Laura Farrell is a talented artist and musician who runs a decorative arts company in the dc area. She is an accomplished musician with a prominent solo career. Laura is a vocalist and guitarist and trained violinist. She performs throughout the DC metro area for private events and weddings as well as in local bars, restaurants, and music halls. Laura's talent for mash-ups and pop music on her acoustic guitar is sure to entertain.
Karina Muñiz-Pagán is a writer, literary translator, and organizer, born to a Scandinavian mother and Mexican father in San Francisco, California. She has an MFA in Prose from Mills College where she was the Community Engagement Fellow and taught creative writing to members of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a Latina immigrant rights base-building organization where she also served as Political Director. As a result of the generative workshops, Karina co-founded the writers’ group, Las Malcriadas, and edited and translated the bilingual anthology Mujeres Mágicas: Domestic Workers Right to Write, published in 2019. She has written and led campaigns focused on place-based storytelling and the power of understanding the social history of the built environment.
Leslie Johansen Nack’s debut, Fourteen, A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing and Survival received five indie awards, including the 2016 Finalist in Memoir at the Next Generation Indie Book Award. Before she started writing, she raised two children, ran a mechanical engineering business with her husband, took care of her aging mother, and dreamed of retirement when she could write full-time. She did everything late in life, including getting her degree in English Literature from UCLA at age thirty-one. Her first historical fiction novel The Blue Butterfly, A Novel of Marion Davies will be released on May 3, 2022.
Leslie Bevans creates in the written word, illustration, and music. She is the author/illustrator of family-friendly Beyond the Weakened Thread, an adventure that centers around the purpose of kindness. Leslie is currently working on the sequel to this 63-chapter novel. Her characters are painfully aware that she is also busy working on creative collaborations with her husband, Frank, and storybooks for children and their families to share. Leslie composes, performs, and teaches music. She is a flutist and vocalist, who loves to write poetry and prose, paint, draw, sew, build, bake … and share!
October - December
Bobbie Mandel was an artist before she even understood what it meant, making simple pencil markings on scraps of paper, even before she talked. She was recognized by those who taught her for her unusual artistic talent. She was encouraged to develop her own artistic voice throughout her education and her life. Her primary focus has been on the human face, creating emotional portraits that reveal interior spaces, and trying to portray the challenges of human existence. Her ability to use linear marks has continued but now is used to describe the emotion and form of the human face. She vacillates between paint, and printmaking, especially woodcuts as her medium of choice and has been influenced by German Expressionism.
Suzanne LaFetra Collier is a Bay Area writer. In 2022 she earned an MFA from Goddard College, where she was the recipient of the Engaged Artist Award. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals and publications including Creative Nonfiction, The Sun Magazine, Brevity, The Citron Review, Smokelong Quarterly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Lunch Ticket, and in fifteen anthologies. She directed and produced the documentary film FREE: The Power of Performance which was nationally broadcast on PBS in 2018. She is currently a BookEnds fellow at SUNY Stonybrook, where she is finishing a novel, a dark comedy about late capitalism.
Thea Pueschel is a writer, filmmaker, artist, and blog managing editor for the literary nonprofit Women Who Submit and a repeated Dorland Arts Colony Resident. Thea has been published in Short Edítion, Perhappened, and the Made in L.A. Anthology: Vantage Points Volume 5, among others. Thea's "44: not dead, just invisible" multimedia solo exhibition was held in 2021 at the Center in Orange and two of the pieces from the series are currently featured in the Fullerton Museum Center's exhibit "Looking Back, Moving Forward: the Wisdom of Older Women."
Cindy Milwe is a writer and teacher who lives in Venice, CA. Her work has been published in many journals and magazines, including 5 AM, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, Poet Lore, The William and Mary Review, Flyway, Talking River Review, and The Georgetown Review. She also has poems in three anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (City Lights, 2001); Changing Harm to Harmony: The Bullies and Bystanders Project (Marin Poetry Center Press, 2015) and Rumors, Secrets, & Lies (Anhinga Press, 2022). Her first full-length collection, Salvage, was published last year by Finishing Line Press.
Mia Alvar is the author of IN THE COUNTRY, which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, One Story, The Missouri Review, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Mia has been a writer in residence at Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Blue Mountain Center for the Arts. She teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
Katinka Clementsmith is a working, teaching artist in Southern California. She loves to be the creative vessel for whimsical expressive works to come into creation. She often paints with migraines and credits the migraines for both her use of color and the disproportion of features that are essential to her signature style. Katinka has shown at art shows and galleries throughout the country, and her work is in private collections throughout the world. She teaches a variety of art classes in person and online.
Los Angeles-based writer, editor, and ghostwriterSarah Tomlinson is the author of the memoir, Good Girl, and has ghostwritten or co-written 21 books—five of which were NYT bestsellers. Her debut novel, How to Be a Ghost, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books in early 2024. Her personal essays and articles have appeared in publications including Marie Claire, MORE, Westways, Publisher's Weekly, The Boston Globe, and The Los Angeles Times, and in essay collections such as He Never Came Home and Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light.
Kristen Fogle has been the Executive Director of San Diego Writers, Ink (SDWI) a literary writers hub, since 2013. She is a former magazine writer, as well as a playwright, performer, producer, director, and author. An instructor for over a decade, in addition to teaching at SDWI, she currently teaches for Wounded Warriors Project, Armed Services Arts Partnership, La Jolla Playhouse, Coronado School of the Arts, and Point Loma Nazarene University. She has released four writing prompt books with Rockridge Media. She has a M.A. in Rhetoric and Writing from San Diego State University.Type your paragraph here.
Dian Greenwood holds a BA and MA in English - from San Francisco State University; an MA in Counseling Psychology - California Institute of Integral Studies. For five years, she taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon. For the past thirty years, she’s worked as a psychotherapist. Her novel, About the Carleton Sisters, debuts from She Writes Press in Spring 2023. More recently, she’s published essays in The Big Smoke online magazine. In October 2021, another essay appears in the anthology, 2020: The Year of the *, University of Hell Press.
Ryan Smith is a musician, educator, and researcher in nanoscale physics. His creative work focuses on making physics ideas accessible to anyone who is curious, engaging with how experiences with music and nature relate to science. Beyond his research, he has published several popular and educational articles about physics, and is currently developing a nonfiction work “Play Outdoors like a Scientist," aiming to inspire deep wonder from seeing the outdoor world through a scientific lens. Ryan was a recent 2021-22 Alexander von Humboldt scholar in Berlin, Germany, and is currently a tenured physics professor at California State University East Bay.
Jane McMackin's interest in writing spans decades, starting with journaling in college. She continued to write poems and essays reflecting on nature and life. When perusing her journals at 60, she realized she had some good stories to tell about her life; and that some of these stories could be fodder for a screenplay. Through UCLA Extension, she took courses in screenwriting and earned a Certificate in Feature Film Writing. Not quite satisfied that the screenplay she was writing captured the full meaning of her experiences, she next completed coursework in nonfiction and memoir writing. She has produced a 200+ page manuscript for a memoir that she intends to develop this into a screenplay.
