THE SPRING 2024 ISSUE OF NOYO REVIEW IS HERE!

THE SPRING 2024 ISSUE OF NOYO REVIEW IS HERE!

We are excited to share that the Spring 2024 issue of Noyo Review is now live! This literary journal is a curated collection of work from our MCWC community published annually online. As a special feature, this issue includes writers from Mendocino County, and we are proud to share their work. We encourage you to check it out and share it widely. 

If you're in the Mendocino area, please join us for a live reading and launch celebration this Saturday at 6pm at Gallery Bookshop. Please see details below.

REGISTRATION IS OPEN AND WE HAVE A FEW SPOTS LEFT!

If you haven't gotten your spot yet for our in person conference in August, don't wait too long as three of our workshops are already sold out! Registration will close when all spots are full or by June 30, whichever comes first.

We still have spots open in the following workshops:

We hope to see you in Mendocino August 1-3!

MCWC CONTEST REMINDER

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions until June 30, 2024. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in Noyo Review.

Photo by: Mimi Carroll

Q&A WITH FACULTY MEMBER HENRY HOKE

Photo by: Myles Pettengill

We sat down with MCWC 2024 Hybrid Genre Workshop Faculty, Henry Hoke, and asked a few questions...

You are a prolific writer who has published work in a variety of genres, including novels, creative nonfiction, and short stories. Your most recent book, Open Throat, is told from the point of view of a mountain lion living in Los Angeles. How would you introduce yourself and your work to writers interested in working with you at MCWC 2024?
 
I’m forever restless as an author, and what inspires me is innovation and shirking expectation. I nurture my voice by giving it new constraints and taking new risks every time. My books start out, conceptually, as jokes. Dares. And then my commitment to them brings motivation and gravitational pull.
 
My MFA at CalArts was not tracked (we didn’t have to choose Fiction or Poetry or Playwriting), so we could truly experiment and write on our own terms and toward our own idiosyncrasies. This was a tremendous gift for me, being allowed to simply stay a hybrid writer, or genrequeer. As a professor I’ve carried on this openness, overseeing classes of first-time writers, or artists from myriad disciplines (animators, actors, painters), making space for them to hone their textual expression collectively. I want to always honor their individuality, the core of creativity only they can bring.
 
A vital component of my practice has always been to read widely and collaborate/build community with writers from an eclectic blend of disciplines, so that rather than be in competition with each other or in danger of homogenization, we are collectively sharing, inspiring, and building one another up.

MCWC has never offered a Hybrid Genre workshop before. How would you describe this workshop to a writer curious about it?

Are you trying out a new genre for the first time? Adapting something you’ve already created into a different form? Hoping to shake up a work-in-progress or near-complete manuscript with dynamic revision? This is where that alchemy can happen. We’ll shirk formal constraints as an inspirational act, via generative prompts and transformative exercises (from impossible stage directions to erasure poetry to manifesto-making), and engage in multi-faceted critique across disciplines. Don’t settle for only one approach. Discover what your work is crying out to be. Crystalize both its purpose and its potential.

If you aren’t sure where exactly your writing fits, you fit here. I like to cultivate a space where no matter where we’re at in the writing process, or in our career, we can always be emerging.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

Surprise. Fresh angles. New inspirations. Unexpected creative exchange. Engines to keep going. Fun. The world will try, over and over, to define us. Let’s resist, together.

How does teaching figure into your writing practice?

Teaching is where I remember the joy of the creative act, the excitement and possibility in trying things out and getting eyes on work for the first time. A rewarding reset, a space outside of commerce.

Do you practice any creative rituals or routines that help you create your work?

I meditate for 20 silent minutes before a writing session, to find my breath and clear my storm of thoughts. Even if I don’t write every day, I touch my work-in-progress in some way, opening it, re-reading it, going over notes, just to stay connected and keep the unconscious churning.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

The two goddesses of my writing practice are Suzan-Lori Parks and Truman Capote, whose work found me early in life and showed me that all of my wild stylistic impulses could coexist and find form. I also owe a great deal to my professors at CalArts: Maggie Nelson, Matias Viegener, Tisa Bryant, Mady Schutzman, and Janet Sarbanes, who helped me trust my voice, shape my work, and give it a bearing toward a bright future.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

The beginning of a journey.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Moderation.

Which talent would you most like to have?

Moderation.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

Really Rosie.

What is your motto?

It’s slower than you think.

WELCOME NEW BOARD MEMBERS

We are excited to announce the addition of three new MCWC Board Members, Miah Jeffra, Emily Lloyd-Jones and Ploi Pirapokin! Please join us in welcoming these former faculty back to MCWC.

MIAH JEFFRA - BOARD MEMBER

Miah Jeffra is author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac (finalist for several awards, including the Grace Paley and St. Lawrence Book Prizes) and the forthcoming novel American Gospel. Work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, Barrelhouse, DIAGRAM, jubilat and many others. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches writing and decolonial studies at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University.

EMILY LLOYD-JONES - BOARD MEMBER

Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. She has a BA in English from Western Oregon University and a MA in publishing from Rosemont College. She resides in Northern California, where she enjoys wandering in redwood forests. Her young adult novels include Illusive, Deceptive, The Hearts We Sold, The Bone Houses, and The Drowned Woods. Her middle grade books include Unseen Magic and the forthcoming Unspoken Magic.

PLOI PIRAPOKIN - BOARD MEMBER

Ploi Pirapokin sits on the board for Khōréō magazine, WP Now, and the Ragdale Foundation. Her work is featured in Tor.com, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Offing and more. She has received grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Creative Capacity Fund, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi, Kundiman and others. A graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She currently teaches at the Writers Program at UCLA Extension, WritingWorkshops.com, and the University of Hong Kong. Born in Thailand and raised in Hong Kong, she uses speculative fiction to explore postcolonial poetics, and imperialism in Asia.

SUPPORT MCWC THIS GIVING SEASON

This Giving Tuesday, please consider supporting MCWC and our Building the Future of MCWC Fundraising Drive to make our 2024 conference a reality.

Photo by Mimi Carroll

With book bans, the rise of AI, and the prevalence of propaganda and disinformation, it is harder than ever to tell our stories, and storytellers are more important than ever. Your donation will enable us to continue in our work of building a community that offers expertise, opportunity, and friendship to writers at all levels. Every gift is appreciated, no matter how small.* 

Photo by Mimi Carroll

Your gift will help:

  • Fund scholarships for both conference registration and housing stipends to make our conference accessible to a more diverse population. 

  • Improve the caliber of the writing we nurture by funding the very best teachers.

  • Support publication of Noyo Review, our own literary journal that publishes voices from the annual Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference.

Please send your check to:

Friends of MCWC
PO Box 2087
Fort Bragg, CA 95437

Or donate via credit card or Paypal using the button below.

* Mendocino Coast Writers Conference is a 501(c)3 registered non-profit organization.

SUBMIT TO NOYO REVIEW

Calling all writers living in Mendocino, Lake and Humboldt Counties as well as participants of the 2023 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference: submit to Noyo Review! We will be taking submissions up through December 1, 2023. You can find details below:

  • Please submit only one piece of prose or up to five (5) poems. 

  • All poems should be submitted in a single document. 

  • Fiction and creative nonfiction may be up to 5,000 words. 

  • Please include a third-person bio of up to 150 words

  • Send your submission as a Word or PDF file to noyoreview@gmail.com with the genre + title of your work in the subject line (e.g. "Poetry + "Poem Title(s)"). 

  • Simultaneous submissions are accepted. 

  • Please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere. 

We look forward to reading your work!

MCWC 2023 IS IN THE BOOKS!

Photos by Mimi Carroll

WE DID IT!

For our 34th Annual Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, we were grateful to be able to convene again in person!

We had a joyful and inspiring three days of workshops, seminars, open mics, and readings that carried on great MCWC traditions and brought many new writers and friends into our inclusive writing community. 

Ariel Gore with Bryan Liu - photo by: Mimi Carroll

We send resounding gratitude for our 2023 faculty: Annie DeWitt, Ariel Gore, Tobi Harper, Rachel Howzell Hall, Q. Terah Jackson, Muriel Leung, Emily Lloyd-Jones, Margaret Malone, Sarah McColl, Nayomi Munaweera, Ploi Pirapokin, Daniel B. Summerhill, and Carvell Wallace.

Michelle Peñaloza at a Faculty Reading - photo by: Mimi Carroll

We can’t forget to mention the incredible food options provided by The Brickery, Pilón Kitchen, Harvest Market, and our Board and dedicated team of volunteers. 

Michelle Peñaloza, Eliana Yoneda, Sage Andersen, Laura Welter and Beulah Vega - Photo by: Mimi Carroll

We had the pleasure of hosting 100 participants who came from as far as London, 20% of whom were scholarship recipients. 

Scholarship Winners - photo by: Mimi Carroll

Here is what some of our 2023 participants are saying about the conference:

  • "I find the content, location, and community inspire me as a writer and hope to keep returning and bringing other writer friends of me."

  • "Excellent conference again this year and a great setting for both experienced and newbie writers to come together."

  • "I'm grateful for the kindness and care that are expressed from your staff, faculty and volunteers. It really is a feel good event that celebrates writers, and for that I am most grateful! See you next year!"

Emerging Writers Workshop - photo by: Mimi Carroll

We couldn’t have done this without our participants, faculty, volunteers, donors, and sustaining members. 

Photo by: Mimi Carroll

Our Executive Director, Lisa Locascio Nighthawk, and Operations Manager, Patty West, planned this year's conference with the dedicated support of the Board of Directors, Georgina Marie Guardado, Laura Welter, Anna Levy, Amy Lutz, Eliana Yoneda, Michelle Peñaloza, and Justine Gomes (not pictured).

Photo by: Mimi Carroll

Save the Date!

Photo by: Mimi Carroll

We are already looking forward to next year when the 2024 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference will run from August 1-3, 2024. We are delighted to announce that we have already confirmed nine faculty members for 2024.

Stay tuned for more faculty news and updates this fall!

FREE ONLINE SEMINAR!

GETTING PUBLISHED: FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FIRST BOOK!

Saturday, September 16
10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. PT

Publishing professional and editor, Tobi Harper, will discuss the landscape of the publishing industry and the process from writing your first draft to the final printed book through editing, acquisitions, contracts, production, design, marketing, and publicity. Building your literary career is a process filled with opportunities to be taken and rejections to be overcome. Learn which opportunities are best for you and understand the industry better so as not to take rejections personally. Everybody can get a book published, it’s just a matter of what you want to accomplish and how you want to get there. 

Meet the Contest Winners!

Every year, MCWC hosts a writing contest in which all conference participants are encouraged to submit. The winners had the opportunity to read at this year's conference and will be considered for publication in the The Noyo Review. See this year's winners below:

Short Story Winner Phannarai Inkun - photo by: Mimi Carroll

MEMOIR

  • First Place - Anniqua Rana

  • Second Place - Monica Olsen-Stein

  • Third Place - Laura Guidry

  • Honorable Mention - Jade Sanchez-Ventura

MG/YA

  • First Place - Doug Henderson

  • Second Place - Melanie Jones

  • Third Place - Edie Lau

NONFICTION

  • First Place - Kira Witkin

NOVEL

  • First Place - Pete Peterson

  • Second Place - Amy Berkowitz

  • Third Place - Isabel Auerbach

  • Honorable Mention - Russell Silver

POETRY

  • First Place - antmen pimentel mendoza

  • Second Place - Lauren Oertel

  • Third Place - Alia Ayer

  • Honorable Mention - Shelby May

SHORT STORY

  • First Place - Phannarai Inkun

  • Second Place - Meghana Mysore

  • Third Place - K.X. Song

  • Honorable Mention - Agatha Hinman

SPECULATIVE FICTION

  • First Place - Tian Yi

  • Second Place - Tom Adams

  • Third Place - Ron Morita

Poetry Winner antmen pimentel mendoza and Memoir Winner Anniqua Rana - photo by: Mimi Carroll

WRITERS’ STRIKE DISCOUNT & MORE!

REGISTRATION CLOSES JUNE 30

Only a few spots left! To ensure you reserve your seat in the morning workshop of your choice, use the link below to register today!

ALREADY REGISTERED?

Get ready for the conference and order your merch now! Whether you need a bag for your books for faculty book signing or a sweatshirt for Fogust, check out our goods!

Photo by Mimi Carroll

WRITERS’ STRIKE DISCOUNT - 50% OFF

We want to acknowledge the Writers’ Strike currently taking place and in solidarity, we are offering a 50% discount on the conference tuition with enrollment in the Screenwriting Workshop with discount code: WGASTRONG. 

Screenwriting Workshop: Beyond the Page

This hands-on studio session led by Q. Terah Jackson invites you to step back from the screenplay page for a 3-day exploration into your creative writing process. Whether this is your first short or fifth feature, this is a chance to reflect, retool, and rethink with other creative minds on how we approach developing a screenplay through a mixture of lecture, in-class exercises and workshopping of participants' material. Each participant will have an opportunity to apply techniques used by Hollywood professionals to their cinematic ideas and sharpen their artistry and craft.

LOCAL STUDENT DISCOUNT - 50% OFF

The Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference is committed to continuous learning and community building. To demonstrate our commitment to these values, from June 15-30, as long as spots are available, MCWC will offer a 50% off Local Student Discount to our 2023 conference! 

Currently enrolled high school, college, and graduate students in Mendocino, Humboldt, Lake, Sonoma, Marin, and Napa Counties are eligible.

Register now to seize this unique opportunity to attend MCWC using the discount code that corresponds to the desired workshop: LOCALEMERGING, LOCALSPECULATIVE, LOCALNONFICTION, LOCALNOVEL, LOCALMEMOIR, LOCALSCREENWRITING, LOCALPOETRY, LOCALMYSTERY, LOCALMGYA.

Local Student Discount registrants will be asked to provide documentation of their student status following their registration and are responsible for their travel and lodging. Payment plans are available; please write to info@mcwc.org for more information.

LAST CALL - MCWC CONTEST CLOSING SOON!

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions until June 30, 2023. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in The Noyo Review. 

MISSED OUR SPRING SEMINARS? 

MCWC hosted five online seminars this spring. Each one was recorded and they are now available for purchase. Each recording includes a two hour seminar as well as resources.

Purchase them individually for $15 each or buy all five for $65. Below is a list of recordings:

Q&A WITH MCWC 2023 SCREENWRITING FACULTY, Q. TERAH JACKSON

We caught up with Q. Terah Jackson who will be leading the 2023 Screenwriting Workshop. You can find more about his work via his website.

Q. Terah Jackson is a LA-based screenwriter, playwright, director, and alum of AFI and Howard University. His work centers marginalized communities, found families, and historic figures’ trials and triumphs to create justice and belonging in the United States. His screenplay on Bayard Rustin’s mentorship of Martin Luther King, Jr. received awards and recognition from AFI, the WGAW, Film Independent, and The Academy Nicholl Fellowships. He wrote Counter, which screened nationally via PBS and the NAACP's 2020 Virtual Convention. He revised American Anthem, a biopic about legendary contralto Marian Anderson, for Autopilot Entertainment. He was a Lincoln Center’s Directors Lab participant and dramaturg for the All For One Theater’s off-Broadway presentation of Anu Yadav’s Meena’s Dream, which he subsequently directed as a video presentation. He has taught at Sundance Collab, Chapman University, CSU Long Beach, and New York Film Academy, advising students, filmmakers, and competitions on writing for the screen and stage.  He is currently developing a limited television series based Storming Caesars Palace and the US Welfare Rights movement with Deniese Davis’s Reform Media Group.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

  • I was born, bred and fed in Washington, DC, as they say. Everyone talks politics. So I grew up curious about how we got here in society and where we were going. My imagination just gravitated to historical dramas and science fiction to explore these great society questions.

