LISA ALVAREZ's essays and short stories have appeared in the American Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, OC Weekly, Santa Monica Review, Green Mountains Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and the anthologies Sudden Fiction Latino: Short- Short Stories from the United States and Latin America, Latinos in Lotusland and Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. With Alan Cheuse, she edited Writers Workshop in a Book: The Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction. She is a professor of English at Irvine Valley College. She co-directs the Writers Workshops at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.

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 writes frequently for the New York Times Book Review and is a Contributing Editor of the Wilson Quarterly. He is founding publisher of Willowbank Books. www.maxbyrdbooks.com

RON CARLSON's most recent book is Room Service, his first collection of poems. His most recent novel is The Signal, which became a best seller in France. His novel Five Skies was one of the Los Angeles Times’s Best Books of 2007 and the One Book Choice of Rhode Island in 2009. His book on writing is Ron Carlson Writes a Story. With Michelle Latiolais, he directs the Graduate Program in Fiction at UC Irvine.

MARK CHILDRESS is the author of the novels A World Made of Fire, V for Victor, Tender, Crazy in Alabama, Gone for Good, One Mississippi, and Georgia Bottoms, just published in paperback by Little, Brown. He has also written three books for children and several screenplays, including the Columbia Pictures production of Crazy in Alabama, an official selection of the Venice and San Sebastian film festivals. www.markchildress.com

BERNARD COOPER most recent book is The Bill From My Father (Simon & Schuster). He is also the author of Maps To Anywhere, A Year of Rhymes, Truth Serum, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again. He is the recipient of the 1991 PEN/USA Ernest Hemingway Award, a 1995 O. Henry Prize, a 1999 Guggenheim grant, and a 2004 National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in literature. His work has appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Essays of 1988, 1995, and 1997, 2002, and 2008. His work has also appeared in magazines and literary reviews including, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, Story, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. He has contributed to National Public Radio's "This American Life" and for six years wrote monthly features as the art critic for Los Angeles Magazine. He teaches creative nonfiction at Bennington College, and held the Mary Routee Distinguished Writer Chair at Scripps College.

JOHN DANIEL is the author of three memoirs and two books of personal essays, as well as two collections of poems. His most recent work is The Far Corner, which won the 2011 Oregon Book Award in Literary Nonfiction. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has been awarded an NEA fellowship, the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, three Oregon Book Awards in literary nonfiction, and a Pushcart Prize, among other honors. He has taught as writer-in-residence at colleges and universities around the country. Of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 1978- 2010, will be published in Fall 2012.
www.johndaniel-author.net

GILL DENNIS was, with Tom Rickman, founding Director of the Community of Writers Screenwriting Program. He wrote the movie Walk the Line with James Mangold and Return to Oz with Walter Murch. Currently, he is writing a detective story with the director Aza Jacobs and an adaptation of Nadeem Aslam’s novel The Wasted Vigil. Forever, which he wrote with Tatia Pilieva, will go into production this spring. Currently he is adapting of Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Footnotes in Gaza, with the director Denis Villeneuve. He is Master Filmmaker in Residence at the American Film Institute Conservatory and won the L.A. Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Distinguished Direction in Theatre. He teaches the Finding the Story Workshop. See Details.

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. www.glendavidgold.com

SANDS HALLis the author of the novel Catching Heaven, a Willa Award finalist and a Random House Reader’s Circle selection. Stories have appeared in the Green Mountains Review and Iowa Review; the latter was selected by Great American Short Stories 2009 for their list of 100 Other Notable Stories. Her work as a playwright includes a stage adaptation of Alcott’s Little Women and the comic drama Fair Use. She is the author of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft, and has an essay in the anthology Writers Workshop in a Book. Sands is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and founding editor of the F&M Alumni Arts Review. www.sandshall.com

DANA JOHNSON is the author of Break Any Woman Down, for which she received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her fiction has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Iowa Review, Slake, Missouri Review, and California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century. Her novel, Elsewhere, California, will be published by Counterpoint Press in 2012. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California.

