Addie Tsai

Addie Tsai (any/all) is a queer nonbinary artist and writer of color. They collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie has an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. She is the author of the queer Asian young adult novel Dear Twin. Unwieldy Creatures, their adult queer biracial retelling of Frankenstein, is forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press in August 2022. They are the Fiction Co-Editor and Editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly, Staff Writer at Spectrum South, and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.

Alan Chazaro

Alison Luterman

Alison Luterman is the author of four books of poetry, including In the Time of Great Fires and Desire Zoo, and an e-book of personal essays, Feral City. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, The Atlanta Review, Catamaran, and many other journals and anthologies. She also writes song lyrics, plays, and is interested in hybrid forms. She has been teaching at the Writing Salon for over twenty years, and has also taught through Poets in the Schools, at New College, at Esalen and Omega Institutes and at workshops and conferences around the country. To learn more, you can visit www.alisonluterman.net.

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Allison Landa

Allison Landa is a Berkeley-based writer of fiction and memoir whose work has been featured in The Guardian US, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post, among other venues. She is the author of BEARDED LADY, a memoir forthcoming from Woodhall Press. Landa holds an MFA in creative writing from St. Mary’s College of California and runs the On the Cusp reading series in San Francisco. She is represented by Marisa Zeppieri of Strachan Literary.

Andy Touhy

Andrew R. Touhy is the author of Designs for a Magician’s Top Hat, winner of the inaugural Yemassee Fiction Chapbook Prize. He is also a recipient of the San Francisco Browning Society’s Dramatic Monologue Award and Fourteen Hills Bambi Holmes Award for Emerging Writers. Stories from Secret of Mayo, his full-length collection and a finalist for the BOA Short Fiction Prize, have appeared in Conjunctions, New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New American Writing, The Collagist, Colorado Review, and other literary magazines. He holds graduate degrees in literature and creative writing and has taught at SFSU, Academy of Art, and Ohio University.

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Ann Guy

Ann Guy is a writer and recovering engineer who was born in the Philippines, grew up among the cornfields and cow patties of Western Michigan, and now lives in Oakland, California with her husband and two kids. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction, and her work has been featured in CRAFT Literary, River Teeth (Beautiful Things), Sweet Lit, Entropy, MUTHA, Ekphrastic Review, Literary Mama, and Motherwell. A graduate of MIT, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State University, her favorite spaces are learning environments. She has taught creative writing classes at San Francisco State University and private workshops in the East Bay.

Anne Raeff

Anne Raeff‘s second novel, Winter Kept Us Warm, was published in February 2018 by Counterpoint Press. Her short story collection, The Jungle Around Us, won the 2015 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her stories and essays have appeared in New England Review, ZYZZYVA, and Guernica among other places. Because her parents were both refugees from the Holocaust and war and because of her penchant for travel, her work is often set far away, both in time and space, from the New Jersey suburbs where she grew up. She is proud to be a high school teacher and works primarily with recent immigrants.

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Arisa White

Cave Canem graduate fellow Arisa White received her MFA from UMass, Amherst, and is the author of Black Pearl, Post Pardon, Hurrah’s Nest, and A Penny Saved. She is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing Program at Colby College and is a member of the board of directors for Nomadic Press. You’re the Most Beautiful Thing that Happened, published by Augury Books, was a nominee for the 29th Lambda Literary Award.

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Ben Jackson

Ben Jackson has been the director of The Writing Salon since March 2016. He has taught at a wide range of colleges, schools, and retreat centers, including the University of San Francisco and the Esalen Institute. His writing has appeared in New England Review, Southern Review, Hudson Review, FIELD, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, he has won awards and fellowships from the Tor House Foundation, Warren Wilson College, Vermont Studio Center, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and Jentel Artist Residency Program.

