THURSDAY, MAY 25

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THURSDAY, MAY 25

OPENING RECEPTION 5:30pm – 7:00pm

• Check-In and Opening Reception ARC Theater Lobby Meet and mingle with presenters and fellow participants.

INTRODUCTION AND FACULTY READING 7:00pm – 8:30pm

• Greetings and Introduction ARC Theater Doug Herndon, Dean of American River College’s English Area, welcomes participants to SummerWords 2017 and introduces our creative writing faculty and presenters. Gather for a general introduction to the exciting days and evenings to come.

• Keynote Readers:

Daniel Rounds, Anthony Swofford, and Naomi Williams ARC Theater ARC participants receive free copies of Ad Lumen Press’s newest publication, Daniel Rounds’s Eros Zero. Longtime SummerWords participants will remember Rounds’s previous poetry volume, Some Distant Lateral Present. Joining Rounds on stage are novelist, memoirist, film writer, ARC alum Anthony Swofford, author of the memoirs Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails and the novel Exit A, and acclaimed novelist Naomi Williams, author of Landfalls.

FRIDAY, MAY 26

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FRIDAY, MAY 26

Lower Library classrooms are in the basement of the ARC Library building. All other SummerWords 2017 day sessions today will be

held in the Student Center. Evening readings will be held in the ARC Theater.

MEET AND GREET 9:15am – 9:45am

• Morning Reception Student Center Lobby Mix and mingle. Questions answered. Friendly orientation offered.

MORNING BLOCK I 10:00am – 11:15am

• Homeroom ARC Creative Writing Core Faculty Various Rooms (see below) Meet in your randomly assigned “homeroom” to meet with a faculty contact, interact with other participants, and warm up with some writing exercises. Check your lanyard badge for your homeroom location. • Aaron Bradford Community Room 1-2 • Traci Gourdine Community Room 3-4 • David Merson Boardroom • Cathy Arellano Lower Library 1 • John Bell Lower Library 2 • Michael Spurgeon: 916 Ink (high school participants only) The Hub

MORNING BLOCK II 11:30am – 12:45pm

WORKSHOPS

• Sometimes an Umbrella Left by the Door is Just an Umbrella Left by the Door: Image over Metaphor Community Room 1-2 Metaphoric language expresses the inexpressible, the saying goes. But what if metaphor, in fact, limits expression, restricting how experience is both perceived and represented? In this workshop, Aaron Bradford leads participants in an exploration of the richness of poetic imagery. Participants will read a variety of works and gain hands-on practice using precise imagery to represent the

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complexity of experience. While this workshop will primarily focus on poetry, other genres will be discussed, as well.

• The Frivolous and The Profound: Irony, Paradox, and The Human Condition Community Room 3-4 Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued that human meaning is established through “differences” and that the most clearly defined differences are created through binary opposition: fast / slow, good / bad, day / night, etc. Join novelist and poet Michael Spurgeon in an exploration of how writers can use binary oppositions to create irony and paradox to unpack the contradictions of being.

• From Murder to Manuscript Lower Library 1 In this workshop, we'll explore how a novelist can pick through copious amounts of research and trial transcripts to create a character that bends known history but still adheres to historical authenticity. While studying the famous Lizzie Borden double-murder case in 1892 Massachusetts, presenter Erika Mailman discovered ways to recast facts to support a fictional scaffolding, and will share tricks for how to adapt a real-life true crime into a manuscript.

• The Razor of Desire Lower Library 2 How do you give a character a sense of motivation that will be sufficient to make a reader take notice? What’s the fundamental difference between what a character wants and what a character needs and how do you ensure the reader understands this difference in the world presented in your writing. Using examples from film and literature, Christian Kiefer offers ways to think about character by zeroing in on the idea of desire. PANEL DISCUSSION

• No Ideas but in Things: Imagery and Poetry Boardroom During this conversation, John Bell, David Dominguez, and Danny Dyer will each read a few of their poems and discuss the role imagery plays in their writing. The poets will discuss how imagery can be concrete or romantic, how it can symbolize complex emotions and ideas, and most importantly, how imagery can ultimately lead the writer and reader towards the sublime.

