Impressive showing by WWLA faculty and students this season! Congratulations to all!
Kim Anton’s story “What Are You Afraid Of?” appeared in the winter 2017 issue of Witness, a literary magazine of the Black Mountain Institute.
Neelanjana Banerjee (Weekend Fiction) represented Kaya Press at LitFest Pasadena as part of "The Future of Publishing" panel.
"The Domino Effect," an essay by Katie Barnes, is a finalist for the 2018 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. Katie is also a finalist for the 2018 Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize.
Francesca Lia Block will be a Creative Writing Undergraduate Visiting Professor at University of Redlands in 2018-2019.
A.S. Callaghan’s essay “What Happens When Your Kid Gets Kicked Out of Preschool” was published at Motherwell.
Andrea Ciannavei is working on Sons of Anarchy spinoff Mayans MC for FX Networks.
Chris Daley (Short Story Crash Course), Natashia Deón, Edan Lepucki, Scott O’Connor (Novel II), Ivy Pochoda (Intensive Novel Revision Workshop), and Zan Romanoff (Young Adult Fiction) participated on panels at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April.
Natashia Deón and Seth Fischer (Mixed Levels Memoir) read at "THE TABLE After Hours presents CANDY" at LitFest Pasadena.
Christopher DeWan (The Art of the Short Story) has two short stories forthcoming this summer—"Hungry" (in Threadcount) and "Unattended" (in Jellyfish Review)—and New Limestone Review recently published seven of his "one-sentence stories." His TV pilot DISASSEMBLY is currently shortlisted for the Sundance Episodic Story Lab.
Jacqueline Elam's book Corpse Encounters: An Aesthetics of Death, co-written with Chase Pielak, will be published by Lexington Books on July 15.
“Fireflies,” an essay by Wendy Fontaine, was published by Mud Season Review. Full Grown People published her essay “In Plane View.” Both essays were developed in Bernard Cooper’s nonfiction workshop.
Aja Gabel’s debut novel The Ensemble was released on May 15. An excerpt was published at Buzzfeed. Aja is currently on book tour in a city near you.
Anita Gill is attending the Anaphora Writing Residency at Otis College in early June. At the end of August, she’ll be giving a conference presentation on writing endings for essays in HippoCamp 2018, a conference for nonfiction writers.
Sophie He has been accepted to Washington University in St. Louis's MFA program for nonfiction, which she'll be attending in the fall. Sophie also received a scholarship for the Juniper Summer Writing Institute and will be attending the Tin House Summer Workshop.
"Love Bird," a story by Laroo Jack, was published in the current issue of The Literary Hatchet.
Edan Lepucki sold a nonfiction photo book called Mothers Before, based on her popular Instagram of the same name, to Abrams; it will be published in May 2020. She’s also launched Mom Rage, a podcast about the joys and $&@! of motherhood, co-hosted by former WWLA instructor Amelia Morris. Check out their second episode for an interview with WWLA guest instructor Lilliam Rivera.
Elline Lipkin (Welcome the Muse—A Generative Poetry Seminar) appeared at LitFest Pasadena as part of the “Poets: The Bright Lights of Community” reading.
Rhoda Novak will attend the 2018 Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshop MG/YA in August to work on her memoir about becoming a physicist in the Sputnik era.
The audiobook for A Perfect Universe by Scott O’Connor (Novel II) won an Audiophile Magazine Earphones Award. The collection is narrated by Bronson Pinchot and Thérèse Plummer.
Jonathan Parks-Ramage and Annette Wong will be attending the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in August.
Wonder Valley, the critically acclaimed novel by Ivy Pochoda (Intensive Novel Revision Workshop), has been purchased for UK distribution by publisher The Indigo Press.
Teen Vogue published an excerpt and revealed the cover of Lilliam Rivera's forthcoming novel Dealing in Dreams.
Zan Romanoff (Young Adult Fiction)'s novel Look, "a feminist, emotionally rich, queer coming-of-age story about falling in love and taking ownership of your own self—your whole self—in the age of social media," was sold to Dial Books for Young Readers in a two-book deal. Look will be published in spring 2020. Zan published the following essays since our last news post: "Why Are We So Obsessed With Making Healthy Desserts?" for Healthyish, "Francesca Lia Block is So Much More Than Weetzie Bat" for LitHub, "Why Khloe is the Most Relatable Kardashian" for Buzzfeed, "This Navy vet turned fishmonger is smoking and curing some of LA’s best sustainable seafood" for the LA Times, "Joe Manganiello Isn’t Just the Guy Who Takes His Clothes Off" and "Madeline Brewer, Handmaid’s Tale Star, Just Wants You to Be Okay" for Playboy, and "What 'Cult' Means When it Comes to Beauty Products" for Racked.
Crystal Salas was accepted into UC Riverside’s fully funded residential MFA program.
Lisa Sanchez’s story, “Ghost Lover,” was a finalist in LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction.
The Tincture of Time: A Parent’s Memoir of (Medical) Uncertainty by Elizabeth L. Silver (Nonfiction I) was released in paperback on April 25. Elizabeth was also chosen for a residency by the Ragdale Foundation.
Christina Simon’s essay “Garage Sale, Topanga” was published by Entropy Magazine.
Raqi Syed was chosen for the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab, which supports independent artists working at the cutting-edge convergence of film, art, media, live performance, and technology.
Lauren Westerfield’s essay “Depth Control" was named a finalist in the Phoebe 2018 Nonfiction Contest and appears in the spring issue of the journal. She also has essays forthcoming in DIAGRAM and Sonora Review and a poem forthcoming in the "Bodies" issue of The Turnip Truck(s).
Tigers, the second poetry manuscript by Kim Young (Poetry I), is a semifinalist at YesYes Books’ Pamet River Prize. Kim also published a limited edition chapbook for Business Bear Press’s animal series and she has a new poem forthcoming in Spillway.