by Amy Lutz, MCWC Executive Assistant
We are thrilled to announce our faculty for MCWC 2019! This year we will feature nine morning workshops, including our first ever speculative fiction workshop and a Master Class in memoir.
Each workshop meets all three mornings of the conference and features three hours of instruction, exercises, and manuscript discussion led by our expert faculty. Limited to just fourteen participants (or twelve juried-in participants for the Master Class), these intimate workshops provide a personalized learning experience focused on the art and craft of writing.
Afternoon events include open mics and seminars on a variety of topics. Our Paths to Publishing panelists will share their wide range of publishing success stories, and our Pitch Panel will give participants the opportunity to pitch their books to agents and editors. We will hold another Blind Critique Panel as well, brought back this year by popular demand.
Scholarship applications open January 1 and close February 15. During this period you can also apply for the Master Class, taught this year by memoirist Myriam Gurba. For full application details, visit mcwc.org. General registration opens on March 1, but you can explore our website to start planning your conference experience now. All workshops, seminars, and consultations are first-come, first-served, so don’t wait to grab your spot once registration opens!
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Shobha Rao
Ismail Muhammad
NOVEL: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree (Doubleday) is an Indie Next selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times editor’s choice. Ingrid has received awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.
SHORT FICTION: Shobha Rao
Shobha Rao is the author of the short story collection, An Unrestored Woman, and the novel, Girls Burn Brighter. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015.
NON-FICTION: Ismail Muhammad
Ismail Muhammad is a novelist and critic based in Oakland, California. He is the reviews editor at The Believer, a contributing editor at Zyzzyva, and a staff writer at The Millions. His work has appeared in Paris Review Daily, Bookforum, The Nation, and other publications. He is currently at work on a novel.
Jeannie Vanasco
Mitali Perkins
Victoria Chang
MEMOIR: Jeannie Vanasco
Jeannie Vanasco’s memoir, The Glass Eye, was featured by Poets & Writers as one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. The Glass Eye was also selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, an Indies Introduce Pick, and an Indie Next Pick. Her second memoir, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, will be published by Tin House Books in the fall of 2019.
MG/YA: Mitali Perkins
Mitali Perkins has written ten novels for young readers, including You Bring the Distant Near (Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, nominated for a National Book Award), Rickshaw Girl (New York Public Library’s Top 100 books for Children in 100 Years), Bamboo People (American Library Association’s Top Ten Novels for Young Adults) and Tiger Boy (Charlotte Huck Honor Award, South Asia Book Award, Neev Best Young Readers Book Award.)
POETRY: Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang is the author of five books of poetry. Her latest book of poems, OBIT, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her previous, Barbie Chang, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2017. The Boss (McSweeney’s) won a PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, and a Pushcart Prize.
Scott Sigler
Myriam Gurba
Charlotte Gullick
Speculative fiction: Scott Sigler
#1 New York Times best-selling author Scott Sigler is the creator of fifteen novels, six novellas and dozens of short stories. He gives away his stories as weekly, serialized, audiobooks, with over 40 million episodes downloaded. He is a co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his Galactic Football League series.
MASTER CLASS: Myriam Gurba
Myriam Gurba’s most recent book, Mean, a work that is part true-crime, part ghost story, and part personal history, was a finalist for the 2018 Judy Grahn Award as well as a New York Times editors’ choice. Her personal essays have been published in TIME and The Paris Review and she has written art criticism and historical monographs for KCET.
EMERGING WRITERS: charlotte gullick
Charlotte Gullick’s first novel, By Way of Water, was published by Blue Hen Books/Penguin Putnam, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Rumpus, Brevity, Pembroke, Pithead Chapel, and the LA Review. Her awards include a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship for Fiction, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, a MacDowell Colony Residency, a Ragdale Residency, as well as the Evergreen State College 2012 Teacher Excellence Award.
Andrew Karre
Philip Marino
Rayhané Sanders
Andrew Karre, Editor
Andrew Karre is executive editor at Dutton Books for Young Readers. Over the course of his career, he’s had the pleasure of publishing debut novels by A.S. King, Maggie Stiefvater, E. K. Johnston, and many other award-winning authors. Books he’s edited have earned the William C. Morris Award, the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, Michael L. Printz and Coretta Scott King Honors, and have been longlisted for the National Book Award.
Philip Marino, Editor
As a senior editor at Little Brown, Philip Marino is interested in a wide range of nonfiction, most notably sports, business, music, history, tech, comedy, economics and philosophy. He has worked with a diverse group of authors, including Seth Kugel, Owen Benjamin, Philip Mudd, Winston Groom, Janine di Giovanni, Philip Kitcher, Evelyn Fox Keller, Michael P. Lynch, and Simon Critchley.
Rayhané Sanders, Agent
Rayhané Sanders is an agent at Massie & McQuilkin—where she represents literary, historical, and upmarket book club fiction; narrative nonfiction; and memoir—and an independent book editor available for hire. Her clients include bestselling and award-winning authors Lidia Yuknavitch, Kerry Cohen, Janet Beard, Jonathan Weisman, Maureen Stanton, Devin Murphy, and others.