LUNCH BREAK 12:45pm – 1:45pm

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AFTERNOON BLOCK I 2:00pm – 3:15pm

WORKSHOPS

• Clichéed Little Thing Called Love Community Room 1-2 There are two kinds of love poems: the awfully poignant and the poignantly awful. This workshop, led by Danny Dyer, explores love poetry as a genre, bringing literary and psychoanalytic theory into conversation with the best and worst love poems ever written. How might ideas from Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, and Charles Olson guide us to craft fresher, more memorable poems about love, loss, Beloved, and the body?

• Where Are We? Setting in Fiction Community Room 3-4

Setting—time, place, atmosphere, and mood—is an important element in fiction. Choosing where our stories take place and how much to reveal about setting are crucial to the effectiveness of our writing. At times a place can function much like a character. John Bell will explore how setting appears in the works of other writers and what we can do to enhance setting as a place, time, mood, climate, and when necessary a character in our stories and novels.

• From Murder to Manuscript Lower Library 1

In this workshop, we'll explore how a novelist can pick through copious amounts of research and trial transcripts to create a character that bends known history but still adheres to historical authenticity. While studying the famous Lizzie Borden double-murder case in 1892 Massachusetts, presenter Erika Mailman discovered ways to recast facts to support a fictional scaffolding, and will share tricks for how to adapt a real-life true crime into a manuscript.

• Poetry Is Music—Otherwise, It’s a Business Memo Lower Library 2 During this workshop, poet David Dominguez will define and discuss literary devices such as alliteration, assonance, cacophony, and euphony; show how artists use these tools through a selection of poems; and give participants a writing exercise that focuses on making poetry instead of business memos. Participants will read poems by Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, Gary Snyder, Philip Levine, Yusef Komunyakaa, Frank X. Gaspar, Corrinne Clegg Hales, Richard Blanco, and others. (Room Host: Kiefer)

PANEL DISCUSSION

• Call Me Readable: Character in Fiction Boardroom

What makes a compelling character? How do character and plot work together to form a captivating and believable story? This panel—featuring Jodi Angel, Kirstin Chen, and Edan Lepucki—will address these questions, and many others, in an attempt to understand all aspects of characterization, from conception to development to revision. (Room Host: Arellano)

FRIDAY, MAY 26

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AFTERNOON BLOCK II 3:30pm – 4:45pm

WORKSHOPS

• Can You Hear Me Now? Writing Dialogue for Characters Who Don't Speak 21st-Century American English Community Room 1-2 You're writing, in English, in 2017, but some or maybe even all of your characters are speaking something else. How do you render dialogue that acknowledges your characters' language in a way that's elegant and believable? If your characters speak multiple languages, how do you signal switches in language? What if your characters speak a dialect or archaic form of English? What, if any, is your obligation to help the reader? Join novelist Naomi Williams for a look at numerous examples of different strategies writers use to approach this challenge in their writing. (Room Host: Bell)

• Historical Fiction, Fictional History: How We Write About the Past Community Room 3-4 Some of our most celebrated contemporary fiction centers on historical narratives. As recent novels by writers like Edward P. Jones, Hillary Mantel and Michael Chabon suggest, the past offers rich territory for storytelling. This workshop, led by Kirstin Chen, will explore the opportunities and challenges that writing about history poses. How much research should we do before we start writing? How do we balance being historically accurate with telling compelling stories? (Room Host: Arellano)

• The Frivolous and The Profound:

Irony, Paradox, and The Human Condition Lower Library 1 Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued that human meaning is established through “differences” and that the most clearly defined differences are created through binary opposition: fast/slow, good/bad, day/night, etc. Join novelist and poet Michael Spurgeon in an exploration of how writers can use binary oppositions to create irony and paradox to unpack the contradictions of being.

• The Prose Poem Lower Library 2 Traci Gourdine invites poets and writers to explore the best of both worlds in a workshop that blends and bends prose into poetry and poetry into prose. We’ll discuss the elements of the prose poem and create a piece or two.