Thea Gavin writes from and about her hometown of Orange, CA. Wild places near and far—explored sans shoes—are her favorite subjects. A retired professor, Thea aims to inspire others to “think outside the shoe” via her writing and workshops. She spent three life-changing weeks as Artist-in-Residence at Grand Canyon’s North Rim in 2011; her work has appeared in the anthologies New Poets of the American West; Fire and Rain: California Ecopoetry; Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon; On Foot: Grand Canyon Backpacking Stories; and in journals such as Rattle, Deep Wild, and The Hopper (“Hiking Across Grand Canyon Alone at Night Barefoot”) theagavin.wordpress.com & theaunravels.com
Ryuko Laura Burges, a lay-entrusted dharma teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, lectures and leads retreats at different practice centers in Northern California. Laura co-founded the Sangha in Recovery Program at San Francisco Zen Center and is the abiding teacher at Lenox House in Oakland. Her first book, Buddhist Stories for Kids, was published by Shambhala in December 2022 and Zen for Kids in March 2023. A book for adults, The Zen Way of Recovery will be released in July 2023.
Lisa Eve Cheby, a librarian, poet, school library advocate, and daughter of Hungarian immigrants. She holds an MFA from Antioch and an MLIS from SJSU. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in journals and anthologies including Santa Ana River Review, So To Speak, Ruminate, TAB, Drawn to Marvel, and Coiled Serpent. She was a writer in Residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts' Firefly Farms and Dorland Mountain Arts. Her two chapbooks are available from dancing girl press, with a third one forthcoming Fall 2023.
Hazel Kight Witham is a mother, writer, teacher, artist, and slam coach who leads workshops on building a sustainable teaching practice. Her poetry, memoir, fiction, and interviews can be found in The Sun, Bellevue Literary Review, Made in L.A. Volumes 4 & 5, High Country News, Mutha Magazine, Integrated Schools, United Teacher, Cultural Weekly, and Rising Phoenix Review. Hazel’s work explores issues of wellness, mental health, healing, social justice, and peace-making. She earned a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University LA and has been a proud member of Women Who Submit since 2016.
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.
Jack Herscowitz is a Los Angeles-based composer who engages in deep inter-personal collaborations, trans-disciplinary thinking, and alternate definitions of "score" to recognize music as a process that has always extended beyond the singular dimension of sound. His work runs the wide gamut of interactive sound installations, enveloping vocal soundscapes, noisy electronic improvisations, theatrical chamber music, and communal spaces for sound-making. His chamber music has been performed by ensembles throughout North America and Europe and he performs actively as an electronics improviser, both solo and alongside instrumentalists.
Justine Adeboyejo is a painter and educator from Chicago living in Los Angeles. She has studied journalism and early childhood education and completed coursework at SAIC. Justine's work is focused on evoking feelings of grief, shock, and anxiety in order to create bonds between her imaginative figures and their viewers. Her work explores the conventions associated with beauty and pain and features painted figures that represent those of us who exist on the fringes of society. She has shown internationally in Barcelona and nationally in Los Angeles, New York and more. She is currently a teaching artist at Inner-City Arts.
Natasha Harrison uses glass as a medium to express feelings about fear, fragility and intensity present within relationships. She is also the Executive Director of the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Paradise Valley, Middletown, Rhode Island.
Composer and violinist Tommy Dougherty (b. 1990) is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is a composer of orchestral, chamber, and solo works. This year, Tommy is in residence at the Winterthur Museum as a Maker-Creator Fellowship Scholar. In 2021, Tommy received a joint commission from the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra and Laurel Arts to compose a work as a tribute to the people of Somerset for the 20th Anniversary of September 11th. He has since been commissioned to write a new work for the JSO’s 2022-2023 season finale. Over the past several years, his music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, the Modern Violin Ensemble (MoVE), Alarm Will Sound, and Kinetic Ensemble. As a violinist, Tommy currently serves as Acting Section Violin with the San Diego Symphony.
Greg Hrbek is the author of "Not of Fire, but Burning," a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and an NPR Best Book of the Year. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton and a Creative Artists' Fellowship from the Japan-US Friendship Commission. His other books are "The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly," awarded the James Jones First Novel Award, and a story collection, "Destroy All Monsters." His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, and numerous literary journals, and in "The Best American Short Stories" anthology.
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.
Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to capture the hidden stories she has been told not to talk about. Her memoir Through Eyes Like Mine, was shortlisted for the 2040 Book Award. Excerpts, essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, and Linden Avenue. She is a member of the leadership team for Women Who Submit, an organization empowering women and non-binary writers to submit their work for publication.
Hannah Keefe is a metalsmith and visual artist known primarily for her one-of-a-kind handmade jewelry pieces. With a fine arts education and years working in the visual arts, she approaches her studio jewelry-making with a sculptor’s eye. For the past 2 decades, Hannah has maintained a rigorous studio practice concentrated around the material exploration of brass chain and silver solder. Her jewelry is sold at galleries and boutiques around the world.
July - September
Peter RField is an award-winning screenwriter whose feature-length script, "Three if by Air," was a top ten finalist in the 2014 Final Draft/Big Break contest. His short script "Tailwinds" received semi-finalist and finalist honors from the 2018 HollyShorts and 2019 DC Shorts screenwriting competitions. Peter is a former story analyst for Miramax Films and New Line Cinema in New York. Peter received his MFA in Creative and Dramatic Writing in 2017 from Spalding University, in Louisville, Kentucky, with a writing residency in Ireland in 2013.
Tony Eprile is a South African writer & photographer now living in Vermont. His novel, The Persistence of Memory, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, longlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize, and won the Koret International Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His writing has appeared in O Magazine, The New York Times, Details, The Nation, Gourmet, and the Washington Post. His photographs have appeared in Discover Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic (online), Gourmet, Pacific Standard, and elsewhere. Awards include National Endowment for the Arts, Ingram Merrill Foundation, Djerassi Foundation, MacDowell Colony and other fellowships.
Kristen Daniels studied creative writing at USC with T.C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, at UCLA Extension with Les Plesko, and at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She lives in Encinitas, CA with her husband and two daughters.
Natalie Hirt is an essayist and fiction writer from Southern California. She earned an MFA from UC Riverside. She is a recent recipient of the Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in women's fiction and a TinHouse Fellow. Her work can be found in various literary journals including Inlandia, The Rumpus, and East Jasmine Review, among others.
Judy Reeves is a writer and teacher who has published four books on writing including the award-winning A Writer’s Book of Days, and the critically acclaimed Wild Women, Wild Voices. Her work has appeared in the San Diego Reader; The Frozen Moment; A Year in Ink; Connotations Press; Serving House Journal; Waymark; Expressive Writing, Classroom and Community, and other journals and anthologies. She is also an editor and has edited manuscripts, journals, and chapbooks. She has been leading writing groups and teaching creative writing for 27 years at writing conferences internationally and at San Diego Writers, Ink, a nonprofit literary center she cofounded.
