Bernard Cooper writes eloquently about the difficult landscape of memory as it pertains to sexuality, loss, AIDS, and family. He is the author of the collection of memoirs Maps to Anywhere, the novel A Year of Rhymes, and a recent collection of memoirs, Truth Serum. He received the 1991 PEN/Ernest…
Kathleen Norris is the author of the 1993 bestseller Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her newest book, The Cloister Walk, is structured around two nine-month residencies at a Benedictine monastery. In it, she links the disparate worlds of 4th-century desert monks and modern-day Benedictines to…
Dagoberto Gilb, of Anglo and Mexican heritage, calls both El Paso and Los Angeles home and is a union carpenter with a degree in philosophy. Gilb's rich experiences translate into stories that range the width of his native desert lands. He has been called "a powerful, necessary voice in American…
Terry Tempest Williams is one of the most knowledgeable and elegant voices of the American West. She brings to her writing, in the words of the poet W.S. Merwin, "the dedicated observation of a naturalist and the abiding innocence and excitement of an open heart." Williams is a Naturalist-In…
Anne Lamott is the author of five novels, most recently Crooked Little Heart (1997). In addition, she wrote the bestseller Operating Instructions (1993), a highly personal account of life as a single mother during her son's first year; and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, "a…
Ivan Doig has described the Pacific Northwest in a number of well-known nonfiction books and novels, including Bucking the Sun (1996), Heart Earth (1993), Winter Brothers (1980), This House of Sky (1984), and the trilogy English Creek (1984), Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987), and Ride with Me…
This program includes readings and discussions among writers in exile from their native countries. Majid Naficy, an Iranian poet who fled Khomeini's regime at great risk, has lived in Los Angeles since 1985. He has published three collections of poems and holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages…
In 1997, Sherman Alexie had just been named one of America's "Best Young Novelists" by GRANTA Magazine and had won the American Book Award. Alexie's work resonates with the collision between white and Native American cultures and while his subjects are serious, Alexie himself is often scathingly…
David Mas Masumoto is a third-generation Japanese-American peach and grape farmer. His book Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm is a chronicle of family, farm travails, and his struggle to market an old variety of peach. In addition to being a writer and farmer, Masumoto is a farm…