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

  • Research, journaling, freewriting time away from my computer, naps, and "sleep writing". I'm being a little fancy here, but I do a lot of heady, analytical stuff then periodically hand off the work to my subconscious mind.

 Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

  • Aesop, Shakespeare, and Akira Kurasowa tend to be my most consistent influences as I grew from listening to my mother professionally telling stories to studying theater and film. Most of my inspiration comes from life itself - bits of conversations, topics in the news, moments lived, and dreams.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

  • Seeing people wrestle with their own ideas, find a way in then get ticked by their own self discovery. There is marvelous kinetic energy in the creative process that is a joy to foster and witness.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

  • Some humor, some craft lesson, and a few reflections on life.

REGISTRATION CLOSES SOON!

ONLY A FEW SPOTS LEFT!

Workshops are filling up fast! Registration closes on June 30. To secure your spot in the morning workshop of your choice, use the link below to register today!

Photo by Mimi Carroll

SPOTLIGHT ON MCWC 2023 WORKSHOPS

Emerging Writers’ Workshop: A Writing Workshop to Revive and Revise Us

Muriel Leung

In this multi-genre writing workshop led by Muriel Leung, participants will share five pages of their "stuck" work, and we will engage in a series of generative exercises that will remake the work or a select excerpt) multiple times through expansive prompts or challenging constraints.

Mystery Workshop: Developing Your Mystery Toolbox

Rachel Howzell Hall

In this workshop, New York Times bestselling author Rachel Howzell Hall shares her step-by-step process for turning ideas into a novel of suspense. She will share her toolbox so that you can write your own story. There are no shortcuts - but there is a process that you can learn to love.

Screenwriting Workshop: Beyond the Page

Q. Terah Jackson

This hands-on workshop led by Q. Terah Jackson is a chance to reflect, retool, and rethink with other creative minds on how we approach developing a screenplay through a mixture of lecture, in-class exercises and workshopping of participants' material.

Speculative Fiction Workshop: The Shapes of You

Ploi Pirapokin

In this workshop led by Ploi Pirapokin, we'll examine how experimenting with structure can impact plot, patterns of unease and pleasure, style, and other elements in a narrative. We'll work on revealing details and particulars of a world, characters, and conflict through the possibilities of our fantastical and sci-fi elements, and how magic and advanced technology can intensify our real-life stories.

MCWC CONTEST 

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions until June 30, 2023. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in The Noyo Review. 

Miah Jeffra at MCWC 2022

Q&A WITH MCWC 2023 FACULTY, RACHEL HOWZELL HALL

We caught up with Rachel Howzell Hall who will be leading the 2023 Mystery Workshop. Her latest thriller, What Never Happened, will be released August 1, just in time for the conference and we can’t wait! You can find more about her work via her website and follow her @rhowzellhall on Instagram and /rachel.h.hall on Facebook and @rachelhowzell on Twitter. 

Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestseller We Lie Here, the Anthony-, Strand and International Thriller Award-nominated These Toxic Things and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-nominated And Now She’s Gone, which was also nominated for the Lefty-, Barry-, Shamus- and Anthony Awards. The author of the Audible Originals bestseller See How They Run, and the Thriller Award- and Audie Awards-nominated How It Ends, Rachel is a New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson. She’s also received acclaim for They All Fall Down and for her Detective Elouise Norton series. Her new thriller, What Never Happened, will be published in summer 2023, and her first fantasy novel, The Last One, will be published in October 2023.

The third in the Lou Norton series, Trail of Echoes, received a coveted Kirkus Star and was one of Kirkus Reviews 'Books That Kept Us Up All Night.' Land of Shadows and Skies of Ash were included on the Los Angeles Times’ “Books to Read This Summer”, and the New York Times called Lou Norton “a formidable fighter—someone you want on your side.” Lou was also included in The Guardian’s Top 10 Female Detectives in Fiction. 

Rachel is a former member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America and was a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers Programs. In her daytime life, she works as a fundraising writer at one of the largest medical centers in Los Angeles.

 Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

I was always a word-nerd and bookworm. I was also a worrier and often wondered why people did the things they did to other people. Why do we hurt each other? What leads to broken hearts and broken homes? Mystery and crime fiction helped me figure those things out in a way that didn't require me to public speak, do math or go to law school.

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

I'm a very-early-in-the-morning writer. I get up at 4:30 every morning. Before she passed the weekend of last Thanksgiving, my golden retriever acted as my alarm clock. I'd take her out to pee, feed her and the cats. I'm still waking myself up at 4:30, making my cup of instant Nescafe and writing until it's time for me to start day-jobbing around 7 am. Writing at zero-dark-thirty every day is crucial for me. The only times I don't write every day are true vacations and Christmas morning.

 Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

The world around me—crime-writing relies on being around people, reading news stories, opening your world to learn more and be horrified at what we do (and that doesn't always mean illegal, breaking laws). My college-aged daughter and twenty-something-old nieces are also sources of inspirations. Bright young women entering the world and learning what it means to be an adult is both fascinating to me and terrifying. I hold my breath as they move into their own apartments, date people, travel on public transportation. 

What do you love most about teaching writing?

I love sharing my experience - I'm an African American working mother who survived cancer and never earned an MFA. It's taken some determination to get where I have and I'm still learning. I like pulling out from students why it's important for them to tell their story - and then, sharing with them, tips on how to persevere.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

I hope participants will understand that writing is a joy and a privilege, that it is work and can break your heart sometimes. I want participants to see that you can be excited about this form of art. That we are a community that must bring people in and not push folks out. That our stories are more than just 'content' but also our own personal truth. 

COMMUNITY NEWS

The 16th Annual Mendocino Film Festival, June 1 through 4, will screen 60 films from 15 countries—documentaries, shorts, animated films, and a free children’s program. Special events include live performances by the John Santos Quartet and Sonoma County Taiko, as well as the Rogue Wave award presentation to director and Oscar-nominated writer Nicole Holofcener. Nicole’s new film, YOU HURT MY FEELINGS, about a writer played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, will screen at the festival. Writers will also enjoy an appearance by Karen Bates, daughter of Sally Schmitt, who will speak about the book SIX CALIFORNIA KITCHENS following the Friday, June 2, 10 am, screening of SHORT FILMS: FASCINATING WOMEN and then sign copies of the beautiful book at Gallery Bookshop on Friday at noon. LIVING, starring Bill Nighy, is a British drama based on a screenplay by Kazuo Ishigura, which was adapted from the 1952 Japanese film IKIRU directed by Akira Kurosawa, which in turn was inspired by the 1886 Russian novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. Details and tickets are available at MendoFilm.org.

SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

21 participants have been selected to join us in Mendocino for the 2023 conference. Thanks to our generous donors, our scholarship winners have been granted full tuition for the conference as well as a stipend to support their travel and housing accommodations. Below is a list of winners:

  • Teresa Connelly First Taste Scholarship - JR Fenn

  • Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction - Tian Yi

  • Nella Larsen Memorial Scholarship - antmen pimentel mendoza

  • Marion Deeds Scholarship - Michael Fischer

  • Ginny Rorby - Rachel Delaney Craft

  • Norma Watkins Scholarship - Damieka Thomas

  • Doug Fortier Scholarship - K.X. Song

  • Anne G. Locascio Memorial Scholarship - Virgie Tovar 

  • Margaret Speaker Yuan Memorial Scholarship - Alexia Nader

  • Margaret Speaker Yuan Memorial Scholarship - Arina Sarwari-Stadnyk 

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Meghana Mysore

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Laura Schmitt

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Kira Witkin

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Kaitlin Hsu

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Evan J.

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Yibing Du

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Ivan Zhao

  • Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Rashaan Alexis Meneses

  • Mendocino County High School Student Scholarship - Phannarai Inkun

  • Mendocino County High School Student Scholarship - Natalie Gutierrez Moreno

  • Mendocino County High School Student Scholarship - Frej Barty

Row 1 (left to right): antmen pimentel mendoza, Arina Sarwari-Stadnyk, JR Fenn

Row 2 (left to right): Michael Fischer, Kaitlin Hsu, Evan J, Meghana Mysore

Row 1 (left to right): Alexia Nader, Tian Yi, Kira Witkin

Row 2 (left to right): Virgie Tovar, Natalie Gutierrez Moreno, K.X. Song, Frej Barty

Row 1 (left to right): Damieka Thomas, Laura Schmitt, Phannarai Inkun

Row 2 (left to right): Rashaan Alexis Meneses, Rachel Delaney Craft, Ivan Zhao, Yibing Du

The passing of longtime MCWC participant Margaret Speaker Yuan led several generous donors to establish a scholarship in her honor. MCWC gratefully acknowledges Marion Deeds, Mark Shynert, Salinda Tyson and Monya Baker for honoring Margaret’s life and legacy by enabling us to invite these deserving writers to our conference.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN - SECURE YOUR SPOT!

General Registration is open to the public and spots are filling up fast. To secure your spot to the morning workshop of your choice, use the link below to register today!

Photo by Mimi Carroll

MCWC CONTEST 

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions from March 15, 2023 until June 30, 2023. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in The Noyo Review. 

JOIN US ONLINE FOR OUR FINAL TWO SPRING SEMINARS

These seminars were developed in response to the demand for more MCWC programming all year round. They also constitute an important fundraiser for us to support our in person summer conference, so please spread the word about this series. Every registration helps us continue creating meaningful, prestigious, and high-quality literary programming for our community. We appreciate your support!

Saturday, April 22

12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. PT

Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry with Ben Gucciardi

How do you know when a poem is finished? What makes a poem successful? Astonishing? Timeless? Using Gregory Orr’s landmark essay “Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry” as a guiding text, this workshop will offer participants new strategies for editing of their own work, and moving poems towards greater balance, complexity and ultimately, completion.

Temperament comes from the Latin temperamentum ‘correct mixture,’ from temperare ‘mingle.’ Together, we will do a close of reading of poems from Vievee Francis, David Baker and Octavio Paz, looking at the temperaments and techniques the poets are mixing together. Participants will also analyze some of their own poems and the work of a peer in the class to identify which of the temperaments--story, structure, music and imagination-- are most prominently at play, and which could be introduced to strengthen the poem.

Participants will leave with a new framework for looking at their own work, developing new tools for revision while becoming more nuanced readers.

Saturday, April 29

12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. PT

Archeology of Memory: Discovering the Bones of Your Story with Nicole Gulotta

Writers of memoir and personal narrative are tasked with going back in time, digging up the bones of their memories, and excavating the past. While you’ll eventually need to erect the scaffolding of structure and shape a cohesive narrative, memoir begins in the mess. In this practical workshop, we’ll focus on everything that comes first—namely, getting closer to the core of your story, brainstorming the scenes that will light your way, and tapping into rich sensory details that will bring these moments to life on the page for your readers. Whether you’re just inching towards a memoir project or have already begun, these practices will support you on the long journey ahead.

KEY DATES

Q&A WITH MCWC 2023 FACULTY, MURIEL LEUNG

We caught up with Muriel Leung, who will be leading the 2023 Emerging Writers Workshop. You can find more about her work via her website and follow her @murmurshewrote on Instagram and Twitter. 

Muriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), winner of the Poetry Society of America's 2022 Four Quartets Prize, in addition to Bone Confetti (Noemi Press) and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. A Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal and also co-hosts The Blood-Jet Writing Hour Podcast with Rachelle Cruz and MT Vallarta. She is a member of Miresa Collective, a feminist speakers bureau. Muriel received her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Southern California where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow. She is from Queens, NY.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

As a hybrid genre writer, I have always thought of myself as a poet at my core, which I think began with a love of language, musicality, and the constant failure of words to capture any precise feeling in time. Growing up as a non-English speaker, I felt like meaning always fell between the gaps and in the attempt to become good at this language, I was always fumbling or navigating silences. There is a profound sense of possibility in this space, learned through humility and persistence, the recognition of language’s immense power and this ability to remake it over time.

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

I am not a daily writer, and I think relinquishing this pressure has freed me to embrace the kind of writer I actually am—chaotic, intuitive, and navigating through the murk to find precision somewhere. I am project-driven, which means that I don’t write until there is a pressing topic that propels me to investigate it deeper. I make reading lists and give myself goals for how much to read and by when. I think of writing as a perpetual act of being an interlocutor, so you must know who else is writing in conversation with you throughout history and in the present, and so that your work might be an additive voice to the mix. At the end of a writing day, I may leave a note for my future self, questions that have come up in the day’s writing, ideas that remain unresolved and which my future self might know more of. I trust that my future self would find the solution somehow.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

I love experimental or hybrid genre writers, multihyphenate artists who defy traditional categorizations of genre, media, and form, and whose social and political imperatives in their work match the spirit of this defiance. I love the work of Truong Tran, Saretta Morgan, Renee Gladman, Brandon Shimoda, Lara Mimosa Montes, Yanyi Luo, Joey De Jesus, Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, to name a few. Other sources of inspiration: trees, flowers, eating two different flavors at the same time (sour and salt), nursing a dying plant to life, palm reading, tarot, meditation, long walks through an uncharted hiking path, getting lost.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

There’s a beautiful vicarious sense of wonder that happens when you have the opportunity to facilitate a unique experience for a group of writers who very much want to see their work taken care of and treated with respect. Teaching is a way of enacting our core values to our writing practice, which for me means integrity, compassion, and persistence in questioning. I know I have succeeded when the writers I teach come away with an insatiable curiosity to learn more on their own, who feel like they can independently carve their own path forward, and who are asking the important questions about the world and our place within it. 

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

I am teaching a workshop on revision, which is a notoriously difficult and underdiscussed topic in creative writing! I am excited about what this might crack open for writers who are coming into the workshop with writing they may have given up on. I am of the belief that nothing has to be wasted, and to guide each writer towards seeing the possibility in their old or stuck work is a challenge I am very much looking forward to.

Get to Know Our Scholarship Winners

Teresa Connelly First Taste Scholarship - JR Fenn

JR Fenn's writing has appeared in Boston Review, DIAGRAM, Versal, and Gulf Coast, among other places. She holds a PhD in English from Columbia University and an MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University, where she won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize in Fiction. JR lives in western New York with her family and is currently at work on a first novel. Her writing can be found at www.jrfenn.com.

Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction - Tian Yi

Tian Yi lives in London. Her writing has appeared in CRAFT, The Daily Drunk, Fractured Lit, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She received an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London, where she was also awarded a Sophie Warne Fellowship. She currently co-hosts ESEA Archives, an online book club run in partnership with Hackney Chinese Community Services, celebrating the work of East and Southeast Asian authors. You can find Tian on Twitter (@tianyiwriting) and ESEA Archives on Instagram (@esea.archives).

Tian is working on a short story collection about families and hauntings. She is excited to learn from and generate new ideas with fellow speculative fiction enthusiasts at MCWC.