Micaiah Seborowski creates vibrant shimmering energy paintings with watercolors, often on textured or modified paper. He also loves to work on his mad scientist creations where he redesigns animal toys into playful mixed species. He sells both on his Etsy page, MASmotif.
Jenal Dolson (Canadian, b. 1983) lives and works in Chicago, Illinois as an artist and arts professional. She received her MFA in 2020, from the University of South Florida, and her B.A., in 2007, from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada). She has participated in residencies at Tempus Projects (Tampa, FL), Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto, ON), and the Vermont Studio Centre (Johnson, VT). Recent exhibitions include the Roper Gallery, Frostburg State University (Frostburg, MA) and the Kimball Arts Center (Chicago, IL). She currently holds the position of gallery director at ANDREW RAFACZ Gallery (Chicago, IL).
Sharon O’Brien teaches creative writing and American Studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. She has long been drawn to life stories and the process of storytelling. Her first book was a biography of Willa Cather (Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice, 1987) that was the first to explore this writer’s life from a feminist point of view. Her second book, The Family Silver (2004) was a memoir of family and depression that explored the concept of inheritance in a cultural context. Recently she has been writing personal essays that address such topics as the American cult of productivity, the politics of the food industry, and American attitudes toward grief. She is working on an academic memoir that explores how academic writing is shaped by history and politics.
Joshua Dysart is a New York Times bestselling writer of graphic novels and prose. His work often centers on real-world narratives backed by extensive research. He has traveled with child soldiers in Uganda (2007), convoyed across Iraqi Kurdistan interviewing Syrian refugees and victims of Da’esh (2014), and traveled across South Sudan researching human migration due to drought and war (2016). He has worked with the World Food Programme, Deepak Chopra, and musician Neil Young. In 2018 he led a college speaking tour across Pakistan for the “Comics for Peace” project. He has been published in seven languages, including Arabic.
Cellist Andrew Hayhurst has been a member of the San Diego Symphony since 2015. He has performed regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Opera and has recorded in many of Hollywood’s major studios. He has performed on National Public Radio and on Los Angeles's Mozart. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Cello Performance and Performing Arts Technology from the University of Michigan and earned his Master of Music from the Yale School of Music. He has participated in the Festival Mozaic, Kneisel Hall, Geneva Music, and Schleswig-Holstein music festivals. His primary teachers have been Richard Aaron, Robert deMaine, Aldo Parisot, and Richard Naill.
Kristen Daniels studied creative writing at USC with T.C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, at UCLA Extension with Les Plesko, and at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She lives in Encinitas, CA with her husband and two daughters.
Laura Schmitt (she/her) is a multiracial writer with roots in Hawai’i and the Midwest. Her fiction can be found in the New England Review, The Pinch, Boulevard, Indiana Review, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the New England Review‘s 2021 Award for Emerging Writers, received a 2019 Hedgebrook residency, and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Laura was born in Southern California and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is at work on a novel and a collection of stories.
Ellen Yaffa tiptoed into flash narrative in 2008 and has been hooked on short-form writing ever since. She is an active, enthusiastic member of weekly writing practice groups and an alumna of workshops emphasizing flash narrative and “short shorts.” Her work has been published in anthologies such as "Dime Stories," "A Year in Ink," and "University of Hell Press," as well as The Sun Magazine. Ellen also creates multi-media art on paper and canvas and has exhibited at Expressive Arts San Diego. "Through My Eyes," her first book, is a collection of flash narratives and original art, available on amazon.com.
Lindsey Doering is an emerging fiction writer with a bachelor’s in film, TV, and media arts from Chapman University. Having worked in management for sixteen years, she likes to write about real-world situations and human struggles.
Laura Bensick is a writer who began her professional storytelling career with an autobiographical documentary play about mental health issues in her family which was staged in St. Louis and Los Angeles. She earned her MFA in Writing for Screen & Television from USC and has since sold television shows to Netflix, Fox, Sony, and Warner Brothers. She lives in Los Angeles, is a member of the WGAw, and is currently writing her first novel. Laura is represented by UTA and Writ Large.
April - June
Vicki Moran is a watercolor artist living in Hemet, California. She began her watercolor study in 2014 upon retiring from a career in book publishing. At Hemet Valley Art Association, she has enjoyed classes by Joyce Thomas and Betty Pilley and has attended watercolor workshops by Janice Cipriani-Willis and Susan Keith. She continues to study under Betty Pilley and, at Dorland, Robert Willis. Vicki has won three Best of Show awards at HVAA, shown at Redlands Multi-Media show, Brandon Gallery, The Merc in Temecula, and at Dorland. Her current focus is portraits.
James Bennett is a writer and translator from San Diego, California. He is a former U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique, as well as the recipient of Fulbright grants to Mozambique (2017) and Portugal (2021). He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and is currently working on his first novel.
Gil Israeli’s stories are often set in spaces where interior/exterior life meets, akin to paintings of Edward Hopper’s New York City and Norman Rockwell’s town life. As an ethnographer, he has studied group behavior, an insightful lens for fiction writing. His stories have appeared and are forthcoming in The Writers’ Rock Anthology, The Airgonaut Review, The Eunoia Review, The Spry Literary Review, a story to be anthologized in The Journal of Experimental Fiction, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a play and a memoir. Gil loves to swap and read stories with writers who also believe in the Muses.
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 throughout 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 wordplay pieces are quirky visuals.
Originally from Chicago, Kelly Mueller teaches art at Lusher Charter High School and lives in Mid-City, New Orleans. She received her MFA from Northern Illinois University and is a member of The Front Gallery in New Orleans, and Baton Rouge Gallery, LA. She attends artist residencies whenever possible outside of her teaching, including such places as Hambidge, GA; Stone House, CA; Philadelphia Art Hotel, Dorland Mountain Arts, and a research trip to the Amazon Rainforest as a Surdna Fellow. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and abroad.
Vicky Hoffman lives and works in her home studio in Paso Robles, California. She holds a BA in Art from San Diego State University. Her work uses multiple mediums – oils, acrylics, watercolor pencils, encaustics, and various papers. In January 2023, Louis Stern Fine Arts selected Vicky’s work, upRooted, for the Glossary exhibit at Gallery 825. In 2021, the Los Angeles critic, Peter Frank, selected Vicky’s work, Untitled #4 (black), for the Open Show at Gallery 825. In addition, she has appeared in other exhibits at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, TAG Gallery in Los Angeles, and many more.
Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache) is a professor of gender studies and core faculty with the American Indian Studies Interdepartmental program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mithlo’s curatorial work has resulted in nine exhibits at the Venice Biennale. Mithlo has taught at the University of New Mexico, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Santa Fe Community College, Smith College, California Institute of the Arts, Occidental College, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her 2020 book Knowing Native Arts was published by the University of Nebraska Press. www.nancymariemithlo.com
A graduate of the University of San Francisco’s MFA program, Tessa White also has a BA from the University of Oregon’s Journalism School. She has developed, taught and marketed creative writing programs to kids in both San Francisco and Los Angeles through The Writing Club and Take My Word for It! For two years Tessa directed kids and teens through collaborative book writing with the program, Written Out Loud, publishing more than twenty books by over eighty student authors. Tessa’s personal essays can be found on Medium, and her short stories have been published online. One of her most exciting achievements was being selected by Lemony Snicket himself, placing runner up in the Literary Death Match Bookmark Contest judged by Daniel Handler.
