The  Instructors

Paul Corman-Roberts has coached many poets to publication, from chapbooks to full-length collections. He authored four chapbooks and two full-length prose poetry collections, including Bone Moon Palace (Nomadic Press, 2020). A four-time Pushcart, Best of the Web, and Northern California Book Award nominee, he holds an MA/MFA from New College of California Poetics program, studying under David Meltzer, Genny Lim, and Neeli Cherkovski. He teaches at SF Creative Writing Institute, the Older Writer's Lab at SF Public Library, and Oakland Unified School District. He co-founded the Beast Crawl Literary Festival in Oakland, California.

Nick Mamatas is the author of seven novels, over one hundred short stories, and many essays and articles. His works include I Am Providence, Hexen Sabbath, The Nickronomicon, The Spook School, and The Second Shooter. His short fiction has been featured in Best American Mystery Stories, Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many other anthologies and journals. He co-edited award-winning anthologies like Haunted Legends and The Future Is Japanese. He has written for The Writer, Fine Books & Collections, and Wonderbook. His latest anthology is Wonder and Glory Forever: Awe-Inspiring Lovecraftian Fiction.

Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem holds a BA from California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts. Her award-winning poems and creative nonfiction have been published locally and internationally. In 2022, Nomadic Press published Cassandra's first poetry collection, Hot Thicket. She illustrated Basho's Haiku Journeys, a haiku picture book. Cassandra's creative work spans various artistic disciplines and literary forms. She values diversity and inclusion, teaching workshops in Alaska, Hawaii, and California. In 2019, she led a literary series for women and non-binary writers at The Beat Museum.

Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, and visual artist with over thirty-five years of experience across the United States. He has lived in New York, Austin, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Chicago, San Francisco, and currently resides in Oakland, CA. He authored Sudden Windows (Zeitgeist Press, 2016), Poems for Teeth (We Press, 2005), The Orange Book (International Review Press, 1990), and ten chapbooks. His work appears in over one hundred magazines, journals, and thirty anthologies. He has performed over 500 featured readings, sharing stages with poets like Jim Carroll and bands like Fugazi and X.

Dr. Kim McMillon is a producer, playwright, and contributor to the anthology Some Other Blues: New Perspectives on Amiri Baraka (Ohio University Press, 2021). She edited Willow Books' anthology Black Fire—This Time, published in March 2022, and hosts Berkeley Community Media's Bay Area Art Beat. McMillon produced the 2016 Dillard University-Harvard Hutchins Center Black Arts Movement Conference in New Orleans and co-produced the 2014 UC Merced Black Arts Movement Conference. She edited a special edition of The Journal of PAN African Studies and contributed to the Black Power Encyclopedia. McMillon wrote and starred in Confessions of a Thespian.

Marc Anthony Richardson is an artist and novelist from Philadelphia, specializing in visceral, avant-garde fiction. His autobiographical novel, Year of the Rat, won an American Book Award and a Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. Messiahs, a speculative novel, was a finalist for the Big Other Book Award. His forthcoming novelistic poem, The Serpent Will Eat Whatever is in the Belly of the Beast, will be published by Deep Vellum/Dalkey Archive Press. Richardson received awards from Creative Capital, PEN America, and the Sachs Program, and residencies from Art Omi and the Vermont Studio Center. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tongo Eisen-Martin is the poet laureate of San Francisco. He authored "Someone's Dead Already," nominated for a California Book Award, and "Heaven Is All Goodbyes," which won multiple awards, including the 2018 American Book Award and California Book Award. His 2020 book "Blood on the Fog" was named the Best Poetry Book of 2021 by the New York Times. Besides being a poet, he is an educator and organizer focusing on mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people, and human rights. He has taught at detention centers and Columbia University and co-founded Black Freighter Press.

Kristina Wong is a Doris Duke Artist Award winner, Guggenheim Fellow, and Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama. She is a performance artist, comedian, actor, and writer who has been presented internationally across North America, the UK, Hong Kong, and Africa. Her work has received support from Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, Center for Cultural Innovation, National Performance Network, a COLA Master Artist Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, nine Los Angeles Artist-in-Residence awards, Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Fund from En Garde Arts.