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PANEL DISCUSSION

• Rosebud!: Writing for/or/and Digital Media Boardroom Join Jason Sinclair Long, Anthony Swofford, and Ryan Finnerty for a wide ranging discussion of writing for film, television, and internet media. Bring your questions!

EVENING READING 5:15 – 6:15pm

• Natashia Deón, Claire Bidwell Smith, and Albert Garcia ARC Theater Join us in the theater for a reading of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Natashia Deón is the author of the award-winning historical novel Grace. Claire Bidwell Smith is the author of the memoir The Rules of Inheritance and After This, a non-fiction exploration of the afterlife. Albert Garcia is the author of the poetry collections Rainshadow, Skunk Talk, and A Meal Like That.

POETS, WRITERS,

THINKERS, DREAMERS OF DREAMS…

TIME TO PARTY!

PLEASE JOIN US AFTER THE FRIDAY READING FOR THE THIRD ANNUAL SUMMERWORDS

BOOGIE BOOGIE GETDOWN BARBEQUE IN FRONT OF THE STUDENT CENTER!

FREE FOOD AND BEVERAGES FOR ALL SUMMERWORDS TICKET HOLDERS (AND A CHANCE TO HANG OUT WITH

FACULTY, PRESENTERS, AND PARTICIPANTS)!

SATURDAY, MAY 27

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SATURDAY, MAY 27

Lower Library classrooms are in the basement of the ARC Library

building. All other SummerWords 2017 daytime sessions today will be held in the Student Center. Evening readings will be held in the

ARC Theater.

MEET AND GREET 9:15am – 9:45am

• Morning Reception Student Center Lobby Mix and mingle. Questions answered. Friendly orientation offered.

MORNING BLOCK I 10:00am – 11:15am

WORKSHOPS

• Let’s Get Small! A Flash Fiction Workshop Community Room 1-2 “Flash fiction” is generally defined as short stories under 1000 words, but Jason Sinclair Long, author of Tiny Giants: 101 Stories Under 101 Words, views flash fiction in much starker terms. In this workshop, participants will create entire worlds in under 100 words.

• Extremely Brief:

Nonfiction Narrative in 750 Words or Less Community Room 3-4 In this workshop, led by Anthony Swofford, we will read a few examples of this emerging and popular form. After a critical discussion of these pieces we will break off into writing and workshop pods to write and discuss the peer work. Near the end of the section volunteers will read their new work aloud. (Room Host: Bradford)

• Jumpstart Your Engines: A Poetry Workshop Lower Library 1 In this workshop, Jericho Brown helps students generate new work through a set of unconventional exercises that keep our ears open and our fingers moving. The workshop engenders new ideas about writing, and as there is a profound relationship between reading poetry and writing it, we participants read, discuss, and even recite the work of several poets whose examples might lead us to a further honing of our craft. (Room Host: Gourdine)

• Going From Fiction to Memoir:

Shifting Gears Without Grinding the Transmission Lower Library 2 In this workshop, Jodi Angel will lead participants through the transition that is necessary when writers not only jump into a new genre, but move from imagination

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to reality. The workshop will focus on craft talk, examples, and brief writing exercises to ease into the vulnerability required when it comes to speaking one’s truth.

PANEL DISCUSSION

• Telling the Story You Need to Tell: Narrative Journalism, Personal Essay, Memoir, and the Field of Creative Nonfiction Boardroom Join Claire Bidwell Smith, Christa Parravani, and Angela Morales for a wide-ranging discussion on the art and practice of creative nonfiction today. (Room Host: Arellano)

MORNING BLOCK II 11:30am – 12:45pm

WORKSHOPS

• Riding/Writing the Waves of Relation Ships Community Room 1-2 You may still love or lust after a person (or not) but if they’re on (in?) your mind, use that energy! Write a sonnet to a special someone. Or perhaps an ode to an esteemed elder when they’re still around to appreciate it. Feel free to free form it for a formidable foe or unforgettable family member. Whether out of love or lust, for blood or spirit family, enemy or frenemy, join us as we experience through readings, music, and visuals how others have put their passion to paper and write some of our own. Note: This will be fun and work and it may be therapeutic, but it won’t be therapy. Led by Cathy Arellano.