Brian Tierney

Brian Tierney is the author of Rise and Float, winner of the 20-2021 Jake Adam York Prize (Milkweed, 2022). His poetry and prose have appeared in such journals as Paris Review, Kenyon Review, AGNI, New England Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a graduate of the Bennington College MFA Writing Seminars, he was named among Narrative Magazine’s 2013 “30 Below 30” emerging writers, and is winner of the 2018 George Bogin Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America. Raised in Philadelphia, he lives in Oakland, Ca., where he teaches poetry at The Writing Salon.

Cate Lycurgus

Cate Lycurgus’s writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, ZYZZYVA, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She has also received scholarships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and 2nd place in Narrative’s Poetry Contest; her chapbook Seacliff is forthcoming from Bull City Press in 2025. Cate lives in San Jose, California, where she interviews for 32 Poems and teaches writing.

David Jacobson

David Jacobson is sole proprietor of Inkflow Communications, which provides writing/editing services and marketing communications consulting to social impact organizations in the areas of youth development, sports/fitness, and DEI efforts. He has self-published Az der Papa (a YA coming-of-age novella), At the Cookout: A White Man’s Journey in Black America (memoir), and The Man Behind the Mask (collaboration with American Ninja Warrior athletes Flip Rodriguez and Noah Kaufman). David’s work is rooted in a journalism career that started at age 15 in 1979 and has included thousands of articles, op-eds, and blogs for his employers and clients.

Elaine Beale

Elaine Beale has published two novels, the most recent of which, Another Life Altogether, was featured in Oprah Magazine and received praise from the Boston Globe, Lambda Literary, and Publishers Weekly, among others. Elaine was the winner of the 2007 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange Award and has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her latest book is Write for Wellness, a guide to using expressive writing to promote emotional and physical health.

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Erin Rodoni

Erin Rodoni is the author of two poetry collections: Body, in Good Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017) and A Landscape for Loss (NFSPS Press, 2017), winner of the Stevens Award sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her third poetry collection won the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize and was published in fall 2021. Her poems, stories, and reviews have been published in such places as Best New Poets, Poetry Northwest, World Literature Today, and Sixfold, among others. She has been the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, a Ninth Letter Literary Award, and the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. When not writing, she enjoys travel and spending time outdoors with her daughters.

Jeff Chon

Jeff Chon is the author of the novel Hashtag Good Guy with a Gun, which New York Magazine called “sick and nasty and funny until page 247, which is the last one,” and praised in The New York Times, The Irish Times, The Scotland Herald, and The Times of London. His stories and essays have appeared in The Seneca Review, The North American Review, Barrelhouse, Best Small Fictions 2021, and many others. This Is the Afterlife, his short story collection, will be available in December of 2022.

Jennifer Lewis

Jennifer Lewis is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low, is published by Black Lawrence Press. Jennifer won the Nomadic Press Bindle Award for her short story, “New Low,” and the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction award for “Put a Teat in It.” She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in May 2015. She teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.

Jenny Pritchett

Jenny Pritchett has taught creative writing classes since 2006 and writes the popular blog Jenny True: An Excruciatingly Personal Mommy Blog. In 2021 she published You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood (Hachette). Her debut story collection, At or Near the Surface (Fourteen Hills Press), won the 2008 Michael Rubin Book Award, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in Guernica, Salon, Southwest Review, Northwest Review, Boulevard, Best of the Web 2008 (Dzanc Books), and elsewhere. She holds a degree in magazine journalism from Northwestern University and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. The former managing editor of Fourteen Hills, she has taught or lectured at SFSU, UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts, Ex’pression College for Digital Arts, and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Jessica Litwak

Jessica Litwak, Ph.D, is an award-winning playwright and actor. She has written over 40 plays which have been produced throughout the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. Her work is published by No Passport Press, Smith & Krause, Applause Books and The New York Times. She is a Drama Therapist, puppet builder and recognized leader in the field of socially engaged theatre, Artistic Director of The H.E.A.T. Collective, core member of Theatre Without Borders, and a Fulbright Scholar. She has taught acting and playwriting at SF State, LA City College, Naropa, Whitman College, Columbia University, and NYU.