Nella Larsen Memorial Scholarship - antmen pimentel mendoza

antmen pimentel mendoza (she, he) is the author of the chapbook My Boyfriend Apocalypse (Nomadic Press, 2023). antmen is a student at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and rides his bike and goes on walks in Oakland.

antmen is excited to connect with fellow writers in shared learning and to explore community as craft. antmen is at work on a full-length manuscript of poetry.

website: antmenpm.com

Marion Deeds Scholarship - Michael Fischer

Michael Fischer is a Moth Mainstage storyteller and humanities instructor in the Odyssey Project, a free college credit program for income-eligible adults in Chicago. He's a Luminarts Cultural Foundation fellow, Right of Return USA fellow, and Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice commissioned humanist. His nonfiction appears in The New York Times, Salon, The Sun, Lit Hub, Guernica, Orion, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Michael writes, “I plan to spend the conference working on my current project, which blends personal essay and narrative journalism to situate mass incarceration within a conversation about mental health and climate change, in order to provide a holistic view of the many interdependent concerns at issue in the carceral state.”

Ginny Rorby - Rachel Delaney Craft

Rachel Delaney Craft writes speculative fiction for children and teens. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as Cricket, Ember, Voyage, and Cast of Wonders, and she edited the anthology Wild: Uncivilized Tales from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She lives and writes in Colorado with her partner, two dogs, and a succulent collection that is slowly taking over her house. Find her on Twitter @RDCwrites or at racheldelaneycraft.com. 

Rachel writes, “I’m currently revising a YA speculative novel called Every Color of My Blood, a sister story set in a world where emotions are bought and sold like drugs. I’m excited to work on this at the beautiful Mendocino Coast and meet the MCWC community!”

Norma Watkins Scholarship - Damieka Thomas

Damieka Thomas is an MFA student at University of California, Davis. She is a mixed-race writer and poet. She holds a degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and a minor in Education from UC Davis. She was born in Clear Lake and bounced around various places, including New York, Arizona, and Kentucky, but she mostly has family in Mendocino and Sutter county. She has been published in Poets.org, Rejected Lit Magazine, Third Iris Zine, Open Ceilings Magazine, and Bloom Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2021 Celeste Turner Wright Prize for Poetry and the 2021 Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction. 

Damieka writes, “I’m working on a memoir for my second-year thesis in the MFA program, which I hope to be a blend of memoir and poetry. At the conference, I’m excited to learn more about memoir writing from Sarah McColl and Ariel Gore. I’m excited to join the MCWC community this summer, and I hope to learn a lot from everyone!” 

Doug Fortier Scholarship - K.X. Song

K. X. Song is a diaspora writer with roots in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her debut young adult novel, An Echo in the City, is forthcoming with Little, Brown on June 20th, 2023. Visit her online at kxsong.com. 

Her current work in progress is a contemporary novel with speculative horror elements, set against the backdrop of the 19th century Opium Wars and the contemporary opioid epidemic. The novel follows a Chinese expat who returns to rural Guangdong for a long-postponed family reunion, only to find her ancestors’ history and inheritance are not as black and white as she once believed.

Anne G. Locascio Memorial Scholarship - Virgie Tovar 

Virgie Tovar's books have included You Have The Right To Remain Fat (Feminist Press 2018), The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color (New Harbinger 2020), and The Body Positive Journal (2018). Tovar hosts the Webby-nominated food-positive and body-positive podcast Rebel Eaters Club and is a contributor for Forbes.com, where she covers how the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She has received Yale's Poynter Fellowship in Journalism and was named one of 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She lives in San Francisco. Read more at www.virgietovar.com. 

Virgie writes, “My current project is a memoir about going no-contact with my family. The work focuses on intergenerational trauma, forgiveness as something corporeal (not intellectual), and the implications of leaving for a woman of color and daughter of Mexican immigrant parents.” 

Margaret Speaker Yuan Memorial Scholarship - Alexia Nader

Alexia Nader is a writer based in San Francisco. Her fiction has been published in Your Impossible Voice, her poetry in Obsidian, and her criticism in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, and Guernica, among other outlets. She has a MA from New York University in Journalism and a MFA from the University of San Francisco in Fiction. 

Alexia writes, “I'm currently at work on a novel that unfolds from the perspectives of three narrators from different generations of a single family. Two narrators are visual artists; one is an art dealer. As their conflicts intersect in a present-day storyline set in Miami, the narrators piece together their stories of migration away from the country or city of their childhood, and their search for belonging to their respective art communities. Through narrating their stories, which travel from Lebanon, to Haiti, to the United States, they examine the values and choices—around gender expectations, femininity, motherhood, and the processes of making or selling art—that have shaped their lives. I'm looking forward to workshopping a chapter from this novel at the conference.” 

Margaret Speaker Yuan Memorial Scholarship - Arina SARWARI-Stadnyk 

Arina Sarwari-Stadnyk (she/they) is a queer Afghan-Ukrainian writer and printmaker on occupied Ohlone Lisjan land. She aspires to create work that reaches through the fabric of history to document the ways in which bodies and landscapes continue to reciprocally haunt one another. Her drawings, linocut prints, poems, and lyrical essays are concerned with the symbiosis of diasporic memory and intergenerational silence. In her free time, Arina enjoys skateboarding, dancing Attan, organizing sapphic poetry circles, and generally wreaking havoc. You can find more of her art and writing on instagram at @absurdistan__.

Arina writes, “In terms of my project, I plan to workshop a work in progress that I recently started. It is a personal essay in the form of a chronological sequence of memories that examines the significance of hair in relationship to the intersection and symbiosis of queer, mixed-race, and immigrant identities.”

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Meghana Mysore

Meghana Mysore, from Portland, Oregon, is a 2022-2023 Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing. She holds a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from Yale, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Hollins University where she was the recipient of several awards for her fiction and creative nonfiction. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in Pleiades, Indiana Review, The Yale Review, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Passages North, The Rumpus, wildness, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Soft Punk, and the anthology A World Out of Reach (Yale University Press). A 2021 Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction, she has also received support from the Tin House Winter Workshop and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, where she won the second-place prize in prose in their annual contest. 

Meghana writes, “At the conference, I will work on my novel-in-stories, tentatively titled A Canopy of Branches, which follows three generations of an Indian American family based in the Pacific Northwest, and considers inheritance, loss, and memory. I am excited to be inspired by the community of writers at the conference working in different styles and genres, and by the beautiful scenery of the Mendocino Coast!” 

Website: www.meghanamysore.com

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Laura Schmitt

Laura Schmitt is a fiction writer from Green Bay, Wisconsin. She received a B.A. in journalism and English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from Hollins University. The winner of the 2022 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Nimrod, Grist Journal, The Boiler, and Electric Literature. She currently works as an Editorial intern at Tin House and indie bookseller in East Nashville. Find her at lauramschmitt.com or on Twitter @LauraSchmitt_

Laura writes, “I'm currently at work on a collection of short stories set in the small towns and cities of Wisconsin and primarily following young girls and women who struggle to grow beyond the bounds of their limitations, both internal and external. The collection explores themes of family, friendship, loss, anxiety, ambition, and class. At Mendocino, I look forward to participating in Margaret Malone’s short fiction workshop and meeting folks in the larger literary community!”

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Kira Witkin

Kira Witkin is an essayist and journalist published by NPR, The Missouri Review, the Dallas Morning News, and other publications. She is writing a book about UFO culture and the politics of belief, focusing on reports of alien “abductions” and her upbringing with a UFO-chasing father. 

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Kaitlin Hsu

Kaitlin Hsu (she/her) is a Taiwanese poet by way of the Bay Area. She studied English and Creative Writing at Stanford University, where she also did a Levinthal Tutorial with Paul Tran. Her work is published or forthcoming in Peach Mag, the lickety~split, and Naugatuck River Review. Currently, she is a poetry reader at The Adroit Journal. Last summer, she interned at the Los Angeles Review of Books, organizing their Publishing Workshop.

Kaitlin writes, “I am currently working on a series of poems that examines the relationship between who we love and who we are through narrating my experiences as a queer Asian femme in relation to externally imposed versions of womanhood.”

Website: https://myrefoli.github.io/

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Evan J.

Evan J (he/they) is the programming coordinator for the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, the Fiction Editor for Cloud Lake Literary journal, and a writing workshop facilitator with the Poetry for Our Future! program in Canada. Evan is also a previous winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry, and their debut poetry book, Ripping down half the trees, was published in 2021. For the past five years, Evan lived in northern Canada while teaching poetry and 3D printing to remote Indigenous communities. Now living in Winnipeg, Evan writes short stories.

Evan writes, “My short story characters, predominately of gender-diverse identities, often encounter turbulent scenarios where gender-diverse people have historically been disregarded (hunting trips, wilderness survival, gendered private-schools, Dostoyevskian fan fiction plots). At the conference, I'll be refining these characters, squeezing their narratives in (and out) of various short story formalist constraints.”

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Yibing Du

Yibing Du is a Chinese writer/poet in the SF Bay Area. Her poems and stories explore the coming-of-age experience and in-betweenness by weaving together the misremembered and the reimagined. She is intrigued by language models, history archives, and her own fears.

Yibing writes, “I hope to revisit novel writing with poetry on my mind and explore alternative story structure with writers of all genres.” 

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Ivan Zhao

Ivan (he/him) is a creative technologist living in San Francisco, CA.  Originally from Seattle, WA, his work can be found in Kernel, Providence Public Library, Silver Sprocket, and is forthcoming in Taper and thehtml.review. His work has been supported by Kundiman and Kearny Street Workshop. 

Ivan writes, “I’m currently working on a hybrid collection of poetry, essays, and collage, centering around digital fragmentation of identity, the queer Chinese american experience, and the role of food in centering and grounding family. I’m excited to hang around other talented writers and the Mendocino coast!”

Website: https://ivanzhao.me 

Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship - Rashaan ALEXIS Meneses

Rashaan Alexis Meneses recently earned a Parent-Writer Residency at Mineral School Arts sponsored by Tahoma Literary Review and served as a Bainbridge Resident for Seventh Wave Magazine. She’s received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, The International Retreat for Writers at Hawthornden Castle, UK, the Jacob K. Javits Program, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing along with an Ancinas scholarship from the Community of Writers. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in LitHub, Kartika Review, Puerto Del Sol, New Letters, and The Coachella Review.

She is currently working on a collection of linked essays exploring ways to decolonize her understanding of her mixed race origins as well as re-examine her relationship to nature, place, womanhood, and motherhood. Honored to be a part of the MCWC community, she is eager and hungry to re-engage with those who care about stories and the written word. 

Mendocino County High School Student Scholarship - Phannarai Inkun

Phannarai Inkun is currently a sophomore at the Mendocino High School where they are taking Creative Writing and frequenting the Writer's Club. Originally born in Thailand, they incorporate their experiences as a queer immigrant into their writing whether that be in the form of a short story or a poem. 

Phannarai writes, “I am working on a short story inspired by my dreams for the future and the family I hope to one day have. During the conference, I plan on workshopping this short story to make sure readers get the feeling of home and comfort that I want to achieve.”

Mendocino County High School Student Scholarship - Natalie Gutierrez Moreno

Natalie Gutierrez Moreno was born and raised in Mendocino county and is currently a senior enrolled in Fort Bragg High School. She is first-generation in a hispanic household and the first family member to go to college. She has a huge interest in art, writing/reading poetry, music, and designing. She plans to study Apparel Design and Merchandising at San Francisco State University.

Mendocino County High School Student Scholarship - Frej Barty

Frej Barty is a Mendocino/Fort Bragg local aspiring filmmaker and cinematographer. Always looking for new opportunities to learn filmmaking, he plans on making movies that inspire. He recently finished filming a segment for Felicia Rice’s Heavy Lifting, an art book release film. He is also a roller skating champ, Dungeons and Dragons lover, and nerd.

Frej writes, “For this conference I plan on working on the script for a short film I will produce later in the year. Scriptwriting is nearly the hardest part of filmmaking, but is also where meaning gets made. I hope this conference provides the opportunity to learn about how to finish a project, something I have been struggling with. I also hope to gain insight into techniques, structures, and how to imagine what a film will be like based only on words on a page.”

Link to YouTube account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy16Dd01FdvnQFJinxsRPfw

REGISTRATION FOR THE 2023 CONFERENCE IS NOW OPEN!

General Registration is now open. To secure your spot to the morning workshop of your choice, use the link below to register today! For more information on the conference, visit our site.

Photo by Mimi Carroll of Jean Chen Ho’s Short Fiction Workshop at the 2022 conference

MCWC 2023 CONTESTS

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions from March 15, 2023 until June 30, 2023. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in The Noyo Review. 

Photo by Mimi Carroll of at a conference Open Mic

JOIN US ONLINE WITH OUR SPRING SEMINARS

These seminars were developed in response to the demand for more MCWC programming all year round. They also constitute an important fundraiser for us to support our in person summer conference, so please spread the word about this series. Every registration helps us continue creating meaningful, prestigious, and high-quality literary programming for our community. We appreciate your support!

Allegra Pescatore - Writing Disability from the Inside Out

KEY DATES

MISS THE LAUNCH PARTY?

Check out the latest issue of The Noyo Review featuring writers and faculty from last year’s conference.

Q&A WITH MCWC 2023 MG/YA FACULTY, EMILY LLOYD-JONES

We caught up with Emily Lloyd-Jones, who will be leading the 2023 MG/YA Workshop. You can find more about her work via her website and @em_llojo on Instagram.

Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. She has a BA in English from Western Oregon University and a MA in publishing from Rosemont College. She resides in Northern California, where she enjoys wandering in redwood forests. Her young adult novels include Illusive, Deceptive, The Hearts We Sold, The Bone Houses, and The Drowned Woods. Her middle grade books include Unseen Magic and the forthcoming Unspoken Magic.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

For many of us lifelong readers, we discovered our love of books in childhood. I remember sinking into an old armchair with a tattered paperback and vanishing for hours into imaginary worlds. When I created my own fantastical worlds, it felt natural to return to that time in my own life. Also teenagers and kids are some of the best readers out there, and it’s a privilege to write for them.

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

I need my morning coffee before anything else. After that, I’m flexible.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

I grew up with myths and fairytales, and I discovered my love of fantasy with Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series. I also watched a lot of Star Trek: DS9 on our old tv, complete with tin-foil assisted antennae, when I was young - which is how I got into science fiction.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

Most writers carve their own paths. Writing is a very solitary endeavor. I love helping writers discover the tools to make their journey a little easier. We all have our own unique voice and I want to help writers tap into their own experiences and develop the confidence to trust their style.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

I hope each participant will leave the workshop with a better understanding of how emotion can guide one’s storytelling, how to craft riveting fiction for children/teens, and how to make a story unique to you. I also hope everyone walks away feeling inspired to create!

MCWC 2023 FACULTY NEWS

Rachel Howzell Hall is a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. 

Rachel Howzell Hall

Margaret Malone is a recipient of the 2023 Oregon Literary Fellowship. 

Margaret Malone

Carvell Wallace is a recipient of this year’s American Mosaic Journalism Prize. This award comes with an unrestricted cash prize of $100,000 in support of freelance journalists who display excellence in long-form narrative or deep reporting about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in America. 

Carvell Wallace

GOT NEWS?

Send it to us at: news@mcwc.org. Until next time, happy writing!