• Why We Write About Ourselves Community Room 3-4

An exploration of the impulse to both read and write memoir, taught by therapist and author Claire Bidwell Smith. We will explore what makes for a compelling memoir, including structure, narrative arc, and voice, and also how to avoid the common mistakes writers fall prey to when writing narrative nonfiction. This will be a helpful workshop for writers who are simply curious about writing memoir, and also those who are already working on one. (Room Host: Merson)

• Backstory: Moving Forward, Looking Back Lower Library 1 Backstories help to create the world of your story. It tells us what’s driving your protagonist (and antagonist) to take the action, to attain a goal, and what your protagonist feels about passionately. Layering the characterization with these histories show us who they are today and will help you avoid writing stereotypes. Led by Natashia Deón, the aim of this workshop is to address backstory and to get your creative juices flowing in writing scenes (the past affecting the present) and relevant history details that can affect dialogue, POV, and attitudes of your characters. These

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details, when woven successfully into pertinent places of your story, will give it added meaning. (Room Host: Spurgeon)

• Digital: The New Traditional— Screenwriting in the Digital Age Lower Library 2 In this workshop, screenwriter Ryan Finnerty discusses how the new wave of distribution platforms have created a need for content like never before. We’ll walk through examples of how even the smallest ideas can be turned into feature films or television shows. (Room Host: Dyer)

PANEL DISCUSSION

• Shouts and Whispers: Poetry in a Politically Charged World Boardroom Join Jericho Brown, Traci Gourdine, and Daniel Rounds as they read, and discuss how they work and respond to issues in culture, community and environment. How do poets find the balance between a salty rant and a well-crafted poem. How can the political become individual? How does the personal become political? Hear approaches and join the discussion.

LUNCH BREAK 12:45pm – 1:45pm AFTERNOON BLOCK I 2:00pm – 3:15pm

WORKSHOPS

• The Anatomy of a Scene Community Room 1-2 What is a scene and what makes one successful? In this seminar, bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki will answer these questions and more by analyzing various methods of dramatization in fiction. Together we will explore scenes in contemporary fiction and complete a few writing exercises to get you thinking deeply about what a scene can do for your plot and characters. Suspense, the treatment of time in fiction, and exposition will also be discussed. (Room Host: Kiefer)

• The Braided Essay Community Room 3-4 This workshop, led by Christa Parravani, will focus on the technique of braiding a personal essay. We will discuss how to bring together seemingly unrelated personal stories, weaving them together into drafts that telegraph meaning through layering. (Room Host: Dyer)

• The Art of Longing: Desire, Impermanence, and the Creative Act Lower Library 1 Participants in this workshop will have their hearts broken. Over and over and over again. A discussion of Freudian, Buddhist, and Deleuzian ideas about desire and the

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ways these might be made manifest in music, dance, literature, cinema, and the visual arts. Do you lack? Are you grasping? Can your longing inspire and sublimate the burning oil of your appetite? Led by Daniel Rounds. (Room Host: Bell)

• You’re Invited to a Sub Party! Lower Library 2 Join Kate Asche and Janna Marlies Maron for this special SummerWords Sub (Submitting) Party! This session includes Kate and Janna’s mini publishing workshop (a quick-and-dirty publishing world overview, and essential do’s and don’ts) plus plenty of time for Q&A. Bring the questions you’ve been too afraid / embarrassed / ashamed to ask—this will be a no-holds-barred conversation essential for all writers who want to start sharing their work through publication. Not quite ready to submit yet? That’s okay, come anyway! Get your questions answered, start your submission plan, make friends and build confidence to take the plunge. (Room Host: Bradford)

PANEL DISCUSSION

• What’s Past Is Prologue: The Art of Historical Fiction Boardroom How does a writer craft narrative when also dealing with the realities of history? How are these aspects balanced in order to create potent characters and tell the stories that affect readers most deeply? Join Nayomi Munaweera, Natashia Deón, and Naomi Williams for a panel exploring many intricacies of writing historical fiction. (Room Host: Arellano)

