Desiree Kannel is a writer and teacher from Southern California. She is an Amherst Writers & Artists Affiliate and leads creative writing workshops through her organization, Rose Writers (www.rosewriters.com). Desiree also teaches creative writing to 5th graders through the Angels Gate Cultural Center's Artist in the Classroom project. Her novel, Lucky John, was published this year by Black Rose Writing, and her short stories have appeared in Running Wild Press, 4th & Sycamore and other publications. Desiree has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is a founding board member of the Long Beach Literary Arts Center.

Melanie Bishop is Faculty Emeritus at Prescott College in Arizona, where for 22 years, she taught creative writing, and was Founding Editor, and Fiction/Nonfiction Editor of Alligator Juniper, a national literary magazine, three-time winner of the AWP Directors’ Prize. Her young adult novel, My So-Called Ruined Life (2014) was a top-five finalist for both the John Gardner Award in Fiction and CLMP’s Firecracker Awards. Bishop has published fiction and nonfiction in The New York Times, Glimmer Train, Georgetown Review, Greensboro Review, Florida Review, Vela, Essay Daily, Carmel Magazine, Huffington Post, New York Journal of Books, and Family Circle. A short story, “Friday Night in America,” is being adapted for the stage as a monologue, premiering in 2019 in Orlando, by Beth Marshall Presents.

Michael Rochford is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. His previous work includes the film adaptation of PAULETTE for Legende Entertainment, and as Staff Writer for USA Network's RUSH. He earned an MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California. He is currently adapting THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS for television.

Tammy Harris is an artist at heart, only lacking a few credits towards an art major besides her masters in special education. She is a prolific writer, artist, and photographer. Her passion for using her expertise to help others led her to create a thriving blog called TammysTeachings.com. Tammy is authoring a book that will serve as a resource for parents and teachers throughout their journey of raising successful children. In addition, she offers online courses teaching parents to love the child they have rather than the one they imagined.

Debra Cross is a writer and educator, as well as an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine. She is currently working on a novel, and her short fiction has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine. She lives, writes, and teaches in Southern California.

RESIDENTS: 2020

Nancy Nichols-Pethick was born in Alaska and grew up in rural Maine. She earned a BFA in Drawing from the University of Southern Maine, and an MFA in Painting from Indiana State University, where she has taught painting since 2003. Her work has been shown nationally, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including two Indiana Arts Commission grants and the prestigious Caleb Mills award for outstanding teaching. She currently lives in Terre Haute, Indiana, with her husband and their two children, as well as two cats, two dogs, and a guinea pig named Petunia.

Angela Morales writes essays and creative nonfiction and is the author of THE GIRLS IN MY TOWN, winner of the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Diamondstein Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. Currently, she teaches at Antioch University and Glendale College and is working on a memoir about early childhood.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is founder and host of "Writers on Writing," which airs every Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. PT on KUCI-FM. She's author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within (Harcourt) and has stories in Orange County Noir and USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. She's also written essays and articles for the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Writers' Digest, The Authors Guild Bulletin, Orange Coast magazine and more. She teaches an online class for Gotham Writers Workshop, and two private workshops in Southern California where she lives with her husband and son, both musicians, and 13 typewriters, and counting.  

April - June Residents

Sheryl A. Stradling is an award-winning author and artist. She is passionate about igniting personal growth through changing generational family patterns. She was inspired to write her family saga by her desire to heal lingering family issues. In the process, she uncovered the spiritual gifts of five generations of women who transformed their challenges into opportunities. She is the author of Faith, Power, Joy: Spiritual Guidance from 5 Generations of Remarkable Women, and a contributor to Journey of an Empath, a compilation of transformational stories from empaths worldwide. She is also a mixed-media, non-representational artist. Her work is process-oriented and primarily intuitive. She shows her work in the Phoenix AZ metro area

Pamella Bowen is a native Californian who earned her B.A. and teaching credential in English from Cal Poly University, Pomona, then went on to teach for thirty-three years in various inland area high schools.  After retirement, she gladly put down her red pen and took up her laptop to write a novel, several pieces of non-fiction, poems and many song lyrics. Her latest venture is self-publishing inspiring books for adults and children. As of 2020, she had written and published ten titles, available on Amazon. She lives in Temecula with her husband Don.

Jared Leake is a high school art teacher and practicing artist in California. He earned his BA at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts and his MED-Teacher of Visual Arts degree from Lesley University where his concentration was high school visual arts. Currently Jared is a visual arts teacher at Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz, California. Jared’s work is a blend of his love of abstract painting, photography, graphic design and found materials. He uses his photographs from his travels as a source of inspiration when working with a variety of mixed media techniques. Here he uses a photo-transfer technique to embed the image onto the surface of the object. Jared has been an Artist in Residence at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Skopelos, Greece as well at The Art Retreat Tamarindo in Costa Rica. He has shown work across the United States and abroad. 

