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*Heather Woodward, Creative Writing Program Director,
is a Bay Area native and the daughter of public school
educators. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree
in Film Studies from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied
writing with Ishmael Reed, Floyd Salas, Charles Muscatine,
and Gary Soto. She received her MFA in Creative
Writing from San Francisco State University. Ms.
Woodward has been teaching at SOTA since 1997 and started
the Creative Writing Program
in 2002.
Lisa Blenis,
who spent two years as an intern with CW, graduated from San
Francisco State University in May 2005 with her MA in
English and Fiction. A San Diego native, Lisa received her
BA in Literature and Writing from UC-San Diego. Her short
stories and poetry have been published in Community Voices.
Michael Braithwaite was born in Nashville, Tennessee in
1979. Though she has since lived a geographically
diverse life, spending time in Boston, Los Angeles, and the
San Francisco Bay Area, the unique colors of the Southern
seasons -- rich tones muted by the almost constant hazy
humidity -- are still a substantial influence on Michael's
work. Michael's pieces often explore thematic issues
involving geography, hope, memory, truth, and childhood.
Her brother's death when she was a child, and the
splintering of her family as a result, left her struggling
with questions about cause and effect. Michael's work
often addresses her attempts to see the point of the space
in between. Michael's paintings are characterized by
distinct textural landscapes, as well as somber, and
occasionally unsettling, imagery. Though her primary
medium is oil paint, she also has a background in
illustration and bookmaking. Michael attended
Massachusetts College of Art, where she received her
Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003. Her work has been shown
in Nashville's Cumberland Gallery, the Nashville Public
Library, Boston's Bakalar Gallery, Boston's Oni Gallery, and
Somerville's The Someday Gallery. She also has worked
on public art projects at the Travellers Rest Plantation and
Museum in Nashville, and the Children's Floating Hospital in
Boston.
*Nicole Bratt
has been the advisor for umläut since its inception. She
earned her Bachelor’s in
 Graphic Design from Drake
University in 1996, and has been striving for design
excellence ever since. In 2003 she voluntarily uprooted
herself and drove across the country to San Francisco. She
teamed up with her cousin, Laura Johnston Bratt, immediately
upon arrival. In April 2004, Laura and Nicole formed the
partnership DesignAura, a graphic design agency specializing
in print, packaging, identity, and signage.
In 2008, they changed their company name to Rock + Feather (www.rockandfeather.com).
Nicole currently
lives happily among the faded flower children in the
Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco with her dog, her cat,
her camera, and her extensive collection of Sharpies.
*Tony
Bravo, Artistic Director
for the Creative Writing Department, graduated from School
of the Arts in 2002 and has been directing CW productions
since 2004. He has attended the writing program at
Bennington College, the James Joyce summer
School at University College, Dublin, and holds a BA from
New College of California in literature and experimental
theater. First published abroad at age sixteen, Tony
is a San Francisco Youth Arts Award recipient and received
the Kennedy Center Scholastic Medal of Honor for his writing
portfolio (with special presentation by Laura Bush in
Washington, D.C.) Tony's performance art work includes
Mary Bell in Hell (Bennington College, 2003); The
Art Fag: A Musical Comedy (premiered San Francisco,
2006); dramaturg for choreographer Theresa
Dickinson's fiber-aerial ballet The Former World (San
Francisco, 2008); The Professional Mourner (final New
College performance, 2008); and Tia Frida (2008, for
SFMOMA's MAPP performance exhibition in collaboration with
Red Poppy Art House.) Tony is currently a program
assistant at the Museum of Performance & Design, where he
manages the Museum's Rendezvous young professional's group.
His next play, appropriately premiering this election
season, is a celebration of American life titled Red,
White and Bravo!
James Brook
is a poet and translator with abiding interests in
Surrealism, film noir, and “the city.” He is the
principal editor of two anthologies, Resisting the
Virtual Life and Reclaiming San Francisco; his
translations include Resistance by Victor Serge,
My Tired Father by Gellu Naum, The Prone Gunman
by Jean-Patrick Manchette, and Panegyric by Guy
Debord. His poems can be found in many journals, including
Big Bridge, Exquisite Corpse, and City Lights
Review.
Patty Cachapero
received her MFA in Playwriting from the California
Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2003. At CalArts, Patty
was mentored for three years by Suzan-Lori Parks, and she
also studied playwriting with Erik Ehn, puppetry with Janie
Geiser, and theatre design with Chris Barreca. Patty
received her BFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco
State University in 1999, where she studied with several
accomplished literary artists including Brighide Mullins,
Toni Mirosevich and Jaime Jacinto. In the Spring of 2004,
as a guest artist for the Kearny Street Workshop’s
Intergenerational Writers Lab, Patty taught a workshop in
the craft of playwriting, and her play “MacArthur’s
Querida,” loosely based on the life of Isabel Cooper
(mistress of General Douglas MacArthur), was presented as a
staged reading. Patty was a principal writer, director, and
actor with Tongue in a Mood, the former resident theatre
company of Bindlestiff Studio, the Bay Area’s epicenter for
Philipino-American performing arts.