- The MCWC Team

JOIN US FOR OUR VIRTUAL NOYO REVIEW LAUNCH PARTY!

Join MCWC this Sunday, February 5, to celebrate the launch of the 2023 issue of the Noyo Review. Selected writers will read their pieces virtually via Zoom video. The event is free to attend. All are welcome!

DEADLINE REMINDER!

The deadline to apply for Scholarships and for the juried Master Class is 11:59 p.m. PT on February 15, 2023.

KEY DATES

Q&A WITH MCWC 2023 SPECULATIVE FICTION FACULTY, PLOI PIRAPOKIN

We caught up with Ploi Pirapokin, who will be leading the 2023 Speculative Fiction Workshop. You can find more about her work via her website and @ppirapokin on Twitter.

Ploi Pirapokin is the Nonfiction Editor at Newfound Journal, and sits on the board for Khōréō magazine, WP Now, and the Ragdale Foundation. Her work is featured in Tor.com, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Offing and more. She has received grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Creative Capacity Fund, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi, Kundiman and others. A graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a BA in Communication Studies and English from the University of San Diego. She currently teaches at the Writers Program at UCLA Extension, the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, Catapult, and the University of Hong Kong. Born in Thailand and raised in Hong Kong, she uses speculative fiction to explore postcolonial poetics, imperialism in Asia, and Pan-Asianism.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

I come from a big family and have lived with multiple relatives over the years, which meant my life was often consumed by tuning out the chores and favors I’ve been asked to do, and diving into my own imaginary worlds to escape obligations. I’ve always read non-naturalist fiction as a child, from Roald Dahl to Paul Jennings, to China Mieville, and Jeff VanderMeer, before I wondered: Can someone like me be represented in these stories? That’s when I began searching for more women of color writers, more writers who were influenced by non-Western mythologies and legacies, and more writers whose descriptions of worlds, norms, and characters resembled a reality I recognized and questioned about, perhaps sometimes a reality I cannot speak about in our real world with very real political consequences. I fell in love with escaping into worlds where philosophical questions are dramatized, and where the human experience is refracted and understood through a more expansive, and wonderous way.

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

I’ve often found my most impactful sentences arrive to me when I’m showering, driving, or powerwalking somewhere; when I’m not forcing myself to “do” or “make” something for an arbitrary deadline or for a piece of writing of mine to “achieve” something. Over the years, I’ve learned that being gentle with myself, and allowing my ideas and story patterns to form without coercion has resulted in organic and unique stories that only I can write. I have the most fun writing when I know I have unfettered, uninterrupted time, which is usually on the weekends when I can excuse myself from brunch, temple, or a family obligation. Space and setting influence my will to write the most. I need quiet, natural lighting, a refreshing minty candle, and a few poems to start typing. On the days I don’t write but I’m thinking about writing, I’ll read in that quiet time instead. I need to have an ending of a story or an essay clear in my mind before I can work on scenes, or characters that will lead me to that inevitability. And having something to look forward to at the completion of a writing project, like a dinner and drinks with friends, is always a strong motivator for completion.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

Heroes I have read, met, and adore include (but are not limited to) Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, Z. Z. Packer, Mat Johnson, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Yona Harvey. They inspire me with their work ethic, professionalism, but are also kind, and generous writers and teachers. For my own stories, my family, upbringing, and cultures are endless resources of stories. For example, I just found out my aunt had left our online family group chat with such stealth that no one knew she left, because she is beefing with another aunt. Now I have to find out why.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

I find it most fulfilling to watch someone discover something they didn’t realize about their writing in workshop is working. Whether it is a plot point that clicks, or that there are gems in their work that emotionally resonate with a larger group or people, or when they’ve proved their inner critic wrong after all, it’s an ebullient moment to celebrate.

My parents and grandparents, and relatives in both of their generations did not have educational opportunities that my siblings, cousins, and I did. A lot of their legacy is prevalent in the business empires they’ve built: hotels, sound and lighting companies, charter planes etc., and all of this exists in order to survive. I see my students as my legacy (cue some kind of majestic Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack here!) and I hope that my love for creating literature as an art form is passed down. I wouldn’t be who I am without my students.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

In my past life, I played women’s rugby for the Hong Kong national team and my position was a front row prop. My main role is to provide stability in the scrub, support the hooker in quickly winning the ball, and hoist the jumper as they compete for an offside ball. Usually, props are also the first to make tackles and hardly ever the ones to score.

I see my role as a workshop leader as I do my time playing rugby. I’m thrilled to provide structure, organization, and support with my expertise in writing, from my own experiences teaching and participating in workshops, so that we can all have fun while on the path to attaining our goals. I hope to also offer concrete and actionable tools for my workshop to support and sustain themselves as writers long after our magical weekend together.

COMMUNITY NEWS

Feeling stuck? Looking for more community? MCWC 2022 faculty, Jade Chang, is co-hosting an ideas retreat in Taos, New Mexico, which might be the experience you need! Use code CA-CAW! for up to $100 off shared rooms and up to $200 off singles.

GOT NEWS?

Send it to us at: news@mcwc.org. Until next time, happy writing!

- The MCWC Team

SCHOLARSHIP AND MASTER CLASS APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN!

Happy New Year! We hope your year is off to a good start. We are thrilled to announce our full schedule of faculty, as well as the morning workshops and afternoon seminars for our 2023 conference taking place August 3-5, 2023. Conference registration begins March 15, 2023 and will be open until June 30, 2023.

CALLING ALL WRITERS

Scholarship and Master Class applications are NOW OPEN! The deadline to apply for scholarships and for the juried Master Class is 11:59 p.m. PT on February 15, 2023.

KEY DATES

FUNDRAISING UPDATE

Thanks to all of our donors, we are 91% of the way to our fundraising goal! We’re so grateful to the following people for their support:

We’re working hard to put together our in-person conference as well as regular online events. Every gift matters, no matter the size. If you are able to support our work with a donation, click on the link below.

Q&A WITH MCWC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LISA LOCASCIO NIGHTHAWK

MCWC Executive Director Lisa Locascio Nighthawk has returned from parental leave and is excited to resume her duties at the helm of the Conference. We sat down with Lisa and asked her a few questions. 

What do you do outside of MCWC?

I am a writer, currently at work on my second novel, a significant portion of which is set in a place a lot like the Mendocino Coast. I also write a newsletter called Not Knowing How. In addition to my work with MCWC, I am the program chair of the low-residency Antioch MFA in Creative Writing, the only MFA program in the United States with a social justice mandate. And I recently became a parent, which is a joy and a mindboggling journey all its own!

How did you get involved with MCWC?

In 2010, while waiting for my then-fiancé (and now-ex-husband) to have his green card interview to come to the United States and marry me, I suffered a recurrence of my lifelong struggle with insomnia, which I treated by reading a Lonely Planet guide to coastal California when I woke up in the middle of the night. Our honeymoon was a road trip up Highway One from Los Angeles to Eureka. The day we drove along the Mendocino Coast made a huge impression on me, and I sought out a way to return to the area that had captivated me, which led me to find MCWC on the Poets and Writers website. I applied for a scholarship and won it, as well as the short fiction contest, at MCWC 2012. Three years later, then-MCWC Executive Director Karen Lewis invited me back as faculty for MCWC 2015. I returned to teach in 2017, and in 2018 I was invited to become executive director of the Conference. MCWC has changed my life in so many ways—I met my partner at the 2015 Conference—and it is the great pleasure and honor of my life to be its leader. 

What is your favorite thing about MCWC?

I love MCWC’s equitable, diverse, and accessible community, which is distinguished by its friendliness and the Conference's handmade vibe.

What are your goals for MCWC this year?

In the past few years, our Conference community has come so far and weathered so many challenges. I’m looking forward to celebrating those wins and deepening our commitment to serving our local community while we continue to build connections with writers near and far, from all walks of life.

Where do you find inspiration as a writer?

I am inspired by the grandeur and mystery of nature, the perplexing singularity of memory, the challenge and gift of relationships, and by the writing I encounter in the world. 

What are you reading?

I recently finished Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin, an unsettling novel about motherhood, loss, and home that moved me deeply. Right now I’m enjoying Age of Cage by Keith Phipps, a delightful history of the last several decades of Hollywood through the prism of Nicolas Cage’s career, The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey, which my sister gave me for Christmas, and City of Quartz by the late great Mike Davis, the brilliant Marxist history of Los Angeles I've lied about having read for years. It’s even better than everyone in my PhD program said it was!

Q&A WITH MCWC 2023 NONFICTION FACULTY, CARVELL WALLACE

Carvell Wallace is a New York Times bestselling author, writer, and podcaster. He is a regular contributor to Pitchfork, MTV News, the Huffington Post, and Slate, and has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, GQ, The Toast, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Esquire, Quartz, ESPN, and other publications. He is the creator and host of Finding Fred, an iHeart Media documentary podcast about the life of Fred Rogers; host of Closer Than They Appear, an Al Jazeera podcast about race and identity in America, and co-host of the Slate parenting podcast Mom & Dad Are Fighting. He is co-writer of the Slate parenting advice column, Care & Feeding. In 2019, he helped create the Sundance Institute exhibition Still Here, an immersive multimedia installation about mass incarceration, erasure, and gentrification in Harlem, New York. His memoir about trauma and recovery is due out on FSG in 2023. 

We sat down with Carvell Wallace, who will be leading the 2023 Nonfiction Workshop and asked him a few questions. 

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

I don't remember anything drawing me to write in this genre! I've just done it for as long as I can remember! I've also written fiction, poetry, and done some dramatic writing, but perhaps the thing that keeps me in creative nonfiction is that it's what they most reliably pay me for. I also think creative nonfiction is such a beautiful way of providing testimony of our human experience, which is how we relate to one another and validate our own being. And I think that including elements of poetry, fiction, and dramatic writing into creative non-fic allows the reader to vibrate more deeply with our work and storytelling, much in the same way that putting a good beat under a message makes it easier to sing along to! 

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

My primary ritual is procrastination. Cleaning, answering emails, dusting, hanging out with friends, cooking elaborate dishes, watching movies, fiddling with my vacuum, driving to far away locations to buy random things I saw on the internet once and don't really need. This is important processing and preparation time, time in which I think about the piece, turn the ideas over, get inspiration from movies, music, radio and podcasts. It's also the time in which the discomfort of not writing builds up so intensely that I have no choice but to finally begin writing! It's not pretty, but I guess it works!

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

I like visual art. I always see paintings, sculptures, and installations and think I'd like to write like that. I watch random films, noir from the 50's or indie films from the 90's and think I'd like to do what that work just did. I love my Black woman authors from the 80's and 90's: bell hooks, Edwidge Danticat, Kathleen Collins, Jamaica Kinkaid. Toni Morrison. Ntzoke Shange. Alice Walker. June Jordan was a huge personal influence on me as she let me sneak into her final class at UC Berkeley, even though I wasn't in college, I was just some rando who kept showing up, and eventually she started reading my work and dropping encouragement my way. But more important for me is her manifesto for Poetry of the New World where she talks about a deliberate balance of perception with vision; a balancing of sensory report with moral exhortation. I keep that one printed out above my desk. I also love the Roberta Flack version of The First Time (Ever I Saw Your Face.) Talk about paying attention! That song is love on a granular and cosmic level. I also keep a photo of her performing that song in my workspace. 

What do you love most about teaching writing?

I like seeing people realize that they have power. Like once they know how it works -- how language and storytelling and observation and insight work -- they start creating work at the next level you can see them start to look at their hands in amazement as if fire just shot out of there. It's just cool! 

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

Oh I just want everyone to have the ability to make work that they are proud of. Because that is an extremely enlivening feeling. 

COMMUNITY NEWS

Former MCWC faculty member Reyna Grande will be honored by Poets & Writers and will receive the 2023 Writers for Writers Award. 

Brew in Santa Rosa will host their weekly open mic on Tuesday, January 17. A group of 2022 MCWC participants will be attending to share their work! Open to the public. 

Location:

555 Healdsburg Avenue

Santa Rosa, CA

Timeline:

  • 5:30 p.m.: Sign-ups

  • 6:00 p.m.: Event start time

  • Runs until ~8:45 p.m.

GOT NEWS?

Send it to us at: news@mcwc.org. Until next time, happy writing! 

- The MCWC Team

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM MCWC!

This holiday season, we want to make sure you know how much we appreciate you. Thank you for being a part of our community!

Photo by Mimi Carroll

And thank you to the many generous supporters who have contributed this holiday season in support of our mission. If you haven’t yet made a contribution, you can still participate before the end of the year. In addition to giving by check or credit card, below are some other ways to show your support:

Shop with Amazon Smile 

Select Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference as your charity and you’ll support us every time you shop at Amazon.

Give the Gift of MCWC Seminars

You can buy one for $15 or all four for $50. 

Buy Our Merchandise

Need a comfy sweatshirt or a mug for your hot chocolate this winter? Shop at our store for yourself or for gifts for the writers in your life.

Photo by Mimi Carroll

EXPLORE MATCHING GIFTS

Many companies offer matching gift programs which can help stretch your support. If your company qualifies, it can double or sometimes even triple your initial gift. Contact your Human Resources Department to find out if your company qualifies.

Photo by Mimi Carroll

Make an End-of-Year Donation

Thanks to our generous donors, we’re 64% of the way to our goal of raising $35,000! We’re working hard to continue our tradition in our 34th year for an in-person conference. Can you help us by making a year-end gift?

the MCWC 2023 SCHEDULE IS COMING SOON!

Scholarship and Master Class applications for the 2023 conference will open on January 15. Check back to our site then for details on how to apply.

Q&A with 2023 master class FACULTY, Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore is an award-winning novelist, memoirist, journalist, and editor. She is the founding editor/publisher of the American Alternative Press Award-winning magazine Hip Mama and edited Portland Queer, which won a 2011 LAMBDA Literary Award. Her memoir The End of Eve (Hawthorne Books) was described by Tom Spanbauer as "an act of poetry damn close to sublime." About her experimental novel/memoir We Were Witches (The Feminist Press), Lidia Yuknavitch said,  “We Were Witches is one woman’s body refusing to become property, refusing to be overwritten by law or traditions . . . a triumphant body story. A singularly spectacular siren song.” Her most recent book, The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar (Microcosm Publishing) is out now. Her other books include The Hip Mama Survival Guide (Hyperion), Atlas of the Human Heart (Seal Press), How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead (Three Rivers), The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show (HarperOne), Hexing the Patriarchy (Hachette), and Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux).

We sat down with Ariel , who will be leading the 2023 Master Class and asked her a few questions.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

Desire & Resistance

I wanted to be myself and survive. I never felt like I could deal with having a normal job where I had to wear heels and smile at all the right times. Not for any longer than necessary, anyway. I did want a career—something I could nerd out on, an outlet more than a hobby. I wanted to be myself and survive.

I wanted to be a writer in the sense that I wanted to do every kind of writing—from novels to news reports to plays to whatever the lit star of the future would do—and I wanted to push feminist and anti-capitalist agendas and travel the world by train smoking cigarettes and wearing a tie when I felt like it but mostly just wearing what was next to my bed when I woke up. I wanted to be myself and survive.

I knew I wanted to publish, but independent publishing appealed to me just as much as collaborative and commercial publishing, so the markets felt secondary. I wanted to be a writer and survive. I wanted to be the architect of my own survival. 