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
Vicky Delong has been creating art for thirty years. In the ceramic genre, she creates objects in the hand-built slab technique. Vicky also creates art books, fabricating many book structures. Early this year, Vicky took an online course with Fibre Arts Take Two learning techniques in the fiber arts genre. DeLong has been the Art Program Coordinator for Mission Trails Regional Park, San Diego, CA for their Visitor Center Art Gallery. She joined the staff at Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad, CA in June 2018. She is also the Director of Gallery 21 at Spanish Village Art Center, Balboa Park.
Chad Michael Lange is a San Francisco-based fiction writer who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. He has received two residencies at The MacDowell Colony, and The Jentel Foundation, The Millay Colony for the Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, Hambidge Center, and Osage Arts Community have also given him fellowships. He has been awarded grants from the California Arts Council and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Lange’s short fiction has appeared in Catamaran, fourteen hills, and ZYZZYVA.
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 in 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 Boisjoly Challenger Disaster Collection Curator, and is actively involved in the Center for American War Letters.
Alyson Earnest is a 3rd generation creative and insatiably curious world traveler. Her passion for writing is grounded in more than 30 years of daily journaling where she believes she has gained much of her wisdom, and yet so much more from her solo travel journeying across the US by car and throughout 6 continents beyond. She is currently writing her first memoir based on what happened when she left her cul-de-sac in 2018 and began to discover the rich, vast, fascinating world beyond. Alyson is living her mantra that proclaims: She is going places she has never been.
Kim Steutermann Rogers spent a month in Alaska as a fellow at Storyknife Writers Retreat in 2016 and, again, in 2021. She was recognized for “Notable Travel Writing 2019” in Best American Travel Writing. Her science journalism has been published in National Geographic, Audubon, and Smithsonian; and her prose in Atticus Review, Bending Genres, CHEAP POP, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and 15-year-old poi dog named Lulu in Hawaii. Read more of her work at kimsrogers.com and follow her on social media at @kimsrogers.
Ryan Sloan teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of the co-hosts of the long-running Babylon Salon quarterly reading series in San Francisco. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his work is published in LA Weekly, Joyland Magazine, Opium Magazine, The Modern Spectator, and Painted Bride Quarterly, among other publications. Residencies include the 2024 Arctic Circle Residency, 2022 Writing by Writers Tomales Bay Workshop, 2021 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop, and 2019 Lit Camp Writers’ Conference. He lives in Oakland.
Thea Pueschel is a writer, filmmaker, artist, and blog managing editor for the literary nonprofit Women Who Submit and a repeated Dorland Arts Colony Resident. Thea has been published in Short Edítion, Perhappened, and the Made in L.A. Anthology: Vantage Points Volume 5, among others. Thea's "44: not dead, just invisible" multimedia solo exhibition was held in 2021 at the Center in Orange and two of the pieces from the series are currently featured in the Fullerton Museum Center's exhibit "Looking Back, Moving Forward: the Wisdom of Older Women."
Ali Beheler is a poet and philosopher whose writing occupies the space between these disciplines. Her poetry aims to explore the entwinement of body, language, nature, and memory, as well as the entwinement of poetic and philosophical language and thought. Her philosophical work combines the work of non-philosophers and philosophers to address the above issues from a feminist lens. Published in both disciplines and recipient of an award for scholarship and teaching, she is currently a tenured Associate Professor at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska.
Ann Leamon (www.annleamon.com) is a photographer and multi-genre writer. Her work has appeared in the Tupelo Quarterly, River Teeth, MicroLit Almanac, The North Dakota Quarterly, and the Hole in the Head Review, among other publications, and her photography has appeared at the Griffin Museum. She is currently working on a collection of poems and photographs about two islands in Maine's Muscongus Bay and a work of environmental fiction exploring the tensions between development and preservation in a small Maine town.
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.
Daniel Getzoff is a Los Angeles-based community activist and organizer, a playwright, personal essayist, blogger, performer, and multi-faceted nonprofit sector worker. His first published story will appear in the upcoming 42 Stories Anthology Presents: Book of 42. Danny was awarded 2 residencies at Playa Summerlake in south-central Oregon to work on his first novel, Nicknames for Harold, the manuscript of which is nearly complete. He has published 80+ essays about his 3 solo cross-country bicycle trips at http://handlebarconfessional.blogspot.com and https://handlebarconfessional.com, which will be the subject of his upcoming memoir, Handlebar Confessional.
Sheryl Stradling is an author and artist. Her book, Faith, Power, Joy: Spiritual Guidance from 5 Generations of Remarkable Women, a multi-generational memoir, won the 2018 Body Mind Spirit book award for Spiritual Healing, and a Readers’ Favorite Five Star award. She contributed to Journey of an Empath, a compilation of stories, and to Akasha: Spiritual Experiences of Accessing Our Soul’s Infinite Intelligence, to be published in August. A mixed media abstract artist, Stradling’s work is inspired by nature and Asian culture. She studied fine art at Western Washington University and printmaking at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington.
Adrienne Roma Sacks (M.F.A. California State University, Northridge, 2021) was the 2019 recipient of the National Annual Award from Collage Artists of America for her assemblage sculpture. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Torrance Art Museum, Millard Sheets Art Center, and Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute. She has previously taught two-dimensional design, painting, exhibition design, and aesthetics at CSUN, CSSSA at CalArts, and Pratt-MWPAI. Her upcoming solo exhibition titled Museum of Ice Cream, curated by Jordan Bohannon opens at Pullproof Studio in Pittsburgh, PA in July 2023.
Chris Morris is a writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. A trifecta of genres. She has honed her writing over the years through classes and writing her blog for her business In 2015, she published her first novel, 'Between' a young adult metaphysical adventure of home and belonging. She writes poetry as well, using the practice of self-inquiry and inspiration. Currently, she is working on her next book, a nonfiction journey about somatics, energy, healing, and wholeness, which will include some of her poetry.
Susan Davies is a painter working mainly in oil and acrylics. She received a BA in Art and Education from Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN (1982) and a MA in Curriculum Design from St. Mary’s University of MN (1995). She also studied at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, Rome, Italy (1981); at the Women’s Art Institute, Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2004). Susan is interested in our connection to our natural surroundings with a special focus on water and water preservation. Davies is represented by Artactile Gallery and Everett & Charlie, both in Minneapolis.
Anthony Alegrete (he/him) is a poet and writer located in Orange, California. He is enrolled in Chapman University’s MFA in Creative Writing program and is an assistant editor at Tab Journal. He earned his BA in English and Communications at Santa Clara University. His work has previously been published in 805 and is forthcoming in The Santa Clara Review.