Joan Gelfand

Joan Gelfand is the author of You Can Be a Winning Writer: The 4 C’s of Successful Authors: Craft, Commitment, Community and Confidence, published by Mango Press. Joan’s publications also include three poetry collections, an award winning chapbook of short fiction and a forthcoming novel set in Silicon Valley. Her reviews, stories, essays and poetry have appeared in literary journals and magazines including the Los Angeles Review of Books, PANK!, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, The Toronto Review, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and a juror for the Northern California Book Awards, Joan has been teaching the “4 C’s” approach at conferences and in classrooms for over ten years.

John J. Geoghegan

John J. Geoghegan has worked as an editor, journalist, author and publisher. He began his career in the editorial department of Doubleday, the largest publisher in the U.S. at the time, where he contributed to the editing and marketing of a variety of books. He is also the author of three, commercially-published, non-fiction books with a fourth under contract. In addition to serving as a Special Correspondent for the New York Times, John’s articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek, and Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine among other publications. While nurturing numerous writers to publication, John has taught freelance writing at Fairfield University. His “real world” experience combined with his frank approach to subjects many authors, agents and publishers are reluctant to discuss, are designed to help aspiring authors navigate the arcane ins-and-outs of the literary industry.

Julie Bruck

Julie Bruck‘s four collections of poems are How To Avoid Huge Ships (2018), Monkey Ranch (2012), The End of Travel (1999), and The Woman Downstairs (1993). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plume, The Walrus, The New Quarterly, The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, and The New Yorker. Her awards include two Gold Canadian National Magazine Awards, and the 2012 Governor General’s Award for Poetry (Canada’s equivalent of a National Book Award). She has taught at Canadian universities, and was a resident faculty member at The Robert Frost Place and a guest writer at Vanderbilt University. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, The Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among others. A former Montrealer, Julie has lived in San Francisco since 1997. Julie’s poem “To the Bridge”  has recently been made into a short film by Astoria Pictures. You can watch it here: https://astoriapictures.ca/to-the-bridge/

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Junse Kim

Junse Kim, like many Writing Salon students, didn’t begin to pursue a writing life until well after graduating from college. Before ever taking a writing class, he worked as a concert promoter, Peace Corps volunteer, managerial consultant, scriptwriter, nonprofit fundraiser, and “full-time” temp. He has since received a Pushcart Prize (for his short story “Yangban”), a Faulkner Award, and the Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. His fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in the Ontario Review, ZYZZYVA, and Cimarron Review, as well as two anthologies: Pushcart Prize XXVII and Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writing.

K-Ming Chang

K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and an O. Henry Prize Winner. She is the author of the novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Otherwise Award. In 2021, her chapbook BONE HOUSE was published by Bull City Press. Her story collection GODS OF WANT (One World/Random House) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her latest novel is ORGAN MEATS (One World, 2023), and her next book is a novella titled CECILIA (Coffee House Press, 2024).

Kate Montgomery

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Katharine Harer

Katharine Harer loves teaching creative writing. She has worked with hundreds, maybe thousands, of students in her over thirty-year career as a community college writing teacher at Skyline College and as a private workshop instructor. Katharine has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent, Deconfliction, in 2020, and a full-length volume of poems, Jazz & Other Hot Subjects, in 2016. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published widely in literary journals, newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. Her travel essay Delle Donne appeared in Best Women’s Travel Writing 2016 and a personal essay, Blue Flags & Painted Crosses, is forthcoming from Sonora Review in Tucson.

Kathy Garlick

Kathy Garlick’s poetry and prose have appeared in Art and Ideas, Fourteen Hills, Field, and other publications. Her chapbook of poems, The Listening World, was published by Momotombo Press at St. Mary’s College. Kathy currently teaches creative writing and academic writing at University of San Francisco and creative writing and literature in the English Master’s program at Holy Names University.