AFTERNOON BLOCK II 3:30pm – 4:45pm

WORKSHOPS

• The Burning House: Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction Community Room 1-2 Writing memoir is like running back into a burning house to retrieve a memory. What do you see inside that house? How do you know if your story is worth saving? Also, given the subjective nature of "truth," how do we know if our memory is trustworthy? In this workshop, led by Angela Morales, we will begin by looking at some examples of confessional nonfiction and memoir. Next, using we'll write the beginning of a memory piece and discuss techniques to help bring your best stories back to life. (Room Host: Arellano)

• Clichéed Little Thing Called Love Community Room 3-4 There are two kinds of love poems: the awfully poignant and the poignantly awful. This workshop, led by Danny Dyer, explores love poetry as a genre, bringing literary and psychoanalytic theory into conversation with the best and worst love poems ever written. How might ideas from Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, and Charles Olson guide us to craft fresher, more memorable poems about love, loss, and the body?

SATURDAY, MAY 27

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• Poetry Is Music—Otherwise, It’s a Business Memo Lower Library 1

During this workshop, poet David Dominguez will define and discuss literary devices such as alliteration, assonance, cacophony, and euphony; show how artists use these tools through a selection of poems; and give participants a writing exercise that focuses on making poetry instead of business memos. Participants will read poems by Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, Gary Snyder, Philip Levine, Yusef Komunyakaa, Frank X. Gaspar, Corrinne Clegg Hales, Richard Blanco, and others. (Room Host: Bell)

• Under the Skin: Writing the Body Lower Library 2 The best fiction embeds the reader not only within the mind of but also within the body of the character. Writing in this fashion causes a visceral sometimes physical reaction on the part of the reader making the writing truly unforgettable. Join Nayomi Munaweera and explore ways in which your writing can become more rooted in the body. (Room Host: Merson)

PANEL DISCUSSION

• Imperfect Memories: Writing Poetry about Family in the Information Age Boardroom Instagram advice: fill the frame with the airbrushed cake; delete the birthday girl punching her cousin in the face. Select and delete until your family’s ideal. Poetry advice—get complicated. Join Kate Asche, Aaron Bradford, and Albert Garcia as they share ideas, reflections, and poems exploring family, research, and memory. We’ll discuss how we write to understand and remember, how research can clarify and complicate our family trees, how the lines between perception, memory, and reality blur as we write in the age of social media, and so much more.

EVENING READING 5:15pm – 6:15pm

• Jericho Brown, Edan Lepucki, and Angela Morales ARC Theater Join us in the theater for a reading of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Award-winning poet Jericho Brown is the author of The New Testament and Please. Novelist Edan Lepucki is the author of the New York Times bestseller California. Her new novel, Woman No. 17, is hot off the presses. Angela Morales is author of The Girls in My Town, winner of the 2017 PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.

SUNDAY, MAY 28

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SUNDAY, MAY 28

Lower Library classrooms are in the basement of the ARC Library

building. All other SummerWords 2017 sessions today will be held in American River College’s Student Center.

MEET AND GREET 9:15am – 9:45am

• Morning Reception Lobby Mix and mingle. Questions answered. Friendly orientation offered.

MORNING BLOCK I 10:00am – 11:15am

WORKSHOPS

• Where Are We? Setting in Fiction Community Room 1-2 Setting—time, place, atmosphere, and mood—is an important element in fiction. Choosing where our stories take place and how much to reveal about setting are crucial to the effectiveness of our writing. At times a place can function much like a character. John Bell will explore how setting appears in the works of other writers and what we can do to enhance setting as a place, time, mood, climate, and when necessary a character in our stories and novels.

• The Prose Poem Community Rooms 3-4

Traci Gourdine invites poets and writers to explore the best of both worlds in a workshop that blends and bends prose into poetry and poetry into prose. We’ll discuss the elements of the prose poem and create a piece or two.