Nancy Maass Mosen, AKA Irene Dogmatic (her art name) has been active as an artist, primarily a painter, since 1972. She has lived and worked in SF, NY and Berkeley, where she currently lives. She has been at two Artists' Colonies, Cummington Community of the Arts in 1988 and VSC in 2018. Painting has always been her first focus, but travel writing , punk rock, rock vocals and correspondence art have enriched her experience as an artist. In the early 1980's she painted murals in a room at a hotel in Manhattan. Her website lists her shows and activities through her career, emphasizing the paintings, since that is her main focus. The site is divided into categories. Paintings are her canvases, pet portraits are commissions she does, the florals are self-explanatory, and the word play pieces are quirky visuals.

Years ago, while a senior in college, Ann Voorhees Baker submitted three short stories to The New Yorker and one to Ladies’ Home Journal. The New Yorker returned three hand-written notes encouraging her to send more. Ladies’ Home Journal sent a full-page critique and asked her to send another story. Being 20, Ann decided she was a failure as a writer, stopped submitting her work, and went to law school instead. The follies of youth. Now, forty years later, Ann is writing again. Her short story, “Changing Lanes” has been published in the Noyo River Review. A second short story, “Midnight in the Garden of Sid and Eva,” will be published this September in the Chicago Quarterly Review. She has two websites: annvbaker.com, featuring her writing, editing, and web design work; and womenatwoodstock.annvbaker.com, which hosts an online community for women over 50 and two retreats every October in Woodstock, NY

Debra Thomas-Zasadzinski Updated BIO Debra Thomas-Zasadzinski completed a DMAC artist residency in October, 2018. It was a life-changing experience for her. Subsequently, she returned to her drawing origins and portraiture. She completed commissioned personal art journals, pencil portraits, and spent six months, twice a week, teaching and collaborating with an artist living with cerebral palsy. The COVID19 pandemic has created an artistic crisis for Debra. During her family’s “safer-at-home” lockdown, she stumbled upon raising and releasing monarch butterflies. Everyday brought her something new and hopeful, and she is currently developing a series of paintings that reflect this experience

July - September

Ellie Holinshead

John Wuchte has been an actor/writer/director/theater creator for more 35 years. He started his acting career in NYC in the 80s and wrote and directed his first play Vivian Vance is Alive and Well in '91. He was Artisitc Director of RAKKA-THAMM!!! theater for 10 years, notable for adapting/staging Greek tragedies outside in Washington Square park. Moving to Los Angeles in 2000 he has been part of Sacred Fools Theater for 20 years. Last year he created Scarlett Fever, a physical theater movement piece that was the hit of the Hollywood Fringe festival. His latest work Housewife 1952 was derailed due to pandemic.

Penelope Moffet is a poet based in Los Angeles. She is the author of two books, It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018) and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, 1995). She was a resident at the original Dorland many times between 1983 and the fire in 2004, and she was artist-in-residence for 9 months in 1992-93. Her poems have been published in Natural Bridge, Permafrost, Levure Litteraire, Pearl, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, The Missouri Review and other literary journals, as well as in several anthologies including What Wildness is This: Women Write about the Southwest (University of Texas Press, 2007), Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press, 2016) and California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Street Press, 2020).

Pam Cardwell grew up in Bluefield West Virginia. She received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a 2019 recipient of a Pollock Krasner grant and has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation in 1998 a MFA grant and in 2004 a Career Opportunity grant. Currently her paintings are being exhibited at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong through the Art in Embassies program. She has attended artist residencies at Yaddo, Albers Foundation, Edward Albee Foundation, Millay Colony and Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic. She has taught and traveled extensively through Turkey and received a Fulbright grant to work in the Republic of Georgia in 2007. The experience of travelling in Turkey and the former Soviet Union continues to inform her work. She has exhibited in the Art on Paper 2017 exhibit at the Weatherspoon Museum and was represented by John Davis Gallery in Hudson, New York until his closure in late 2019.

Jana Richman is the author of a memoir, Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman’s Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail; two novels, The Ordinary Truth and The Last Cowgirl, which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her most recent book is a collection of personal essays, Finding Stillness in a Noisy World. Jana’s fiction and nonfiction traverse landscapes—personal and historical, internal and external—populated with fierce female characters pitted against time, betrayals, and the heft of family. In her new collection of essays, Jana intimately shares with readers the ways place, space, and the rigors of working toward peace can transform a life. Running through all of Jana’s work are the elements that threaten to destroy the essence of our lives: overpopulation, consumption, rapidly dwindling water aquifers, stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, and greed. And the elements that might save us: passion, beauty, kindness, and love.