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 recent fiction and essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Open City and The Sun and received a Pushcart Prize in 2009. He has reviewed for the New York Times and Washington Post and served as Visiting Writer at several MFA programs, including Washington University. His new novel, Radiance, was published last year by Counterpoint Press. www.louisbjones.com

JOANNE MESCHERY has published short stories, essays, and the novels, In A High Place, A Gentleman’s Guide to the Frontier, which was a PEN/Faulkner finalist, and Home and Away. She is also the author of a book of nonfiction, Truckee. Selwa Press has published two of her novels as ebooks. She is teaching in the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.

is the author of three novels, Like China, A Company of Three, and The Cure. Her fourth novel, The Master’s Muse, will be published by Scribner in May. Her short prose and fiction craft interviews have appeared in AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Faultline, Driftwood, The MacGuffin, The Sun, and Algonkian magazine. She teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Kent State University and for The Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program. www.varleyoconnor.com

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 teaches at Antioch University’s Master of Fine Arts program and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Riverside. www.victoriapatterson.net

JASON ROBERTS is the author of the forthcoming Two Shipwrecks, a nonfiction saga of intertwined lives in 19th century America and Japan. His previous book, A Sense of the World, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the international Guardian First Book Prize. He is also the winner of the Van Zorn Prize for short fiction, and a contributor to McSweeney's, The Believer, the Village Voice and other publications. http://jasonroberts.net

ROBIN ROMM is the author of two books. The Mother Garden, her collection of stories, was a finalist for the PEN USA prize. Her memoir, The Mercy Papers, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a San Francisco Best Book of 2009, and a Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The UK Observer, O Magazine, Tin House, One Story, and The Threepenny Review. She's a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and served on the faculty of the MFA Program at New Mexico State University. . http://www.robinromm.com

GREGORY SPATZ's most recent book publications are Inukshuk, a novel (Bellevue Literary Press, 2012), and the forthcoming collection of short stories, Half As Happy (Engine Books, 2012). His short stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The New England Review, Glimmer Train Stories, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He is a 2012 NEA Fellow, and the recipient of a Washington State Book Award. He teaches in and directs the MFA program for creative writing at Eastern Washington University. www.gregoryspatz.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. www.lisatucker.com

ANDREW WINER’s second novel is The Marriage Artist (Henry Holt, 2010), which was released in paperback this fall by Picador. His first novel, The Color Midnight Made, was a national bestseller. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, he is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. www.andrewwiner.com

AL YOUNG was California’s poet laureate from 2005-2008. His most recent book, Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames (The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson), received the 2009 PEN- Oakland Award. Other books include Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry; Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons; the reprint of The Sound of Dreams Remembered, which received the 2002 American Book Award; African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology; and Mingus Mingus: Two Memoirs (with Janet Coleman). An essay appears in the anthology Writers Workshop in a Book. Young’s honors include Guggenheim, Fulbright and NEA Fellowships, the Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Nonfiction, and the 2011 Thomas Wolfe Prize for lifetime achievement. He is currently the visiting writer at California College of the Arts, San Francisco. www.alyoung.org

MICHAEL V. CARLISLE, a founder of InkWell Management, has been involved with the Community of Writers for many years. His fiction and nonfiction client list includes prize-winning as well debut authors. A former director of the AAR, a not-for-profit organization of independent literary and dramatic agents, Michael is an active member of PEN.

DIANA COGLIANESE has been at Alfred A. Knopf since 2003 and edits primarily literary fiction. She has helped to bring several fiction writers to the Knopf Group, including Javier Marías, Annabel Lyon, Rhidian Brook, Patricio Pron, Jo Baker, Evie Wyld, whose novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and Andrew Porter, whose story collection won the Flannery O’Connor Prize.

JOHN A. GLUSMAN is vice president and editor-in-chief of W.W. Norton's trade department. A publishing veteran of more than thirty years, he has worked with Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz; National Book Award winner Richard Powers; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jim Crace and finalists Andrew X. Pham and Philip Ball; Pulitzer Prize winners Laurie Garrett and David Rohde; the New York Times bestselling author, Erik Larson; New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger, and many other writers. He has taught at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, and his book, Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945 (Viking/Penguin), based on his father's experiences as a Navy doctor-and POW-in the Philippines and Japan, won the Colby Award for the best work of military nonfiction by a first-time author. In 2009 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in nonfiction.

MARY EVANS is a New York Literary Agent. Her first job in publishing was at Farrar, Straus & Giroux and then The Viking Press. For over thirty years she has been a literary agent who specializes in upmarket fiction and nonfiction. She has operated her own literary agency, Mary Evans Inc., out of an East Village Greek Revival brownstone since 1994. She is privileged to work with such talents as Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, Abraham Verghese and Vendela Vida (to name only a few).

JEFF KLEINMAN is a literary agent, intellectual property attorney, and founding partner of Folio Literary Management, LLC, a New York literary agency which works with all of the major U.S. publishers (and, through subagents, with most international publishers). His authors include Garth Stein, Robert Hicks, Charles Shields, Bruce Watson, Neil White, and Philip Gerard.

