Christina Adams's memoir, A Real Boy: A True Story of Autism, Early Intervention and Recovery, was published by Berkley Books in 2006. She is a commentator for National Public Radio. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Brain Child Magazine, Kaleidoscope, and Appalachian Heritage, among others. She attended the Community of Writers in 2000. www.christinaadamswriter.com

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Knopf published her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck in 2009. She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008). Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Iowa Review, Zoetrope: All Story, Granta and elsewhere. She attended the Community of Writers in 2002.
http://www.halfofayellowsun.com

Andrea Alban is a poet and novelist, and author of eight parenting and children's picture books. Her first novel, Anya's War, which she brought to Squaw Valley in 2004, was published in Spring 2011 (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan). Her best-selling book, The Happiness Tree was recently adapted for stage by the University of Utah and nominated for the Florida Children's Book Award. Andrea is a speaker at writer's conferences and literary festivals, and coaches writers in the craft of fiction. She is the Creative Director of AlbanBossi.com, licensor of verse and illustrations. She attended the Community of Writers in 2004. www.andreaalban.com

Andrew Foster Altschul is the author of the novels Lady Lazarus (2008) and Deus Ex Machina (Counterpoint, 2011). His short fiction and essays have appeared in publications including Esquire, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Fence, One Story, Story Quarterly, and anthologies such as Best New American Voice sand O. Henry Prize Stories. A former music journalist and rock DJ, he is the Books Editor of The Rumpus and director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University. He lives in San Francisco. www.andrewfosteraltschul.com

Anita Amirrezvani is the author of the novels Equal of the Sun (forthcoming from Scribner in summer, 2012) and The Blood of Flowers (Little, Brown, 2007), which has been published in 22 languages. She teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the California College of the Arts. www.bloodofflowers.com

Photo credit:
Twin Lens Images

Ramona Ausubel is the author of the novel No One is Here Except All of Us and the collection of stories A Guide to Being Born, both forthcoming from Riverhead Books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, One Story, the Best American Fantasy and elsewhere. Her stories have received special mentions in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine. She attended the Community of Writers in 2007.
www.ramonaausubel.com

Photo Credit:
Nancy Jean Santos

David Bajo was raised on the California-Mexico border and has worked as a journalist and translator. He is the author of the The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri (Viking, 2008). His newest novel, Panopticon was published by Unbridled Books in 2010. He first attended as a participant in 1987 and 1988. He teaches writing at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Elise Blackwell, and their daughter. www.davidbajo.com

Photo Credit: Brett Hall

Michael Jaime Becerra is the author of the short story collection Every Night Is Ladies' Night, winner of a California Book Award for a First Work of Fiction. His most recent book is the novel, This Time Tomorrow, which was awarded an International Latino Book Award. He first attended as a participant in 1999 and 2002 and now returns often as a member of the staff. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Aimee Bender is the author of four books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a New York Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own, Willful Creatures, which was nominated in 2005 by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010). Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and many more places, as well as heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. She's received two Pushcart prize. Her fiction has been translated into ten languages. She first attended the Community of Writers in 1995 and 1997. She she teaches creative writing at USC. www.flammableskirt.com

Photo Credit:
Brett Hall Jones

Greg Bills is the author of the novels Consider This Home (Simon & Schuster) and Fearful Symmetry (Dutton/Penguin). His fiction appears frequently in the Santa Monica Review, and also recently in The Fairy Tale Review and the anthology Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales (Wayne State University Press). Greg is a graduate of the MFA program in writing at UC Irvine, currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Redlands in Southern California. He attended the Community of Writers in Fiction in 1993 and Screenwriting in 1994.

Elise Blackwell is the author of four novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Grub, and An Unfinished Score. Her work has been translated into several languages, and her books have been named to numerous best-of-theyear lists, including the Los Angeles Times, Sydney Morning Herald, and Kirkus. Her short stories and cultural criticism have appeared in Witness, Seed, Global City Review, Quick Fiction, and elsewhere. She directs the MFA program at the University of South Carolina and writes regularly for the Chronicle of Higher Education. eliseblackwell.com

Belle Boggs grew up in King William County, Virginia and is a writer and teacher. Her first book, Mattaponi Queen, was published in June 2010 by Graywolf Press. Stories from Mattaponi Queen have appeared in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, At Length, StorySouth and Five Chapters. She attended the Community of Writers in 2002. belleboggs.wordpress.com

Sheila W. Boneham, Ph.D., is the author of Rescue Matters: How to Find, Foster, and Rehome Companion Animals, a Nautilus Award nominee. Six of her seventeen nonfiction books, including three written for Animal Planet, have won MUSE and Maxwell "Best Book" Awards from the associations for professional cat and dog writers, and three more have been finalists in their annual competitions. Her short nonfiction has appeared in The AKC Gazette, Cat Fancy, Dog Fancy, The World & I, and many other periodicals. Her new mystery series will debut next year with Drop Dead on Recall. Sheila has taught writing, folklore, and linguistics at the University of Maryland, American University, Indiana University, Kuwait University, and the University of Tunis (Tunisia). Sheila currently lives on the coast of North Carolina. She attended the Community of Writers in 2011.

James Brown is the author of several books of nonfiction and fiction. His personal essays have appeared in GQ, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and Ploughshares. He's been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and is the recipient of the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Chesterfield Film Writing Fellowship from Universal/Amblin Entertainment. His memoir, The Los Angeles Diaries, published by HarperCollins in 2003 and reprinted in 2011 by Counterpoint Press, was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Independent of London. His new memoir, This River, was recently published by Counterpoint. Brown teaches in the M.F.A. Program at California State University, San Bernardino. He first attended Squaw Valley as a participant in 1989 and has returned many times over the years as a staff member. www.jamesbrownauthor.com

Colleen Morton Busch is the author of Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara (Penguin, 2011). She received her M.F.A. in poetry but writes and publishes fiction and nonfiction as well. A yoga student and Zen practitioner, Busch has worked as a college instructor—in New Orleans and Beijing—and as a magazine editor. Her work has appeared in Yoga Journal, where she was a senior editor, Tricycle: A Buddhist Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous literary magazines, including Willow Springs, Manoa, New Orleans Review, The Big Ugly Review, and Yellow Silk. Busch attended the Community of Writers in 2004. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two cats. http://fire-monks.com/

Max Byrd is the author of a number of detective novels including California Thriller, which won the Shamus Award and, more recently, the historical novels Jefferson, Jackson, and Grant. Bantam published his most recent novel, Shooting the Sun. He is a Contributing Editor for the Wilson Quarterly. His new novel Rue du Dragon will be published in the fall of 2012. He first attended the Community of Writers in 1983. Now he returns most every year as a staff member. He also serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
www.maxbyrdbooks.com

Jamie Cat Callan is the author of seven books, most recently Bonjour, Happiness! (Kensington) and French Women Don't Sleep Alone, (Kensington 2009) which has been translated into ten languages. She is also the creator of The Writers Toolbox: Creative Games and Exercises for the 'Write' Side of Your Brain. (Chronicle Books 2007). Her short fiction and personal essays have been published in The New York Times Modern Love column, Story, The Missouri Review, Best American Erotica. Jamie has received fiction grants from The New York State Council on the Arts, The Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Arts Council. Most recently, Jamie received a VCCA fellowship to spend a month writing in Auvillar, France. Her latest book, Bonjour, Beautiful (Kensington) will be released in April 2013. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband who is a climate change scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Jamie attended the Community of Writers in 1990.JamieCatCallan/Home.html

Photo Credit:
Sue Evers

Aneesha Capur has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MBA from Wharton. Her professional career spans private, non-profit and academic sectors. Aneesha was born in India and spent most of her childhood in Africa. She now lives in San Francisco. Aneesha Capur's novel, Stealing Karma, debuted at the Beijing International Literary Festival in March 2011. Stealing Karma was launched by HarperCollins India in March/April to critical acclaim and was listed in the Top 5 Fiction Picks in The Hindu, India's leading national newspaper, picked as Essential Reading in the Sunday Guardian and featured on CNN-IBN among others. Stealing Karma has also been on WHSmith's Bestsellers List in Fiction in India since March 2011. Stealing Karma was featured at the 2011 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Indonesia. Excerpts of Stealing Karma have been recognized in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Wild River Review, two Glimmer Train Press competitions and the Writer's Digest Literary Short Story award. Aneesha Capur's essay "The 9/11 Attacks and a Question of Home" was published in Asian Times, Eastern Eye, Bangladesh Weekly, Garavi Gujarat, Pakistan Weekly and Sri Lanka Weekly. She attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Fiction Program in 2005. www.aneeshacapur.com

Michael Chabon is the author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh which became a New York Times bestseller. Chabon’s second novel, Wonder Boys was also a bestseller, and was made into a film featuring actors Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire. His third novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Chabon is also the author of A Model World and Other Stories, Werewolves In Their Youth, Summerland, The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, (a New York Times bestseller), Gentlemen of the Road, Maps & Legends, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures & Regrets of a Husband, Father & Son). His first children’s book, The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man, illustrated by Jake Parker, was published in September 2011. He first attended the Community of Writers as a participant in 1986 and 1987 and has returned several times over the years as a staff member. www.michaelchabon.com

