Writers Week

Alice Bolin is the author of Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, a New York Times Notable Book for 2018. Dead Girls also received a Kirkus Star and was nominated for Edgar and Anthony Awards. She has another essay collection, Cosmos, and a book-length essay on the color pink forthcoming from Mariner/HarperCollins. Her essays have appeared in New York Magazine, New York Times Book Review, the Paris Review, and the anthology Unspeakable Acts. She has taught creative writing at the University of Memphis, where she was assistant professor of creative nonfiction. She lives in Minneapolis.

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation. He holds a BA in English creative writing from the University of Montana and an MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa. He was also a James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and more recently a Stegner fellow at Stanford University and a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and volumes 1 and 2 of Off the Path: An Anthology of 21st Century American Indian and Indigenous Writers, Montana Quarterly, ESPN.com., The Yellow Medicine Review and The Atlantic. He is an unrecognized citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.

Ron Koertge, a fixture in the L.A. poetry scene for decades, is the author of a dozen books of poetry. He has grants from the NEA and the CaliforniaArts Council, poems in the Best American Poetry series, and is a recent Pushcart Prize winner. Billy Collins calls him “the wisest, most entertaining wiseguy in American poetry,” and B. H. Fairchild says, “We all know who said that poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom, but Koertge might have said it because his poems are delight and wisdom all the way through.”

Sergio Lima is a poet and educator from Southern California. His work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Breakbeat Poets LatiNext anthology, and The Bastard’s Review. Sergio teaches high school English in Southeast L.A. County and lives in Long Beach, CA with his family.

Angela Morales, a graduate of the University of Iowa’s nonfiction writing program, is the author of The Girls in My Town, a collection of personal essays. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays 2013, Harvard Review, The Southern Review, The Southwest Review, and other journals.  Her book is the 2017 winner of the River Teeth Book Prize and the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Currently she is working on her second essay collection. www.angelamorales.net

Willie Perdomo is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix, The Crazy Bunch, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, and Where a Nickel Costs of Dime. Winner of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, and the PEN Open Book Award, Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. He is co-editor of the anthology, Latínext, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, Washington Post, The Best American Poetry 2019, and African Voices. He teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy and was recently appointed New York State Poet Laureate.

Ed Skoog is the author of four books of poetry: Travelers Leaving for the City, Run the Red Lights, Rough Day (winner of the Washington Book Award), and Mister Skylight, all published by Copper Canyon Press. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review and Harper’s. His poems have received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the William Faulkner Society, and he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Sewanee Writers Conference, and The Lannan Foundation. He is currently the coordinator of the Idyllwild Arts Summer Writers Week, and Poet-in-Residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. He has also taught at Tulane, University of Montana, and George Washington University. He co-hosts, with novelist J. Robert Lennon, the literary podcast Lunch Box, with Ed and John, and is poetry editor of Electric Literature’s weekly literary magazine The Commuter. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Sasha LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe. Her memoir Red Paint is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press. Her collection of poetry, Rose Quartz will be published by Milkweed. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work her great grandmother did for the Lushootseed language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage. With strange obsessions revolving around Twin Peaks, the Seattle music scene, and Coast Salish Salmon Ceremonies, Sasha explores her own truth of indigenous identity in the Coast Salish territory. 

Casandra Lopez is the author of Brother Bullet (University of Arizona Press), a collection of poems. She is a Chicana and California Indian (Cahuilla/Tongva/Luiseño) writer who’s received support from CantoMundo, Bread Loaf and Jackstraw. She’s been selected for residencies with the School of Advanced Research and Hedgebrook. She’s a founding editor of As/Us: A Space For Women Of The World and teaches at Northwest Indian College.

Daniel Hornsby’s first novel, Via Negativa, came out on Knopf in 2020. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. His stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Missouri Review, Bookforum, and Joyland. Via Negativa is currently being adapted to film by writer/director Hannah Peterson.

David L. Ulin is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. The former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Black Mountain Institute, and the Lannan Foundation. Most recently, he edited the Library of America’s Didion: The 1960s and 70s, the first in a three volume edition of the author’s collected works. He is Associate Professor of the Practice of English at USC, and edits the magazine Air/Light.

Threa Almontaser is the author of the poetry collection The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press 2021), winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American poets, inaugural winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award, shortlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, and longlisted for the National Book Award. She is a recipient of fellowships from Duke University, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright program, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from North Carolina State University and is at work on her first novel.