LISA ALVAREZ's essays and short stories have appeared most recently in Faultine, American Book Review, Santa Monica Review, Green Mountains Review and the anthology, Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America. 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.

ALAN CHEUSE is the author of the novels The Bohemians, The Grandmothers' Club, The Light Possessed, and the award-winning To Catch the Lightning, plus several collections of short fiction. As a book commentator, Cheuse has been a regular contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered since 1982. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, and elsewhere. A collection of his travel writing, A Trance After Breakfast, was published in the summer of 2009. His three-volume introduction to literary study, Literature: Craft & Voice, which he wrote with Nicholas Delbanco, was published by McGraw-Hill last year. His new novel, Song of Slaves in the Desert, recently appeared in paperback. His latest book is a trio of novellas published under the title Paradise, Or, Eat Your Face. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers. www.alancheuse.com

MARK CHILDRESS is the author of seven novels, A World Made of Fire, V for Victor, Tender, Crazy in Alabama, Gone for Good, One Mississippi, and Georgia Bottoms. www.markchildress.com

GILL DENNIS was, with Tom Rickman, founding director of the Community of Writers Screenwriting Program. He wrote the movies Forever with Tatia Pilieva, Walk the Line with James Mangold and Return to Oz with Walter Murch. A screenplay written with the director Aza Jacobs based on a short story by Raymond Chandler is in pre-production, and he is currently writing an adaptation of Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza for 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.

ALEX ESPINOZA was born in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in suburban Los Angeles. He is the author of two novels: Still Water Saints (Random House, 2007), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection; and The Five Acts of Diego León (Random House, 2013). His nonfiction and stories have appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and several anthologies. He was the 2009 Margaret Bridgeman Fellow in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and currently teaches English and creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

JANET FITCH is the author of the Los Angeles novels Paint It Black and White Oleander. Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies and journals as Black Clock, Room of One's Own, and Los Angeles Noir. She teaches creative writing in the Master of Professional Writing program at USC. A contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, she also maintains a blog. www.janetfitchwrites.wordpress.com.

KAREN JOY FOWLER is the author of six novels and three short story collections, including Sarah Canary and The Jane Austen Book Club. Her most recent collection is What I Didn’t See, from Small Beer Press, and Putnam will publish a new novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, in 2013. www.karenjoyfowler.com

LYNN FREED is the author of six novels, a collection of stories and a collection of essays. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Southwest Review, The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, and Narrative Magazine, among other publications, and is widely translated and anthologized. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/O. Henry Award, fellowships, grants and support from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Born in South Africa, she now lives in Northern California. www.lynnfreed.com

DAGOBERTO GILB is the author of Before the End, After the Beginning (Grove Press). His previous books include The Flowers, Woodcuts of Women, Gritos, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, and The Magic of Blood. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a range of magazines, most recently The New Yorker, Harper's, and Callaloo, and is reprinted widely. Among his honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, a Whiting Award, and a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award. www.dagobertogilb.com

SANDS HALL is the author of the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Random House Reader's Circle selection, and of a book of essays and exercises, Tools of the Writers Craft (Moving Finger Press). A playwright, director and actor, she is also the author of the play Fair Use, and of a widely produced adaptation of Alcott's Little Women. Stories and essays have appeared in such places as Green Mountains Review and Iowa Review. www.sandshall.com

DANA JOHNSON is the author of Elsewhere, California and 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. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California.
www.danajohnsonauthor.com

LOUIS B. JONES is the author of the novels Ordinary Money, Particles and Luck, California's Over, and Radiance. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Open City, The Sun, Santa Monica Review, and the 2007 Pushcart Prize anthology. Counterpoint Press will publish his new novel, Innocence, in March 2013. www.louisbjones.com

TERESA JORDAN is the author of five books about the American West, including the memoir Riding the White Horse Home, and has edited two anthologies of women’s writing, including The Stories That Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write About the West, co-edited with James Hepworth. With her husband, Hal Cannon, she created the series “The Open Road” for public radio’s The Savvy Traveler. Her newest book, The Year of Living Virtuously, Weekends Off, based on her blog of the same title and inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues and the seven deadly sins, is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press.