Julie Chibbaro is the author of Deadly (Simon & Schuster 2011), a historical medical mystery about the hunt for Typhoid Mary. Her first book, Redemption (Simon & Schuster, 2004), an epic tale of love, kidnapping, and white Indians, won the American Book Award. Two of Julie Chibbaro’s stories appeared in the literary anthology Return of the Kral Majales (Litteraria Pragensia, 2010). She writes for YA Outside the Lines. Julie teaches creative writing in New York. She attended the Community of Writers in 1999 and 2001. www.juliechibbaro.com

Meg Waite Clayton is the nationally bestselling author of The Four Ms. Bradwells, The Wednesday Sisters, and the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light, all published by Random House's Ballantine Books and all major national book club picks. Her fourth novel, The Wednesday Daughters, will be released in 2013. Her books have been published in six languages. Her essays and short stories have aired on public radio and appeared in commercial magazines and news sources including The Los Angeles Times, Writer's Digest, and Runner's World, and in literary magazines such as The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Literary Review. She attended the Community of Writers in 2000.
www.megwaiteclayton.com

Mark Coggins’ work has been nominated for the Shamus and the Barry crime fiction awards and selected for best of the year lists compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Detroit Free Press and Amazon.com, among others. His novels Runoff and The Big Wake-Up won the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) respectively, both in the crime fiction category. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Linda. In 1996 he attended the Community of Writers in Fiction, and in 2001, he attended the Screenwriting Program.
www.markcoggins.com.

Photo Credit:
Karen French

Jody Cohan is a writer, editor and corporate communications consultant. With her sister, Susan Cohan Hoffman, and Lila Carroll, Jody coauthored the Procrastinator’s SOS Planner. The 2005 edition was featured on NBC’s Today show as one of Gene Shalit’s top calendar picks for the year. Her book, What If Your Prince Falls Off His Horse?--The Married Woman's Primer on Financial Planning won the Business Category at the 2009 San Francisco Book Festival. The book was also the runner up in the General Non-Fiction Category at the 2009 New York Book Festival and a finalist in the Women's Issues Category of The National Best Books 2009 Awards. Jody is currently helping producer/director Doug Wilson write a memoir about the people and places he encountered while spanning the globe with ABC Sports for 50 years. She attended the Community of Writers in 2004. www.whatifyourprince.com

Photo Credit:
Allen Dean

Myfanwy Collins was born in Montreal, Canada, grew up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, and now lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts with her husband and son. Her work has been published in The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Cream City Review, Quick Fiction, and Potomac Review. Her debut novel, Echolocation, is forthcoming from Engine Books in March 2012. A collection of her short fiction entitled I Am Holding Your Hand is forthcoming from PANK Little Books in August 2012. She attended the Community of Writers in 2004 and 2005. www.myfanwycollins.com

David Corbett is the author of four novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar), and Do They Know I’m Running for which Publishers Weekly gave a, starred review). His fifth novel, Babylon Sister, will appear in 2013. David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Mission and Tenth, The Smoking Poet, and Best American Mystery Stories (2009 and 2011). He is currently working on a novel and several TV and screenplay projects, and Penguin will be publishing his book on the craft of characterization in early 2013. He has taught at the UCLA Extension's Writers' Program, as well as at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California—both through its individual seminar program and its annual Mystery Writers' Conference, at which he has become a mainstay—as well as at numerous other writing conferences across the US. He first attended the Community of Writers in 1988 and has returned many times since. www.davidcorbett.com

Charmaine Craig is the author of the novel, The Good Men (Riverhead Books.) She graduated magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard University, where she studied religion and literature. In 1997, she received her MFA at the graduate writing program at the University of California at Irvine. Formerly an actress, she played the lead role in Disney's White Fang 2 and had a recurring role on the CBS television series Northern Exposure. She lives in Laguna Beach with her husband Andrew Winer, author of The Color Midnight Made. He attended the Community of Writers in 1997 and 1998.
www.charmainecraig.com

Lindsey Crittenden is the author of two books, The View from Below: Stories (1999)and The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray (1997). Her articles, essays, and stories have appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Glimmer Train, Bellingham Review, and other publications. Lindsey attended the Community of Writers in 1998. www.lindseycrittenden.com

Jasmin Darznik was born in Tehran, Iran and received her Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. Her first book, The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life, was a New York Times Bestseller and will be published in thirteen countries. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She has received honors from the San Francisco Foundation, Marin Arts Council, Steinbeck Fellows Program, Zoetrope: All-Story, Iowa Review, Norman Mailer Colony, and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. A professor of English at Washington and Lee University and a 2011-2012 fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, she is at work on a novel set in 1960s Tehran. She attended the Community of Writers in 2007 and 2009. www.jasmindarznik.com

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's book, Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, was published by Harcourt in October of 2004 and squeaked onto the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. Her story, “Crazy for You,” is included in the anthology, Orange County Noir (Akashic, 2004). She hosts the Pen on Fire Writers Salon in Orange County, and hosts Writers on Writing, a weekly radio show that airs on KUCI-FM from UC-Irvine. She attended the Community of Writers in 1992. www.barbarademarcobarrett.com

Photo Credit:
Mark Bennington

Tracy DeBrincat’s novel Hollywood Buckaroo received the inaugural Big Moose Prize and will be published in April 2012 by Black Lawrence Publishing. Her short story collection, Moon Is Cotton & She Laugh All Night, received a prize for innovative fiction and was published in 2010 by Subito Press/University of Colorado, Boulder. Her short stories and poetry have been published in journals from Another Chicago Magazine to Zyzzyva. She authors the blog Bigfoot Lives! & Other Literary Adventures, and is a freelance creative advertising consultant in Los Angeles. She attended the Community of Writers in 1996. www.tracydebrincat.com

Terry DeHart is a former Marine and ex-NASA contractor. His first novel, The Unit, a post-apocalyptic thriller, was published in 2010 as part of a two-book deal with Orbit Books. The Unit was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2011. His short stories have appeared in In Posse Review, Paumanok Review, Vestal Review, Barcelona Review, Zoetrope All-Story Extra, Night Train, Smokelong Quarterly, Opium and elsewhere. Three of his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He attended the Community of Writers in 1996. www.terrydehart.com

Photo Credit:
Seth Sherwood

Colin Dickey is the author of two books of nonfiction: Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius, and Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the End of Faith (forthcoming), both from Unbridled Books. His essays and fiction have appeared in Lapham's Quarterly, Cabinet, TriQuarterly, and The Santa Monica Review. He attended the Community of Writers in 2006. www.cranioklepty.com

Frances Dinkelspiel is a fifth generation Californian who grew up in San Francisco. After working as a newspaper reporter for twenty years in places as varied as Syracuse, New York and San Jose, California, she started freelancing. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, People Magazine, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle and Magazine, San Francisco Magazine and elsewhere. She writes a blog on writing, Ghost Word: http://francesdinkelspiel.blogspot.com/ St. Martin’s Press published her first book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, in 2008. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003 and 2004.
http://francesdinkelspiel.com/

Heather Donahue: At 24, she was one of the filmmakers of the Blair Witch Project. Her memoir Growgirl: The Blossoming of an Unlikely Outlaw was recently puchased by Gotham/Penguin. She attended the Community of Writers in 2008. http://heatherdonahue.com/

Photo Credit:
Kenneth Dolin

Katherine Easer is the author of Vicious Little Darlings. She was born in Kansas, raised in Southern California, and now she lives in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Smith College and a member ofthe Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She attended the Community of Writers in 2008. www.katherineeaser.com

Carol Edgarian is cofounder and editor of Narrative Magazine. She is the author of the best-selling novel Rise the Euphrates. Along with Tom Jenks, she coedited The Writer’s Life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame. Her new novel, Three Stages of Amazement, will be published by Scribner in March 2011. In 1988 she attended the Community of Writers in Fiction. www.narrativemagazine.com

Selden Edwards’s first novel, The Little Book was published by Dutton in 2008 and became a New York Times bestseller; the paperback edition appeared in 2009. His second novel The Lost Prince, the World War I part of the story, will be published also by Dutton in August 2012. A graduate of Princeton and Stanford, he is a former English teacher and was headmaster of several private schools during his career in education. He also has a doctorate from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He and his wife Gaby live in Carpinteria, California. He attended the first three Community of Writers in 1969,1970 and 1971.
www.seldenedwards.com

Jennifer Egan was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad. She is the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starting Cameron Diaz in 2001, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories and, most recently, the The Keep, which was a national bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney’s and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Her non-fiction articles appear frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and her most recent article, “The Bipolar Kid,” received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Her new book, A Visit From the Goon Squad, published in June was named by Publisher’s Weekly and Oprah as one of the Best 10 Books of 2010, as well as winning the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989 she attended the Community of Writers in Fiction, and in 1992 and 1996, she attended the Screenwriting Program.
http://jenniferegan.com