Kathy Mac walks in the woods a lot, and tries to write every day, and is starting to be a bit envious of retired friends, but loves her job at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada, and helps run the Odd Sundays Reading Series there, and has brown eyes, and used to have brown hair, and likes to cook, and not-so-secretly loves genre fiction (but not zombies), and does yoga, and loves her dog, and is learning French, and doesn’t melt in the rain, and has published three books of poems and one book of essays, and likes to swim, and wonders about a lot of things, and doesn’t teach Victorian Literature or Women Writers any more mostly because she spends all her teaching time teaching Creative Writing and Intro Lit and has three brothers, three friends-like-sisters, two friends-like-daughters, a sweetheart, and an ex, and and would be a shoo-in for the absent-minded professor of the year award if there was such an award which there isn’t because no one can ever remember to get their applications in, and loves dogs. And cats too.

Steven Lizardi is a writer, teacher and business owner. He studied English at Stanford University before getting an MBA at the University of Michigan. In addition to running his own small business, Steven has a passion for theology and its practical applications in life. He has been studying and teaching the Gospel of Mark to adults and youth for over 25 years and is currently in the process of getting a Master’s in Theology at Fuller University. As the youngest of 10 kids, Steven has a million stories to tell about his adventures growing up in a big, Latino family in LA and has always loved telling them in the form of personal essays. Recently, he has begun working on a longer memoir that combines reflections on his life with the theological concepts in the Gospel of Mark.

A native of the Washington, D.C. area, D. Gause currently resides in Las Vegas. Performer, composer, educator, writer, consultant, advocate, grant writer, coach are some words to describe her 
daily work. In her spare time, she reads, cooks, bakes, and volunteers.

“I am a sphere, not a slice.” ~D.G.

Lisa Eve Cheby’s poems and reviews may be found in journals such as The Rumpus, Entropy, The Citron Review, Tidal Basin Review, Ruminate, A cappella Zoo, and TAB: Journal of Poetry and Poetics, which nominated her poem for a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and in the anthologies Drawn to Marvel, The Burden of Light, and Coiled Serpent. Her chapbook, Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Dancing Girl Press) was featured in The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed. Lisa holds an MFA from Antioch and an MLIS from SJSU.

Gretchen Shannon is a California based painter.  A master watercolorist, her early passion was influenced by illuminated Persian manuscripts and the Brandywine School.  Born and raised in Pennsylvania, her works from this period were adapted to textiles, prints and other licensed art products.  Her work is featured in "100 Artists of the Brandywine Valley" a Schiffer Art book. In 1998, she began a collaboration with African American Storyteller, author and NEA fellow, Linda Goss.  This began Gretchen's love affair with world cultures and broadened the themes and materials in her work.  In 2018, Gretchen published "The Mad Women" book. A series of figurative oil paintings expressing the value, strength and transformative power of women.

Siel Ju lives and writes in Los Angeles. Her novel-in-stories, Cake Time, won the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award. Siel is also the author of two poetry chapbooks. Her stories and poems appear in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Confrontation, and other places. The recipient of residencies from The Anderson Center at Tower View and Vermont Studio Center, Siel holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.

Kate Martin Rowe’s poems and nonfiction have appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, fugue, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, The Angel City Review, Hotel Amerika, Zyzzyva, VOLT, The Denver Quarterly, and The Beloit Poetry Journal, among others. She teaches writing at Glendale Community College and lives in Northeast Los Angeles. She is currently at work on a book of nonfiction essays about infertility, race, and adoption.

Micheal Lopez is a Bay Area native having grown-up in Pittsburg and eventually moving to Oakland, CA, where he currently resides. Micheal’s parents are both from Mexico and growing up had the benefit of strong cultural influences such as food, music, and art. Micheal pursued artistic endeavors at a very young age having the encouragement of his family and friends. “I would often draw and paint as a kid as I was inspired by my sister, who was a very talented artist. My dream was to go to art school to sharpen my craft in painting”. Micheal attended the Academy of Art in SF and during his time there he became a father to his son, Nathan. Micheal put his art pursuits on pause to seek a career in design. Micheal currently works as a Design Director for a technology company based in Seattle.

Karen Jo Combs is a visual artist who makes screen prints, paintings, drawings and big wall murals, as well as NAMA ROCOCO wallpaper. Everything is on paper. The imagery arises primarily from a particular vision of the natural world . Images of plants and animals and geometric shapes. All of the works are brilliantly colored, with pastels and neons. She studied printmaking at Indiana University, and has a graduate level art teaching certificate from Massachusetts College of Art. Her handmade wallpaper, NAMA ROCOCO, a production project begun in 2006, has been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe, The London Times, Maison Française, Elle Decoration Hong Kong, Vogue Living Australia, Metropolis, and NYLON magazines, among others.