CHRISTIAN KIEFER is the author of The Infinite Tides, published by Bloomsbury in the U.S. and in the U.K. in 2012. He earned his Ph.D. from UC Davis, and is on the English faculty of American River College in Sacramento. He is an active poet, songwriter, and recording artist. www.christiankiefer.com

M.G. LORD is the author of The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted By Her Beauty to Notice. Her other books include Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll and Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science, a family memoir of cold-war aerospace culture. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Discover, and Travel & Leisure. She teaches in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. www.mglord.com

GREGORY SPATZ is the author of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler's Dream and No One But Us, and of the short story collections Half as Happy, and Wonderful Tricks. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, and New England Review. The recipient of a 2012 NEA Fellowship in Literature and a Washington State Book Award, he teaches in the Creative Writing program at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Spatz plays the fiddle in the twice Juno-nominated bluegrass band John Reischman and the Jaybirds; he plays fiddle and bouzouki with the world-time stringband Mighty Squirrel.www.gregoryspatz.com

MARTIN J. SMITH is a journalist, novelist, and magazine editor who has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards. A former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, he currently is editor-in-chief of Orange Coast magazine in Orange County, Calif. He has written three crime novels, Time Release, Shadow Image, and Straw Men, and co-authored the pop-culture history books Poplorica and Oops. In 2012 Bloomsbury published his latest book, The Wild Duck Chase, about the Federal Duck Stamp Contest and the strange and wonderful world of competitive duck painting. www.martinjsmith.com

GAIL TSUKIYAMA is the author of seven novels, including Women of the Silk and The Samurai's Garden. She has been the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence, and the Asia Pacific Leadership Award from the Center of the Pacific Rim and the Ricci Institute. She has taught at San Francisco State University, University of California, Berkeley, and Mills College. St. Martin’s Press published her new novel, A Hundred Flowers, in 2012. www.literati.net/authors/gail-tsukiyama

AMANDA EYRE WARD has published four novels, Sleep Toward Heaven, How to Be Lost, Forgive Me, and Close Your Eyes; and a collection of short stories, Love Stories in This Town. Her work has been optioned for film and television, chosen as a Target Bookmarked pick, and published in 15 countries. Amanda’s new novel, Close Your Eyes, was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2011 and Elle Magazine's Fiction Book of the Year. www.amandaward.com

JOSH WEIL is the author of The New Valley, a New York Times Editors Choice that won the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 5-Under-35 Award from the National Book Foundation. Weil’s other writing has appeared in Granta, One Story, and The New York Times. A recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, he has been Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University and Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Grove/Atlantic will publish his second novel, The Great Glass Sea, in late 2013. www.joshweil.com

MIRIAM ALTSHULER established her own agency in 1994 after twelve years as an agent at Russell & Volkening. She focuses on literary and commercial fiction and nonfiction. Fiction writers she represents include Robb Forman Dew, National Book Award winner, Alice Lichtenstein, Joanna Catherine Scott, Donna Freitas and Kevin McIlvoy. Her nonfiction authors include Andrew Carroll, Harriet Brown, Adina Hoffman, winner of the 2010 Wingate Literary Prize, Wednesday Martin, Janna Malamud Smith, and New York Times columnist Alina Tugend. Miriam also represents writers of middle-grade and young-adult fiction, including National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Walter Dean Myers. www.miriamaltshulerliteraryagency.com

REAGAN ARTHUR is Vice President and Editorial Director of Reagan Arthur Books, an imprint of Little, Brown. She began her publishing career at St. Martin’s Press, and also worked for Picador USA. Writers she has worked with since arriving at Little, Brown include Kate Atkinson, Kate Braestrup, Tony Earley, Joshua Ferris, Tina Fey, Elin Hilderbrand, Elizabeth Kostova, Denise Mina, George Pelecanos, Josh Bazell, Kathleen Kent, Simon Rich, and Joanna Scott. www.reaganarthurbooks.com

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 as 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. He directs the Nonfiction Program and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.

CAROLYN CARLSON is an executive editor at Viking Penguin. Since starting there as an assistant twenty years ago, she has worked with bestselling and debut novelists, including Jan Karon, Margaret George, Ann Ross, Jennifer Niven, and the writing duo known as Magnus Flyte. Her nonfiction interests include biography, history, memoir, and religion; she has published books by Garry Wills, Paul Johnson, Robert Greene, Beverly Donofrio, Jonathan Spence, Nancy Goldstone, Krista Tippett, and Kathleen Norris. She also worked with general editor James Atlas on the publication of the thirty-volume Penguin Lives series of short biographies.

ANN CLOSE is a Senior Editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Her fiction writers include Sarah Bird, Jay Cantor, Gish Jen, Brad Leithauser, Alice Munro, and Norman Rush. Among her nonfiction writers are Martin Sherwin, David Shields, Alec Wilkinson, and Lawrence Wright. She is the recipient of a Roger Klein Award for Editorial Excellence.