Cai Emmons is the author of the novel His Mother’s Son, which was a Booksense and Literary Guild selection, won the Ken Kesey Award for the Novel in 2003, and was translated into French and German. Her second novel, The Stylist, was published in Fall 2007 by HarperPerennial. Her short work has appeared in Arts and Letters, Narrative Magazine, and the Santa Monica Review, among others, and she has a selection in Now Write: Writing Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers. Emmons teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon. Before turning to fiction she wrote for film and theater. She attended the Community of Writers in 1993, 1994, and 1998. Since then, she has returned as a staff writer on several occasions.
www.caiemmons.com

Maria Espinosa is a novelist, poet, and translator. She has also taught Creative Writing and English as a Second Language. She has published four novels, two chapbooks of poetry, and a translation of George Sand’s novel, Lélia. Her novel, Longing, received an American Book Award. Dying Unfinished, her most recent novel, published by Wings Press, continues the saga of Longing through voices of mother and daughter. It recently received a Josephine Miles Award from PEN Oakland. www.mariaespinosa.com

Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico to parents from Michoacán and raised in suburban Los Angeles. He earned his MFA from UC-Irvine. His first novel, Still Water Saints (Random House 2007) appeared simultaneously in English and Spanish and was selected for Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers. His nonfiction and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Salon. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Fresno State. He just completed work on his second novel, tentatively titled The Other Stranger (Random House, 2012), about a Mexican actor in Hollywood’s Golden Age. He attended the Community of Writers in 2004 and 2005.www.facebook.com/AlexEspinozaFans

Merrill Feitell's first book, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, won the 2004 Iowa Prize for Short Fiction and was published by University of Iowa Press. She attended the Community of Writers in 1993.www.merrillfeitell.com

Joshua Ferris is the author of novels, Then We Came to th End, which won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and was a National Book Award finalist, The Unnamed, both published by Little, Brown & Co. His stories have appeared in such publications as the New Yorker, Granta and Tin House. He first attended the Community of Writers in 2003.
www.joshuaferris.com

Barbara Fischkin is an author and journalist who has taught at three universities. Her books include Muddy Cup: A Dominican Family Comes of Age in A New America (Scribner 1997). She completed Muddy Cup after attending the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Fischkin has also published two satiric journalism novels Exclusive and Confidential Sources. (Bantam Dell at Random House). www.barbarafischkin.com

Photo Credit:
Jim Herrington

Jordan Fisher Smith is the author of the 2005 Houghton Mifflin book, Nature Noir which was just released as an Amazon Kindle e-book in December. He narrates and appears as himself in the 2008 documentary film on Lyme disease, “Under Our Skin” which made the 2010 Oscar nomination shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. Since 2008, he has been at work on his book about American wilderness for Crown/Random House. He is in two 2010 anthologies, To Everything on Earth: New Writings on Fate, Community, and Nature from Texas Tech University Press, and The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology, from Heyday. His October 2010 feature for Discover magazine "Life Under the Bubble," was nominated for an American Society of Magazine Editors award. http://www.jordanfishersmith.com/

Janet Fitch is the author of three novels including White Oleander and Paint it Black. She is a faculty member in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, where she teaches fiction. She attended the Community of Writers in 1993 and returns regularly to serve of the teaching staff. literati.net/Fitch/

Photo Credit:
Lawrence Kim

Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name "Ford," thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet was a New York Times bestseller and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 30 languages. He attended the Community of Writers in 2006.
www.jamieford.com

Richard Ford is the author of six novels, including, Independence Day and Lay of the Land, and he has also published several collections of short fiction. He has been awarded both the PEN/Faulkner award and the Pulitzer Prize. He attended the Community of Writers in 1970 and 1971 and has also returned dozens of times to serve on the teaching staff. Ford also serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.

Vicki Forman is a writer, a teacher, a mother and an advocate for people with disabilities. Her memoir, This Lovely Life, won the PEN Center USA Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Nonfiction, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). Her work has appeared the Seneca Review and the Santa Monica Review as well as the anthologies, Love You To Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child With Special Needs, and Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined. For several years, she wrote the popular column, “Special Needs Mama” at Literary Mama. She attended the Community of Writers in 1994.
www.vickiforman.com

Photo Credit:
Franco Vogt

Martha Frankel is the author of the 2008 memoir, Hats & Eyeglasses, chronicling her family's lifelong love affair with gambling (Tarcher/Penguin Group). She began her writing career at the original Details magazine, and went on to write book reviews, essays and celebrity profiles for other magazines, such as Movieline, Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker. Her second book, Brazilian Sexy: Secrets to Living a Gorgeous and Confident Life (co-written with Janea Padilha) was published in April 2010 (Perigee / Penguin Group). She is the executive director of the Woodstock Writers Festival, and the creator of the always wait-listed class, Write As If No One Is Reading Over Your Shoulder. She is a winner of a NYFA grant in nonfiction literature, a fellow at the MacDowell colony, and an Artist-in-Residence at SUNY Ulster. Not bad for a college dropout. She attended the Community of Writers in 1998.
www.marthafrankel.com

Photo Credit:
Thomas Cooper.

Amy Franklin-Willis, an eighth-generation Southerner, was born in Birmingham, Alabama. She received an Emerging Writer Grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation in 2007 to complete The Lost Saints of Tennessee, a novel inspired by stories of her father’s childhood in rural Pocahontas, Tennessee. Grove/Atlantic will publish The Lost Saints of Tennessee, in February 2012. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006, 2006 and 2009.

Darien Gee is the national bestselling author of three novels written under the name Mia King (Good Things, Sweet Life, and Table Manners, all published by Berkley Books). Her fourth novel, Friendship Bread, sold at auction last March and has sold foreign and audio rights. Friendship Bread (Ballantine Books/Random House) will be released in April 2011 under her own name. Darien is a former Bay Area resident who served on the board of directors for ZYZZYVA and the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. She attended the Community of Writers in 1999. A year later, she and her husband, author and golf academy owner Darrin Gee, moved to Hawaii where they currently reside with their three children. www.facebook.com/authordariengee

Tanya Egan Gibson's debut novel, How to Buy a Love of Reading, was published by Dutton in May 2009. She attended the Community of Writers in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004.
www.howtobuyaloveofreading.com

Jeff Gillenkirk is an author, journalist, and political commentator. Chin Music Press in Seattle published his first novel, Home, Away, this year. He is also the author of the non-fiction book Bitter Melon: Inside America's Last Rural Chinese Town (Heyday Books) which won the Commonwealth Club’s Silver Medal award for best California history. His articles and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Parenting magazine, The Nation, Mother Jones, America, and other publications. He attended the Community of Writers in 1976. www.librarything.com/profile/jeffgillenkirk

John J. Gobbell is a former Navy Lieutenant who saw duty as a destroyer weapons officer. His thirty plus year career in executive recruiting included clients in the military and commercial aerospace sectors giving him added insight into character development for his novels. He has written six historical thrillers involving the U.S. Navy – Pacific Theater -- and is currently at work on his seventh. He and his wife Janine live in Newport Beach, California. www.JohnJGobbell.com

Glen David Gold is the author of Carter Beats the Devil, a national bestseller currently translated into 14 languages. His fiction, essays and memoirs have appeared in Playboy, McSweeney's, The Independent UK and The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and he has written comic books for DC and Dark Horse. His novel Sunnyside was published by Knopf in 2009. He first attended the Community of Writers in 1996 and 1997. He now returns often as a staff member. www.glendavidgold.com

Michael Golding is the author of the novels Simple Prayers and Benjamin's Gift, both published by Warner Books. His work has been translated into ten foreign languages. His translation of Alessandro Baricco's stage play Novecento opened the 2002 Edinburgh Festival, and his screenplay adaptation of Mr. Baricco's novel Silk, starring Keira Knightley and Alfred Molina, was a featured selection at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival.