Patsy Creedy is a native Californian who lives and works in San Francisco. She received an MA and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State. She recently completed a memoir, The Blue Valiant. She has published poetry in Transfer 110 and 112 and was awarded their Mark Linenthal prize for poetry. She has also published poetry in Dragon’s Leap and Inlandia. She published a nonfiction piece, The Stud in a San Francisco Anthology and was awarded an honorable mention for a flash fiction piece, Burger, in Glimmertrain magazine. She was accepted to the Dairy Hollow Writer’s Residency 2019. She has been a member of the San Francisco Zen Center since 2000 and she co-leads a writer’s retreat several times a year, Writing the Way, with her teacher Laura Burges.

January - March Residents

Marj Charlier is the author of the forthcoming historical fiction, The Rebel Nun, to be released by Blackstone Publishing, March 2, 2021. She is the author of ten self-published novel. Her hybrid publishing company, Sunacumen Press (www.sunacumenpress.com), has produced 22 books for other authors. She teaches workshops at public libraries on fiction and memoir writing, and publishing, and has served on the boards of the Diamond Valley and Palm Springs Writers Guilds and the Palm Springs chapter of Pen Women. She reviews books monthly for midwestbookreview.com, and writes an occasional column on writing for The Press Enterprise.

 Caitlyn Lawler is a fine artist living in the greater Los Angeles region. Originally from Northern Michigan, she moved to Claremont, California in 2018 to attain her MFA in Painting from Claremont Graduate University. She has participated in group exhibitions throughout Michigan, Italy, Greece, and California. This year, she has been the subject of a two-person show in Santa Ana, as well as a solo exhibition at Claremont Graduate University. The human condition is reflected in her body of work as she investigates varying states of excess and impermanence. She constructs a visual language in her paintings through impasto gesture and mark-making that carries over to three-dimensional forms and installations. She uses materials such as plaster, concrete, burlap, and hay alongside traditional oils. There is reclaim in pleasure and in filth- the human experience is messy, painful, and joyous. One must get their hands dirty.

Phillip E. Dixon is a writer, musician, and college English instructor living in Las Vegas. He holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, and a BA in English Literature from Pacific Lutheran University. He's the co-author of the Riff Notes series published by Hal Leonard, and his fiction and non-fiction have been published in Past-Ten magazine, The Molotov Cocktail Lit-zine, and The Horror Tree . He plays guitar and mandolin, speaks poor German, and is definitely stuck in traffic right now.

Douglas DeChow is the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story and The Craft of Librarian Instruction and the co-editor of Intertwingled: The Life and Influence of Ted Nelson. His writing has appeared at The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Post Game, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Curator, and others. He is the Digital Humanities and Science Librarian at Chapman University, the Curator of the Boisjoly Challenger Disaster Collection, and actively involved in the Center for American War Letters. 

Dr. Deborah Mindry is an anthropologist born in Cape Town, South Africa who has resided in Altadena, California since January 1990. Her manuscript, “I am HIV: Ordinary people daring to live and make change in South Africa” examines the complex realities of people living with HIV, their efforts not just to survive but to thrive, and make change in their communities. She is a founding member of the UC Women’s Health Gender and Empowerment Center, who conducts research on gender, HIV, and reproductive health in Malawi, Uganda, South Africa, and Rwanda. Her work is published in numerous academic journals

AnnaLeahy is the author of the nonfiction book Tumor and the poetry collections Aperture and Constituents of Matter and the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story, Conversing with Cancer, and What We Talk about When We Talk about Creative Writing. Her essays have appeared at The Atlantic, Pop Sugar, The Southern Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere and won the top awards from Ninth Letter and Dogwood in 2016. She directs the MFA program at Chapman University, where she edits the international journal TAB and curates the Tabula Poetica reading series. Read Anna's latest book review in Entropy here.

Michael Jon Fink is a composer/performer who resides in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles. For over thirty years he has served on the faculty of the Herb Albert School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts where he teaches Composition, Orchestration, and Analysis. He has composed concertos for soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, violin, and cello as well as incidental music for two plays by W.B. Yeats and four by Wajdi Mouawad. M.J.F. is a member of experimental and new music groups that have included the Negative Band, Musica Veneris Nocturnus, Stillife, and Ghost Duo; and currently plays electric guitar with the Feedback Wave Riders (Free Improv), Trio Through the Looking-Glass (Jazz-inflected), and Spectral Dawn Spirits (Hierophanic, somewhat metallic, post-psychedelic ambient instrumental music). His music appears on the Cold Blue, Contagion, C.R.I., Trance Port, Raptoria Caam and Wire Tapper labels.