Sarah Z. Sleeper's debut novel, Gaijin, came out in 2020 with glowing reviews. Her short story, “A Few Innocuous Lines,” won an award from Writer’s Digest. Her non-fiction essay, “On Getting Vivian,” was published in The Shanghai Literary Review, and her poetry was exhibited at the Bellarmine Museum. In the recent past, she was an editor at New Rivers Press and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Mason’s Road. Prior to completing her MFA in 2012, she was a reporter, winning three journalism awards and a fellowship at the National Press Foundation.
Jean Toner is a retired clinical social worker and social work educator. In retirement, she has shifted from academic and professional writing to creative writing. She is working on a non-fiction book that weaves mythology, autoethnography, poetry, and vignette into a path to healing trauma. She is also working on bringing years of poetry together into a thematic whole.
Pam Woolway is a recovering journalist seeking redemption through poetry and pigment. Her book Short Order Poems is available on Amazon and is the product of time spent at art events typing poems to order for passers-by. Her memoir, Let It Shine, has a tentative publishing date of April 2024. To learn more about Pam visit ShortOrderPoet.com.
JoBeth McDaniel is an author and journalist with work published in LIFE, AARPMagazine, House Beautiful, Veranda, Islands, Reader’s Digest, Newsweek and Business Week. She wrote for LIFE under five managing editors, operating LIFE’s LA bureau. She was a Working Woman columnist for four years, and Investors BusinessDaily columnist for three. Her bestselling biography A Special Kind of Hero (Doubleday, Dell) was named a Library Journal “Best Book” and a Literary Guild selection. JoBeth’s essays appear in several anthologies. Two were selected for college textbooks.
Jared Leake is a mixed-media artist based on the central coast of California. His work focuses on mixed media painting, drawing, photography, and aspects of video. He has attended Artist in Residency programs in Greece, Costa Rica, and Southern California as well as other workshops around the country where he created work through research and experimentation with materials. Aspects of Jared's travel, love of the outdoors, and storytelling are seen throughout his work. Over a year ago Jared's son was born and he became a stay-at-home father and artist after fifteen years as a high school art teacher. During this time he has refocused his work on his passion for illustration and children's books resulting in his self-published children’s board book "Have You Seen Slithy?".
Paula Dwyer is a 3d mixed media artist using primarily found materials. Her work is currently transitioning from a series of larger pieces that have evolved from her passion for assemblage mixed with her love of conceptual symbolism. Her pieces evoke a feminine energy and are protective in nature, yet strive to celebrate individuality and truth. She enjoys sharing her work and looks forward to continued live arts events and creative collaboration with others. Paula's work has been featured in both online and onsite exhibitions as well as in a variety of environmentally focused events.
Kristen Daniels studied creative writing at USC with T.C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, at UCLA Extension with Les Plesko, and at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She lives in Encinitas, CA with her husband and two daughters.
Michael Correy is a Lead, Experience Design at BCGX where he applies human-centered research and design methodologies to uncover challenges and create thoughtful, engaging experiences. In a previous life, Michael was an Associate Director, Creative Strategy at Code and Theory. Michael originally hails from Indianapolis but currently lives in Brooklyn. He truly is a believer that immersive and empathetic research is vital to strategic, equitable, and impactful design solutions. If you happen to ever encounter him in the flesh, start the conversation off with the Muppets, basketball, or 90s R&B music.
Jennifer Irani is finishing a memoir about her experience in Phoenix House while publishing short stories, essays, poetry, and op/eds. She is a member of environmental groups, racial justice organizations, and political organizations. Her art and writing are acts of activism. Her website combines her fine art and writing and offers a broader picture of her work. The mannequin heads titled “We Will Be Heard” are inspired by the #MeToo movement and Dr. Ford. She resonates with Deep Adaptation philosophy. Despite the challenges we face, she makes room for the awe and wonders through her craft.
Erica W. Jamieson was born in the Bronx and grew up outside of Detroit. She currently lives in Los Angles. A former lawyer, she writes fiction and personal essay. She facilitates writing groups, including an intergenerational program where young adults write alongside senior citizens to start conversations and create a community. Her work has appeared in Self Magazine, Lilith and published online, most recently in Minerva Press’ the Keeping Room. Her story Emends won the December 2021 StoryNosh award from The Braid Theatre, produced as a performed reading on YouTube.
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 in 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 Boisjoly Challenger Disaster Collection Curator, and is actively involved in the Center for American War Letters.
At 3 years old, Danni Hart knew she was going to be an author when she grew up. But at 11 years old Danni decided that she could not stand being vulnerable. So, Danni stopped writing . . . for a very long time. Danni is trying to reconnect with her three-year-old self and forgive her eleven-year-old self in the process. Danni IS a writer. She just needs to remember and reconnect with that.
Jennifer Vandever is an author and screenwriter living in Los Angeles where she teaches at Emerson College. She is the author of the novels THE BRONTE PROJECT and AMERICAN TANGO and was the co-screenwriter and associate producer of the film JUST ONE TIME. Her work has appeared in First City, Redbook, The New York Times and The Village Voice.
Michael Jon Fink is a composer/performer who resides in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles. For over forty years he has served on the faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts 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. He currently plays electric guitar with the Feedback Wave Riders (Free Improv), and Spectral Dawn Spirits (Hierophantic, somewhat metallic, post-psychedelic ambient instrumental music). His music appears on the Cold Blue record label.
Kristen Havens is a writer and poet living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in PANK, Atticus Review, Monkeybicycle, Necessary Fiction, Bending Genres, and Slipstream, among others. She has been a Finalist for the Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize and a nominee for 2021 Best Small Fiction. A former marketer for a small press and reader for CRAFT literary magazine, she works as an IT contractor and developmental editor of technical and business books. She is currently writing a literary futurist novel about artificial intelligence. Dorland is her first residency.
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is author of Palm Springs Noir (Akashic). Her stories are in Orange County Noir, Coolest American Stories, 2022, USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, Rock, and A Hard Place, Dark City Crime Mystery Magazine, and Literary Hatchet. She received a Distinguished Instructors award from UC-Irvine and is adjunct professor of creative writing at Chapman University and Saddleback College. Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. For the last 24 years she has hosted Writers on Writing. For 23 of those years, the show broadcast on KUCI-FM.
Jean Sackin became interested in art at a young age. When attending high school, she assisted a professional artist with his Saturday children's classes and her own college classes focused on drawing. Essentially, she is self-taught by watching as many TV shows, YouTube, and Pinterest videos as she can. She has since taken open studio lessons in acrylics and to a lesser degree, watercolors, to learn more about painting. Jean has also taken up hobby photography, which inspires many of her paintings.
Rose Lombardo is the Principal Flutist of the San Diego Symphony. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Jeffrey Khaner and continued on to the Colburn School Conservatory of Music where she was granted a Professional Studies Certificate studying with Jim Walker. Ms. Lombardo is an active chamber musician and has performed alongside musicians from ensembles such as the San Diego Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, and William Christie’s early music ensemble, Les Arts Florissants. Ms. Lombardo is an avid performer of both baroque and contemporary music.