• Sometimes an Umbrella Left by the Door is Just an Umbrella Left by the Door: Image over Metaphor Lower Library 1 Metaphoric language expresses the inexpressible, the saying goes. But what if metaphor, in fact, limits expression, restricting how experience is both perceived and represented? In this workshop, Aaron Bradford leads participants in an exploration of the richness of poetic imagery. Participants will read a variety of works and gain hands-on practice using precise imagery to represent the complexity of experience. While this workshop will primarily focus on poetry, other genres will be discussed, as well.

SUNDAY, MAY 28

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• Stealing from the Masters: Imitation as a Path to Originality Lower Library 2 T.S. Eliot famously quipped, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal.” So how do you “steal” and not get sued? David Merson shares some tricks for strategically imitating your favorite stories and poems while still developing your own original ideas and style.

CLOSING REMARKS 11:30am – 12:00pm

• Call to Write! Community Room 1-4 Cathy Arellano takes up the “Call to Write!” mantle this year with words of encouragement to push you to write in the months ahead.

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PRESENTER BIOS

JODI ANGEL’s second collection of stories, You Only Get Letters From Jail, was published by Tin House Books in 2013 to national acclaim. Her first collection, The History of Vegas, was named as a San Francisco Chronicle "Best Book of 2005" as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Review "Discovery." Her work has appeared in Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, and the Sycamore Review, among other publications and anthologies. Her stories have received several Pushcart Prize nominations and she was selected for Special Mention in 2007. Her story, "A Good Deuce," was noted as a "Distinguished Story" in The Best American Stories 2012. CATHY ARELLANO is just another writer from San Francisco’s Mission District. Her debut poetry and prose collection, Salvation on Mission Street, appears this summer from Kórima Press. Kórima will also publish her collection of broken-hearted lesbian love poems suitable for anyone who has loved, been loved, or been left—I Love My Women, Sometimes They Love Me—in the fall. KATE ASCHE writes poetry, essays and short stories. A graduate of the UC Davis Creative Writing Program, she is a writing teacher and literary community builder in Sacramento. Her first poetry collection, the chapbook Our Day in the Labyrinth, was published by Finishing Line Press in September 2015, and her poetry has appeared in Bellingham Review, RHINO, Pilgrimage, the anthology Late Peaches: Poems by Sacramento Poets and elsewhere. She is a trained facilitator in the Amherst Writers and Artists Method and has taught creative writing in a variety of academic and community settings since 2005. She currently teaches workshops in Sacramento and provides manuscript coaching to writing groups and individuals. JOHN BELL has been a professor of English at American River College since 2003 and has also taught in Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. A former department chair and Writing Center coordinator, his poetry has appeared in several small magazines and anthologies. He has also presented at several writing conferences. AARON BRADFORD teaches creative writing, composition, and literature at American River College. He has also taught creative writing and

psychology at CSU, Long Beach, where he earned his MFA in poetry. His poems have appeared in Pearl, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, and the anthologies Incidental Buildings & Accidental Beauty, Burning the Little Candle, and Late Peaches. He co-wrote the experimental play Singularities and contributed dramatic monologues to River City Anthology, a collaboration between the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Actor’s Workshop of Sacramento. JERICHO BROWN is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry. His first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is an associate professor in English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. KIRSTIN CHEN is the author of the novels Bury What We Cannot Take, forthcoming from Little A in 2018, and Soy Sauce for Beginners, a Kindle First selection, an O, The Oprah Magazine “book to pick up now”, and a Glamour book club pick. A former Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, she holds an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from Stanford University. She has received awards from Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Her short stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hobart, Pank, Best New Singaporean Short Stories, and others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best New American Voices. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently lives in San Francisco. NATASHIA DEÓN is a 2017 NAACP Image Award Nominee and author of the critically-acclaimed novel, GRACE (Counterpoint Press), which was awarded the 2017 First Novel Prize by the American Library Association's Black Caucus (BCALA), was named Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a New York Times Top Book 2016, a Book Riot Favorite Book of 2016, The Root Best Book of 2016, and an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016. Her writing has appeared in American Short