Suzanne Greenberg’s collection of short stories, Speed-Walk and Other Stories, won the 2003 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, chosen by Rick Moody, and was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award in 2004. Her fiction, creative essays and poetry have appeared in a number of publications, including The Washington Post Magazine, Mississippi Review, West Branch and The Sun, among others. She is the co-author with Lisa Glatt of two novels for children, Abigail Iris: The One and Only and Abigail Iris: The Pet Project, both published by Walker Books, a division of Bloomsbury USA. Her work on teaching creative writing has appeared in numerous publications, including, most recently, in Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project, edited by Anna Leahy, Multilingual Matters, Ltd. She is the co-author, with her husband Michael C. Smith, of a book on creative writing, Everyday Creative Writing: Panning for Gold in the Kitchen Sink, distributed by McGraw Hill, now in its second edition. She teaches creative writing at California State University, Long Beach, where she’s a professor of English. She lives in Long Beach with her husband and three children. www.suzannegreenberg.com

Lev Grossman is the author of four novels, most recently the New York Times bestsellers The Magicians (2009) and The Magician King (2011). He is also the book critic for Time Magazine and a frequent guest on NPR, and he has published essays in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Believer, Wired and many other magazines. He first went to Squaw Valley in 1994. www.levgrossman.com

Lise Haines is the author of three novels. Girl in the Arena, a South Carolina Book Award nominee in 2011, was published in the US (Bloomsbury) with foreign rights sold in Turkey (Alfa-Artemis Yaynevi) and Brazil (Editora Underworld), with a movie option to Denver & Delilah, Charlize Theron's production company. Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (Unbridled Books) was a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006” by San Diego's NPR station. In My Sister’s Country, (Penguin/Putnam), was a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Fiction Prize, with movie rights sold to Renart Films, a NYC Indie company. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals and she was a finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Award. Haines is Writer in Residence at Emerson College and she has been Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard. Haines holds a B.A. from Syracuse University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She grew up in Chicago, lived in Southern California for many years, and now resides with her daughter in the Boston area.www.lisehaines.com

Daniel Hallford is the author of 3 books: Pelican Bay, a novel about ex-cons; Upper Noe, a memoir about a boy growing up in San Francisco; and his latest, Tattooed Love Dogs, a collection of short stories. He divides his time between San Francisco and Truckee, California. He attended the Community of Writers in 2005. danielhallford.com

Seré Prince Halverson's debut novel, The Underside of Joy, will be published by Dutton in January 2012. It was one of six novels chosen for the 2011 BEA Editor's Buzz Panel and will be translated into a dozen languages. Seré and her husband live in northern California and have four grown children. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006.
www.sereprincehalverson.com

Masha Hamilton is the author of four novels, most recently 31 Hours, which the Washington Post called one of the best novels of 2009 and independent bookstores named an Indie choice. Her novel, Staircase of a Thousand Steps (2001) was a Booksense pick by independent booksellers and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection; The Distance Between Us (2004), was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal; The Camel Bookmobile (2007), also a Booksense pick. She also founded two world literacy projects, the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women's Writing Project. She is the winner of the 2010 Women's National Book Association award, presented "to a living American woman who derives part or all of her income from books and allied arts, and who has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation." She began her career as a fulltime journalist, working in Maine, Indiana and New York City before being sent by the Associated Press to the Middle East, where she was news editor for five years, including the period of the first intefadeh, and then moving to Moscow, where she worked for five years during the collapse of Communism, reporting for the Los Angeles Times and NBC-Mutual Radio and writing a monthly column, "Postcards from Moscow." She also reported from Kenya in 2006, and from Afghanistan in 2004 and 2008. She attended the Community of Writers in 2000. www.mashahamilton.com

Michael Harris is an Army veteran of Vietnam, who he has worked as a Forest Service aide, a janitor and an English conversation teacher in Tokyo and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. For 30 years, he was a reporter, editor and book reviewer for West Coast newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. His first novel, The Chieu Hoi Saloon, was published by PM Press in October 2010. He attended the Community of Writers in 2008.

Photo Credit:
David Henderson

Judith Hendricks is the author of the novels Bread Alone, Isabelle's Daughter, and The Baker's Apprentice. Her writing has been translated into 11 languages. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband. Her newest novel, The Laws of Harmony was published by Harper Paperbacks in 2009. She attended the Community of Writers in 1997.
www.judihendricks.com

Sara J. Henry's first novel, Learning to Swim, published by Crown in February 2011 is a Target Emerging Author pick for December 2011, and has been selected one of Best Books of 2011 by Booklist magazine. Her second novel is due out in summer 2012. Her previous writing credits include several health and fitness books, and she's been a newspaper, book and magazine editor, writing instructor, website designer, and bicycle mechanic, with a very short stint as a soil scientist. Learning to Swim is set in the Adirondacks, where Sara worked as a sports editor. She grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and now lives in southern Vermont; she attended Squaw in 2006 (fiction) and 2007 (nonfiction).
www.sarajhenry.com

Sheila Himmel writes for publications ranging from the New York Times to Eating Well to IEEE Spectrum: The Magazine of Technology Insiders, and psychologytoday.com. Her memoir of being a food writer with an anorexic daughter is Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia (Penguin/Berkley, 2009). She attended the Community of Writers in 2008. www.sheilahimmel.com

Rhoda Huffey is the author of the novel The Hallelujah Side, which received the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award. She has published stories in Santa Monica Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Green Mountains Review, and has a story upcoming in Santa Monica Review (spring issue). She first attended the Community of Writers in 1988 and often returns as a staff member. She lives in Venice Beach and is a tap dancer.

Gina Hyams is an author and editor who specializes in mysterious and confounding subjects, such as pie, nannies, incense, folk art, facials, death, and room service. She is the creator of the Andrews McMeel Publishing book/kit series Pie Contest in a Box (2011), Chili Cook-Off in a Box (2012), and Christmas Cookie Contest in a Box (2012). Her other books include the bestselling travel-design titles, In a Mexican Garden (2005) and Mexicasa (2001), as well as Pacific Spas (2006), Day of the Dead Box (2001), and Incense (2004) – all published by Chronicle Books. She is also co-editor of the anthology, Searching for Mary Poppins (Hudson Street Press and Plume, divisions of Penguin U.S.A., 2007). www.ginahyams.com

Buzzy Jackson is the author of Shaking the Family Tree: Blue Bloods, Black Sheep, and other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist (Simon & Schuster, 2010) andA Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them(W.W. Norton: 2005).She has a Ph.D. in U.S. History from UC Berkeley and her work has been honored by PEN-West and the American Library Association. Buzzy is a Research Affiliate at The Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a Correspondent for the Boston Globe.
www.buzzyjackson.com

Cindy Jones: is the author of My Jane Austen Summer (Wm. Morrow/Harper Collins, 2011), winner of the Writers' League of Texas Manuscript Contest 2007. She is a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and blogs with austenauthors.net and girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com. She attended Squaw in 2007. www.cindysjones.com

Photo Credit: Brett Hall

Louis B. Jones is the author of the novels Ordinary Money, Particles and Luck, and California's Over, all three New York Times Notable Books. His new novel, Radiance, was published in 2011 by Counterpoint Press. His stories or nonfiction have appeared this year in the 2009 Pushcart Prize collection, The Sun, ThreePenny Review, and Open City. He first attended as a participant in 1988 and 1989. With Lisa Alvarez, he now directs the Writers Workshops of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.
www.louisbjones.com

Photo Credit:
Jen Fariello.

Matthew F. Jones is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Cooter Farm, The Elements of Hitting, A Single Shot, Blind Pursuit, Deepwater, and Boot Tracks, as well as a number of screenplays. His novel A Single Shot (FSG, 1996) was reissued in fall 2011, with a forward by Daniel Woodrell, as the first novel in Mulholland Books series of classic noir novels. His screenplay adaptation of A Single Shot is set to begin filming in spring 2012 starring Forrest Whitaker, William H. Macy, Juno Temple and Juliette Lewis. The script he wrote of his novel Boot Tracks finished filming in summer 2011 starring Michelle Monaghan, Stephen Dorff and Willem DeFoe. His novel, Deepwater, was made into a film in 2005, starring Lucas Black, Peter Coyote and Mia Maestro. He attended the Community of Writers in 1990. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. www.matthewfjones.com

Kathryn Jordan’s novel, Hot Water, was published by Berkley/Penguin in 2006. She has an M.A. in English from U.C.L.A. and taught in Spain, the Philippines and at Cairo American College in Egypt where her new novel In The Time Of Apricots is set. Her articles have appeared in such diverse publications as Palm Springs Life, Westways, Ranger Rick, Silk, and Diver Magazine, (reprinted in a book, A Diver’s Guide to Underwater America). In 2008 she wrote a column, Women Changing The World, for The Desert Woman Magazine. Kathryn attended Squaw Valley in 1997. She lives on an acre in Bermuda Dunes, California with her Arabian horse, Abu. http://kathrynjordan.com/

Alma Katsu is the author of the novel The Taker, published in 2011 by Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, with translation rights sold in ten languages. The Taker is the first book in a trilogy. She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Program, blogs for the Huffington Post's Washington, DC page and has been published in an anthology of Washington DC women writers. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003.
www.almakatsu.com

Elizabeth Kadetsky's short stories have been chosen for a Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices and Best American Short Stories notable stories, 2010, and her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Santa Monica Review, Antioch Review and elsewhere. She has been a fellow at MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the St. James Centre for Creativity in Malta. A 25-year practitioner of Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga, she lived in India as a Fulbright scholar and wrote a memoir about her studies with the yogi BKS Iyengar, First There Is a Mountain, published in 2004 by Little, Brown and forthcoming in reprint from Dzanc books. She is visiting assistant professor of creative writing in fiction and nonfiction in the Penn State MFA program’s Emerging Writer Series.