HENRY DUNOW We are sorry, but Henry Dunow can no longer join us this summer. We hope he will join us again in the future. www.dclagency.com

Mollie Glick is a literary agent at Foundry Literary + Media. She was an editor at the Crown imprint of Random House, before becoming an agent in 2003. She represents literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and a bit of practical nonfiction. Some of her recent projects include New York Times bestseller Jonathan Evison¹s West of Here (Algonquin); Daniel O'Malley's The Rook (Little, Brown); Elizabeth Black's The Drowning House (Nan A. Talese); Dr. Tracy Allowa's The New IQ (The Free Press); and Gennifer Albin's Crewell (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). In addition to her work as a literary agent, Mollie also teaches classes Media Bistro, and her instructional articles on nonfiction proposal writing and query letter writing have been featured in Writers Digest.

JOY JOHANNESSEN has been an editor at Chelsea House, Grove Press, and Oxford University Press, a senior editor at HarperCollins Publishers, and the executive editor of Delphinium Books. She has worked with hundreds of writers, among them Dorothy Allison, Amy Bloom, Harold Bloom, Michael Cunningham, Ursula Le Guin, and Arthur Miller. She is the co-editor, with Roxanne Coady, of The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them. She currently freelances.

MICHELLE MEYERING is the Director of Programs and Events at PEN Center USA and the founding editor of The Rattling Wall, a literary journal. Recently named a 2013 "Face To Watch" by the Los Angeles Times, Michelle received her MFA from American University in 2008. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals. Currently, she teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program in Los Angeles.

PETER STEINBERG has been a literary agent for sixteen years and the proud owner of his own agency for the last four. His clients have written many New York Times bestsellers and have been nominated for/awarded Edgars, The Pulitzer Prize, The Story Prize, The Paris Review Discovery Prize, and National Book Awards.
www.steinbergagency.com

ANDREW TONKOVICH edits the West Coast literary magazine Santa Monica Review and hosts a books show, Bibliocracy Radio, on Pacifica station KPFK in Southern California. He reviews and writes about favorite books for the Orange County Weekly at OC Bookly. Recent fiction and nonfiction appear in Los Angeles Review of Books, Ecotone, The Rattling Wall, Green Mountains Review and Faultline. He teaches Composition at UC Irvine, where he is president of UC-AFT Local 2226. bibliocracyradio.blogspot.com

Christopher Beaver's films include Dark Circle, winner of a National Emmy Award and a Certificate of Special Merit from the Academy Awards documentary committee; Treasures of the Greenbelt and Secrets of the Bay about San Francisco Bay and the surrounding open countryside; and Between Dreams and History, a portrait of the artist Shimon Attie. Tales of the San Joaquin was nominated for the Pare Lorentz Award of the International Documentary Association, and it earned an honorable mention at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival. In addition Christopher has produced and curated an international multi-media photographic exhibit with accompanying book and film: Nagasaki Journey, the Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, August 10, 1945. The exhibition opened simultaneously in New York, San Francisco, and Nagasaki to mark the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings. The Nagasaki Journey film from the exhibit was broadcast in the United States on PBS, in England by the BBC, and in Japan by NHK. Christopher recently added the role of video journalist to his resumé with three pieces of internet journalism for The Center for Investigative Reporting concerning nitrate-contaminated drinking water in rural California. Christopher has also been the recipient a Guggenheim Fellowship. For more information, visit his website: http://cbfilms.net/

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, Grant, and the 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. His new novel, The Paris Deadline, was published by Turner Books in October 2012.
www.maxbyrdbooks.com

TERENCE CLARKE has published three novels: My Father in the Night, The King of Rumah Nadai and A Kiss for Señor Guevara, and two story collections: The Day Nothing Happened and Little Bridget and The Flames of Hell. Terry is Director of Publishing at Red Room Press. www.redroom.com His new novel The Notorious Dream of Jesús Lázaro will be published later this year. He lives in San Francisco.

RICHARD FORD is a novelist, story writer and essayist. He has published seven novels, three books of short fiction and many essays, in such periodicals as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian of London, The Financial Times, and numerous other newspapers in Europe. His novel Independence Day won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and his stories have won PEN-Malamud Award, and been widely anthologized. His most recent novel, Canada, was a New York Times bestseller. He is Mellon Professor Humanities at Columbia University.
www.richardfordbooks.com

EDWARD HUMES is a journalist and the author of twelve narrative nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper coverage of the military and a PEN Center USA Award for his book, No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year In the Life of Juvenile Court. His other titles include Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul, Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers & Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet, and Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash. His true-crime bestseller, Mississippi Mud, is being developed for film by Defina Film Productions. www.edwardhumes.com

MICHELLE LATIOLAIS is the author of the novels Even Now, which received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California and A Proper Knowledge, published in 2008 by Bellevue Literary Press. Her work has appeared in three anthologies, Absolute Disasters, 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. She is a Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine.