(Do you see what I’m doing here? I keep reaching back into a previous sentence and cutting a clipping from it and planting that clipping to grow the next sentence forward. I keep planting it forward. That’s all I’m doing.)

When I dropped out of high school in Northern California and headed to China in the mid-1980s, I put “writer” as my occupation on the visa form. A fellow traveler in the consulate in then-British Hong Kong nudged me and whispered, “Put student. Governments don’t like writers.”

I changed it. I wanted to be a writer and survive. But I already knew I also wanted to be a writer in the sense that I wanted governments not to like me. I wanted to be a writer in the sense that I wanted liberation for myself and all people. 

I wanted to be myself and survive.

I wanted bay windows and a fireplace. 

I soon learned that one must be strategic and diligent to achieve the bohemian lifestyle. Even then, capitalism puts up a fight. No matter. I was in this for the long haul. I would be myself and survive.

(If we think of a story as a series of tensions between desire and resistance, a series of scenes animating that tension in an ever-escalating or ever-deepening pattern, then reaching back to clip and replant becomes a way to allow the pattern of the language itself to imitate the central pattern of the desire and resistance.)

Try this:

Start with the words “I wanted . . . ” and tell the story from there. What does the narrator want and what tells them or shows them they can’t or shouldn’t have it? Let the story become a forward-moving pendulum that swings between “yes, maybe you can have what you want” and “no, probably you can’t have that.” Whenever you get stuck, re-read your previous sentences and clip from them to regenerate. Replant to grow the next sentence.

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

I love numbers. I like word counts and page counts and my own invented deadlines that I adhere to as if they're universe-sent. Like most writers, I love it when the inspiration just ARRIVES, like something mystical, but I have found that I can only create the conditions for that magic with sit-your-butt-in-the-chair daily practice.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

Audre Lorde, Adrian Rich, Diane DiPrima, Ntozake Shange, Haruki Murakami, noir film, my teenage job at a art movie house in the Bay Area, my kids, and the anxiety inside me that only writing can seem to calm.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

I love reminding emerging writers that every aspect of their imagination has a place in literature, every aspect of their experience. I love that moment when we ask, together, wait, can we do this, and then we laugh and say YES OF COURSE!

I also love reminding emerging writers that everyone’s first draft is wonky.

I’m all for publishing before you’re ready, but you don’t have to publish everything you write and you certainly don’t have to publish early drafts of everything you write.

You’re going to have to learn discernment. It’s okay if this takes time.

Listening to NPR a few years back, they interviewed Alice Munro, you know, the Nobel Prize winner, and they asked her how many drafts she did and she said 80 or 100.

I thought about that and I figured I do about 40 or 50 drafts of everything I write if you count all the different ways I draft.

And that made me feel good, like maybe the only difference between me and Alice Munro was another 40 or 50 drafts.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

There’s nothing wrong with art that tracks “The Hero’s Journey,” but our experiences are so much more diverse, relational, non-heroic, embodied, anti-colonial, and magical. Let’s make new models for our stories—models and experiments that serve the true shapes of our experiences. Every writer has heard of Chekov’s gun, the one that, if it appears in the first chapter absolutely must go off in the second or third chapter, but I am more of a disciple of Maxine Hong Kingston who said, “let’s find another way to unload that gun.” Let’s get together, rewrite the myths we’ve been handed when they don’t serve us, and find un-tragic ways to unload Kingston’s gun.

Also! Everyone can publish! Let’s DO THIS.

Got news? 

Send it to us at: news@mcwc.org. 

We hope your holiday season is full of health and happiness. We’ll see you in 2023!

From,

All of us at MCWC

A FUNDRAISING UPDATE + RECOMMENDED READING & VIEWING

We’re More than Halfway to Our Fundraising Goal! Our 2023 Sustaining Community Fundraising Drive is off to a fantastic start! We’re so grateful to the following people for their generous donations:

  • Alix Sabin

  • Anonymous Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation

  • Brenda Yeager

  • Bryant Burkhardt

  • Carole Stivers

  • Catherine Marshall

  • Claire Fortier

  • Clay Craig

  • David & Laura Welter

  • Eliana Yoneda

  • Henrietta Bensussen

  • Jane Armbruster

  • Jasper Nighthawk & Lisa Locascio Nighthawk

  • Laura Welter

  • Michelle Peñaloza

  • Norma Watkins

  • Susan Bono

  • Susanna Janssen

  • Terry & Michael Connelly

Thanks to our generous donors, we’re 61% of the way to our goal of raising $35,000! We’re working hard to continue our tradition in our 34th year for an in-person conference. Can you help us by making a year-end gift? Every gift matters, no matter how big or small.

Your contribution to our 2023 Sustaining Community Fundraising Drive will enable us to continue building a community where literary dreams become a reality. We’re so looking forward to being back together next summer. Thanks for helping us get there!

With gratitude,

Georgina Marie Guardado, Interim Executive Director

Laura Welter, Vice President, MCWC Board of Directors

Miss the Fall Online Seminars? 

Don’t worry! You can catch up now by purchasing the recordings. You can buy one for $15 or all four for $50. 

December Reading List

This upcoming winter season may provide an opportunity to catch up on reading and we’ve got a list for you! Here are selected works from some of 2023’s MCWC faculty:

  • We Were Witches by Ariel Gore

    “You know that feeling when you crack open a brand new book and just by reading the first paragraph you can tell you’re about to go on a transformative journey? The kind of book that grabs you by the hand and says, hold on, we’ve got important work to do? A story that, at the risk of sounding very cliché because the word “witches” is, after all, in the title - leaves you spellbound? We Were Witches by Ariel Gore is that book… it is everything you didn’t know you were allowed to want in a narrative.” - Autostraddle

  • Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera

    “Munaweera's first novel is a breathtaking work of lyrical prose and vivid, transporting imagery. Part historical fiction, part family saga, it is most of all an ode to the Sri Lanka of the past and a hopeful wish for the country's future.” - Booklist (starred review)

  • Joy Enough by Sarah McColl

    "McColl's argument — that these small moments make up a life, that these small moments are life — is persuasive, and it is presented with humor and charm. This is a book about an extraordinary figure who was a housewife, mother and divorcée. The word 'mother' doesn’t entirely do her justice, and yet that’s what this memoir does: does her justice, in more than a summarizing word." - Rachel Khong, The New York Times Book Review

  • Mausoleum of Flowers by Daniel B. Summerhill

    “The assemblage of poems in Daniel Summerhill’s Mausoleum of Flowers creates an umbrella of memory through which language becomes the salve, the armor that allows these words to resurrect into something beautiful by living and reliving history. These poems are aware and cognizant of a social condition where silence is not an option, and yet, the poems are tender and loving—aesthetic beauty on the poet’s terms.” - Randall Horton, author of #289–128: Poems

  • Looking Back at Hong Kong: An Anthology of Writing and Art edited by Nicolette Wong - “The Ones Who Immigrated to Convoy Wharfs,” by Ploi Pirapokin

    Amidst the reshaping of Hong Kong’s social, cultural, political and ideological landscape, how do we re-envisage a city that exists in our memories? For those who have left their hometown—or the place they once called home—the question, “What does it mean to be a Hongkonger?” marks a constant shift between conflicting realities, identities and perceptions. Beyond the act of remembering, how do we reimagine our relationship with Hong Kong in the present and the future? In this collection of prose, poetry and photography by eighteen writers and artists, we see a gathering of reflections on the profound changes and subtle transitions that have transpired in Hong Kong, both in recent times and over the past decades. 

  • Bone Confetti by Muriel Leung

    “In this book of specters, there are so many sonorous, uncanny, and sorrowful lines that inspire me to think and feel as Leung meditates on the politics of mourning and the ineluctable impossibility of happiness. Bone Confetti inaugurates a unique voice that will gain lasting prominence in American letters. ” - Cathy Park Hong

  • The Sixth Man by Andre Iguodala, Carvell Wallace

    “This is a very special book—a sports memoir for the ages.” - Booklist   

  • People Like You by Margaret Malone

    “People Like You is a powerful debut by a writer of immense talent. In stories that shimmer and burn with beauty and sorrow, generosity and wit, Margaret Malone reveals the deepest, darkest, and most illuminating truths about what it means to be human. I love this book beyond measure.” - Cheryl Strayed (Wild) 

  • We Lie Here by Rachel Howzell Hall

    “Hall has long forged a singular path as a crime writer, blending an increasingly assured mastery of the genre with an abiding interest in lives too often relegated to the margins. Watching her peel back the layers of Palmdale to expose its diverse residents and problems feels particularly gratifying. Stellar.” - Los Angeles Times

  • The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

    "[Emily] Lloyd-Jones creates an evocative world of magic...and plays with the conventions of fairy tales and horror.... The story serves as a meditation on the complicated relationship between the living and the dead, combining fear, humor and enchantment in equal measure...” - Publishers Weekly

  • The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar by Ariel Gore

    When your dream and creative passion is to write, how do you succeed without selling out or selling yourself short? In this follow-up to her national bestseller How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead, Gore offers a lyrical call to literary revolution paired with practical exercises. Through her own experiences and interviews with other authors, publishers, and agents, she shows you how to chart your own creative education, vanquish shame and imposter syndrome, cast off oppression, cast a spell on your readers, step into your unique powers, and build your own literary community where respect and honesty reign—and where you can be a writer and survive.  

 

Q&A with MCWC 2023 Faculty, Daniel B. Summerhill

We caught up with Daniel B. Summerhill, who will be leading the 2023 Poetry Workshop. You can find more about his work via his website or @bennysummerhill on Instagram and Twitter.

Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and scholar originally from Oakland, CA. His work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Obsidian, Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. He is the author of Divine, Divine, Divine (Nomadic Press 2021), a semi-finalist for the Wheeler and Saturnalia Poetry Prizes and Mausoleum of Flowers (CavanKerry Press 2022). A two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee, he was invited by the U.S. embassy to guest lecture in South Africa in 2018 and earned fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts and The Watering Hole. He is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Monterey County.

What drew you to begin writing in your genre?

(condensed version) James Baldwin says you don't "become" a writer but rather, you discover you are and I like to think this is my case. Two folks are responsible for helping me "discover" that I was writer: I began writing in middle school. The first person who served as a catalyst for the poetry already being inside of me was my oldest sister, Tenesha Smith. She is a poet as well. When I was just 12 years old, I found a journal of poems she had written while she was in high school. All it took was for me to recognize what words were capable of. In particular, she wrote a poem called “Wishing Upon a 747” which detailed her realization that she wasn't wishing upon a star but a commercial airline. In the hood, stars aren’t visible, so her poem, a play on the “wishing on a star” idiom, showed me that I could also use my culture and my discourse to share that story, that vantage point.

Once I got to High School, I had an English teacher named Mr. Ross. We did a unit on poetry. We wrote poems and then we shared them with the class, mine was received well. The next day after class, he pulled me to the side, bought me a brand-new journal, and wrote in it: “so much talent, never waste it.”  Till this day, I still have that journal and I have been looking for Mr. Ross to let him know of the effect that day had on my career. It wasn't a huge gesture, but echoes the sentiment that small decisions of care can have monumental effects. This is true of poetry too!

What patterns, rituals or routines are crucial to your writing practice?

I'm not sure I have rituals or routines; however, a good cup of earl grey or chai tea with some lemon and honey always helps. Beyond a caffeinated drink, time to do nothing is a requirement of my writing practice. The bulk of my writing takes place outside of the page. So engaging people or places is always helpful. Beyond that, I also understand poetry as an artform of craftsmanship, so I'll often write a poem while I am actively resurfacing a kitchen table or repairing my backyard deck. I understand craft and decision-making through my hands, so use of my hands is a large part of my process.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

James Baldwin, James Baldwin, Jimmy Baldwin, Frank Ocean, Gary Clark Jr., Nina Simone, Kendrick Lamar, Miles Davis' album Kind of Blue ("Flamenco Sketches" in particular), Toni Morrison, Ocean Vuong, June Jordan and her relentless dedication to the "We," Langston Hughes, Truth Telling, Music and The Southern Ocean.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

I love revealing possibilities to students instead of offering constriction. I enjoy wrestling with language with them and helping them make the small decisions. I love using alternative means of teaching craft to connect with students who may not learn solely from "font and text." I enjoy empathizing and engaging in the refining of a story. Above all, I enjoy serving as a container for students to make a mess while searching for the poem in the rubble. 

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

I hope they understand that the poem is first a vehicle to some place else and that we must wield it recognizing this responsibility. I hope that they get an abundance of tools. I hope that they see each other and themselves more fully & freely and I hope that they leave excited about what a poem can be!

LAST CHANCE FOR FALL SEMINARS!

We have been busy this fall lining up our 2023 conference and hosting online seminars! In case you missed it, we’ve enjoyed seminars from Donna Freitas and Kate Folk and have Claudia Castro Luna and Anastacia-Renée coming up on November 5 and 12. If you haven’t yet, grab your spot!

Each seminar is two hours and includes a presentation, resources, and Q&A. They are also recorded, so if you purchase a ticket and aren’t able to attend as it happens, you will be emailed a link to view the recording within 24 hours.

These seminars constitute an important fundraiser for us to support our in-person summer conference, so please spread the word! Every registration helps us continue creating meaningful, prestigious, and high-quality literary programming for our community. We appreciate your support!

Silence and the Imagination with Claudia Castro Luna

Sir Isaac Newton rested under an apple when a falling fruit inspired him to formulate his theory of gravity. As writers, how do we sustain inspiration? Each of us may have a different response to this question but I'd argue that to seek silence is a good place to start. Silence is the blank page of the world. The song of trees, the music of things plays out in it. Silence nurtures the imagination, births theories, inventions, and metaphors. This is an exploration of how things come into our minds that later appear in our writing.

Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). Castro Luna’s newest collection of poetry, Cipota Under the Moon, is forthcoming April 2022 from Tia Chucha Press. She is also the author of One River, A Thousand Voices (Chin Music Press), the Pushcart nominated  Killing Marías(Two Sylvias Press) also shortlisted for WA State 2018 Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press). Her most recent non-fiction is in There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis (Vintage). Born in El Salvador she came to the United States in 1981. Living in English and Spanish, Claudia writes and teaches in Seattle on unceded Duwamish lands where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children.

The Main Course: Poets Writing About Food Through With The Haibun with Anastacia-Renée

This is a fact.

If you get right

down to it the new

unprocessed peanut

butter is no damn

good & you should

buy it in a jar as

always in the

largest supermarket

you know.

-Eileen Miles

In this workshop we will examine our cultural, familial, spiritual and communal connections to food. We will read and discuss food poetry written by: Li-Young-Lee, Jane Wong,  and Eileen Miles. Participants will create a poem using aspects around or rooted in food. We will “cook” together by writing responses to recipes, historical facts about spices, and sharing stories about food. Workshop participants will leave with one draft poem.

Anastacia-Reneé  is a writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx Speaker and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Black Ocean) and Forget It (Black Radish) and, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere and Sidenotes from the Archivist forthcoming from Amistad (an imprint of HarperCollins). Recently she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows." Anastacia-Renee was former Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Hugo House Poet-in-Residence (2015-2017) and Arc Artist Fellow (2020). Her work has been anthologized in: Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Furious Flower Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Afrofuturism, Black Comics, And Superhero Poetry, Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden, and Seismic: Seattle City of Literature. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Torch, Poetry Northwest, Cascadia Magazine, Ms. Magazine and others. Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Ragdale, Mineral School, and The New Orleans Writers Residency. 