Photo Credit:
Andre Vippolis

Lauren Kate is the internationally best-selling author of The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove (Razorbill) and the Fallen novels (Delacorte): Fallen, Torment, Passion, the forthcoming short-story collection, Fallen in Love, and Rapture. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages. She has a masters degree in fiction from UC Davis and has worked as a fiction editor at HarperCollins. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006. She lives in Los Angeles. laurenkatebooks.net

Dylan Landis is the author of a novel-in-stories, Normal People Don't Live Like This (a Newsday Top Ten pick of 2009), and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives and teaches in New York. She attended the Community of Writers in 2001. www.dylanlandis.com

Photo Credit: Brett Hall

Michelle Latiolais is professor of English at the University of California at Irvine. She is the author of the novel Even Now, which received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. Bellevue Literary Press published her second novel, A Proper Knowledge, in spring 2008, and will publish her collection of stories, Widow, in 2011. She has published stories and essays in several literary journals. She first attended as a participant in 1989. She now returns often as a staff member.

Photo Credit: Gayle Geary

Michael Lavigne’s first novel, Not Me, was published by Random House. Not Me was the recipient of the Sami Rohr Choice Award for emerging Jewish writers, was an American Library Association Sophie Brodie Honor Book, a Book of the Month Club Alternate, and was translated into three languages. Michael’s second novel, with a working title of Korban (SACRIFCE), has been acquired by Deborah Garrison at Pantheon and will be released under the Schocken imprint. Before becoming a full time novelist, Michael was an advertising creative director, whose work had been honored by the Cannes Film Festival, the Clio, and the ADDY. He is also a founder of the Tauber Jewish Studies Program in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife, Gayle. He attended the Community of Writers in 2001.
http://www.michaellavigne.com

Krys Lee is the author of Drifting House, to be published by Viking/Penguin in February 2012. Her novel-in-progress is also to be published by Viking/Penguin in 2013. Her short stories and articles have been published or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, California Quarterly, Asia Weekly and Conde Nast, UK. Her stories have received special mentions in the Pushcart Prize Anthology 2012 and Narrative Magazine: 20 under 30. She attended the Community of Writers in 2010. She divides her time between the U.S. and South Korea. http://kryslee.com

Edan Lepucki is the author of the novella If You’re Not Yet Like Me, published by Nouvella Press. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her short fiction has been published in Narrative Magazine, where she was featured in their "30 Below 30," a list of writers under 30 years old who have published exceptional work on its site; the Los Angeles Times Magazine; Meridian; and McSweeney's; among others. In 2009, she won the James D. Phelan Award for her recently-completed novel, The Book of Deeds. She is a staff writer for The Millions. She attended the Community of Writers in 2007. www.edanlepucki.com

Dr. Joan Steinau Lester is an award-winning commentator. She is the author of the biography Eleanor Holmes Norton: Fire In My Soul, as well as The Future of White Men And Other Diversity Dilemmas and Taking Charge: Every Woman's Action Guide. Her first novel, Black, White, Other: In Search of Nina Armstrong, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her numerous recognitions include the NLGJA Siegenthaler Award for commentary on National Public Radio, a 2010 Bellwether Prize Finalist Award, and a Finalist Award for the 2011 Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Essence, Executive Female, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Progressive Media Project, New York Times Syndicate: New American Voices, Huffington Post, Persimmon Tree, and Common Dreams, among other venues. Her commentaries have frequently aired on PRI’s Marketplace and NPR’s All Things Considered. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.joanlester.com

Margit Liesche is the author of the novels, Lipstick and Lies and Hollywood Buzz. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.margitliesche.com

Aimee Liu’s work includes the novels Flash House; Cloud Mountain; and Face, and the memoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. She is the editor of The Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk About Writing, and Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives: Guidance and Reflections on Recovery from Eating Disorders. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She also has co-authored more than seven books on health and psychological topics. Liu holds an MFA in creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is a past president of PEN USA and a current member of the faculty of Goddard College’s MFA program in creative writing at Port Townsend, WA. She attended the Community of Writers in 1994. www.aimeeliu.net

Dixon Long lives in Mill Valley, California. Before moving to the Bay Area, he was professor of Political Science and dean of Western Reserve College at Case Western Reserve University. His account of building a 42-foot yawl in Japan and sailing across the Indian and South Atlantic oceans with two friends is titled Westward Home. His first novel, Brothers, was published in 2001. A Very Rich Man, about a wealthy but dysfunctional family, came out in 2009. Running without Lights, an international romantic thriller, was published in June 2010. He has co-authored two guidebooks, Markets of Provence and Markets of Paris.

Laura Glen Louis is the author of the story collection, Talking in the Dark, a Barnes & Noble Discover Book. Recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, she has had work anthologized in Best American Short Stories. Her recent book is Some, like elephants, a chapbook of elegies (El León Literary Arts). She attended the Community of Writers in 1987 and 1988.
www.lauraglenlouis.com

Regina Louise is the author of the bestselling memoir Somebody's Someone. She has been featured on NPR’s "All Things Considered," as well as The CBS Early Show. Regina’s story has also garnered nationwide attention in newspapers and magazines including San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Tribune. She optioned her story for film and a play, which premiered May 2007. www.reginalouise.com

Li Miao Lovett is the author of the novel, In the Lap of the Gods (Leap Frog Press, 2010) a tale of the dammed and displaced in China's Three Gorges. She has been a frequent contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle and KQED "Perspectives," and has also written for Narrative Magazine, Earth Island Journal, China Rights Forum, and National Radio Project's "Making Contact." In both fiction and nonfiction, Li’s work has won awards or finalist standing from Glimmer Train, Writer's Digest, A Room of Her Own Foundation, National League of American Pen Women, and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Li attended the Community of Writers in 2006. www.limiaolovett.com

Photo Credit: J. Cross

Michael David Lukas's first novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, was published by HarperCollins in February. A 2010 NEA Fellow in Creative Writing, Michael has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. His writing has appeared in VQR, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, Tikkun, and Georgia Review. He attended the Community of Writers in 2009 assisted by The James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship. www.michaeldavidlukas.com

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of two collections of short fiction. This Life She’s Chosen was published by Chronicle Books in 2005, and was named a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection for the year. Her second collection, Swimming With Strangers, was also published by Chronicle Books in 2008. With Jacqueline Kolosov, she is also editor of the anthology The Sincerest Form of Flattetery: Contemporary Writers on Forerunners in Fiction (Lewis-Clark Press, 2008). Kirsten’s short fiction has appeared in One Story, The American Scholar, and Willow Springs, among other journals. She has been the recipient of a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She teaches creative writing at Purchase College (SUNY). She attended the Community of Writers in 2002. www.kirstenlunstrum.net

Annam Manthiram is the author of the novel, After the Tsunami (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011), and a short story collection Dysfunction: Stories, which was a Finalist in the 2010 Elixir Press Fiction Contest and in Leapfrog Press’ 2010 Fiction Contest. A graduate of the M.A. Writing program at the University of Southern California, Ms. Manthiram resides in New Mexico with her husband, Alex, and son, Sathya. She attended the Community of Writers in 2010. www.annammanthiram.com

Marisa Matarazzo is the author of Drenched: Stories of Love and Other Deliriums (Soft Skull Press, 2010). Her stories have been published in Faultline and Hobart. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006.
www.marisamatarazzo.com

Photo Credit: Lilac Chang

Christina Meldrum is the author of Madapple (Knopf, 2008), a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award and the William C. Morris Award, an ALA Best Book, a Booklist Editors' Choice and a Kirkus Best Book. Her most recent novel, Amaryllis In Blueberry, was published in February 2011 by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Currently, Christina is writing her third novel, slated for publication by Knopf in 2013.
www.christinameldrum.com

Maile Meloy is the author of the story collection Half in Love, the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter, and the new collection Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review and a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times and Amazon.com. It also won the California Book Awards Silver Medal for Fiction. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, she was chosen as one of Granta’s 21 Best Young American Novelists. She attended the Community of Writers in 2000.
www.mailemeloy.com

Deborah Michel is the author of the novel Prosper in Love (Berkley, May 2012). She has worked as a magazine writer and editor for a long list of publications that includes House Beautiful, Premiere, Self, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Buzz. She was a nightlife columnist for Avenue, and the West Coast correspondent for Spy. She attended the Community of Writers in 2005, and recently received her MFA in fiction from Bennington. www.deborahmichel.net

Donna Miscolta’s first novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced was published in June 2011 by Signal 8 Press. Her unpublished collection of short stories Natalie Wood’s Fake Puerto Rican Accent was a finalist for the 2010 Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in America’s Review, Calyx, Cha: An Asian Literary Review, Connecticut Review, New Millennium Writings, Raven Chronicles and Seattle Magazine. She has been awarded residencies from Anderson Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has received over a dozen grants and awards, including the Bread Load/Rona Jaffe Scholarship for Fiction. She attended the Community of Writers in 1998. donnamiscolta.com