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. Her latest novel, The Valley of Amazement, will be released in 2013. www.amytan.net

WAIMEA WILLIAMS is the author of the Hawaii memoir, Aloha Kauai: A Childhood. Her first novel, Aloha, Mozart, was published in 2012 by Luminis Books. She received short story awards in 2011 from Salamander, Glimmer Train, Lorian Hemingway, and in 2012 won First Prize and publication in The Chariton Review for "Vienna Quartet, With Dog."
www.luminisbooks.com/books/aloha-mozart

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, Ramona Ausubel, David Bajo, Aimee Bender, David Corbett, Charmaine Craig, Frances Dinkelspiel, Heather Donahue, Cai Emmons, Alex Espinoza, Joshua Ferris, Jamie Ford, Vicki Forman, Tanya Egan Gibson, Glen David Gold, Judith Hendricks, Susan Henderson, Sara J. Henry, Rhoda Huffey, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Alma Katsu, Krys Lee, Regina Louise, Michael David Lukas, Marisa Matarazzo, Christina Meldrum, Janis Cooke Newman, Jessica O'Dwyer, Victoria Patterson, Ismet Prcic, Frederick Reiken, Robin Romm, Elizabeth Rosner, Adrienne Sharp, Alice Sebold, Julia Flynn Siler, Jordan Fisher Smith, Scott Sparling, Ellen Sussman, Lisa Tucker, Brenda Rickman Vantrease, Mary Volmer, Dora Calott Wang, M.D., Andrew Winer, and Alia Yunis among others.

2013 ALUMNI READERS

Eddy Ancinas is a non-fiction writer, living between Squaw Valley and Tahoe City, CA-- with roots deep in the San Francisco Bay Area, and on the California ranch where she grew up. She specializes in ski history and travel, with articles on travel in Argentina, Chile and Peru; in the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, LA Times, Atlantic Monthly, and Jetsetter (online). She wrote the wine and Patagonia chapters for 6 editions of Fodor’s Argentina Guide, and won first place in the 2010 Nevada Magazine Writers’ Contest for her story, “Back in the Saddle” on a roundup in Elko, Nevada. Skiing Heritage Magazine has published her biographies on Wayne Poulsen and Charlie Proctor. Her first book, Tales form Two Valleys ~ Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows was published in March by the History Press. She is a long-time Board Member of the Community of Writers and attended as a participant in 1972.

ALISON SINGH GEE is an international journalist whose work has been translated into eight languages and has appeared in People, Vanity Fair, In Style, Marie Claire, International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. For eight years, she was a staff features writer/correspondent for People magazine. She won the 1997 Amnesty International Award for Feature Writing for her Asiaweek cover story about child prostitution in Southeast Asia. Her memoir Where the Peacocks Sing: A Prince, a Palace, and the Search for Home will be published in 2013 by St. Martin's Press. She attended the Community of Writers in 2001 and 2007.

ALAN GROSTEPHAN is the author of the novel Bogotà, published by TriQuarterly Books. His work has appeared in various journals, including Faultline, Orange Coast Review and Wisconsin People and Ideas. A graduate of the MFA program at UC Irvine, he translated and edited Stories of Life and Death, an anthology of poetry and fiction by emerging Colombian writers. He attended the Community of Writers in 2009.

MARK MAYNARD’s first collection of short stories, Grind, was published by Torrey House Press in 2012. His short fiction has been selected as runner-up in the Our Stories Gordon Fiction Contest and as honorable mention in the Torrey House Press Winter 2011 Fiction Contest. His work has also appeared in Shelf Life Magazine, The Duck and Herring Pocket Field Guide, the Tall Grass Wild Things Anthology and the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market 2010. Mark is the Fiction Editor for The Meadow literary journal. He attended the Community of Writers in 2008. He can sometimes be found performing stand-up comedy at the Third Street Bar in downtown Reno. www.markmaynard.info

AMY FRANKLIN-WILLIS's, received an Emerging Writer Grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation in 2007 to complete The Lost Saints of Tennessee. Atlantic Monthly Press, a division of Grove/Atlantic, published The Lost Saints of Tennessee in 2012. It was an Indie Next Selection and a Vanity Fair Hot Type Pick. She attended the Community of Writers in 2005, 2006 and 2009. www.amyfranklin-willis.com.