CHRIS PARRIS-LAMB is an agent at The Gernert Company, where he started as an assistant in 2005. He began his career at Burnes & Clegg, Inc. He specializes in literary fiction and in a wide variety of nonfiction. New York Times Bestselling writers on his list include the novelists Chad Harbach and Hillary Jordan, as well as Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl, the game designer Jane McGonigal, and UNC Men's Basketball Coach Roy Williams. Other clients have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Paris Review, The New Republic, GQ, Outside and n+1, among many others.

MICHAEL PIETSCH is Executive Vice President and Publisher of Little, Brown and Company. Before joining Little, Brown in 1991 he worked as an editor at Scribner and at Harmony Books. He has worked with the novelists Martin Amis, Michael Connelly, Tony Earley, Janet Fitch, Chad Harbach, Mark Leyner, Rick Moody, Walter Mosley, James Patterson, George Pelecanos, Alice Sebold, Anita Shreve, Nick Tosches, David Foster Wallace, and Stephen Wright, the nonfiction writers Peter Guralnick, Stacy Schiff, and David Sedaris, and the cartoonist R. Crumb. Career highlights include editing Ernest Hemingway’s posthumous memoir, The Dangerous Summer, in 1985, David Wallace's posthumous novel The Pale King in 2011, and the autobiographies of Chuck Berry, Phil Lesh, and Keith Richards. Recent acquisitions include new novels by Nick Tosches, Donna Tartt and David James Duncan.

ALAN RINZLER has edited and published Toni Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Shirley MacLaine, Lorraine Hansberry, Clive Cussler, Andy Warhol, Robert Ludlum, Jerzy Kosinski, Bob Dylan, andothers.HebeganatSimonandSchuster in 1962, and then went to Macmillan and Holt as Senior Editor. He was Director of Trade Book Publishing at Bantam Books, Associate Publisher and Vice President of Rolling Stone Magazine, and President of the Rolling Stone book division Straight Arrow Books. He was West Coast Editor for the Grove Press, Editor of The Berkeley Monthly, and for 19 years Executive Editor of Jossey-Bass, the San Francisco imprint of John Wiley & Sons.

BJ ROBBINS opened her Los Angeles-based literary agency in 1992 after a multifaceted book publishing career in New York at Simon & Schuster and Harcourt. Her clients include award-winning novelists James D. Houston, Max Byrd, Nafisa Haji, John Hough, Jr., Eduardo Santiago, Craig Ferguson, Kathryn Jordan, Renee Swindle, Laura Catherine Brown, and nonfiction writers J. Maarten Troost, James Donovan, Tim Madigan, Chris Erskine, and Mel Watkins.

ANIKA STREITFELD is an independent editor specializing in fiction and narrative nonfiction. She has worked as an in-house editor at Random House and MacAdam/ Cage. She has worked with the writers Audrey Niffenegger, Dan Chaon, and Amanda Eyre Ward.

ANDREW TONKOVICH is the editor of the Santa Monica Review. His short stories, essays and commentaries have appeared in Green Mountains Review, The Rattling Wall, Faultline, OC Weekly, The Los Angeles Times and an anthology, Geography of Fear. He has taught at UC Irvine, UC Irvine Extension, Santa Monica College, Irvine Valley College and University of Redlands. He hosts “Bibliocracy,” a weekly book culture program on Pacifica Radio affiliate KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, which focuses on literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry. bibliocracyradio.blogspot.com

CHARMAINE CRAIG's first novel, The Good Men, was a national bestseller. Her second novel, nearing completion, is inspired by the life of her mother, once Miss Burma and leader of an insurgent army brigade. She is visiting faculty in Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. www.charmainecraig.com

SUSAN GOLOMB founded the Susan Golomb Literary Agency in 1990 and for over twenty years has been known for finding bestselling and award winning fiction and nonfiction. Her authors include Sarah Shun–lien Bynum, Glen David Gold, Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Kushner, Krys Lee, Tom Mullen, Marisha Pessl, Tom Rachman, Gwyn Hyman Rubio, Brando Skyhorse, William T. Vollmann. Prior to founding her agency, Susan worked for Sydney Pollack’s film company, Mirage, Hearst Entertainment, and PBS’ Great Performances. She is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, the Women's Media Group and PEN International.

RHODA HUFFEYis the author of the novel The Hallelujah Side. She has published stories in Tin House, Ploughshares, and Green Mountains Review, and has a story upcoming in Santa Monica Review (Spring, 2012).