Victor Cartagena,
Salvadoran-born, is based in San
Francisco and works in the media of printmaking, painting,
drawing and mixed media on canvas and paper, installation
and set-design. As a member of Tamoanchán, a collective of
Latin American printmakers, Cartagena studied and worked at
Berkeley’s distinguished KALA Art Institute from 1990-1996,
sponsored by the California Arts Council. Cartagena has
exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in the US
and internationally. His many grants and awards include a
Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation 2001 Visual Arts
Purchase Award, the competitive Art Council award in the
year 2000, and 1996 and 2000 Pacific Prints Awards.
Cartagena’s work is in numerous private and institutional
collections, including the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the
Contemporary Art Museum in Honolulu, and the Oxbow School of
Art in Napa, CA. Cartagena is represented by Stephen Cohen
Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and TinT Gallery in Thessaloniki,
Greece. His website can be found at
http://www.victorcartagena.net.
Emily Cavanagh
interned with CW in 2004-2005, while pursuing her MA in
English and Creative Writing at San Francisco State
University. Her stories have been published in Transfer
and Grain.
*Isaiah
Dufort
is a San
Francisco-based playwright and screenwriter. His plays
include Absolute Pure Happiness, produced by Three
Wise Monkeys Theater Company in San Francisco, and The
Pheasant, winner of The Little Theater of Alexandria
2007 National One-Act Competition. His films include
Silent Anna, directed by Max Sokoloff, and Tests I
Love to Take, directed by Ronald Chase. Isaiah is
the assistant director of the San Francisco Art & Film
Program, an arts education non-profit making the arts
accessible to students. He is also the screenwriting
mentor for the SF Art & Film's Film Workshop. With his
spare time, he contributes to the 2xHR art society.
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*Sam Hamm
turned to screenwriting when it became apparent he would
never make a living as a cartoonist. His screen credits
include Never Cry Wolf, Batman, Batman Returns, and
Monkeybone, and he co-created, with Sam Raimi, the
television series M.A.N.T.I.S. At the moment he is
working on an untitled comedy for DreamWorks, a two-part
Batman comic for DC, and an episode of the cable anthology
series Masters of Horror, to be directed by Joe
Dante. Mr. Hamm lives in San Francisco with one wife, one
son, and one beagle. His favorite hobby is missing
deadlines.
Israel Haros is currently a graduate student at
California College of the Arts, where he will receive an MFA
in Writing in Spring 2008. His work ranges from poetry
for the page, to short fiction, to performative poems,
stories, and monologues. He is also extremely invested
in painting and music. Currently he is working on a
series of name poems exploring the history of naming and
renaming within the Latino community of East Los Angeles.
Israel has been a youth mentor, tutor, and teacher to
students in the Bay Area and Southern California.
Ultimately, he is concerned with creating new curriculum for
a generation of inner city youth who need to see, hear, and
read works by/for/from their communities as a means to
appreciating writers and worlds further afield.
Donn Harris, SOTA Principal and Playwright Director for
the CW department, holds an MA in Acting and Directing from
Cal State L.A. Donn has directed numerous productions,
including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and
Awake and Sing, as well as many original works by
student playwrights. Donn is now entering his second
year as guest director in the CW department and looks
forward to refining the challenging and exhilarating process
of bringing student work to the stage.
*Benjamin Hollander is a poet and essayist whose books
include Vigilance (Beyond Baroque, 2005), Rituals
of Truce and the Other Israeli (Parrhesia Press, 2004),
The Book of Who Are Was (Sun & Moon, 1997), How to
Read, too (Leech Books, 1992), and, as editor,
Translating Tradition: Paul Celan in France (ACTS,
1988). He teaches at Chabot College in Hayward, CA.
*Dan Hoyle
is an actor and writer based in San
Francisco. Tings Dey Happen, his third solo show,
directed by Charlie Varon, premiered at The Marsh in
San Francisco and won the 2007 Will Glickman Award for
Best New Play before running five months
Off-Broadway
in New York at The Culture Project, where it was
nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding
Solo Show. Hoyle's previous solo shows,
Circumnavigator
and Florida 2004: The Big Bummer had extended runs in
SF before touring colleges throughout the country.
Hoyle has been commissioned by The Aurora Theatre
Company and has served as an artist-in-residence
teacher at San
Francisco's School of the Arts. His
essays have been featured in The San Francisco
Chronicle, SportsIllustrated.com, and Salon.
He also
performs with his father, actor and comedian Geoff
Hoyle, and holds a double degree in Performance
Studies and History from Northwestern University.
