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
Amber Flora Thomas is the author of two collections of poems: Eye of Water, selected by Harryette Mullen as the winner of the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and The Rabbits Could Sing, selected by Peggy Shumaker for the Alaska Literary Series in 2011. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize, and Ann Stanford Prize, she is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at East Carolina University. Her third collection, Red Channel in the Rupture was published by Red Hen Press in 2018. She attended the Community of Writers for the first time in 1993, and has been back many times since then.
Matthew Thomas‘s New York Times-bestselling novel We Are Not Ourselves was shortlisted for both the James Tait Black Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, longlisted for the both the Dublin International Literary Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, nominated for the Folio Prize, and named a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. It was named a Notable Book of the year by The New York Times and one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple and others, as well one of Janet Maslin’s ten favorite books of the year in The New York Times. He attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.matthewthomasauthor.com
Photo Credit: John F. Martin
Robert Thomas’ novel, Bridge, published by BOA Editions, Ltd, was named the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction. His first book of poetry, Door to Door, was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize and published by Fordham University Press, and his second book, Dragging the Lake, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and won a Pushcart Prize. www.robertthomaspoems.com
Photo Credit: Karen Wolf
Ann Tweedy’s (’97, ’00, ’04, ’07, ’12, ’15) first full-length book, The Body’s Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in August 2016. The Body’s Alphabet was the winner of the Bisexual Book Award in Poetry, 2017. She also has published two chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases (TcCreativePress ’10) and White Out (Green Fuse Press ’13). Her poetry has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Rattle, damselfly press, Lavender Review, literary mama, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, and elsewhere. www.anntweedypoetry.com
Max Winter is a graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA program, and his work has appeared in Day One, Literary Hub, and Diner Journal. His new novel, Exes, was published by Catapult in 2017. Max attended the Writers Workshop in 2006.