Kerry Muir

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Kevin Dublin

Kevin Dublin is author of the chapbook How to Fall in Love in San Diego (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and editor of Etched Press. He enjoys making video adaptations of poetry and working with emerging artists and writers. His words have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in North Carolina Literary Review, Rogue Agent, and Poetry International. He holds an MFA from San Diego State and has taught in community as well as youth programs and colleges, including Duke University and Litquake’s Elder Writing Project. Follow him on Twitter @PartEverything.

Kilby Blades

Kilby Blades is a USA Today Bestselling author of Romance and Women’s Fiction. Her debut novel, Snapdragon, was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize Semi-Finalist, and an IPPY Award medalist. Kilby was honored with an RSJ Emma Award for Best Debut Author in 2018, and has been lauded by critics for “easing feminism and equality into her novels” (IndieReader) and “writing characters who complement each other like a fine wine does a good meal” (Publisher’s Weekly). Kilby is a feminist, an oenophile, a cinephile, a social-justice fighter, and above all else, a glutton for a good story.

Kimberly Lee

Kimberly Lee left the practice of law some years ago to focus on motherhood, community work, and creative pursuits. A graduate of Stanford University and UC Davis School of Law, she is an Amherst Writers & Artists facilitator and affiliate and serves on its board of directors. She is trained and certified by The Center for Journal Therapy, The Center for Intentional Creativity, and SoulCollage®. A former editor and regular contributor at Literary Mama, Kimberly has also served on the staffs of Carve and F(r)iction magazines. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications and anthologies including Minerva Rising, LA Parent, Toyon, The Ekphrastic Review, Read650, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Kuang Lee

Kuang Lee is a writer and filmmaker. Kuang’s narrative feature, BUDDY SOLITAIRE, starring Golden Globe Award Winner Sally Kirkland, was distributed by Gravitas Ventures and licensed by Hulu. His second feature, BEST MOM, won Best Family Feature at the Hollywood Film Festival. Kuang’s shorts have screened worldwide in film festivals such as NBC Shortcuts, Cinequest, and Dances with Films. He is the founder of Satellite Films, an Addy Award winning production company specializing in commercial films and documentaries.

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet is the author of The Greenhouse (Frost Place Chapbook Prize) and Tulips, Water, Ash (Morse Poetry Prize). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Blackbird, Kenyon Review, Plume, and Zyzzyva, in anthologies including Nasty Women Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, and online at Poem-A-Day and Poetry Daily. In addition to leading workshops at Portland’s Literary Arts, Seattle’s Hugo House, and The Writing Salon, she hosts the Portland reading series Lilla Lit and Literary Bingo and works as a freelance editor of poetry and nonfiction. Before fleeing northward in search of writer-friendly rents, she taught in UC Berkeley’s Post-Baccalaureate Writing Program.

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Lisa Moore Ramée

Lisa Moore Ramée still calls Los Angeles home even though she now lives in the Bay Area. She counts coffee as one of her best friends and is a devout believer in dreams coming true. Her debut novel, A Good Kind of Trouble, is a Walter Dean Meyers Honor book and an Indie bestseller. She is also the author of Something to Say and MapMaker. Her books have received multiple starred reviews. Visit her website at lisamooreramee.com.

Lori Ostlund

Lori Ostlund’s novel, After the Parade, was a Barnes & Noble Discover pick, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her story collection, The Bigness of the World, won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the California Book Award for First Fiction, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and was a Lambda Finalist. Lori’s work has appeared in the Best American Short Stories and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories as well as in ZYZZYVA, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, and other journals. Lori has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and was a finalist for the 2017 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has been a teacher for over twenty-five years in New Mexico, Spain, Malaysia, and North Carolina and is currently on the Mile-High MFA faculty. Since 2022, she has served as the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She lives in San Francisco, where she is at work on her fourth book, a novel entitled The Proprietresses, based on the years that she and her wife owned a furniture store in Albuquerque. Her third book, a story collection entitled Are You Happy?, will be published by Zando Projects in April 2025.