Lisa Braver Moss is the author of Celebrating Family: Our Lifelong Bonds with Parents and Siblings and co-author of The Mother's Companion: A Comforting Guide to the Early Years of Motherhood. Her work has appeared in Tikkun, Parents, American Health and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Her collection of short essays, "I'm Not Impressed," can be found on the blog lisabravermoss.wordpress.com. Her novel, The Measure of His Grief, was published in late 2010 by Notim Press. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.lisabravermoss.com

Photo Credit: Brigitte Sire

Nami Mun is the author of the debut novel, Miles from Nowhere, which was shortlisted for the Orange Award, and selected for Booklist Editor’s Choice, Booklist Top Ten First Novels, Amazon’s Best Fiction of 2009 So Far, and Indie Next. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Granta, Tin House, The Iowa Review, and other journals. Named Best New Novelist of 2009 by Chicago magazine, she is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a 2009 Whiting Award. She attended the Community of Writers in 2002, and currently teaches creative writing in Chicago. www.namimun.com

Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the novel, Mary, which was a Finalist for an LA Times Book Prize, and the memoir, The Russian Word for Snow. 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

Denise Nicholas actress and novelist, launched her professional acting career in New York with the award winning Negro Ensemble Company after serving a two-year apprenticeship with the Free Southern Theater, in Mississippi and Louisiana during the most violent days of the civil rights movement. She is best known for her roles on ABC TV's Room 222 for which she received two Golden Globe Nominations and on In the Heat of the Night (NBC) for which she also wrote. She is the author of the novel, Freshwater Road, published by Agate in 2005 and included in the Best Books of of that year by The Washington Post, The Detroit Free Press, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, New York Newsday and the Chicago Tribune. Freshwater Road received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and was a Books Sense Pick. In 2006, Denise won the Best First Novel Award from the American Library Association’s Black Caucus and the Zora Neal Hurston-Richard Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Denise's screen adaptation of Freshwater Road has been optioned for motion picture development. On Sunday, January 8, 2012, Denise will do readings from "Hands on the Freedom Plow" (U. of Illinois Press) and from her new fiction work at the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. She attended the Community of Writers in 2001.

Photo Credit:
Jessica Nunn

Kem Nunn has published five novels: Tapping the Source, Unassigned Territory, Pomona Queen, The Dogs of Winter, and Tijuana Straits. He worked for a season on the HBO show Deadwood. He co-created and co-produced the HBO show John from Cincinnati together with David Milch. He has written for Rolling Stone, GQ, and other periodicals.

Varley O’Connor’s first novel Like China was published by William Morrow in 1991. Her second novel A Company of Three came out from Algonquin Books in 2003. Her third novel, The Cure, was published by the Bellevue Literary Press in 2007. Scribner will release her most recent novel, The Master's Muse, in May 2012. Her short prose has appeared in Faultline: Journal of Art and Literature, AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Driftwood, Algonkian Magazine, The Sun, and in an anthology, Naming the World and Other Exercises for Creative Writers, edited by Bret Anthony Johnston (Random House, 2008). She has taught writing and literature at Irvine, Hofstra University, Brooklyn College, Marymount Manhattan College and now at Kent State University, where in addition to undergraduate creative writing, she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction writing in the Northeast Ohio Universities Consortium MFA program. She first attended the Community of Writers in 1989 and has returned in recent years to serve on the staff. www.varleyoconnor.com

Jessica O’Dwyer is the author of the book, Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir, published by Avalon Travel/Seal Press in 2010. She is the adoptive mother to two children born in Guatemala. Her essays have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Adoptive Families, West Marin Review, and the Marin Independent Journal; aired on radio; and won awards from the National League of American Pen Women. She has worked in public relations and marketing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006 and 2007. www.mamalitathebook.com

Regina O’Melveny is the author of the novel, The Book of Madness & Cures, which will be published by Little, Brown and Company in April 2012. She holds aan MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. As well as being a poet and a writer, she is also an assemblage artist. Her poetry and prose have been anthologized and has appeared in The Bellingham Review, rattapallax, The Sun, The LA Weekly, Solo and The Wild Duck Review. She won first prize in the John Foster West National Poetry Award Contest judged by Marge Piercy, first prize in the Cleveland State University Poetry Contest, and she was the 2007 Poetry Award Winner for Conflux Press where her work was published as an artist’s book designed by Tania Baban. Her manuscript Blue Wolves, a collection of poems with reproductions of her assemblages, won the Bright Hill Press poetry book award in New York. She has taught at The Palos Verdes Art Center, The South Coast Botanic Garden, and currently teaches at Marymount College.

Kristin Ohlson is author of the award-winning memoir Stalking the Divine and co-author of the New York Times bestselling Kabul Beauty School. A freelance writer, Ohlson publishes articles in a wide range of publications, as well as short fiction in magazines such as West Branch and the Indiana Review. She has been anthologized in Salon’s Life As We Know It, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Science Writing. She received fiction fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council in 2004 and from the Community Partnership for the Arts in 2009. She attended the Community of Writers in 1988 and 1992.
www.kristinohlson.com

Mary Otis is the author of the short story collection Yes, Yes, Cherries. She has been published in Tin House, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Times, Santa Monica Review, Alaska Review, Cincinnati Review, and other literary journals. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her story “Unstruck” was cited as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories. Her work has been anthologized in Best New American Voices (Harcourt), Do Me: Tales of Love and Sex (Tin House) and Woof: Fiction Writers on Dogs (Viking) Mary is a fiction professor and core faculty in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program. In 2010-11 she served as a literary advisor in The Mark Program sponsored by PEN. www.maryotis.com

David Page has run sled dogs into the Maroon Bells, seined for salmon off the Kenai, hunted for T-Rex eggs in Patagonia, and traveled from the Algerian Sahara to Paris in the back of a Belgian floral delivery van. He has written for the Discovery Channel, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Men's Journal, The New York Times, Eastside, and many other publications. He is a contributing editor at-large for MatadorNetwork.com, and author of and author of the Lowell Thomas Award-winningExplorer's Guide to Yosemite & the Southern Sierra Nevada: A Complete Guide (Countryman Press/W.W. Norton), now in its second edition. He attended the Community of Writers in 2002 and 2003. www.sierrasurvey.com/davidtpage/

Photo Credit:
Chris Patterson

Victoria Patterson's novel This Vacant Paradise, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Drift, her collection of interlinked short stories, was a finalist for the California Book Award and the 2009 Story Prize. The San Francisco Chronicle selected Drift as one of the best books of 2009. Her work has appeared in various publications and journals, including the Los Angeles Times, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Southern Review. She lives with her family in Southern California and teaches at Antioch University’s Master of Fine Arts program and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Riverside. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006. www.victoriapatterson.net

Shira Potash, head of Sprouts Nutrition, is a certified nutritional educator. She teaches nutrition-based cooking classes to public elementary schoolchildren. With her husband, Yoav Potash, she produced and directed the documentary film Food Stamped, which follows a couple as they attempt to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet on a food stamp budget. The film was an official selection for the Mill Valley Film Festival. She attended the Community of Writers in 2008. www.foodstamped.com/film.html

Yoav Potash Yoav Potash is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. Crime After Crime, Yoav's first full length feature documentary premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network. The film has earned 15 honors including The National Board of Review's Freedom of Expression Award, five film festival audience awards, and the top two cash prizes for documentaries in the US. Crime After Crime was a Critics' Pick in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Denver Post, among others. Yoav and the film have been featured on The PBS News Hour, MSNBC's NewsNation, and numerous other TV and radio outlets. Food Stamped, a documentary Yoav co-produced and co-directed on a shoestring budget with his wife Shira Potash, explores the challenge of eating healthy on a food stamp budget. This first-person film won the Grand Jury Prize at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, has been featured on CNN Money, and has found a wide audience across the US. His other past work includes Minute Matrimony, a Mel Brooks-style short comedy that earned a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Yoav has produced several other short films for PBS stations, and has produced, shot, and/or edited short films and advertisements for nonprofits and companies including Apple and Neutrogena. While attending college at UC Berkeley, he won several writing awards, including the Eisner Prize, the university's top prize in creative writing. He attended the Community of Writers in 2005 and 2008. www.foodstamped.com/film.html

Nora Pierce is the author of The Insufficiency of Maps, published by Atria/Simon & Schuster. The novel was selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title and shortlisted for the NCIBA Book of the Year award. She has held residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Vermont Studio Center, and elsewhere. She was a lecturer and Wallace Stegner fellow in Fiction at Stanford University and a PEN/Rosenthal fellow. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003.. www.norapierce.com

Todd James Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Newsworld, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award and the Paterson Prize. His novel, The Australia Stories (also published as A Woman of Stone) is regularly taught in high school and college literature classes. His work has been published in over 80 magazines and literary journals, including The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, The Sun, and Willow Springs. He attended the Community of Writers four times in the 1990s. www.toddjamespierce.com