Elena Masi is an emerging artist based in Northern Michigan. In the years between drawing as a child and graduating from Kendall College of Art and Design with a BFA in Illustration, she has come to learn how to use art as her primary means of processing and connecting to the world around her. She utilizes both traditional and digital tools to create her wide breadth of work, ranging from large-scale acrylic paintings on vintage skis, to oil landscapes, to digitally rendered portraits and designs.
Jaimee Wriston Colbert is the author of seven books of fiction: How Not to Drown, Vanishing Acts, Wild Things, Shark Girls, Dream Lives of Butterflies, Climbing the God Tree, and Sex, Salvation, and the Automobile. Her books won the 2021 and 2018 International Book Awards, the 2021 NYC Big Book Award, CNY 2017 Fiction Award, Willa Cather Fiction Prize, Zephyr Prize, and an IPPY Gold Medal. Originally from Hawai'i, she is a Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at SUNY Binghamton University-USA.
Edan Lepucki is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17, and the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Romper, The Cut, and Esquire Magazine, among other publications. Her story "People in Hell Want Ice Water" was released as an Audible Original, and her novel Time's Mouth is forthcoming.
W. Eliot Jordan is a professional tea taster and singer-songwriter. After a lifetime cupping and buying tea, recording and performing his songs, and composing two musicals, he now returns to his love of prose. His debut fantasy novel, The Aether Glass, is in no small part inspired by his career in the international tea trade, blending his love of literature and history with exposure to Asia's fascinating rural cultures. Three Turns of the Sun, the second in a series of linked stories, is currently in the rewriting stage. He lives in his native Berkeley, California.
Kate Brody is a novelist, whose debut RABBIT HOLE will come out with Soho Press (US) and Bloomsbury (UK) in January 2024. She has published in Lit Hub, The Literary Review, Glimmer Train, and other magazines. Currently, Kate is at work writing her second novel, HEATHENS. She has an MFA from NYU. She writes and teaches in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and two children.
Karen Palmer is the author of two novels, All Saints and Border Dogs, and the recipient of an NEA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. Her writing has appeared in Best American Essays, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Five Points, Arts & Letters, and The Rumpus, among others. She has taught at UCLA Extension and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver and lives with her family in Los Angeles.
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, and 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, Where I Belong.
Kristin Eade is a writer from Seattle, although she currently calls the Bay Area home. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts and has an ardent love for words, especially those that need a good edit. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Defunct Magazine, Spectrum, Rogue Agent, Fragments, and Rue Scribe. When she’s not writing she enjoys daydreaming, playing with cats, and being in nature. You can find her at www.kristineade.com.
John Wuchte is an actor/writer/director living in Los Angeles. He started his acting career in NYC in the 80s performing multiple roles. He was Artistic Director of RAKKA-THAMM!!! theater for 10 years, notable for adapting/staging Greek tragedies outside in Washington Square park. He recently established Kick Boom Theater, dedicated to exploring the intersection of movement and percussion, and his 2 new musicals, Scarlett Fever and Housewife ’52, were both nominated for Best Musical at Hollywood Fringe. His newest musical, Vivan Vance Alive and Well Running Chinese Take-out premieres 2024.
Nancy K. Fishman is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her Creative Writing MFA in fiction at San Francisco State University in 2021, including a Graduate Student Award for Distinguished Achievement. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in English with an Emphasis on Creative Writing. She has been a resident at Write On, Door County (WI), and Wellstone Center in the Redwoods (CA). Her short story “Stoplight” was a runner-up selected by Joshua Ferris for Symphony Space’s 2021 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. She is currently working on a novel.
Molly Reid’s debut collection of stories, THE RAPTURE INDEX, won the seventh annual BOA Short Fiction Prize and was published by BOA Editions. The collection was longlisted for the Story Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Molly Reid’s stories have appeared in the journals Ninth Letter, West Branch, Witness, Mid-American Review, Crazyhorse, and Gulf Coast, among others. She received her Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, and she currently teaches creative writing at Portland State University and for Eastern Oregon University’s low-res MFA program. You can learn more at mollyjeanreid.com.
Ja'net Danielo is the author of This Body I Have Tried to Write, winner of the MAYDAY 2022 Poetry Micro Chapbook Editors' Choice Award, and The Song of Our Disappearing (Paper Nautilus, 2021. A recipient of a Professional Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council for Long Beach and the Fischer Prize, her poems have appeared in Frontier Poetry, Mid-American Review, GASHER, Radar Poetry, and elsewhere. Originally from Queens, NY, Ja'net teaches at Cerritos College and lives in Long Beach, CA, where she facilitates Word Women, a free poetry workshop series for cancer patients and survivors.
Steven Morris is an award-winning artist, author, business consultant, and speaker. As an artist, Steven is a figurative abstract painter, that extends the lineage of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist and European Surrealist painters. As a writer, he has written two books. His newest book will be released in the fall of 2021 entitled “The Beautiful Business.” Much of his business consultancy work is centered around evolving businesses, brands, and cultures to be more conscious and sustainable. When he’s not working or doing artwork, Steven is an avid outdoor enthusiast, surfer, beekeeper, husband, and father of two young men.
Katherine Saviskas investigates ancestral reconnection, attempting to decolonize U.S. psychology such that time, blood, and traditions emerge as important or disappear, communities form, and radical aliveness flourishes. Through installation, photography, textiles, folk art, ritual, and social practice, she gathers where longing and play meet. In 2023, Katherine was a Rhizomatic Imagination Fellow with the Center for Story-based Strategy. In 2022, she was an Artist in Residence at Picture Berlin, in Germany. She is a Ph.D. candidate of East-West Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she is pursuing the Creative Dissertation track.
Frank Bevans, a native son of California, has been a commercial photographer for over forty years, working for Fortune 500 companies, producing books and magazine covers, billboards, editorial content, and promotional materials of all sorts, all over the world. He loves teaching photography workshops and is currently working on a new educational publication: “The Spirit of Your Subject.” Frank creates award-winning nature and fine art imagery. He is a curious and driven artist, musician, craftsman, audio engineer, and videographer.
April Dávila received her undergraduate degree in biology from Scripps College before going on to study writing at USC. She is a mindfulness meditation instructor (certified by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley), creator of the unique Sit Write Here writing coaching program and co-founder of A Very Important Meeting. In 2019 her short story “Ultra” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2020 her debut novel “142 Ostriches” was published by Kensington Books and went on to win the 2021 WILLA Award for Women Writing the West. A fourth-generation Californian, she lives in La Cañada Flintridge with her husband and two children. She is a practicing Buddhist, a half-hearted gardener, and an occasional runner.