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Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win’s poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 – 2018). Her full-length poetry collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn), was long listed for the PEN America Open Book Award, nominated for a Northern California Book Award for Poetry, and short listed for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Golden Poppy Award for Poetry for 2021. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and was a Spring 2021 ARC Poetry Fellow at UC Berkeley.

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Nayomi Munaweera

Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize, short-listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and won the Commonwealth Prize for Asia. Her second critically acclaimed novel, What Lies Between Us, won the Sri Lankan National Book Award. Munaweera is widely anthologized in collections such as Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian-American Women on Obedience and Rebellion, Oakland Noir, Many Roads Through Paradise, and All the Women in My Family Sing. She teaches at the Ashland University low-residency MFA Program.

Nina Schuyler

Nina Schuyler’s novel, Afterword, was published in May 2023 by Clash Books and was named a top book by Alta Journal and Bay City News and a June pick by Towne Center Books. Her short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won The Prism Prize for Climate Literature and the W.S. Porter Prize and will be published in July 2024. Her novel, The Translator, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her nonfiction book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, is a Small Press Distribution bestseller.

Preeti Vangani

Preeti Vangani is a poet and personal essayist. Born and raised in Mumbai, she is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), her first book of poems (selected as the winner of RL India Poetry Prize.) Her work has been published in BOAAT, Gulf Coast, Threepenny Review, among other journals. She is the Assistant Poetry Editor for Glass Journal, a Poet Mentor at Youth Speaks, and holds an MFA (Writing) from University of San Francisco.

Rob Williams

Rob Williams teaches Creative Writing and English at Skyline College and has led writing workshops at San Diego Writers Ink on flash fiction and creative nonfiction. His essays and fiction have appeared in Maisonneuve Magazine, Versal, 400 Words, San Diego Citybeat Magazine and various anthologies including I Do/I Don’t and Foolish Hearts. He is the co-editor of the Lambda Literary Award-nominated anthology From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up and has received writing fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Fishtrap. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and worked as a Poetry Reader for W. W. Norton in New York City.

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Shelby Hinte

Shelby Hinte has led and supported writing workshops at San Francisco State University and in the community, including teaching creative writing to incarcerated adults and youth on juvenile probation. She is the Associate Editor of Write or Die Magazine where she edits essays and interviews. She has served as a reader and intern at various independent presses including ZYZZYVA, Split/Lip Press, and No Contact. Her work has been featured in BOMB, ZYZZYVA, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her first novel, HOWLING WOMEN, is forthcoming from LEFTOVER Books (2025).

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Steve Mitchel

Steve Mitchel was awarded the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for his story, “Dog People.” His story “The Return of the Capellmeister” was a finalist for LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction. He earned a B.A. in political science from Stanford University, a J.D. from Northwestern University and an MFA in fiction writing from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He’s led fiction writing workshops throughout the Bay Area and has taught legal writing to law students at Northwestern and U.C. Berkeley.

Thea Matthews

Thea Matthews is a poet, author, and educator originally from San Francisco, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University; and her work has appeared in Southern Indiana Review, Interim, Aster(ix) Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, The New Republic, and others. Her first book Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press, 2020) was listed as part of Kirkus Reviews’s Best Indie Poetry of 2020. She lives in Brooklyn. 

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Tongo Eisen-Martin

Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker, educator, and poet who has organized around issues of human rights and self-determination for oppressed people throughout the United States. His curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people titled “We Charge Genocide Again,” has been used as a teaching and organizing tool throughout the country. His poems have been published in Harper’s Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. His book someone’s dead already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book of poems Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the California Book Award and the American Book Award.