CATCHING UP WITH INTERIM BOARD PRESIDENT, LAURA WELTER

Photo by Mimi Carroll

How did you get involved with MCWC?

My friend Norma Watkins bought me a cup of coffee one morning a few months after I’d retired. She said her days on the MCWC board were coming to an end, and would I join up and take over her “volunteer manager” role? She said, “You’re not a writer, but you’re a reader.” I had heard Norma talking about this great conference for 30 years, so I knew it was something worthwhile.

What is your favorite thing about MCWC?

The Thursday evening gathering, when I ask conference attendees how their first day went. The positive responses have been unanimous.

What are you excited about for MCWC this year?

Meeting the faculty. They tend to be interesting people who feel ready to socialize in this setting. Our small town makes it an easy place to relax. No traffic jams to struggle through, so plenty of time to interact with other writers.

Where do you find creative inspiration? 

In my yard. I love succulents, especially, and grow all kinds of them. They look like sculptures and are self-reliant. My yard provides me with endless opportunities to be creative while discovering what nature has in mind for these plants. Then I throw in a smattering of yard art, if my collection of 41 bowling balls can be called a smattering.

What are you reading?

I am re-reading one of my favorites by Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin. It’s two stories in one, and she is masterful at weaving them together. This month my book group read The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray about the black woman who passed for white throughout her amazing career as the curator for J.P. Morgan’s library. Another recent read, Joy Enough by Sarah McColl, was a well-crafted memoir that told of the end of her marriage, happening simultaneously with the end of her mother’s life. I look forward to meeting Sarah at our MCWC 2023 conference as she will be teaching the memoir workshop. Finally, I recently traveled to Maine and had some very long stretches to breeze though two John Grisham novels. Perfect for airport layovers!

SUBMIT YOUR WORK

Lake County publication, The Bloom, invites literary submissions. Contributing writers are paid. Submit your work here.

OTHER NEWS

MCWC 2022 participant Jasmine Sawers’ debut collection, The Anchored World, is now available to purchase via Rose Metal Press.

Don't forget, if you have news you'd like to share with the MCWC community, please send it to news@mcwc.org. 

FUNDRAISING FOR MCWC 2023 IS UNDERWAY!

As we finalize our plans for next year’s conference, we need your support! If you’d like to help support the organization or a scholarship, please consider making a donation. 

Stay tuned for our next 2023 faculty update in December. Until next time, happy writing!

- The MCWC Team

ANNOUNCING ONLINE SEMINARS!

In response to the demand for more MCWC programming all year round, we have put together a slate of incredible fall online seminars! 

Each seminar will be two hours and will include a presentation, resources, and Q&A. Registration is $40 each. Seminars will be hosted through Zoom video. Seminars will also be recorded, so if you purchase a ticket and aren’t able to attend as it happens, you will be emailed a link to view the recording within 24 hours.

These seminars also constitute an important fundraiser for us to support our in-person summer conference, so please spread the word about this series. Every registration helps us continue creating meaningful, prestigious, and high-quality literary programming for our community. We appreciate your support!

Saturday, October 15 - 12pm - 2pm PT

The War Still Within: Poems of the Korean Diaspora with Tanya Ko Hong

Tanya Ko Hong (Hyonhye) 고현혜, a bilingual poet, considers her writing a product of two minds. Weaving together cultures, her poetry gives voice to multiple generations of Korean and Korean-American women. Her collection The War Still Within contains 36 poems, including a well-researched, vividly imagined sequence of six poems based on experiences of Korean “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII. Tanya will read “Comfort Woman” and we will discuss how history turns to poetry—how untold stories can be poetry and play. She will share tips for writing in both Korean and English, while exploring how translation affects the creative process. We will analyze her poem, “The Gap,” as an example of how different languages display different minds. Every writer in the seminar will leave with their own “gap” poem!

Saturday, October 22 - 12pm - 2pm PT

Write with Urgency: The Novel & The Memoir with Donna Freitas

We are all reluctant readers of a sort, and often the books we love most are the ones that grab us and won’t let us go. Just about any story can grab a reader this way if framed well. Whether writing a novel or a memoir, I believe that all of us need to find the urgency, the drive, the momentum in the story we want to tell, and in the storytelling itself. If we can locate the urgency in our characters’ lives, relationships, choices, if we can do this in our own story, then we can create a narrative that keeps readers turning pages. But part of locating that urgency involves digging deep inside ourselves, to discover the personal desires that are driving us to write. This seminar will focus on these elements of storytelling, the centrality of the personal when we decide on a new project. We'll also discuss how to set up the beginning of the novel or memoir to grab the reader and hold her there. 

Saturday, October 29 - 12pm - 2pm PT

Building Out a Writer’s Life with Kate Folk

The act of writing is a solitary endeavor, but a writing life is built from a dialogue between the solitary act and engagement with a larger community of writers and readers. Publishing is an important piece of this dialogue for many writers, though it is by no means the only one. In my experience, each piece builds on the others in unexpected and exciting ways. This seminar will explore avenues of getting your work out in the world, growing your writing community, and applying for opportunities that can support your creative practice. We’ll go over tips and best practices for submitting to journals, and discuss other opportunities, like writing residencies, conferences, reading series, and fellowships. We’ll also discuss how to create a writing life that feels meaningful and sustainable over the long term, amid the inevitable setbacks and rejections all writers experience. 

Saturday, November 5 - 12pm - 2pm PT

Silence and the Imagination with Claudia Castro Luna

Sir Isaac Newton rested under an apple when a falling fruit inspired him to formulate his theory of gravity. As writers, how do we sustain inspiration? Each of us may have a different response to this question but I'd argue that to seek silence is a good place to start. Silence is the blank page of the world. The song of trees, the music of things plays out in it. Silence nurtures the imagination, births theories, inventions, and metaphors. This is an exploration of how things come into our minds that later appear in our writing.

Saturday, November 12 - 12pm - 2pm PT

The Main Course: Poets Writing About Food Through With The Haibun with Anastacia-Renée

This is a fact.

If you get right

down to it the new

unprocessed peanut

butter is no damn

good & you should

buy it in a jar as

always in the

largest supermarket

you know.

-Eileen Miles

In this workshop we will examine our cultural, familial, spiritual and communal connections to food. We will read and discuss food poetry written by: Li-Young-Lee, Jane Wong,  and Eileen Miles. Participants will create a poem using aspects around or rooted in food. We will “cook” together by writing responses to recipes, historical facts about spices, and sharing stories about food. Workshop participants will leave with one draft poem.

Catching Up with Interim Executive Director Georgina Marie Guardado

How did you get involved with MCWC?

I attended MCWC’s poetry workshop in 2020 as a recipient of the Anne G. Locascio scholarship. The following year, I became a scholarship judge for the conference, then a Board member, Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, and an editor for the Noyo Review team. 

What do you do outside of MCWC?

Outside of MCWC, I am the Literacy Program Coordinator for the Lake County Library where volunteer tutors are matched with adult learners to improve their literacy skills. I am the Poet Laureate of Lake County for 2020-2024. I am also the Literary Editor for The Bloom, a news site in Lake County with a positive twist, a contributing writer for Antioch University’s Common Thread News, and President of WordSwell Nonprofit, a literary arts organization founded by Bay Area poets and writers brought together by Clive Matson, a Beat Generation poet and creative writing teacher who is looking to leave behind a haven for the literary and arts community. I also foster rescue dogs!

What are your goals for MCWC this year?

My goal is to continue expanding on the sense of inclusivity by welcoming faculty, participants, volunteers, and more, who are from all walks of life, including different racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, ranges of physical capabilities, and different literary genres including writers who are in all different stages of being a writer. This is already what MCWC is built on, so I want to continue this while supporting the ideas and work of our current Board of Directors, sustaining members, faculty, and participants.

What are you reading right now?

Too many books at one time! I have as many TBR lists as I have To-Do lists. Right now I’m slowly reading The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon, because I don’t ever want it to end. I’m also reading Everyday Mojo Songs of the Earth by Yusef Komunyakaa. Next will be books by all of our 2023 faculty!

“LIFE-GIVING. REFRESHING. RENEWING”: OUR SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS ON WHAT MCWC 2022 HAS MEANT TO THEM

In case you missed it, MCWC 2022 was back in person and was an overwhelming success! The 33rd annual Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference was a vibrant and energetic three days of workshops, seminars, open mics, and readings that carried on great MCWC traditions and brought many new writers and friends into our inclusive writing community. 

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, MCWC was able to fund 23 scholarships for this year’s conference, which was held in person from August 4 - 6. Our increased housing stipends allowed us to welcome writers from all over the U.S.A. to the conference this year - from New York City to Hawaii!

Doug Fortier

This year, in memory of Doug Fortier, a group of writers fundraised the Doug Fortier Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction, which was awarded to Muriel Leung.

Muriel, who will be joining MCWC as faculty in 2023, came in from Oakland. She said, “I was very excited to be in a workshop space again and to have the opportunity to work on my short story collection. The scholarship enabled me to afford an experience that would have prevented me from attending otherwise.” 

She left the conference feeling “inspired.” 

“I'm grateful for my class with Ayize who encouraged us to think about our writing life alongside our day jobs, to always insist on making time for it. While other conferences may push the agenda of always needing certain opportunities to make writing happen, MCWC is very much of the attitude that writing happens all the time and that we need not put it off anymore. This encouragement is invaluable to me.”

Ayize Jama-Everett and Muriel Leung at MCWC 2022 - photo by Mimi Carroll

Natalie Rose-Gove, who won the Thank You To Healthcare Workers Scholarship and participated in the Emerging Writers’ Workshop said, “My experience at MCWC was fabulous. Life-giving. Refreshing. Renewing. A conference which squashed the real mess of imposter syndrome. I met lifelong acquaintances who I hope to see next year. I saw the Pacific Coast in a way I never knew existed. I wept at the beauty and grandeur of what felt like a movie. I could not have been here without the scholarship.” 

Natalie and the Emerging Writers’ Workshop at MCWC 2022 - photo by Mimi Carroll

Ebony Haight, who was selected for a Terry Connelly First Taste Scholarship for the Master Class, said that she is “grateful for the experience.” 

Ebony and the Master Class Workshop at MCWC 2022 - photo by Mimi Carroll

“I can confidently say that without the support I received I would not have attended the conference. I was glad to see the real diversity of conference participants, and was proud that I added to that mix. The housing stipend allowed me to choose to stay close by, at a place where I felt comfortable, which contributed to my overall ability to participate in, enjoy, and reap the full benefits of the conference.” 

She says, “I'm so glad spaces like yours exist.” 

Jessica and new friends at MCWC 2022 - photo by Mimi Carroll

Jessica Z. who received an Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship said that “it was a transformative experience.” 

“Had it not been for the housing stipend, I absolutely would not have been able to attend MCWC 2022, which was my first-ever writing conference. I left the conference feeling the way I move through the world both held and affirmed in the way that comes from being seen by others I find kinship with, and transformed. My world has expanded by so much since attending.”

She describes her experience as “life changing.” 

“I am so thankful for the intimate and care-filled nature of MCWC, and each day felt a lifetime in that it was full and dense with so many insightful and thoughtful teachings, comments, lines of prose, and questions I'm still processing. I was also touched by the intergenerational friendships I could make, with high schoolers who I saw myself in, and with folks in their 30s/40s/50s/60s who demonstrated so much rigor and joy in their writing and in their lives, who modeled to me who I hope to be like as I progress through my life. Life-changing, I've felt certain in my practice, but there's a sense of ease and grounding I feel after MCWC, that there is nothing for me to do but to keep going (writing, reading, listening, editing).”

Designed to make our Conference accessible to writers from diverse backgrounds and to reward writing of outstanding merit, our scholarships are largely funded by generous individual donors. If you would like to fund a scholarship, please contact us. You can find details on how to make a general donation in support of the MCWC here. Thank you for your support!

We did it!

Dear MCWC followers, 

We returned to an in-person format for our 33rd Annual Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference and it was a success well worth the wait. We had a vibrant and energetic three days of workshops, seminars, open mics, and readings that carried on great MCWC traditions and brought many new writers and friends into our inclusive writing community. 

Photo credit: Mimi Carroll

We send resounding gratitude for our 2022 faculty (not in order of appearance): Faith Adiele (Memoir Master Class), Pablo Cartaya (MG/YA), Naomi Hirahara (Mystery), Ayize Jama-Everett (Speculative Fiction), Miah Jeffra (Emerging Writers), Lydia Kiesling (Novel), Michelle Peñaloza and Georgina Marie Guardado (Poetry), Karen Tei Yamashita (Keynote Speaker); Jonah Straus (Literary Agent), Jade Chang (Author), Mary Burns (Author), and Lorraine Hee-Chorley (Historian).

Photo credit: Mimi Carroll

Our Pathways to Publishing and Pitch Panels were especially enjoyed by participants and faculty. We can’t forget to mention the incredible food options provided by The Brickery, Pilón Kitchen, Chef Oscar and her team, and more. 

We had the pleasure of hosting over 60 participants who came from many different locations around the United States and beyond, including the Mendocino Coast, Ukiah, Eureka, Lake County, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, Oregon, Colorado, Canada, and more!

Photo credit: Mimi Carroll

Here are some reviews from our wonderful 2022 participants:

  • “Right from the registrars, organizers, MC's, faculty, board and cooks, the whole conference is put on spectacularly well.”

  • “MCWC — which I chose by the randomness of it still having spots available — is my first writers’ conference and I think my experiences here will stay with me for the rest of my life! It may have been chosen at random, but I think fate also played a hand because I think this was exactly where I was supposed to be at this point in my life.”

  • “I was appreciative and still am about the care and concern regarding COVID. Eating outside and wearing masks indoors was a great way to try to keep us all safe. Had it not been that way, I would have felt very anxious. Thank you for not only setting the COVID protocols, but for modeling and enforcing them.”

  • “The conference provided a fantastic set of offerings with a great mix of ways to engage - I plan to return and recommend it to folks in my various writing communities since I think it was an excellent event other writers would appreciate.”

Photo credit: Mimi Carroll

We couldn’t have done this without our participants, faculty, volunteers, donors, and sustaining members. 

Volunteers help bartend at MCWC 2022

Photo credit: Mimi Carroll

Our Executive Director, Lisa Locascio Nighthawk, and Operations Manager, Alexander Matthews, were instrumental in the planning of this year’s conference, as were our Board of Directors, Kara Vernor, Laura Welter, Aime McGee, Anna Levy, Eliana Yoneda, Michelle Peñaloza, Vincent Poturica, Sheba Brown, Georgina Marie Guardado, Justine Gomes, and Elaina Erola (not in order of appearance). 

MCWC 2022 Board at the Conference

Photo credit: Mimi Carroll

We also warmly welcome our new Interim Executive Director, Georgina Marie Guardado and Operations Manager, Patty West!

Georgina Marie Guardado is the Poet Laureate of Lake County, CA for 2020-2024, and a Poets Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. She is the Literary Editor for The Bloom, a contributing writer for Antioch University’s Common Thread News, and the Literacy Program Coordinator for the Lake County Library. In 2020, she was an Anne G. Locascio scholar with the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, and a Brereton Scholar for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference in 2021. Her work has appeared in The Bloom, Noyo Review, Poets.org, Humble Pie Magazine, Gulf Coast Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, and The Muleskinner Journal, and is forthcoming in Colossus: Freedom and Two Hawks Quarterly. 