Ismet Prcic is a Bosnian American writer who is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for fiction in 2010. His work has appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Bat City Review, Wazee Literary Journal, Prague Literary Review and IdentityTheory.com. In addition to his fiction writing, Ismet is a long-time writer of dramatic works as well as having worked extensively as an actor and director both in the U.S. and abroad. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. His first novel, Shards -- which is nominated for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize -- was published by Black Cat (Grove, Atlantic) in 2011. He attended the Community of Writers in 2007. www.ismetprcic.com

Paula Priamos is the author of the forthcoming memoir The Shyster's Daughter (Etruscan Press, Spring 2012). An excerpt has recently been published in ZYZZYVA literary magazine. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and The Washington Post Magazine, among others. She attended the Community of Writers in 1997. www.paulapriamos.com

Frederick Reiken‘s most recent novel, Day for Night, was published in 2010 with Reagan Arthur Books of Little, Brown and was released in trade paperback in 2011 with Back Bay Books. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was listed as one of the best books of 2010 by the Washington Post and Kansas City Star. Translations have been published or are forthcoming in French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Dutch, and foreign editions have been released in Australia and the UK, where the London Daily Telegraph cited him as one of “10 rising literary stars of 2010.” His debut novel, The Odd Sea, won the Hackney Literary Award. His novel, The Lost Legends of New Jersey, was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Best Book of the Year for both the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. His short stories have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, Gulf Coast, and the Western Humanities Review, and his essays have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle. He currently directs the graduate program in creative writing at Emerson College. He attended the Community of Writers in 1992 and has returned recently to serve on the staff.
www.frederickreiken.com

Anne Rice is a best-selling author of over 28 novels, the first of which, Interview With A Vampire, she brought to the Community of Writers as a manuscript. Her most recently novel, Of Love and Evil, was published by Knopf in November 2010. 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

Robin Romm is the author of two books. Her memoir, The Mercy Papers, was named a Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and Top 100 Nonfiction Book by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her collection of stories, The Mother Garden, was a finalist for the PEN USA prize and the Northern California Independent Bookseller's Book of the Year Award. Her stories have appeared in numerous national journals (Tin House, One Story, Threepenny Review) and anthologies. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at New Mexico State University. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.robinromm.com

Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum is the author of the novel, A Day of Small Beginnings, published by Little, Brown and Company in 2006. She attended the Community of Writers in 2001. http://www.lisapearlrosenbaum.com

Photo Credit:
Julia McNeal

Elizabeth Rosner is an award-­winning novelist, poet and essayist now living in Berkeley, California. Her first novel, The Speed of Light, was published by Ballantine Books in 2001. Winner of several literary prizes, including Hadassah's Ribalow Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association award for Fiction, and the Prix France Bleu Gironde, the book was a national best­seller, and was translated into nine foreign languages. It was optioned for film, by actress Gillian Anderson, who plans to make the film her directorial debut. Her second novel, Blue Nude, was published by Ballantine Books in May 2006. It was named one of the Best Books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle and was also a bestseller. The paperback edition was issued by Gallery Books, (Simon and Schuster) in September 2010. Her poetry collection, Gravity was published as one of the Select Poets Series by Small Poetry Press, it is currently in its 14th printing. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Elle magazine, The Forward, and several anthologies. She attended the Community of Writers in Poetry in 1999, and in Fiction several times in the 1980s before returning as a staff member. www.elizabethrosner.com

Amy Kathleen Ryan is the author of four young adult novels, most notably Vibes (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008) and Glow, the first novel in the Sky Chasers series, (St. Martins, 2011), which has been published in eight languages and has been optioned for film rights by 20th Century Fox. She lives in Colorado with her husband and three daughters. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006. http://www.amykathleenryan.com

Kris Saknussem is the author of the novels Zanesville, Private Midnight (which became a bestseller in France and Italy), Enigmatic Pilot, a collection of short stories entitled Sinister Miniatures, and a portfolio book of paintings, The Colors of Compulsion. His music has been nominated for two European Jazz Awards. Three new works are scheduled for publication in 2012. A long time expat resident of Australia, Papua New Guinea and Tonga, he is currently the Gallagher Fellow of the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. www.saknussemm.com

Julia Scheeres is the author of the New York Times bestseller memoir Jesus Land. Her second book, A Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown, was published in October 2011. She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two daughters and works at the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003.http://juliascheeres.com

Adrienne Sharp is the author of White Swan, Black Swan (Random House, 2001), The Sleeping Beauty (Riverhead, 2005), and The True Memoirs of Little K which was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in October, 2010. She attended the Community of Writers in 1988 and again in 1998. www.adriennesharp.com

Julia Flynn Siler is the author of The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, a New York Times bestseller now available in paperback. She and her husband have two sons and live in Northern California. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003 and 2004. www.juliaflynnsiler.com

Dashka Slater is the recipient of a 2004 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her novel,The Wishing Box (Chronicle, 2000), was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of three children's books,Baby Shoes (Bloomsbury, 2006), Firefighters in the Dark (Houghton Mifflin, 2006),andThe Sea Serpent and Me (Houghton Mifflin, 2008).A fourth,Dangerously Ever After,will be released by Dial Books for Young Readers in 2012. Slater is also an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared inNewsweek, The New York Times Magazine, More, Salon,Mother Jones,Sierra, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine and many other magazines. She writes a column about Green Living for Fit Pregnancy magazine. She attended the Community of Writers in 2005. www.dashkaslater.com

Alice Sebold is the best-selling author of Lucky, a memoir, and the novels, The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon. www.barclayagency.com

Benton Sen is the author of Men of Hula: Robert Cazimero and H'lau N' Kamalei (Island Heritage), about the only male halau hula (school) in the Hawaiian Islands. He has been the recipient of the James D. Houston Fellowship from the Squaw Valley Writers Conference and has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists. He attended the Community of Writers in 2010 and 2011.

Jordan Fisher Smith is an author whose work in print, film, and the spoken word explores the effects of environmental change on human lives. For twenty-one years Jordan worked as a park ranger in California, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska. In 1990, convinced that global climate change was real, he decided to try writing for magazines as a way to extend his protection for wilderness beyond the reach of his badge. His debut interview with Al Gore for Orion appeared in the months before the 1992 presidential election. Smith’s work has since appeared in Men’s Journal, Backpacker, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and other periodicals. He is the author of the 2005 Houghton Mifflin book, Nature Noir and narrates and appears as himself in the 2008 documentary film on Lyme disease, “Under Our Skin.” He is now working on a book about the future of American wilderness to be published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House. His radio commentaries have appeared on National Public Radio affiliate stations. He attended the Community of Writers in 2001.
www.jordanfishersmith.com

Martin J. Smith is editor-in-chief of Orange Coast magazine in Newport Beach, California, and was senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine for eight years. He is co-author, with Patrick J. Kiger, of OOPS: 20 Life Lessons From the Fiascoes That Shaped America (Collins) and POPLORICA: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore That Shaped Modern America (HarperResource). Smith also is the author of many short stories and three thematically linked suspense thrillers published by Berkley, Time Release, Shadow Image, and Edgar Award-finalist Straw Men. His latest nonfiction book, The Wild Duck Chase, is about the strange and wonderful world of competitive duck painting. Bloomsbury will release it in fall 2012. www.martinjsmith.com

Scott Sparling grew up in Michigan and now lives outside Portland, Oregon. Wire to Wire, his first novel, was published by Tin House Books in 2011. He is a graduate of Antioch College. Since 1997, he has written and maintained Segerfile.com, one of the oldest and largest music sites of its kind on the Internet. He attended the Community of Writers in 1986 and 1992. scottsparling.net

Photo Credit:
Adolfo Rollo

Janyce Stefan-Cole’s novel Hollywood Boulevard will be published in April 2012 by Unbridled Books. Her Knock Literary Magazine Award-winning story “Conversation with a Tree,” currently appears in Being Human: Call of the Wild, Editions Bibliotekos. A finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, she is included in the Boston Globe bestselling anthology, Dick for a Day (Villard Books). Essays appear in The Healing Muse, And Then and other publications. She attended the Community of Writers in 2004. www.janycestefan-cole.com

Brad Summerhill is a writer and professor of English Literature at Truckee Meadows College. His first novel, Gambler's Quartet, was released in July by Virginia Avenue Press. He attended the Community of Writers in 1998 and 2004.