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Fiction, Buzzfeed, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, Asian American Lit Review, Rattling Wall and other places. A practicing attorney, law professor, and creator of the popular L.A.-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit, Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, and has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Prague's Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert. DAVID DOMINGUEZ holds a BA in comparative literature from the University of California at Irvine and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona. He is the author of the collections Marcoli Sausage, (Chicano Chapbook Series), Work Done Right (University of Arizona Press), and The Ghost of César Chávez (C&R Press). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, such as Crab Orchard Review, Miramar, Poet Lore, and Southern Review. In addition, his work has been anthologized in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry; Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California; Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes; How Much Earth: the Fresno Poets; Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing; and Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley. He teaches composition and poetry writing at Reedley College and is a co-founder of The Packinghouse Review. DANNY DYER teaches composition at American River College and Sierra College and previously taught at University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he earned his MA in Literature and MFA in Poetry. His prose, poetry, and criticism have been awarded and published in regional and national journals including Calaveras Station, The Gapped Toothed Madness, The Unrorean, and Antipodes. He hopes to soon publish his first book, a collection of formal poems exploring the spiritual aspects of trauma. RYAN FINNERTY is an Emmy Nominated screenwriter and producer. An ARC alum and graduate of the UCLA School of Film of Television (2010 Samuel Goldwyn Award Winner), he has written/produced the feature films Rogue River, Children of Sorrow, Ghostmates, Smosh The Movie, and I Love You Both. For the past 7 years, he has been the head writer/producer for YouTube’s top

sketch comedy channel SMOSH (22 million+ subscribers; 6 billion+ views). ALBERT GARCIA is the author of three books of poems: Rainshadow (Copper Beech Press), Skunk Talk (Bear Star Press), and A Meal Like That (Brick Road Poetry Press). Individual poems have been published widely in journals such as The North American Review, Willow Springs, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Poetry Review. He has also published Digging In: Literature for Developing Writers (Prentice Hall). His poems have won various awards, have been featured in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, and have been read by Garrison Keillor on A Writer's Almanac. He holds a bachelor's degree from Chico State University, an MFA from the University of Montana, and an EdD from Benedictine University. He taught community college English for 17 years and now is Dean of the Language and Literature Division at Sacramento City College. He lives with his wife, the artist Teresa Steinbach-Garcia, in Wilton, California. TRACI GOURDINE’S poetry and stories have been published in numerous literary magazines, and she has been anthologized within Shepard and Thomas’s Sudden Fiction Continued. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Ringing In the Wild, was published by Ad Lumen Press. Traci and Quincy Troupe were paired in a year-long exchange of letters for the anthology Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics, and Community. She is co-editor of Night is Gone, Day is Still Coming, an anthology of writing by young Native writers, as well as We Beg to Differ, poems by Sacramento poets against the Iraq war. She has also co-edited the Tule Review for the Sacramento Poetry Center. She was Chair of the Sacramento Poet Laureate Committee for four laureate terms. For ten years she facilitated writing workshops within several California state prisons in the Arts in Corrections program for the William James Association. CHRISTIAN KIEFER is the author of the novels The Infinite Tides, The Animals, and the novella One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis and serves on the faculty of Sierra Nevada College’s low-residency MFA program, directs Ashland University’s low-residency MFA program, and teaches at American River College, where he founded Ad Lumen Press. Christian is a contributing editor at Zyzzyva, a