Patty West is a producer and arts educator based in California. For 10 years, she led filmmaking programs at the American Film Institute and now serves as the Digital Course Director for the Sundance Institute. As a Producer/Executive Producer, her feature film credits include Some Girl(s) (2013), Addicted to Fresno (2015), and They (2017). West is a Chicago native and holds a B.S. from Northwestern University, an M.F.A. from the AFI Conservatory and an Executive M.B.A. from Quantic School of Business & Technology.

Photo credit: Karen Lewis

We are already looking forward to next year when the 2023 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference will run from August 3-5, 2023. We’ve been receiving wonderful feedback and many good ideas for how we can continue to improve our Conference and its offerings. We are delighted to announce that we have already confirmed seven faculty members for 2023, including our Keynote Speaker and Master Class instructor Ariel Gore, Daniel B. Summerhill (Poetry), Nayomi Munaweera (Novel), Ploi Pirapokin (Speculative Fiction), Sarah McColl (Memoir), Carvell Wallace (Nonfiction), and Muriel Leung (Emerging Writers)!

Stay tuned for more updates!

Two scholarships to honor Doug Fortier at MCWC 2022

In April 2022, our community lost our friend Doug Fortier, a long-time Conference participant and advocate for writing on the Mendocino Coast. Two scholarships to this year’s conference have been created in his memory.

The WMC Doug Fortier Scholarship

Doug played a central role in the Writers of the Mendocino Coast, the local chapter of the state-wide organization, the California Writers' Club. In honor of Doug’s love for MCWC and the Coast’s writing community, WMC sponsored a scholarship for one of its members to attend the conference. It has been awarded to the poet Karin C. Uphoff.

Karin is author of Botanical Body Care; Herbs and Natural Healing for your Whole Body (2007), and writes a monthly column, Words on Wellness for Lighthouse Peddler Newspaper. She has published poetry in Noyo River Review (2015) plus Writers of the Mendocino Coast anthologies Hooked (2018), Erosion (2021) and Borders (2022).

Karin writes: “Although my career in healthcare continues to require I write informational non-fiction, the language of my heart is poetry. I am creating a chapbook and eager for guidance and the exchange of feedback from the diversity of voices that MCWC offers.”

The Doug Fortier Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction

In memory of Doug, a group of writers fundraised the Doug Fortier Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction. It was awarded to Muriel Leung.

Murel is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers, and currently serves as the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Southern California where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow.

Muriel writes: “I am excited to work on a linked speculative short story collection set in New York City during the sudden appearance of weekly acid rainstorms. In the midst of this ongoing disaster is a queer love story between two Asian American women, navigating the world of ghosts, heartbreak, lost opportunities, and the space between life and afterlife. I look forward to developing this collection further with the support of a writing community at MCWC.”

Thank you to generous donors who funded the Doug Fortier Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction:

Jane Armbruster
Cassia Brill
Debbie DeVoe
Jamie Ericson
Chris Hall
Leata Holloway
Shirin Leos
Alicia London
Cameron Lund
Amy Lutz
Marjorie Miles
Lisa Manterfield
Cady Owens
Ginny Rorby
Jenn Siebert
Carole Stivers
Dana Wagner
Mike Winn
 

Congratulations to both scholarship winners! We hope you’ll join them at the conference from August 4-6; registration closes on June 30.

Remembering Doug

We are collecting remembrances of Doug Fortier to be published in the MCWC literary magazine Noyo Review. Please send your remembrance—in any writing or visual format—to noyoreview@gmail.com by July 1. 

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE MCWC 2022 SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS

We are thrilled to welcome this year’s scholarship winners to MCWC 2022! We received a record number of scholarship applications and the following writers were selected out of a highly competitive field. We asked them to tell us a little about their current project and/or what they hope to get out of their conference experience. If you would like to join these writers at MCWC, be sure to register for the workshop of your choice by June 30.

Scholarships strengthen the MCWC community by bringing in talented individuals who may not be able to attend otherwise. These opportunities would not be possible without the support of our generous donors. We cannot thank them enough!

ALBERTINA THOLAKELE DUBE SCHOLARSHIP FOR YOUNG WRITERS

We were delighted to award this scholarship to 12 young writers.

Clockwise, from top left: Kathryn Hargett-Hsu, Julie Ae Kim, Alice Ehlers, Kaitlin Harness, Sidney Regelbrugge, huiying b. chan, Veasna Has and Ryan Artes

Kathryn Hargett-Hsu is an MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. Born and raised in Alabama, she is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, Belgrade Art Studio, and UAB. Most recently, she received the Barksdale-Maynard Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize. Find her in TaiwaneseAmerican.org, Muzzle Magazine, Cherry Tree, Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere.

Kathryn says: "I'm working on my first poetry collection, CROCODILE, which centers the Asian American woman body and metamorphosis. At the conference, I hope to investigate ecopoetics and draw inspiration from the beautiful Mendocino Coast. I'm excited to join the MCWC community and to learn from everyone this summer!" 

Julie Ae Kim is an organizer and writer from Queens, NY. She is an incoming MFA student in Creative nonfiction at Ohio State University. She is the co-founder of the Asian American Feminist Collective and the co-editor of the Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities Project at The Margins. Currently, she is working on a memoir on sexuality, desire and Asian America.

Alice Ehlers is a writer and published author born and raised in Mendocino County. She is currently a sophomore at the Mendocino Community High School, where she has the freedom to pursue her aspirations of building a life out of her writing. 

Alice writes: “Recently, I've been trying my hand at writing short fiction. I am also really excited to workshop a couple of my poems, as well as meet other young and ambitious writers!“

Kaitlin Harness is a senior at Developing Virtue Girls' School at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, where she is currently studying AP English Literature and Composition after realizing a deep interest having taken AP English Language the previous year. 

Kaitlin writes: “Having started my study of literature and poetry, I am very excited to learn from experienced writers and gain more depth in my own writing. I look forward to meeting everyone and reaching new poetic heights in such a creative environment.”

huiying b. chan is a visionary poet, cultural worker, and educator from Brooklyn, NY on Lenape Land. huiying’s writing explores what is forged in diaspora, and charts how we heal from societal wounds. huiying’s work is published in Best New Poets 2021, The Offing, and The Margins. He has received fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, VONA/Voices, DreamYard, and elsewhere. As a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow at Rutgers University-Newark, huiying is working on a manuscript that explores matriarchal legacies and self-remembrance. For more, visit huiyingbchan.com.

huiying writes, “At the conference, I plan to work on ‘Speak to Me in Toisanese,’ a hybrid poetry and prose memoir project that uses Toisanese words as an organizing principle to tell the stories of matriarchs and elders in my family across generations. In its storytelling, it is a project that preserves the culture of a language decreasing in speakers with each generation.”

Veasna Has is a writer and nonprofit administrator based in Queens, New York, by way of Long Beach, California. She was a 2020 Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellow in creative nonfiction and is most interested in storytelling through written, cinematic, and dance mediums. Her writing has been featured in 433 Mag and the Asian American Feminist Collective's First Times collection. Her work explores themes of family and cultural identity, rooted in her Cambodian American upbringing and an ongoing effort to define what that means.

Veasna writes: "I'm looking forward to meeting and connecting with other writers after a bit of a hiatus from producing work, and to enjoying a creative recharge by the sea, on my home coast."

Ryan Artes is an adoptee, activist, novelist, and poet. He self-published his debut poetry chapbook, After Midnight, in May 2021. He hosts two monthly events for adoptees only, a generative writing workshop and an open mic. Ryan is simultaneously creating and pursuing his DIY MFA.

Ryan writes: “I will continue to develop my third poetry manuscript, which offers a model of healing for queer Indian adoptees. After a lifetime of seeking such a model, I have realized one does not exist. I aim to begin filling this void by sharing my narrative.”

Sidney Regelbrugge is a Junior at Point Arena High School.

Sidney writes: “Currently, I am the Mendocino County Youth Poet Laureate and will be in to February 2023. With my writing in my current Laureate position, I will be publishing a collective book of poetry, as well as having countless county-wide readings. I hope to expand my writing into a different genre of literature. I am also quite looking forward to being around all sorts of writers.”

Jessica Zhou (she/they) is a writer, researcher, and artist rooting in San Francisco. She'd love to talk to you about digital diaspora, each of our cyborgnesses, and finding one another online. Her writing has been supported by Kundiman, Kearny Street Workshop, Southern Exposure, and Friends with Benefits.

Jessica writes: “I’m so excited to dedicate time and attention to hanging out and learning with fellow writers! My speculative non/fiction collection involves nonlinear narratives of dreams and memories, so I'm looking forward to honing in on writing that can be truth-telling and myth-making all the same in Jean Chen Ho's short fiction workshop, and in the rest of the incredible faculty's afternoon seminars.”

Frej Barty is an aspiring filmmaker, cinematographer, and storyteller. Always looking for new opportunities to learn filmmaking, he plans on making movies that inspire. He interviewed Jamie Heinemann of the MythBusters. He is also a roller skating champ, Dungeons and Dragons lover, and nerd.

Frej writes: “For this conference I plan on working on the script for a film. There is not point to all of the wonders of cinematography without a good story to tell. I am super exited to see what the conference can do to the script, and how the film will turn out. The goal isn’t to make the best film ever, but to develop skills for me and others who will work on the project.”

Lizeth Granados is currently enrolled at the Mendocino Community High School.

Lizeth says: “I write a quiet lot of poetry when I have very intense emotions. Whether it be feeling sad, nostalgic or happy. I plan to work on poetry, and I hope to get better at it as well as learn new ways of creating it. I’m very excited to meet everyone and hear about their poetry.”

Phannarai Inkun is a writer and a student going into their Sophomore year. Originally born in Thailand, they have been writing for years because of their love for storytelling. They have written in many different genres such as romance, fanfiction, post-apocalyptic, and fantasy. They would love to try their hand at more.

Phannarai writes: “I hope to get more writing experience out of this workshop. My love of storytelling stems from the fact that it creates strong communities and lasting connections between readers.”

From left: Phannarai Inkun, Lizeth Granados, Frej Barty and Jessica Zhou

TERESA CONNELLY FIRST TASTE SCHOLARSHIP

This scholarship has been awarded to two writers who are attending the conference for the first time.

Ebony Haight (left) and Tom Gammarino (right).

Ebony Haight is a 2022 Periplus fellow and graduate of The University of Oregon writing program, with work appearing in KQED, Good Company Magazine, and This Long Thread: Women of Color on Craft, Community, and Connection. You can find her on the web at ebonyhaight.substack.com. 

She’s currently working on a speculative memoir about transracial adoption and will use her time at the conference to workshop and refine this project.

Tom Gammarino’s most recent novel is King of the Worlds. Recent shorter works have appeared in The Tahoma Literary Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Writer, Entropy, SFS Stories, and Hawai'i Pacific Review, among others. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a PhD in English from the University of Hawai'i, and he teaches Science Fiction, Magical Realism, and Jazz Literature to high school kids in Honolulu.

Tom writes: “I have been teaching and writing science fiction for many years, though all of my schooling was focused on literary fiction (which I also love). I'm looking forward to working with Ayize Jama-Everett, unapologetically, on genre stuff.”

Anne G. Locascio Scholarship

This scholarship was awarded to two writers whose work has grappled with intergenerational trauma, family history, and/or homelessness.

Ida Soon-ok Hart (left) and Danny Thanh Nguyen (right).

Ida Soon-ok Hart is a Korean War baby currently living in Los Angeles.  She is a retired educator writing her memoir.  She was a Writer’s Digest competition winner in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and has been published in 3 anthologies for women of color and will be included in Nonwhite and Woman to be released in September 2022.  She volunteers sponsoring women in recovery from alcoholism and addiction.  She can be contacted by email:  Idahart1@gmail.com

Ida writes: “During the 2022 Mendocino Writers Conference, I will be workshopping excerpts from my memoir The Camel Hump Mountains of Sangok Dong, the part focusing on my year of teaching English in Seoul while searching for my mother.  Also, maybe, a new short story I’m currently writing, “This One Was Born in Zion” (Psalms 87:6 – The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: ‘This one was born in Zion.’) upon finding out the Korean Registry had removed my name from their books.”

Danny Thanh Nguyen (they/she/he equally) has published stories and essays in GQ, them. magazine, The Offing, The Journal, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. In the last year, they have been awarded fellowships and grants from San Francisco Arts Commission, Caldera Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Ucross Foundation. Her column on kink and leather culture appears in the international social network platform Recon. Find him on social media @engrishlessons.

Danny writes: “Because I've been solely focused on completing my queer kinkster memoir/essay collection, I'm excited to shift gears at MCWC reconnecting with fiction by returning to my Southeast Asian folklore-inspired magical realism story collection, which I haven't touched in over two years.”

Nella Larsen Memorial Scholarship

Maryam Ghadiri is a researcher, a life-coach and a storyteller. As a researcher, she studies and writes about how children interact with nature and learn science. As a life coach, she works with mission driven individuals who want to have a bigger impact and transform their life by finding their voice and redefining their personal stories. Her love for writing and storytelling grew after her immigration to the United States about 10 years ago, when she found her healing in the process of writing about her childhood memories, documenting her experiences and feelings in a new academic system and exploring her identity in a new land that now she calls “home”.

Currently, she is in a journey of writing her memoir called Alien from Iran in which she shares the story about her identity as a first generation Iranian immigrant and how it was formed and transformed during her time in a land far away from the place she was born and raised. In this conference, she is excited and grateful to meet amazing writers, co-create a creative space and learn from everyone and enjoy every moment.

Marion Deeds Scholarship

Keish Kim (she/her/hers) is a first-generation transnational feminist writer. Keish’s writing focuses on (dis)ability and citizenship, and she studies literary and cultural texts by queer and undocumented im/migrant artists. In her spare time, you can find her in the ceramic studio, in front of the oven, or going on bike rides. She is also a co-host of A Revolutionary Love Letter podcast (https://linktr.ee/migrantloveletters). 

Keish writes: “I am excited to be in a community with writers across genres & forms. I am looking forward to workshopping my writing in Jean Chen Ho's Short Fiction workshop.”

Thank You To Healthcare Workers Scholarship

Natalie Rose Gove is a writer, poet, and performer who works in acupuncture, caregiving, and waits tables for the brunch crowd. A former public school teacher and mentor, she is currently working towards receiving her MFA from Queens University Charlotte, where she is studying three genres in their Latin American Track. She will be attending a writing residency this July in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is currently working on sifting through piles of papers under the bed and planning her move this summer to New Orleans.

Natalie writes: “I am revising pieces from a collection of short nonfiction that focus on trauma in the roots and landscapes of memory from childhood until now. I am excited to work with Anastacia-Reneé on cutting into these words and creating a hybrid work that will become a healing memoir.”

Frances Andrews

Sarah Wang is has written for the London Review of Books, American Short Fiction, BOMB, The New Republic, n+1, and Harper’s Bazaar. She is a 2021-2022 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, the winner of a Nelson Algren prize for fiction, and a former fellow at the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Witness Program, and Kundiman’s Mentorship Program. See more of her writing at wangsarah.com and follow her on Twitter @sarah_wwang.

