Lisa Alvarez’s debut collection, Some Final Beauty and Other Stories, was published in August 2025 by the University of Nevada Press, as part of their New Oeste imprint which promotes Latinx writers of the American West. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely including About Place Journal, Air/Light, Citric Acid, Huizache, Santa Monica Review, and in anthologies such as Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America (Norton) and most recently, Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond (Gunpowder Press). Devoted to promoting the writing of California, she has edited three anthologies including Orange County: A Literary Field Guide (Heyday) and Why to These Rocks: Fifty Years of Poems from the Community of Writers (Heyday). She teaches at Irvine Valley College, where she co-directs the PUENTE program.
Program Directors
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
Brenda Hillman is the author of eleven books of poetry from Wesleyan University Press, the most recent of which is In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022). A twelfth collection, Still House in the Desert, is forthcoming in fall 2026. Her first collection of prose, Three Talks, was published in 2023 by the University of Virginia Press. Hillman has co-edited and co-translated over a dozen books, including At Your Feet by Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar, co-translated with her mother Helen Hillman. A former Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, Hillman’s recent awards include the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for innovation in literature and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Pen (Oakland) in 2025. Hillman is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California and currently directs the Poetry Program at Community of Writers; she lives in the Bay Area with her husband Robert Hass.
http://blueflowerarts.com/artist/brenda-hillman/
Photo credit: Louisa Michaels
Louis B. Jones is the author of five novels, three on The New York Times annual list of Notable Books. A Fellow of the NEA and the MacDowell Colony, he has published stories and essays in ZYZZYVA, Santa Monica Review, and The Threepenny Review. He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis and Wichita State University; and has for many years helped run the Community of Writers. [Admin/Fiction]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
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]