MICHELLE LATIOLAISis a 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. Her second novel, A Proper Knowledge, was published in 2008 by Bellevue Literary Press. She has published writing in three anthologies, Absolute Disaster, Women On The Edge: Writing From Los Angeles and Woof! Writers on Dogs. Her stories and essays have appeared in Zyzzyva, The Antioch Review, Western Humanities Review and the Santa Monica Review. Most recently she had work in issues of the Iowa Review and the Northwest Review. Widow, a collection of stories, involutions and essays, was published in 2011 by Bellevue Literary Press.

ALISON OWINGS is the author of Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans (Rutgers, 2011). Her other books include Hey, Waitress! The USA from the Other Side of the Tray and Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Alison is also a public speaker and freelance editor. www. alisonowings.com

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 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 also serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. www.amytan.net

MIKE LEVINE has been an Acquisitions Editor at Northwestern University Press since 2007. Among the authors with whom he has worked are Kathleen Hill, A. E. Stallings, Katherine Karlin, Michael Griffith, Horton Foote, and Mary Zimmerman. He teaches continuing-education literature seminars at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

OSCAR VILLALON is the managing editor of ZYZZYVA and the former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. His reviews and essays have appeared in Black Clock, The Los Angeles Times, VQR, LA Weekly, The Believer, and on NPR.org. He also serves as a book critic for KQED-FM's “The California Report." www.zyzzyva.org

Each summer, recently published alumni are invited to return to Squaw Valley to read from their books and talk about their journey from unpublished writers to published authors.

The Community of Writers is delighted to celebrate the success of these writers and to present them to the participants, staff, and the public.

Recent alumni who have been part of this reading series include Anita Amirrezvani, David Bajo, Aimee Bender, David Corbett, Charmaine Craig, Frances Dinkelspiel, Cai Emmons, Alex Espinoza, Joshua Ferris, Jamie Ford, Vicki, Forman, Tanya Egan Gibson, Glen David Gold, Judith Hendricks, Sara J. Henry, Rhoda Huffey, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Alma Katsu, Regina Louise, Michael David Lukas, Marisa Matarazzo, Christina Meldrum, Janis Cooke Newman, Jessica O'Dwyer, Victoria Patterson, Frederick Reiken, Robin Romm, Elizabeth Rosner, Adrienne Sharp, Alice Sebold, Julia Flynn Siler, Jordan Fisher Smith, Ellen Sussman, Lisa Tucker, Brenda Rickman Vantrease, Dora Calott Wang, M.D., Andrew Winer, and Alia Yunis among others.

2012 ALUMNI READERS

RAMONA AUSUBEL ('07) 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, 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 UC Irvine. www.ramonaausubel.com

HEATHER DONAHUE ('08): At 24, she was one of the filmmakers of the Blair Witch Project. Her memoir Growgirl: The Blossoming of an Unlikely Outlaw was recently published by Gotham/Penguin. www.heatherdonahue.com

SUSAN HENDERSON ('09) is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award. Her debut novel, Up From The Blue, was published by HarperCollins in 2010 and has been selected by many print and online editors as a top pick of the year, including as a favorite reads feature on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. Now in its fourth printing, Up From The Blue will soon be available in Norwegian and Dutch. Susan blogs at LitPark.com and The Nervous Breakdown. http://www.litpark.com

KRYS LEE ('10) is the author of Drifting House published by Viking/Penguin in February 2012. Viking/Penguin will also publish her novel-in-progress in 2013. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in California and Washington. She was a finalist for Best New American Voices in 2006, received a special mention in the 2012 Pushcart Prize XXXVI, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Narrative magazine, Granta online, California Quarterly, Asia Weekly, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Condé Nast Traveller, UK (forthcoming). She lives in Seoul with intervals in San Francisco. www.kryslee.com

ISMET PRCIC ('07) is a Bosnian American writer who is the recipient of a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for fiction. His work has appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Bat City Review, Wazee Literary Journal, Prague Literary Review and IdentityTheory.com. Ismet is also a writer of dramatic works and has worked extensively as an actor and director both in the U.S. and abroad. He was 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. www.ismetprcic.com

SCOTT SPARLING ('86/'92) 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. www.scottsparling.net

MARY VOLMER’s ('03/'04) first novel, Crown of Dust, first by published HarperCollins UK, was released in the US by Soho Press in 2010. Her short story “Canyon” was a finalist for the 2010 Orlando Prize and featured on Sacramento’s “Stories on Stage.” Her nonfiction has appeared in NPR’s “This I Believe” series, Women’s Basketball Magazine and Fullcourt Press. She was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to Wales in 2001 and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College in 2005. She attended the Community of Writers in 2003 and 2004. www.maryvolmer.com