Octavia Butler Scholarship for Speculative Fiction

Jasmine Sawers is a Kundiman fellow and Indiana University MFA alum whose fiction appears in such journals as AAWW's The Margins, Foglifter, SmokeLong Quarterly, and more. Their work has won the Ploughshares Emerging Writers' Contest and the NANO Prize, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Their debut collection, The Anchored World, is forthcoming through Rose Metal Press in fall of 2022. They serve as an associate fiction editor for Fairy Tale Review. Originally from Buffalo, Sawers now lives outside St. Louis. Learn more at jasminesawers.com and @sawers on Twitter.

Jasmine writes: “As I prepare to write a very queer, very magical, and very Thai American novel, I am eager to learn more about the craft of worldbuilding in speculative fiction, which hasn't been a focus in my writing education thus far. I'm also looking forward to being in community with everyone at the conference and visiting California for the first time.”

Ginny Rorby Scholarship for MG/YA Fiction

Described by one professor as “the Great Iconoclast,” Logan Silva was born and bred in Mendocino County. Amazing teachers and writers passed their love of the written word to Logan, and he tries to pass that love on to his students in middle school, high school, junior college, and university. Historical studies have taken Logan to Cal, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Yale, but he never lost his love of storytelling. 

Logan writes: “I plan on using the conference to soak up as much craft as I can from an amazing field of experts and fellow writers. I’m moving from education writing and curriculum to the young adult fiction genre and hope that the conference will help me bridge that gap.”

James I Garner Scholarship

Raquel Baker earned a PhD in English Literary Studies from The University of Iowa. She specializes in Postcolonial Studies and 20th- and 21st-century African literatures in English. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and Transnational Literatures at California State University Channel Islands, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and Africana Studies courses. 

Raquel says: “I am currently working on a cyberpunk flash fiction collection and look forward to engaging the tools, community, and space to move the project forward.”

Norma Watkins Scholarship

Jordan Alam is a queer Bangladeshi-American writer, performer, and therapist based out of Seattle. Their short stories and articles have been published in The Atlantic, SeattleMet, Autostraddle, CultureStrike Magazine, Entropy, and The Rumpus among others. They have performed on stage and facilitated workshops on embodied writing nationwide, most recently at Kundiman, Hugo House, and Town Hall Seattle. Their debut novel is a story of family secrets told from the points of view of four Bangladeshi American women in the aftermath of their mother's unexpected death.

At the conference, they'll be doing something completely different—embarking on an early draft of their memoir about transnational adoption and uncovering one's own history in fragments. Learn more about their work at their website: www.jordanalam.com.

Doug Fortier Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction

In April 2022, our community lost our friend Doug Fortier, a long-time Conference participant and advocate for writing on the Mendocino Coast. In memory of Doug, a group of writers fundraised the Doug Fortier Memorial Scholarship for Speculative Fiction.

From Queens, NY, Muriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers, and currently serves as the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Southern California where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow.

Muriel writes: “I am excited to work on a linked speculative short story collection set in New York City during the sudden appearance of weekly acid rainstorms. In the midst of this ongoing disaster is a queer love story between two Asian American women, navigating the world of ghosts, heartbreak, lost opportunities, and the space between life and afterlife. I look forward to developing this collection further with the support of a writing community at MCWC.”

Top row (from left to right): Maryam Ghadiri, keish kim, Natalie Rose Gove

Middle row (from left to right): Sarah Wang, Jasmine Sawers, Logan Silva

Bottom row (from left to right): Raquel Baker, Jordan Alam, Muriel Leung

If you would like to join the scholarship winners at this year’s conference, you can register now at mcwc.org. If you would like to support our scholarship program, please consider donating to MCWC at mcwc.org/donate.

MCWC 2022: Registration is now open!

Registration is now open for the 33rd annual Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference (MCWC). After two years of being held online, the conference will be held again in-person on the Mendocino Coast.

“We have a phenomenal line-up of acclaimed teachers for this year’s conference,” says MCWC Executive Director, Lisa Locascio Nighthawk. The faculty includes Pablo Cartaya (Middle Grade/Young Adult), Claudia Castro Luna (Poetry), Jean Chen Ho (Short Fiction), Lydia Kiesling (Novel), Ayize Jama-Everett (Speculative Fiction) and Anastacia-Reneé (Emerging Writers). Naomi Hirahara will be teaching the conference’s first-ever Mystery Workshop and Faith Adiele will facilitate a Memoir Master Class. Special guests include keynote speaker and UC Santa Cruz professor emerita Karen Tei Yamashita, winner of the 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation, and literary agent Jonah Straus.

Registration for MCWC 2022 is open until June 30, 2022. Writers of all ages and levels of experience are encouraged to register (click here to do so). Registration is open to all and requires no application or writing sample. Tuition is $675 for the three-day conference, which includes morning writing workshops (limited to twelve students), afternoon seminars on the craft of writing and the writers’ life, open mics, pitch panels, blind critique panels, opportunities for one-on-one consultations with literary agents and authors, and evening readings by faculty. The registration fee also covers breakfast and lunch for each day of the conference, along with a celebratory dinner on the final night.

All MCWC 2022 participants and faculty are required to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Masks must be worn at all times indoors. Meals before and after the morning workshops will be outside.

 “We are monitoring the constantly evolving public health situation closely. Additional safety protocols may be implemented in accordance with state and county guidelines,” adds Locascio Nighthawk.

  •  To register for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference registration, click here. Questions can be directed to Operations Manager Alexander Matthews at info@mcwc.org.

"Exploring the multiplicity of the human condition": A Q&A with Pablo Cartaya

Pablo Cartaya. Photograph by Zoe Milenkovic.

We chat to acclaimed author Pablo Cartaya, the faculty of the MCWC 2022’s Middle Grade/Young Adult Workshop, “The Villain Speaks”.

Who/what are your key influences and sources of inspiration?

My inspiration always begins with my abuela and abuelo. They are the foundation for my work and how I represent their legacy through culture, family, and community in the stories I write. And my kids are a parallel inspiration—they teach me so much about the world. And they're funny!

What drew you to begin writing books for kids and young adults instead of for grown-ups?

I don't necessarily write with the aim to tell stories for young people. I write to tell human stories and young people are often my protagonists. Sometimes I write adult protagonists but I don't change my approach to the craft. Exploring the multiplicity of the human condition is what I'm most fascinated by and writing characters who are young people are great vessels for that creative exploration.

What's the secret to a great MG/YA novel?

Read. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.....Repeat.

How does being fully bilingual influence your writing and creative practice?

It influences every aspect of my creativity. It's like breathing air. It took me a long time to feel I had permission to write sentences akin to the way I think—where thoughts often begin in one language and end in another.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

One of my favorite parts of teaching writing is watching students get that glimmer in their eyes when a story emerges. Helping them discover the hidden secrets of that story and then watching them fly off with it is an incredible feeling. I've had several students get story ideas in my class that turned into full novels and became published.

What are you hoping participants of your MCWC workshop will get out of the time they spend with you?

That they feel free to explore the endless possibility of their creativity and come away with a renewed sense of where their stories will go next.

About Pablo’s workshop

What’s the deal with the antagonist in your story? Why do they make the life of your protagonist so miserable? Is it merely to exist or is there something more profound going on? How do we provide nuance to our protagonist’s foe? In this workshop, writers will immerse themselves into the world of villains to get an understanding of why they do what they do. The workshop will be aimed at spotting static villains and learning to avoid stereotypical depictions of the antagonist. This class will consist of writing the villain monologue. Writing the villain’s backstory. And imagining the life of the villain without the protagonist getting in their way. Sample texts will be explored as well as several writing exercises.

About Pablo

Pablo Cartaya is an internationally acclaimed author, screenwriter, speaker, and educator. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, and on Oprah’s Booklist. Pablo has worked with Disney, Apple+, and Sesame Street on projects adapted from television series and movies. In 2021, he served as a judge for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature and is currently an associate professor in the low residency MFA creative writing program at the University of Nevada. He calls Miami home and Cuban-American his cultura. Novels include: The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora, Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish, Each Tiny Spark, and the upcoming climate dystopia The Last Beekeeper. Awards and Honors include: 2020 Schneider Family Book Award Honor, 2019 ALSC Notable Book, 2018 American Library Association’s Pura Belpré Honor, 2018 Audie Award Finalist, and 2018 E.B. White Read Aloud Book Award Finalist.

"The hero is the cult of the dead": A Q&A with Speculative Fiction faculty, Ayize Jama-Everett

Conference Assistant Frannie Deckas chats to Ayize Jama-Everett, instructor of the Speculative Fiction workshop at MCWC 2022, POV/Voice and Worldbuilding: The way through.

What are some of the people, places, things, and ideas that inspire you?

I've got my heroes like everyone, but the unifying factor in them all is an inability to live a life prescribed to them. I'm inspired by those who take ownership of their lives and don't let norms, trauma, or conventional thinking dictate their moves in the world. In terms of places, I've heard about an island full of dogs that sounds amazing. I like deserts and secluded large lakes, quiet places. But I also grew up in NYC, so I'm a sucker for good nightlife, at least I was before COVID. Now the thought of being around a mass of strangers is a bit daunting to me. Still, though, the magic of the dance floor is always on my mind.

What does your ideation process look like for a new book?
Percolation, percolation, percolation + mind-numbing tedium called typing X burst of inspirational jotting/reading said accumulations of letters on the page, bracketed by an inability to stop=A novel, short story, or graphic novel. That makes sense, right? I write. When I have enough down that I think it makes sense, I read it. Then I figure out what else to write. Rinse and repeat until someone else tells me it's done. I think there's a belief that I've helped to perpetuate, that writers are self-aware and know what we're doing most of the time. The older I get, the more seasoned in the game, I realize that the best writing comes from being open to being wrong about everything I'm doing but doing it anyway. For instance, I have a cult novel, my cult novel. My obsession with intentional communities has persisted since I was four-years-old. I have at least 200 pages of a good cult novel. But just last week, after realizing that someone I'm very close to has been in two cults in her life, I realized my angle on the novel was wrong. So those 200 pages will probably never come to light. Something will come out of them, but if I try and make those pages my cult novel, I'll be doing a disservice to what I know to be true. What's that? Ideation? Trying something and screwing up? Being open to failure? Bad writing? I call it my process :)

Sometimes, when writing, voice can feel like it wants to hang on into the next work. How do you make the shift in voice between one story to the next?

Usually, through POV (point of view), omniscient narrators are no longer in favor. Still, I'll say that most narratives I start have that god-like overview of the world, the character's psyche, and the future of the narrative (though that often time tends to be false). What I burrow into, what makes it fun for me, is to strip away all that insight by focusing on one character or a set of characters. It's like a flashlight that can only cast so much brilliance in front of them. Like us all, the characters fumble in the dark, pretending they're aware of the world around them in total. When in actuality, we're all just trying to give ourselves a little bit of security with the lie, "It's not that dark in here." Voice, for me, comes from the tone of that lie and the amount of luminance surrounding the character. I tend to write intimate stories, with characters doing their best to pay attention only to what's in front of them. It's the world that invades their space, not the other way around. So the character's voice is determined by how they deal with the unknown. The narrative's voice is determined by how much knowledge I choose to convey to the reader.

What's your best advice on writing flawed but redeemable characters?

The hero is the cult of the dead. Please don't have them seek out redemption. Hercules killed four mythical creatures, captured three more, and stole a goddess girdle to atone for killing his wife. Is that redemption? I guess for the times, it was. So make redemption culturally specific and intriguing if you're going to do that. I don't need redeemed characters. I need characters who make choices, hard choices and live with the consequences. I like Giles Corey from the Crucible asking for more weight. I like Marv from Sin City getting electrocuted only to ask, "Is that all you got?"

Flawed characters are characters. They're human. And while audiences like to read about how a character changes over time, I don't think every novel needs to mimic therapy; by this, I mean it doesn't have to be a standard arc of improvement for a character. We can revel in their flaws, or we can be disgusted by them, but they've got to have those dings in their armor so we can relate to them. This is why for the most part, I don't like Superman. It's not the ubiquity of his powers; it's the fact that he never has a moral failing. It's why I love Daredevil. A blind lawyer goes out at night dressed like a devil and fights the wealthiest and most wealthy people his lawyering can't touch. Show me someone stuck in a constant moral compromise, and you show me someone as flawed as we all are. That's the beginning of piquing my interest: Kerouac's Dean Moriarty the perfect example. A flawed character never to be redeemed but at the same time a literary zeitgeist.

What, if anything, do you translate from your own life into the lives of your characters?

Damn near everything! What else am I to draw from? Even if I do my research, it's how the study hits my ears, eyes, and heart. The fun part of writing, which some have taken too far, is to live a life worthy of drawing from. That's why we're about to have a flood of novels about being locked down, locked in, pandemic length relationships, and the tentative nature of the social contract. :) We've all been living through the same thing globally.

How do you build on POV to create your story world?

No world exists without characters to experience it. The POV allows the writer to zoom in or out of any particular aspect of the world that impresses the character. But just as all knowledge is subjective, so too is the focus. What may seem like a close read to a first-person narrator maybe be frivolous to a third person. I find it interesting that these POV's come in and out of style. I'm sure there's some macro psychological reason as to why, but damned if I can call it.

I had an opportunity to write up an interview in the second person. It was of Ahmed Best, the dancer, singer, musician, and all-around great guy who, among other roles, played Jar Jar Binks. That role haunted him and caused a lot of people to question his standing in the Black artistic community. I'll confess that I had some of those questions myself. Man, I felt like an asshole after hanging out with that man. He was so charming, so kind, so generous. He shared what it had been like to him to be ostracized by both the Black community (those that knew it was him playing the role and disagreed with its depiction) AND the Star Wars fans. He became suicidal briefly. Thankfully, he got the help he needed and is now thriving and being his usual excellent self.

Anyway, the interview was for a class Tom Lutz was teaching, then editor in chief of the L.A. review of books. I wanted people to feel Ahmed the way I thought him, to experience his highs and lows the way I did. So I pitched writing the interview in the second person. "You're Ahmed Best. You're fifteen and your mother has just recorded another album. You commit yourself to creating an album of your own". That sort of thing. Tom Lutz was not a fan, but he hit me with the "Prove me wrong" like all great teachers. So I wrote it up...and he loved it. That's the power of the proper POV. It adds the dimension of the Lacanian Real, the inarticulate, to a narrative. It's also a convention of the time, the metastructure through which the audience expects the narrative.

About Ayize

Ayize Jama-Everett was born in 1974 in Harlem New York. He has traveled extensively in Northern Africa, Northern California, and Oaxaca, Mexico. He holds three Master’s degrees (Divinity, Psychology, and creative writing), and has worked as a bookseller, professor, and therapist. He has a firm desire to create stories that people want to read. He believes the narratives of our times dictate future realities; he’s invested in working subversive notions like family of choice, striving when not chosen to survive, and irrational optimism into his creations. Three of his books have been published by Small Beer Press, The Liminal series, with another on the way. He’s published a graphic novel with noted artist John Jennings, entitled The Box of Bones, and has forthcoming a graphic novel adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo coming from Abrams Press. Shorter works can be found in The Believer, LA Review of Books, and Racebaitr.