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, professor, editor, and book reviewer based in Austin, TX. He authored Zero Saints and Coyote Songs, the latter winning the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His work, published in five languages, has been optioned for film and nominated for Bram Stoker and Locus Awards. He edited Both Sides: Stories from the Border for Agora and reviews books for NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University's online MFA program and offers low-cost online writing workshops.

Hollie Hardy can teach you how to survive anything. Her poetry collection, "How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems," with titles borrowed from "The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook," is available from Punk Hostage Press (2014). Hardy is an English instructor at Berkeley City College and a seasonal lecturer at San Francisco State University, where she earned her MFA in Poetry. Active in the Bay Area literary scene, she co-hosts the monthly reading series Saturday Night Special, helps produce the Beast Crawl Literary Festival, curates Litquake's Flight of Poets, and was Editor-in-Chief of Fourteen Hills.

Michelle Amor sold her second TV show, PG County, to Lifetime with Lionsgate and Mary J. Blige's Blue Butterfly Productions in January 2023. Her first TV show, The Honorable, sold to BET/Viacom CBS in March 2020 and was co-created with Ali LeRoi. Michelle co-wrote Playin' for Love, wrote Of Boys & Men starring Angela Bassett, and co-produced and co-wrote the documentary Tupac Shakur: Before I Wake. A Writers Guild of America West member, she served as co-chair of the Committee of Black Writers. She is a Clinical Professor of Screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University and was honored in Variety's 2020 Entertainment Education Impact Issue.

Sam Sax is the author of the poetry collections PIG (Scribner, 2023), bury it (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), winner of the James Laughlin Award, and madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series. They hold a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Sax has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, and Stanford University. A two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion, their poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Granta. Sax lectures in the ITALIC Program at Stanford University.

Cassandra Dallett has published multiple chapbooks and full-length books of poetry, (two of which On Sunday, A Finch and Collapse, both on Nomadic Press, were nominated for CA Book awards.) She has been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes and was recently in the running for Oakland's first Poet Laureate, Cassandra has graced many stages, hosts the weekly writing workshop ONTWOSIX, is co-host of the quarterly-themed reading series Moon Drop Productions, host of The Badass Bookworm Podcast, and The Badass Bookworm's Lit Loft. Her most recent book of poetry, A Pretty Little Wilderness came out on Be About It Press June of 2020.

Jason Ridler is an expert in unconventional warfare, Cold War strategy, and the history of science and technology. He earned his doctorate in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a biography of Dr. Omond Solandt, published as Maestro of Science (2015). He also authored Mavericks of War (2018). His work has appeared in Diplomacy and Statecraft and Defense and Security Analysis. Dr. Ridler won the Smith Richardson Foundation Fellowship in 2014. He teaches at Norwich University and Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School. He has published over sixty short stories and lives in Berkeley, CA.

San Francisco-based performance poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter with her words. She is the author and editor of five award-winning books, with a sixth on the way. Her graphic novel, Jokes and the Unconscious, illustrated by Diane DiMassa, was released in 2006 and praised by Publisher's Weekly as "brilliant and unsettling." Gottlieb is best known for Final Girl (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Why Things Burn (Soft Skull Press, 2001), and Pelt (Odd Girls Press, 1999). She teaches at New College of California and holds an MFA from Mills College.

Kim Shuck is a Cherokee Nation poet, author, weaver, and former poet laureate of San Francisco. She holds a BA in Art and an MFA in Textiles from San Francisco State University. Shuck has authored several works, including "Deer Trails," "Clouds Running In," "Rabbit Stories," "Smuggling Cherokee," and the chapbook "Sidewalk Ndn." In 2019, she was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She currently works in the Diversity department at the California College of Art. Shuck has won the Diane Decorah First Book Award and the Mary Tallmountain Award for her literary contributions.

Molly Tanzer is the award-winning author of five novels, two collections, and many short stories. She lives outside Boulder, CO, with her notorious cat, the Toad. She won the Colorado Book Award for historical fiction and has been nominated for the Locus Award, British Fantasy Award, and Wonderland Book Award. Known for her genre-bending fiction, she combines horror and fantasy with strong female protagonists, deep characterization, and realistic interpersonal relationships.