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fiction reader at Virginia Quarterly Review, and received a Pushcart Prize for his story “Hollywood and Toadvine.” His new novel is underway. EDAN LEPUCKI is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17, and the novella If You're Not Yet Like Me. She's the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles and a contributing editor to The Millions. JASON SINCLAIR LONG studied Theater and American Literature at UC Santa Cruz and earned his MFA in Playwriting from UCLA. He is a former member of Blue Man Group and currently teaches, writes, drums, gardens, and plays board games in Northern California with his wife and two sons. His first collection of flash fiction, Tiny Giants, was released by Ad Lumen Press in 2014. ERIKA MAILMAN is the author of The Witch's Trinity, a Bram Stoker finalist and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book, and Woman of Ill Fame, a Pushcart Press Editor's Book Award nominee. Her novel The Murderer's Maid: a Novel of Lizzie Borden will come out in October. Under the pen name Lynn Carthage, she has written a young adult trilogy called The Arnaud Legacy. Erika has been a Yaddo fellow and a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards. JANNA MARLIES MARON is an author, editor, and publisher living in Midtown Sacramento. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and publishes Under the Gum Tree, a literary quarterly. During its five-year tenure, Under the Gum Tree has published more than 100 artists and writers, and has seen nine essays recognized as notable in The Best American Essays of 2013, 2015, and 2016. Janna has self-published several books, including How to Manage Depression Without Drugs, her story of using story, music, food and ritual to find her way out of depression. Her creative nonfiction has been published online in Lunch Ticket and The Manifest-Station. DAVID MERSON teaches composition and creative writing at American River College, where he served as Editorial Adviser for the American River Review for nine years and was awarded the 2006 "Teacher of the Year Award" by the ARC Associated Student Association. He earned his M.A. in Fiction Writing at UC Davis. 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, The Los Angeles Review, Arts and Letters, The Baltimore Review, The Pinch, Hobart, River Teeth, Under the Sun, Puerto del Sol, and The Indianola Review. She is the winner of the River Teeth Book Prize, 2014, and is a MacDowell Fellow. Her book won the 2017 PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Currently she teaches composition and creative writing at Glendale Community College and is working on a new collection of essays NAYOMI MUNAWEERA's debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors won the 2013 Commonwealth Literary Prize for Asia and was nominated for the Northern California Book Award. The New York Times called it "incandescent" and Publisher's Weekly has compared her work to that of Jumpha Lahiri and Michael Ondaatje. Her second novel, What Lies Between Us was named one of the best literary releases of 2016 from venues such as BuzzFeed and Elle Magazine. The novel was included in Publisher's Weekly's Ten Essential Books About the Immigrant Experience 2017. CHRISTA PARRAVANI is author of the memoir Her and is an internationally exhibited photographer. She has taught photography at Dartmouth College, Columbia University and UMass, Amherst. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers. She and her husband and daughters split their time between Morgantown, West Virginia and Los Angeles, CA. DANIEL ROUNDS’s poetry has been featured in Aufgabe, 3rd Bed, Goodfoot, XConnect, Fish Drum Magazine, and American River Review. His first book of poetry, some distant lateral present, was released by Ad Lumen Press in 2014. His second collection of poems, eros zero, also from Ad Lumen Press, is being released at SummerWords 2017. He lives and works in Sacramento. CLAIRE BIDWELL SMITH is a therapist specializing in grief and the author of two books of nonfiction: The Rules of Inheritance and After This: When Life Is Over Where Do We Go? both published by Penguin. The Rules of Inheritance, a coming of age memoir about grief, was a Books for a Better Life nominee, a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick, has been published in 17 countries, and is currently being adapted for film. After This

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chronicles Claire’s journey as a grief therapist searching for meaning as she explores various beliefs about the afterlife. Her work as appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Slate, Chicago Public Radio, The Guardian, Psychology Today, Yoga Journal, and BlackBook Magazine. Claire currently works in private practice in Los Angeles. ANTHONY SWOFFORD is the author of the memoirs Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails and the novel Exit A. Knopf will soon publish his recent work, a biography entitled A Fire Came to My Mind, which he has adapted into a feature for HBO Films. His next novel is the first book in a Sacramento noir trilogy. He and his wife and daughters split their time between Morgantown, West Virginia and Los Angeles, CA. In August of 2017 he will join the English Department and Creative Writing MFA faculty at West Virginia University.

MICHAEL SPURGEON is the author of the novel Let The Water Hold Me Down (Ad Lumen Press). Additional writing has appeared in multiple regional and national journals, including the North American Review, Sonora Review, and The Packinghouse Review. A tenured professor of English at American River College, Michael teaches composition, literature, and creative writing and serves as the current Editorial Adviser to American River Review. He is also co-founder and former Board President of 916 Ink, a Sacramento literacy project that turns children into published authors. NAOMI WILLIAMS is the author of Landfalls (FSG 2015), long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and one-time winner, Naomi has an MA in Creative Writing from UC Davis.

SummerWords is sponsored by

The Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation

The American River College Foundation