RESIDENTS: 2023
Moira Donohoe: My Paintings are driven by a passion for the mountains, particularly the Yosemite Sierra. I never tire of pulling apart and remixing various elements of Yosemite. Namely, light, color, rock, flora, fauna, and spirit. Yosemite is a thin place, very close to another dimension, a sacred one. Indeed, there are certain spots away from the crowded central areas where I can feel another essence, a spiritual one. I describe that essence through physical media. Growing up in a large Irish family encouraged the worldview of the sacred in all things. Lately, I have been working on a tree series. Trees are sentient Beings, and Yosemite is home to many. My Celtic roots honor trees in ritual and tradition. I want to keep that tradition.
Natalie Sudman worked as an archeologist for sixteen years before accepting a position managing construction contracts in Iraq in 2006. After being injured in Iraq, she retired from government service to concentrate on art and writing. Her nonfiction book Application of Impossible Things was published in 2010. Poetry and essays have been published in national journals throughout the 1990s. Sudman's artwork has been shown internationally. Raised in Minnesota, she has lived most of her life in eastern Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota. She currently resides in Minnesota.
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.
Mike Brosnan is a Los Angeles native and received his BA at Cal State University, Northridge in film with a minor in journalism. After long stints writing scripts and poetry (he studied under Eloise Klein Healy - named LA’s first Poet Laureate in 2012), he turned his eye towards fiction. Mike has worked at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and was for a time in the development departments of producer Edward R. Pressman, producer/director Oliver Stone and Miramax. He is currently employed at The Walt Disney Co. His essay on Irene Adler, a character found in the Sherlock Holmes canon, can be found in the book, Ladies, Ladies: The Women in the Life of Sherlock Holmes, Aventine Press, 2007. In addition to his writing and movie industry endeavors, he has been a wine director, wine bar manager and owned his own wine event planning business.
Kristine L. Schomaker is an Art Historian, Curator, Publisher, Art Manager, and multidisciplinary artist living and working at the Brewery artist complex in Los Angeles, California. She earned her BA in Art History and MA in Studio Art from California State University at Northridge. Kristine’s art practice includes painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, performance, and conceptual art based focused on body image and society’s perception of beauty. In 2014 Kristine founded Shoebox Arts to support and empower artists while building community and creating new opportunities. Kristine is also the publisher of Art and Cake, a contemporary L.A. Art magazine.
Chris Morris is a writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. A trifecta of genres. She has honed her writing over the years through classes and writing her blog for her business In 2015, she published her first novel, 'Between' a young adult metaphysical adventure of home and belonging. She writes poetry as well, using the practice of self-inquiry and inspiration. Currently, she is working on her next book, a nonfiction journey about somatics, energy, healing, and wholeness, which will include some of her poetry.
Zan Romanoff is the author of three young adult novels, most recently LOOK, which O: The Oprah Magazine called “one of the books that will change the LGBTQ+ literary landscape.” Her non-fiction has appeared in print and online in BuzzFeed, Eater, The Los Angeles Times, LitHub, The Paris Review, and The Washington Post, among other outlets. She lives and writes in LA. Learn more at zanromanoff.com.
Steven Morris is an award-winning artist, author, business consultant, and speaker. As an artist, Steven is a figurative abstract painter, that extends the lineage of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist and European Surrealist painters. As a writer, he has written two books. His newest book will be released in the fall of 2021 entitled “The Beautiful Business.” Much of his business consultancy work is centered around evolving businesses, brands, and cultures to be more conscious and sustainable. When he’s not working or doing artwork, Steven is an avid outdoor enthusiast, surfer, beekeeper, husband, and father of two young men.
Dian Greenwood holds a BA and MA in English - from San Francisco State University; an MA in Counseling Psychology - California Institute of Integral Studies. For five years, she taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon. For the past thirty years, she’s worked as a psychotherapist. Her novel, About the Carleton Sisters, debuts from She Writes Press in Spring 2023. More recently, she’s published essays in The Big Smoke online magazine. In October 2021, another essay appears in the anthology, 2020: The Year of the *, University of Hell Press.
Kara Laurene Pernicano (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist and poet. She captures resonances in the porous mind for art and healing, routinely working in erasure, collage, comics, improv dictation, and poetic monologue. Kara has an MFA from Queens College and a MA from the University of Cincinnati. She has performed for Poetic Theater Productions and the Poetry Society of New York. Her work has been exhibited in various literary magazines and galleries, including Waccamaw, Full Stop, the Whitney Staff Art Show, and LIC Artists’ Plaxall Gallery. She teaches at CUNY and curates a creative series Why Open Pandora’s Box.
An anthropologist by training, Emily Zeamer’s creative writing explores worlds and lives that feel strange and distant from her own. She is currently working on a novel about the entanglements and dependencies of 19th-century women who were compelled to work for a living. She teaches Anthropology at the University of Southern California.
Cathy Rose is a writer and clinical psychologist in San Francisco, CA. She holds an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Greensboro Review, Your Impossible Voice, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Fourteen Hills, Santa Clara Review, Deep South Magazine, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies, Flash NonFiction Food and Nixon under the Bodhi Tree and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction. Fellowship residencies have included Joya AiR, Obras Foundation, VCCA, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is currently at work on a novel.
In 2022, Debra Thomas-Zasadzinski embarked on a new enterprise, retailing professionally printed greeting cards of her original artwork. Her florals are sold at Crème Bakery in Claremont, CA, as well as at local group art shows and sales. She is working on a new series of line drawings based on travels to France and will continue them this Spring.
Trapper Robbins is a multi-instrumentalist rock composer, keyboard player, and singer with a special interest in interwoven rhythmic patterns, creative lyrics & phrasings, and unexpected song transitions. His music moves seamlessly across genres including elements of progressive rock, fusion, funk, and jazz. Trapper has released 12 albums and periodically performs live. Trapper has also worked as a professional software developer and as a volunteer with the US National Park Service. He currently splits his time between Seattle and Stehekin, a remote mountain town in North Cascades National Park (WA).
Pam Woolway is a recovering journalist seeking redemption through poetry and pigment. Her book Short Order Poems is available on Amazon and is the product of time spent at art events typing poems to order for passers-by. Her memoir, Let It Shine, has a tentative publishing date of April 2024. To learn more about Pam visit ShortOrderPoet.com.
Kristine L. Schomaker is an Art Historian, Curator, Publisher, Art Manager, and multidisciplinary artist living and working at the Brewery artist complex in Los Angeles, California. She earned her BA in Art History and MA in Studio Art from California State University at Northridge. Kristine’s art practice includes painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, performance, and conceptual art based focused on body image and society’s perception of beauty. In 2014 Kristine founded Shoebox Arts to support and empower artists while building community and creating new opportunities. Kristine is also the publisher of Art and Cake, a contemporary L.A. Art magazine.
Composer Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer whose music has been called "devastatingly beautiful" (The Washington Post) and praised for its "soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies deployed with finesse" (The New York Times). Trumbore's compositions have been performed internationally by the Chicago Symphony's MusicNOW ensemble, Conspirare, and the Miró Quartet, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Modesto Symphony, and Pasadena Symphony. Her choral works have been commissioned for premieres at national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, American Guild of Organists, Chorus America, and National Collegiate Choral Organization. Learn more about Trumbore’s music and writing at daletrumbore.com.