Mailing address: P.O. Box 6, Temecula, CA 92593  ~  Physical Address: 36701 Highway 79 South, Temecula, CA 92592
(951) 302-3837 ~ www.dorlandartscolony.org ~ info@dorlandartscolony.org
A California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization

Daniel Ruffing is a Senior Arts Management & Entrepreneurship major at Baldwin Wallace University, and his music had millions of views. His songs "I Want To Be Tall" and "Aries and Virgo'' were featured on popular YouTuber Jenna Marbles' channel. More recently, his song "Rise and Shine" received 50,000 views on YouTube and 40,000 views on Twitter over the course of 24 hours, additionally earning him feature articles on sites like celebrityinsider, betches, and classicfm. Daniel’s work has been produced on stage twice in concert form at the esteemed Feinstein’s 54/Below in New York City. Daniel was an Honorable Mention in the 34th Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, as well as a Semi-Finalist in the 2016 International Songwriting Competition. He has multiple musicals in development and dreams of having a show on Broadway one day.

Karen Toloui teaches writing and literature at Diablo Valley College and lives in Ashland, Oregon. She possesses an M.A. in Creative Writing (poetry) from San Francisco State University. She’s currently on leave from in Pacific University’s MFA in Fiction and working feverishly on her next novel. Her memoir, A Late Stop in Queersville, is about her late-in-life experience of finding the love of her life, then falling, way, way down into a tragic heap, and her ultimate rising and landing in a better place. It’s about loving and loss and gratitude and joy. Two Young Adult novels, All That Glitters, and The River in You, are dreaming of being published in the near future. Current writing projects include short stories and a novel. Not that long ago, she played drums in the all-mom rock band, “Placenta.

Audrey Babcock has gained her notoriety as a sought-after Carmen having over 115 performances of this femme fatale under her belt. She has performed with Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera, New York City Opera, San Diego Opera, the ASO, the NSO, and more. She has spent her career promoting new works with companies such as Prototype Festival, American Lyric Theatre, and Beth Morrison Projects. On tour now is Ms. Babcocks flamenco duo Beyond Carmen, which explores her Sephardic roots, celebrates Ladino language, and plays with textures of the marginalized people of the diaspora. This project cries out for the misunderstood experience of being fiercely female in a time that saw a woman’s strength as something dangerous, dark, and destined for annihilation.

Lisa Beerntsen lives and paints in Graton, (Sonoma County) California, where she & husband, fellow artist Tony Speirs, moved in 2002.
Lisa received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1991, and her BFA from California College of Arts & Crafts (now CCA) in 1983.
Lisa has been an adjunct art instructor at the Santa Rosa Junior College for over 15 years, where she teaches classes in color, painting, watercolor, & drawing.

Nathan Rivera is a native of the Temecula Valley. Writing words and music on the accordion, guitar, voice, piano, what else? Traveling to share the gift of music with those willing to accept it. Spreading positivity and joy one note at a time. 

Bruce Trinkley taught composition and orchestration and conducted the Penn State Glee Club from 1970 to 2006, and was music director for Penn State's Centre Stage from 1970 until 1995. He received degrees in composition from Columbia University where he studied with Otto Luening, Jack Beeson and Charles Wuorinen. Professor Trinkley's music has been performed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and China

Recent works include The Last Voyage of Captain Meriwether Lewis, a cantata for men's voices; One Life: The Rachel Carson Project, a multi-media work for women’s chorus, soloists, and instrumental ensemble; and York: the Voice of Freedom, a music drama about the life of the only African American on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. His operas for young people include The Prairie Dog That Met the President and Chicken Little.

Violinist Jeff Thayer is currently the concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony as well as concertmaster and faculty member of the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara). Previous positions include assistant concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, associate concertmaster of the North Carolina Symphony, and concertmaster of the Canton (OH) Symphony Orchestra. He is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. His teachers include William Preucil, Donald Weilerstein, Zvi Zeitlin, and Dorothy DeLay.  Awards include the Stephen Hahn/Lillybelle Foundation Award in Violin from the Music Academy of the West, the Starling Foundation Award, the George Eastman Scholarship, and the Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music.

Ashley Kunsa ’s poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction appear in more than three dozen publications including The Writer magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, and Quarter After Eight. Her writing has won awards from the A Room of Her Own Foundation and Eastern Iowa Review, and she has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Currently, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT, and editor in chief of genre2, an online literary journal devoted to publishing writers’ best work outside their primary genre.

Tressa Berman Ph.D. is a visual ethnographer and writer. She taught for 30 years and conducted fieldwork in Indigenous communities around the world. Transitioning from academia into creative writing and non-traditional teaching, she folds her life's experience as an anthropologist into new modes of translation and revelation. She aims to bring about transformation through the synergy between writer and reader. To her credit are two books, more than thirty articles, NEA and Rockefeller awards, and inklings of recognition as a poet and art writer. Her new projects combine literary prose with poetry and essays that reflect her interdisciplinary approach to creativity.

July - September Residents

Leslie Wolcott is a graduate of UC Berkeley and University of London, England. She studied at Art Center and later became an Asian antique dealer. These drawings are from an Italian series made from her travels to Italy where last year some of her oil paintings were featured in an exhibition in Tuscany. She now spends time in Dorland with Robert Willis learning how to capture landscapes in watercolor.

