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| 2010 Faculty |
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Chris Abani's prose includes Song For Night (Akashic, 2007), The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007), Becoming Abigail (Akashic, 2006), GraceLand (FSG, 2004), and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985). His poetry collections are Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon, 2006), Dog Woman (Red Hen, 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). He is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize & a Guggenheim Award. |
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Elmaz Abinader is the winner of The 2002 Goldies Award for Literature and a recent winner of The Silicon Valley Arts Grant for Fiction. Her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams... won the 2000 Josephine Miles/ Pen Oakland Award. She is the author of Children of the Roojme. Elmaz has presented her plays to audiences throughout The Middle East, Central America, Europe & the U.S.including the Kennedy Center. She has a forthcoming memoir,The Water Cycle and a collection of poetry, The Torture Quartet and Other Acts of Poetry. |
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Lorna Dee Cervantes: A fifth generation Californian of Mexican and Native American (Chumash) heritage, Cervantes was a pivotal figure throughout the Chicano literary movement. Her poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and in many anthologies, including Daughters of the Fifth Sun (1995), ¡Floricanto Sí! A Collection of Latina Poetry (Penguin, 1998), Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (1992. Cervantes' first book, Emplumada was a recipient of the American Book Award; her second collection, From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger ) was awarded the Patterson Poetry Prize, the poetry prize of the Institute of Latin American Writers, and the Latino Literature Award. |
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Tananarive Due — pronounced tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo — is the American Book Award-winning author of books ranging from mysteries to supernatural thrillers to a civil rights memoir. Her newest solo novel, Blood Colony (June 2008), is the sequel to her 2001 thriller The Living Blood and 1997's My Soul to Keep, The Living Blood received a 2002 American Book Award. |
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Ruth Forman is the author of three award-winning books: poetry collections We Are The Young Magicians and Renaissance, and children’s book, Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon. . She also starred in the 2004 California premiere of For an End to The Judgment of God/Kissing God Goodbye, directed by acclaimed theater artist, Peter Sellars. Her latest book is Prayers Like Shoes on Whit Press, the second in the Hedgebrook Writer’s Series. |
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M. Evelina Galang is the author of two books of fiction -- Her Wild American Self (Coffee House Press, ’96), a collection of short stories and the novel, One Tribe (2004 AWP Prize). She has edited the anthology, Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. She is currently writing Lolas' House: Women Living with War, stories of Surviving Filipina Comfort Women of World War II and is at work on her second novel, Angel de la Luna and THE 5th Glorious Mystery and is at work on a new novel, Beautiful Sorrow, Beautiful Sky. Galang teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami and has recently been nominated one of the 100 most influential Filipinas in the US by Filipina Women’s Network.
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Suheir Hammad is the author 2009 American Book Award recipient "breaking poems" (cypher books), as well as "ZaatarDiva", "Born Palestinian, Born Black" and "Drops of This Story". Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals. She was an original writer and performer in the TONY award winning Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and appeared in the 2008 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, "Salt of This Sea". She has read her work throughout the world on stage, radio and screen. |
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Mat Johnson was born to an Irish American father and an African American mother, and grew up inspired by both literary traditions. He attended graduate school at Columbia University. Johnson has written two novels, including Hunting in Harlem (2004, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction), about the area’s gentrification, and a nonfiction book, The Great Negro Plot. His work addresses contemporary race and social issues with wicked humor. |
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Tayari Jones is a novelist, short-fiction writer, and literary critic. Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta , is a coming-of age story that centers on the Atlanta child murders of 1979–81, which occurred while Jones was a child there. She knew two of the 30 victims. The book won the 2003 Hurston/ Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Untelling, winner of the Lillian C. Smith Award, traces the legacy of a fatal accident that haunts a family and speaks of class and race issues within a particular neighborhood. Her highly realistic work is focused on the urban South, reflecting her interest in “recording the dynamics, landscapes, and community, which I have known.” Her third novel, The Silver Girl, will be published next year. |
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David Mura is a memoirist, poet, essayist, novelist, critic and performer. His writings include Where the Body Meets Memory; Turning Japanese; After We Lost Our Way, Color of Desire, and Angels for Burning. and his most recent work, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, was a finalist for the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award, The Minnesota Book Award in Fiction, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. A third-generation Japanese-American, he has written intimately about his life as a man of color and the connections between race, sexuality and history. |
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Willie Perdomo is the author Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Bomb, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood and Centro Journal. His children's book, Visiting Langston, received a Coretta Scott King Honor. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University and is a 2009 fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is co-founder/editorial director of Cypher Books.
Photo credit: Gabriela Ramirez |
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Andrew Pham was born in Saigon, Vietnam and has been a dreamer since he was a child. Although he became an Aerospace Engineer, he loved writing. Andrew's books include: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Across the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (1999), The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (2008), and a work of translation called, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Thuy Dang Tram. His prizes and awards include: Kiriyama Prize , Whiting Writer Award, Quality Paperback Book Prize, the Oregon Literature Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, National Book Critics Circle Finalist, Guardian Prize Shortlist Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discovery Book, and a Border’s Original Voices Selection. |
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