Anita Zachary holds an MFA from San Diego State University in creative writing with an emphasis in Fiction Writing. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Writing and Rhetoric Dept. at Occidental College. Her work had appeared in Windmill, Raising Mothers, and Poetry International. She is currently working on a memoir. Anita resides in Los Angeles with her partner John and a furry friend named Kunta.
BUZZFEED called Nona Caspers' novel The Fifth Woman, a book "Queers and Everyone Else Should Read." It was a LAMBDA Finalist, and Indies Book of the Year SILVER Winner in Literary Fiction. Her book of stories, Heavier than Air was honored with a Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction & Editor's Choice New York Times Book Review. Her work has received a Cultural Equity Grant and NEA fellowship, among other grants and awards. Journal publications include Kenyon Review, The Sun, and Glimmer Train. She teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University and lives in the city with her little dog Bora.
Lindsey Doering is an emerging fiction writer with a bachelor’s in film, TV, and media arts from Chapman University. Having worked in management for sixteen years, she likes to write about real-world situations and human struggles.
Sonja Schenk is a multi-disciplinary artist from Los Angeles. She began with video installations and has since turned to other types of installation, painting, and sculpture. Her work explores the intersection of humankind and the natural world through traditional, technological, and transformative processes. She exhibits both locally and internationally and she has created several large, site-specific installations. She has been an artist-in-residence at two colleges and the U.S. National Park system. Influenced by early mentors Allan Kaprow, DeeDee Halleck, and Manny Farber, her work relies on a strong grounding in conceptual thought that is then translated into various media.
Maureen Loftis is working on her first novel. The book is an historical and psychological fiction, set in Reno, Nevada, that explores a family's secretive past and how the youngest daughter searches for answers. Maureen holds a Juris Doctorate in law and a MA in clinical psychology. She is on a sabbatical to work on her novel. Maureen has completed UCLA advanced writing workshops and was admitted twice to the prestigious Community of Writers workshop in Olympic Valley. Maureen completed an artist residency in 2022 with Dorland Mountain Arts Community. She hopes to have her novel completed in 2024.
Ellen Ancui writes female-driven comedies for TV, film, and theater. She obsesses with characters who are excluded or feel like imposters, and her stories are often dark, playful, and always filled with sexual irreverence. Ellen’s feature, SILICON GIRLS has placed in 12 competitions and is currently optioned. She wrote for the animated series, BROWN & FRIENDS (on Netflix August 2022) and her one-act play, SIZZLER, will be published this spring. Her ensemble plays have been produced in NYC and LA, she is a member of the WGAw and is working on her first cookbook, SAUCY!
Catharine Roth still resides in her native rural Pennsylvania landscape, which shapes her fiction. At various and overlapping times she has worked as a college writing and literature instructor, a performer of traditional folk music, kept a small milk-goat enterprise, fostered whole litters of abandoned puppies, and through it all, has been a worker in local vineyards, and orchards. After discovering Dorland in 1994, Roth has returned frequently, completing a novella and two novels. A photo journal of her residencies at the “old” Dorland is on view in the library/common room.
Kathryn Jordan is from Berkeley, CA. In the past year, her poems placed or won Honorable Mention in The Steve Kowit, Muriel Craft Bailey, Connecticut River Poetry Award, and Patricia Dobler poetry contests. Kathryn’s work appears in Catamaran, Atlanta Review, The Sun, Comstock Review, and New Ohio Review, among others. She is a bird nerd and loves nothing better than to hike the East Bay Hills in search of the Swainson’s Thrush. Her website is http://kathrynjordan.org
Sarah Louise Williams is writing a novel This Prairie Alchemy that examines her family’s 19th-century Irish and English roots, using stories of her family’s immigration to the U.S. and settlement as farmers and stonemasons in the Midwest as inspiration for fiction. Williams has published fiction in StoryQuarterly, Gargoyle, and Enhanced Gravity: More Fiction by Washington Area Women. She has published nonfiction in Vogue, Gargoyle, and Grand Street. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a B.A. in English Literature from Yale College. She lives in Maryland.
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.
Dr. Kate Gale is co-founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review. She teaches at Chapman University. She is the author of The Loneliest Girl from the University of New Mexico Press and of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone from the University of New Mexico Press in 2014, and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis, which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee.
Greg Hrbek is the author of "Not of Fire, but Burning," a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and an NPR Best Book of the Year. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton and a Creative Artists' Fellowship from the Japan-US Friendship Commission. His other books are "The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly," awarded the James Jones First Novel Award, and a story collection, "Destroy All Monsters." His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, and numerous literary journals, and in "The Best American Short Stories" anthology.
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.
Mike Brosnan is a Los Angeles native and received his BA at Cal State University, Northridge in film with a minor in journalism. After long stints writing scripts and poetry (he studied under Eloise Klein Healy - named LA’s first Poet Laureate in 2012), he turned his eye towards fiction. Mike has worked at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and was for a time in the development departments of producer Edward R. Pressman, producer/director Oliver Stone and Miramax. He is currently employed at The Walt Disney Co. His essay on Irene Adler, a character found in the Sherlock Holmes canon, can be found in the book, Ladies, Ladies: The Women in the Life of Sherlock Holmes, Aventine Press, 2007. In addition to his writing and movie industry endeavors, he has been a wine director, wine bar manager and owned his own wine event planning business.
Sheryl Stradling is an author and artist. Her book, Faith, Power, Joy: Spiritual Guidance from 5 Generations of Remarkable Women, a multi-generational memoir, won the 2018 Body Mind Spirit book award for Spiritual Healing, and a Readers’ Favorite Five Star award. She contributed to Journey of an Empath, a compilation of stories, and to Akasha: Spiritual Experiences of Accessing Our Soul’s Infinite Intelligence, to be published in August. A mixed media abstract artist, Stradling’s work is inspired by nature and Asian culture. She studied fine art at Western Washington University and printmaking at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington
January - March 2023 Residents
Jessica Danger lives, writes, and teaches in Southern California. She holds an MFA from Bennington College. Her work has been published in several journals and magazines. She was recently shortlisted for the Iowa Review Nonfiction Prize judged by Eula Biss and was also a semi-finalist in the VanderMey Nonfiction Prize with Ruminate Magazine.
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.
Darcy Vebber writes fiction and personal essays. She teaches fiction writing at Art Division, a nonprofit school for under-served young adults, and Writing Workshops L.A. Her work has been published in the Iowa Review, Tribe Magazine, The Jewish Journal, and others. She had a BA in Film from USC and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.
Candace Flint, a native Southern Californian, spent 40+ years in Accounting & Finance working for private and public industries as a fiscal analyst, accountant, policy analyst and business consultant. She has an Accounting degree from Cal State Fullerton, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Cal State San Marcos. Now, in retirement, Candace has begun to write short prose and poetry, connecting with the natural world as her Muse. A life-lover of the written word and the inspirations that art and music provide, she enjoys participating in the creative community-accessible events that Dorland provides local residents.