Anita Cabrera, work has appeared in The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Brain, Child Magazine, Colere, Acentos Review, and other journals. My short story That Thing won the 2017 New Guard's Machigonne Fiction Award. My fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Award and most recently, adapted for the stage by Word for Word Theater Group. Ms. Cabrera lives and teaches San Francisco, CA.

Veteran journalist Pamela K. Johnson is Digital Content Editor for the National Writers Union. As a freelancer, her work often focuses on health. As an author, she co-wrote Santa & Pete, a novel based on a legend that Santa had a partner. It was adapted into a CBS-TV movie starring James Earl Jones and Hume Cronyn. Pamela co-edited Tenderheaded: A Comb Bending Collection of Hair Stories. The book became the basis of a stage play. She was a grand prize winner in the International 'Write Beijing' Competition, where she received $10,000 to shoot her short film “Morning Song” on location in Beijing, China. 

Karina Muñiz-Pagán is a writer, literary translator and organizer.

GeetikaLizardi left a successful MBA career to pursue screenwriting. Her first feature, a biopic of Jane Austen, was optioned and later adapted for musical theater in the UK. Her first TV spec landed her a staff-writing job on NBC comedy, Outsourced. She is currently staffed on Disney’s Mira, Royal Detective animated series. Geetika had the honor of winning the Writers Guild of America’s Writer Access Project two years in a row, winning in both Comedy and Drama. She is currently developing several TV pilots and stage play.

Shannon Sullivan earned a B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and an M.F.A. from University of North Texas. Since 2006 Sullivan has been a Professor of Art at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, CA. Sullivan creates objects, wall sculptures and interactive work using a visual language that reinterprets agricultural landscapes, shifting geologic boundaries, and migrating oceanic phenomenon. Sullivan observes human intervention in the natural world by using aerial and microscopic imagery as a point of interpretive departure. Sullivan's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. She has worked as an artist in residence in Jingdezhen, China at the Pottery Workshop, and at the International Ceramics Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark. She’s been invited to present at National conferences in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Portland, OR. Her research has been featured at international conferences in Denmark and Germany.

Caitlin Rae is an artist and art educator living in the Bay Area. Caitlin studied painting at Syracuse University and has continued to paint as well as explore digital art and mixed media since graduating in 2007. For the last 5 years, Caitlin's work has explored the human connection to everything within our universe. In June of 2016, Caitlin spent a month as a resident at Starry Night in Truth or Consequences, NM. She had a solo show at Black Hammer Brewing in San Francisco from October to December in 2016 which featured her paintings and assemblages. Her work was also featured in January 2018 at Peacebank Yoga Studio in Redwood City. Since having a child in April, 2018, Caitlin has continued to work on smaller-scale projects, and while she continues to explore the cosmos she has shifted her focus to the connection between women, the moon, and all creation within the universe.

Désirée Zamorano is an award-winning short story writer and the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Amado Women. A frequent contributor to the LA Review of Books, her essays and short stories can be found at Cultural Weekly, Catapult, Huizache, and Kenyon Review.  Her work frequently addresses cultural representation and misrepresentation. She explores contemporary and historic issues of injustice and inequity. A Pushcart Prize nominee and award-winning short story writer, Desiree is also proud of having co-authored with her sister two plays commissioned by southern California's Bilingual Foundation for the Arts. "Reina" and "Bell Gardens 90201" received Equity productions and toured for a total of eight years.

Karen Briner grew up in South Africa and now lives in Los Angeles. The author of two middle grade novels, Cassandra’s Quest (Human & Rousseau, 2000), and Snowize & Snitch: Highly Effective Defective Detectives (Holiday House, 2016), she has also written for television, including for the award-winning South African animated series Magic Cellar and the medical drama Jozi H, which she co-created.

James Underdown is a 1982 graduate of DePauw University. He has been the Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles since 1999. He has written for Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines, and is founder of the Center for Inquiry Investigations Group, the U.S.’s premiere paranormal investigation team. The CFIIG offers a $250,000 prize for anyone who can prove paranormal ability under scientific testing conditions, and works with groups throughout the world. James has shot two short films, A Day in the Life of Frank Sinatra, and The Test, and wrote and directed the play Party of 13.

At Dorland, Steven Forry is completing his first novel, After Such Knowledge. Although the novel is set in Flagstaff during Prohibition, it has nothing to do with either and everything to do with Eliot’s “Gerontion”. He is a Whiting Scholar, Columbia University Regent Scholar and Columbia GSAS Research Abroad grant recipient. The University of Pennsylvania Press published his doctoral dissertation "Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of Frankenstein in the 19th Century." In addition to a Ph.D. from Columbia University, he holds bachelor’s degrees in English and French from UC Santa Barbara and a language degree from Sorbonne University. He counts as his proudest achievement his lecture on the films of the great Buster Keaton, which he delivered at the Laguna Beach Museum of Art in August 2019.