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet, writer, and educator from Mumbai. She authored Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), and her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Hobart, and Threepenny Review. Her essays have been featured in Buzzfeed India, The Ladies Finger, and Huffington Post. Her debut short story, Work Wives, won the 2022 PEN America/Robert J. Dau Prize. She is the Poetry Editor for Glass and has worked as a Poet Mentor with Youth Speaks. Supported by residencies and fellowships from Ucross, Djerassi, Tin House, PEN America, and CCI, she holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco.

Gina Tron has authored multiple books, including the 2020 poetry book Star 67, which features a Pushcart Prize-nominated poem. Her forthcoming books include Suspect, which won the 2020 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award. Gina writes true crime for Oxygen and is an editor-at-large for Ladygunn. She has contributed to The Washington Post, VICE, Politico, USA Insider, The Daily Beast, and more. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has taught at the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. Gina's work on the opioid epidemic, including articles for VICE and Politico, received widespread recognition, with NPR and Rolling Stone highlighting her contributions.

Sandra Ruttan has been hit by a car, had her foot partially severed, survived a car crash in the Sahara Desert and almost drowned. She has no idea how she's still alive. Her crime novels include Harvest of Ruins and the Nolan, Hart and Tain series: What Burns Within, The Frailty of Flesh and Lullaby For The Nameless. She is represented by Allan Guthrie of The North Literary Agency, has a background in education and journalism, and is a full-time writer. Sandra has experience writing and editing crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and YA fiction.

Sarah Bush is a dance artist passionate about the intersections of art and community. Since 2007, she has been the Artistic Director of Sarah Bush Dance Project. She has danced and choreographed for Page Hodel's Club Q, Michigan Women's Music Festival, and is a member of Krissy Keefer's Dance Brigade. Her work has been presented by the National Queer Arts Festival, Global Women's Rights Forum, and others. She has choreographed for Axis Dance Company and performed in "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist." Sarah received the 2019 Della Davidson Prize and is the 2020/21 Artist in Residence at Richardson Bay Audubon Center.

Koraly Dimitriadis is a Cypriot-Australian poet, writer, performer, and actor. She authored the poetry books "Just Give Me The Pills" and "Love and F–k Poems" (also in Greek). Koraly creates film and theatre with her poetry and has received travel grants from the Cypriot government to perform across the USA and Europe. Her work is translated into Greek, Greek-Cypriot, Czech, and Polish, and published in various journals and anthologies. As a freelance opinion writer, Koraly's work appears in The Saturday Paper, The Age, ABC, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent (UK), and Aljazeera.

Award-winning author and former food editor for Martha Stewart's Whole Living magazine, Ying Chang Compestine has written 20 books, including fiction, picture books, and five cookbooks. Ying has been featured on national TV programs and profiled in The New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Huffington Post. Named one of the "50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading," she contributes to Cooking Light, EatingWell, Self, and Men's Health. Her novel "Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party" has won over 30 awards and is included in school syllabi worldwide.

Sarah Tuft is an accomplished playwright whose works have been developed and produced at notable venues across the United States and internationally. Her play "110 Stories," published by Playscripts, has featured acclaimed actors in benefit productions at prestigious theaters. Tuft's accolades include a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Her plays have been showcased at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Naked Angels' Tuesdays at 9, and 24 Hour Plays at BAM. Tuft's latest one-act play, "Marvel-ous Monica," premieres in Los Angeles. 

Alisa Valdes is an award-winning journalist, bestselling novelist, and screenwriter from New Mexico. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Music from Berklee College, where she majored in saxophone performance, and a Master of Science in print journalism from Columbia University. A former staff writer for the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, Valdes has published more than a dozen books, including New York Times and USA Today bestsellers. Her work has been published by St. Martin's, Little Brown, HarperTeen, and Gotham Books. With over 1 million copies in print in 11 languages worldwide, Valdes was named one of Time Magazine's "25 Most Influential Hispanics" for her pioneering contributions to literature. Her books have recently been under development for film and television.