Christine Sunderland s the author of four novels, Pilgrimage (2007), Offerings (2009) which won a bronze medal in the IPPY 2010 Awards (Independent Publishers Association), Inheritance (2009), and Hana-lani (2010) which won Honorable Mentions in the San Francisco Book Festival, the Hollywood Book Festival, and the Beach Book Festival. All were published by OakTara. www.ChristineSunderland.com

Photo Credit:
Chris Hardy

Ellen Sussman is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel, French Lessons and the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, On a Night Like This. She is also the editor of two anthologies, Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia Of Sex and Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave, which was a New York Times Editors Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller. She attended the Community of Writers in 1980 and 1996.
www.ellensussman.com

Photo credit:
Rick Smolan / Against All Odds Production 2011

Amy Tan's novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning, all New York Times bestsellers. She was co-writer and co-producer of the film The Joy Luck Club, and was the librettist for an opera based on The Bonesetter's Daughter, which premiered to sold-out audiences in San Francisco in 2008. She has also published a memoir, The Opposite of Fate; two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa; and numerous articles for magazines including The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and National Geographic. Tan's work has been widely anthologized and translated into 35 languages. She attended the Fiction Program of the Community of Writers in 1985 and 1987, and the Screenwriters Program in 1988. Now she returns most every year as a Special Guest. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. www.amytan.net

Renee Thompson's second novel, The Plume Hunter, is forthcoming from Torrey House Press in December 2011. Her first novel, The Bridge at Valentine, received high praise from Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry. Her short story, “Fences,” is forthcoming from Arcadia, the journal of the University of Central Oklahoma. Other stories have appeared in Narrative, Chiron Review, and 10,000 Tons of Black Ink. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003, 2007 and 2009. www.reneethompson.com

Photo credit:
Marion Ettlinger

Jessica Maria Tuccelli is a writer, filmmaker, and women’s rights and welfare advocate. In March 2012, Viking/Penguin will publish her debut novel, Glow, a Georgia mountain-saga about the complex bond of mothers and daughters across a century. She is a graduate of MIT with a degree in anthropology. She attended the Community of Writers in 2008. www.jessicamariatuccelli.com

Lisa Tucker is the author of six novels: The Song Reader, Shout Down the Moon, Once Upon a Day, The Cure for Modern Life, The Promised World and The Winters in Bloom. Her books have been published in fourteen countries and selected for Borders Original Voices, Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, People magazine Critic’s Choice, Redbook Book Club, Amazon Book of the Year, Barnes & Noble Reading Group program, Target “Breakout” Books, the American Library Association Popular Paperbacks, and the Indie Next list. Her short work has appeared in The New York Times, Seventeen, and The Oxford American. She attended the Community of Writers in 2001. www.lisatucker.com

Wendy Nelson Tokunaga is the author of the novels, Midori by Moonlight, and Love in Translation, which was released in November 2009. Both novels were published by St. Martin’s Griffin. She is also the author of the non-fiction e-book, “Marriage in Translation: Foreign Wife, Japanese Husband.” Forthcoming in Spring 2012 is an essay in the anthology "Madonna and Me" published by Soft Skull Press, and a short story in the Young Adult "Tomo" anthology of Japan-related fiction to be published by Stone Bridge Press. She teaches writing at Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio and University of San Francisco, and also has her own manuscript consulting service.She attended the Community of Writers in 2001 and 2002. www.wendytokunaga.com

Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s first novel The Illuminator, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2005,and was translated intofourteen foreign languages and became a national best-seller. Her second novel, The Mercy Seller, was published by St. Martin's Press inhardcover in 2007. Her new novel The Heretic's Wifewas published by St. Martin's in 2010. She attended the Community of Writers in 2002.
www.brendarickmanvantrease.com

Mary Volmer's first novel, Crown of Dust (Soho Press), was released in 2010. Her short fiction has appeared in the “Sacramento Stories on Stage,” series and The Farallon Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in NPR’s “this I believe” series, Women’s Basketball Magazine and Fullcourt Press. She was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to Wales and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College (CA). She attended the Community of Writers in 2003 and 2004. www.maryvolmer.com

Katherine Vaz is the author of Saudade, a selection in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series, and Mariana, translated into six languages and selected by the U.S. Library of Congress as one of the Top Thirty International Books of 1998. Her collection Fado & Other Stories won the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary quarterlies, and she occasionally reviews for The Boston Globe. She attended the Community of Writers in 1988. www.katherinevaz.com

Photo Credit: Jim Roberts

Dora Wang is an author, psychiatrist, and medical historian. Dr. Wang's blogs appear on The Huffington Post, Truth Out, PsychologyToday.com, MomsRising.org, and DoctorsforAmerica.org. She has been the host of a television talk show, Duke City Magazine. Her memoir, The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing in a Changing World was published by Riverhead/Penguin in 2010. Dr. Wang is a graduate of the Yale School of Medicine, and is currently a psychiatry professor and Historian for the School of Medicine at the University of New Mexico. She earned her M.A. in English Literature at the University of California Berkeley, and has published works of memoir and fiction in the Asian Pacific American Journal. She has been the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Writers Residency. Dr. Wang was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and spent her first years as a member of the city's expatriat Chinese community. She grew up in Los Angeles. She attended the Community of Writers in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2005. www.doracalottwang.com

Amanda Eyre Ward is the author of the novels Sleep Toward Heaven, How to be Lost, Forgive Me, and the short story collection, Love Stories in this Town. Her work has been optioned for film and television and published in fifteen countries. Her new novel, Close Your Eyes, was chosen as a Elle Lettres Prize Pick and will be published in paperback by Random House in Summer, 2012. She attended the Community of Writers in 1992. www.amandaward.com

Spring M. Warren is the author of Turpentine: A Novel, published by Grove/Atlantic. Her second book, Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year, was published by Seal Press in 2011. thequarteracrefarm.com

Tim Wendel is the author of eight books, including High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of all Time (Da Capo Press). Ballentine published his novel, Castro’s Curveball and Writers' Lair published Red Rain in 2008. In addition, his book The New Face of Baseball (HarperCollins) was named Top History Book for 2004 by the Latino Literary Council. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Weekend, Washingtonian, National Geographic Traveler, Huffington Post, The Potomac Review, Gargoyle, GQ and Esquire. His columns appear on the USA Today op-ed page, where he is on the Board of Contributors. He teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins University, where he received the 2009 Award for Teaching Excellence and the Professional Achievement Award in 2004 and 2010. He attended the Community of Writers 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 and 2005. www.timwendel.com

Andrew Winer’s most recent novel, The Marriage Artist (Henry Holt, 2010), will be released in paperback by Picador this fall. His first novel, The Color Midnight Made, was a national bestseller. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, he has also published philosophical essays on art and music. He is married to author Charmaine Craig. In 1997 and 1998, he attended the Community of Writers, and will return this year to serve on the staff.
www.andrewwiner.com

Diane Wolff is an expert on East Asia and the recipient of an ALA Notable Book Award. She has been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, and the Chicago Tribune, among others, for her work on China and Tibet. Palgrave MacMillan published her book of nonfiction, Tibet Unconquered: An Epic Struggle for Freedom in late 2010, with a foreword by Robert Thurman, the foremost expert on Tibetan Buddhism in the U. S. www.dianewolff.com

Tiphanie Yanique is the author of How to Escape From A Leper Colony, published by Graywolf Press in 2010. She has been named on the the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35, winner of the Rona Jaffe foundation Award, and winner of the BOCAS Prize in Fiction from the Caribbean. She attended the Community of Writers in 2005. www.tiphanieyanique.com

Mingmei Yipis a musician, writer, poet, artist, and calligrapher. She is the author of nine books, five in Chinese, and four in English. Her novels are all published by Kensington Books, Peach Blossom Pavilion (2008), Petals from the Sky (2010), and Song of the Silk Road (2011). She is now under contract to write her fourth novel The Skeleton Women, to be published in 2012, and her fifth Needle of a Thousand Beauties in 2013. Mingmei is also a children's book writer and illustrator. Her first children's book is Chinese Children's Favorite Stories. She is now working on her second one for Tuttle to be published in 2013. www.mingmeiyip.com

Alia Yunis' novel The Night Counter was published by Random House in 2009. It was also chosen as a top summer read by the Chicago Tribune and Boston Phoenix. A PEN Emerging Voice Fellow born in Chicago, she has worked as a filmmaker and journalist in the Middle East and the United States. Her fiction has been published in many journals and anthologies, and her nonfiction work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Saveur, SportsTravel Magazine, and Aramco World. She currently teaches film and television at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. She attended the Community of Writers in 2004. www.aliayunis.com

Alexi Zentner’s first novel, Touch, is published in the USA by W.W. Norton, in Canada by Knopf Canada, and in the UK by Chatto & Windus. Touch is published in Italy by Einaudi, in Germany by BTB, in France by Éditions JC Lattès, in The Netherlands by De Bezige Bij, in Israel by Modan, in Korea by Hyundae Munhak, in Denmark by Klim, and in Brazil by Editora Nova Conceito. Touch is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Knopf New Face of Fiction pick. Touch is available from Dreamscape as an audio book. Zentner has been named by the CBC as one of 12 Canadian Writers to Watch, and Touch was shortlisted for The Center for Fiction’s 2011 Flahery-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Alexi’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Glimmer Train, The Walrus, Slice Magazine, Orion Magazine, and many other publications. His short story “Touch” was featured in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 where it was chosen as a jury favorite. His short story “Trapline” was awarded the 2008 Narrative Prize and named to the Best American Short Stories 2009 list of “100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2008.” His short stories “Touch,” and “The Adjuster” were also selected for “special mention” in the 2008 Pushcart Prize anthology. He attended the Community of Writers in 2005. www.alexizentner.com