NatalieSmith Parra writes fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Calyx, Mommy Wars, a Random House anthology edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner, Dove Tales Literary Journal, Gravel Magazine and Dryland Literary Journal. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Mesa Refuge, Norcroft, and others, as well as The Barbara Deming Money for Women Grant and a Puffin Artists' Grant. She served as Writer in Residence for InsideOut Writers, an organization that teaches creative writing to incarcerated youth

Sherri C. Perry​ is the author of Venn, a collection of short stories, Letters to Cadence, Musings of a Modern Grandmother and Slice, a collection of poetry. Her work has been featured in Streetlight Magazine, Tigershark Publishing, GNU Literary Journal, Dragon Poet Review, The Bayou Review, Emerge Magazine and The Storyteller Magazine. Her awards include the Write Partners of North Arkansas Award, Ozark Creative Writers Editor’s Award, Clouse Literary Arts and Theater Award, Saturday Writers Creative Non-Fiction Award, Porter Art Enterprises Award and The Caudle Memorial Award for Excellence in Storytelling. She is the head speech and debate coach at an all-girls college preparatory high school in Houston, Texas.

Angela Cybulski is a writer, editor, and teacher who lives in Southern California. She is currently  the Managing Editor for Wiseblood Books, a small literary press specializing in works of fiction, criticism, and non-fiction that seeks to find its aesthetic bearings in the great literary tradition of the mid-twentieth century. Angela teaches English and creative writing and is also an experienced literacy and special needs consultant/advocate. She is helping to develop the fine arts program at St. Michael’s Preparatory School and will teach drama there next year. Her writing appears on the blogs Persephone Writes, one tiny violet, Dappled Things/Deep Down Things, and Wiseblood Books. During her residency, Angela is revising her first novel The Spectre of a Rose, a retelling of the Persephone myth, and completing work on a personal essay about getting her first tattoo.

Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer is an author/journalist/lecturer whose writing has appeared in major magazines and newspapers both here and abroad including Elle magazine, New York Times, Denver Post, Toronto Star, Neue Zuercher Zeitung (Switzerland). She enjoys writing monthly columns. She has had until recently a column in PRforPeople, an online magazine. Before that she had a monthly column, The Young World, which appeared in suburban newspapers on the East Coast. While interviewing teenagers for her column, The Young World, she learned about the problems facing teenagers with alcoholic parents and was inspired to publish numerous books on the subject. Today she works as an investigative reporter and essayist, and lectures at various colleges on successful writing for mainline publishers and the new media. She continues to write books. She is in the process of completing her novel, Need & Faith.

​​​Sakae Manning’s storytelling strives to give voice to women who defy cultural, racial, and gender norms. Her work typically blends race and identity, creating alliances and solidarity amongst women of color. A Mills College graduate, Manning’s poem, December Baby, was published in the College literary journal. Other writing credits include Okasan/Mother, published in Making Waves: An Anthology of Asian-American Women Writers and Sammy’s Shitkickers published in The Salt River Review. She received honorable mention in the 2018 Carve Magazine Prose and Poetry Contest for The Button Maker’s House, scheduled for publication in spring 2019. In 2017, Manning was writer-in-residence at The Annenberg Community Beach House where she developed public programs focused on building community and expanding audience for women writers of color. She has been awarded a 2019 Summer Fishtrap Writing Fellowship, is a 2019 returning resident at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and is currently working on a novel, Kimono Blues.

Michael Remson is an accomplished composer, librettist and author who has had works performed across the United States and in Europe. Among the many professional, college and high school groups that have performed his operas, choral and chamber music include Houston Grand Opera’s “Opera to Go” program, Lone Star Lyric Theater Festival, Houston Ballet Academy, Bulgarian Composers Collaborative, The Cameron Museum (Wilmington NC), Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland OR), Abilene College Opera, Texas Tech Opera, and New York City Opera’ “Showcasing American Composers” series. Dr. Remson served as Composer-in-Residence with the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as recipient of a prestigious award from the Americans for the Arts Foundation (ARTS-USA). Dr. Remson has authored two books on American music and has held numerous faculty appointments over his career. He is a graduate of New York University, University of Houston Moores School of Music, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Krista Nyberg is a multi-disciplinary Art and Creative Director working with an international client base mainly in the U.K., the U.S., and Sweden. Her international work has included extensive client-facing experience with high-profile accounts, practicing 360 degree approaches from strategy and initial concepts through to design and execution. Clients include The Guardian, Working Title, Old Vic, Åhléns Klubb, V&A, AKA (UK & NYC) and Vogue UK. Since 2015 she has been based in Stockholm, Sweden as Head of Brand Creative within the Global Marketing Department at the American sportswear and lifestyle brand GANT. With a multi-cultural design background, Krista takes a diverse stylistic approach to technique and material, allowing innovative and original work.

October - December Residents

Jen Wyrauch Edson received her MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2007. She writes fiction and poetry. She has taught English, ESL, and Conversation and Culture classes with the Tustin Unified School District and at UCI for over two decades, and ran the Poetry Slam Team at Beckman High School for many years. She was a judge at the International Poetry Slam at Berkeley in 2004. Currently, Jen teaches GED and High School Diploma classes for adults at the Tustin Adult School. She enjoys supporting dog rescue and spending time with her husband and grandchildren in Dana Point California.

Jackie Bryant is a San Diego-based culture writer and journalist covering cannabis, wine, spirits, travel and dining. She runs a newsletter about cannabis culture, called Cannabitch, and has been published in Sierra, San Diego CityBeat, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Afar, Eater, Food & Wine and many other publications.

April Dávila received her undergraduate degree from Scripps College before going on to study writing at USC. She was a resident of the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in 2017 and attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in 2018. In 2019 her short story “Ultra” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A fourth-generation Californian, she lives in La Cañada Flintridge with her husband and two children. She is a practicing Buddhist, half-hearted gardener, and occasional runner. 142 Ostriches is her first novel.

Natasha Harrison uses glass as a medium to express feelings around the fragility and intensity present within nature. She is the Executive Director of the Newport Tree Conservancy in Newport, Rhode Island. 

Christina Clancy's debut novel, The Second Home, was recently published June 2, 2020, and was named the Amazon "Book With Buzz" for June. The novel received a starred review from Booklist, and was named an "Indie Next" pick in June, and was one of ten "Indies Introduce" selections for summer and fall 2020 by the American Bookseller's Association. Her second novel, Shoulder Season, will be published by St. Martins Press summer 2021.

Bettye Barclay is a multi-media artist who during the last 30 years has created with clay, fused glass and paintings. Paintings have been in watercolor and acrylic as well as mixed media. Her artistic work was influenced by her work as a psychotherapist and she often used her creative work as a visual expression of the various aspects of life that are constantly in flux. This was especially so in her Seasons of the Heart series as a way of expressing the experience of joy and pain in our heart connections. Her creations are in collections in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia and Korea. She has participated in solo and group exhibits locally and with clay in other parts of the US. She has received awards both locally and nationally.

Julie Parker, Middlebury College BA 1954,  University of Paris, Sorbonne, 1952-3; Trinity College of Graduate Studies, MFT, 1992,  Has taught French and yoga 40 years, has written East-West views by Juli for Altadena Chronicle,(arts editor,) Inspiration Points for Idyllwild Town Crier, created radio and TV instructional yoga and a commercial video called Move Gently, Move Mountains. From 1997 to 2007 she created Teen Futures for local public high schools (parenthood postponement) Since 2012 she is writing a memoir called "Hold Gently The Crack" about the value of setbacks in the road to healing from emotional illness. She spends half her life in Vermont on the family tree farm doing and educating others about the value of stewardship forestry.

Vicky DeLong has been creating art for about thirty years. In the ceramic genre, she creates objects in the hand built-slab technique. In addition to working with clay, Vicky has been creating art books. In the last few years she began fabricating many types of books. More attention was needed to learn additional book arts techniques which led to the need for this artist residency. DeLong has been the Art Program Coordinator for Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation, San Diego, CA for the past eight years where she organizes fine art exhibits in their Visitor Center Art Gallery. She joined the staff at Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad, CA in June 2018 with her expertise of many years working as an arts administrator. "Every day of my life, I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to create my art and to work as an art administrator in this vast art world."

Jill Miller, C-IAYT, ERYT is the co-founder of Tune Up Fitness Worldwide and creator of the self-care fitness formats Yoga Tune Up® and The Roll Model® Method. With more than 30 years of study in anatomy and movement, she is a pioneer in forging relevant links between the worlds of fitness, yoga, massage, athletics, and pain management. Jill is the former anatomy columnist for Yoga Journal Magazine and featured in multiple publications including the Wall Street Journal, O, Shape, Women’s Health, and featured on the Today Show and Oprah Winfrey Network. She is the author of the bestselling book The Roll Model: A Step by Step Guide to Erase Pain, Improve Mobility, and Live Better in your Body. She is also a contributing author to “Fascia, Function and Medical Application.” She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children She is currently writing her second book. 

Additional Jan - Mar 

Sandy Walker

Leslie Blanco 

Charles Curtis has pioneered new works for solo cello in collaboration with leading composers of our time. In addition, he has written extensively on the aesthetics of experimental music and issues of realization and performance. He is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Music at UC San Diego, and a sometime composer of original work which he performs himself. His concerts and recordings are acknowledged internationally and written about in journals such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, ArtForum, The Brooklyn Rail and many other publications.