Tings Dey Happen
received rave
reviews from the Chronicle's theater critic Robert Hurwitt
during its SF run. You can read the review (January 8, 2007) online at SF
Gate,
here. Dan
Hoyle's
website, www.danhoyle.com,
keeps up to date with his adventures, shows, and reviews.
*Maia Ipp is a poet, translator and editor who has had
the great pleasure of working with amazing young writers in
New York, Los Angeles and the Bay Area. She is a proud
member of the occasionally outrageous and radical City
Lights team as Assistant Editor, and her poetry has been
published in several journals. Maia studied creative
writing at UC Santa Cruz, and lived in Paris, France, where
she studied and worked in a bookshop, and began translating
her first book from French.
*Andrew Joron was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1955,
and grew up in Stuttgart, Germany; Lowell, Massachusetts;
and Missoula, Montana. He attended the University of
California at Berkeley, where he majored in History and
Philosophy of Science. After a decade and a half spent
writing science-fiction poetry, culminating in his volume
Science Fiction (Pantograph Press, 1992), he began to
elaborate other forms of lyric speculation. This work
has been collected in The Removes (Hard Press, 1999),
and in Fathom (Black Square Editions, 2003).
The Cry at Zero, a selection of his prose poems and
critical essays, was published by Counterpath Press in 2007.
Joron is also the translator, from the German, of the
Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch's Literary Essays
(Stanford University Press, 1998). Andrew Joron lives
in Berkeley, where he works as a part-time proofreader and
indexer.
Rocco Kayaiatos (aka Katastrophe) is a poet
and underground hip hop MC/producer. Winner of the
1998 Youth Speaks Poetry slam, he went on to compete
nationally and was a featured youth slam performer in the
acclaimed documentary Poetic License, which aired on
PBS in 2000. Ultimately, Kayiatos' love for words led
him to hip hop. He began producing and performing hip
hop in 2001. He has since released two solo cd's and
been featured on five compilations. He was crowned
producer of the year by Out Music Awards for his debut
album. Kayiatos is also a prominent artist in the
feature-length documentary Pick Up the Mic: the
(r)evolution of queer hip hop, which premiered to great
acclaim at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and
has since been picked up by LOGO. His video for the
single "The Life" premiered on LOGO's NewNowNext in mid-2007
and had a long run on the top ten countdown. His music
has also been featured on season four of The L Word
and its soundtrack. The subject of a forthcoming
biopic, The State of Katastrophe, Rocco has toured
nationally and internationally as well as performing in
dozens of colleges.
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Chad Lawson,
originally from the St. Louis, Missouri area, is currently a
second-year MFA student in fiction at San Francisco State
University. He received his undergraduate degree in English
Literature from St. Louis University and studied music and
video production at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.
Chad is currently working on a collection of stories
pertaining to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; other work
focuses on the issues of identity and race in America. Chad
is also an editor for the forthcoming literary journal,
Alligatorhorse.
*Beth Lisick has published poems, essays, and a short
fiction collection, and also wrote a weekly nightlife column
for the Chronicle's website, SF Gate for eight
years. Her stage and screen collaborations with
writer/performer Tara Jepsen "have yielded some
uncomfortable moments," the most recent being a short film
called Diving for Pearls, which screened
internationally. She also co-organizes the Porchlight
Storytelling Series, a monthly show for amateur storytellers
in San Francisco. Her most recent book, Everybody
Into the Pool, made Entertainment Weekly's list
of Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2005.
Claire Light
received
her BA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona,
and subsequently studied and taught English in Berlin. She
has taught fiction writing, speculative fiction writing, and
cultural sensitivity to high-schoolers, college students and
adults, and has worked in the nonprofit arts for eight
years. Currently, she is seeking a Master of Fine Arts at
San Francisco State University. Her writing has
been
published in McSweeney’s, Sensor, Hyphen, and other
magazines and chapbooks.
*Dana Teen Lomax
is the author of Curren¢y (Palm Press, 2006),
Room (a+bend press, 1999), and is the contributing
co-editor of Letters to Poets: Conversations About
Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia Books,
2008). Her work
has received the San Francisco Foundations's Joseph Henry
Jackson prize for poetry, as well as Academy of American
Poets, Ann Fields, and Leo Litwak awards. Her writing
has been published internationally in numerous journals and
magazines, including Jacket, Poets & Writers,
The Bay Poetics Anthology, Tripwire, Moria,
sonaweb, Vert, Fourteen Hills, Dusie, mem, and many
others. Supported by the California Arts Council, the
Peninsula Community Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Fund,
the Marin Arts Council, and other organizations, she is
presently working on Q, "home movies" about raising a
daughter on prison grounds, and a poetry manuscript entitled
Shhh! Lullabies for a Tired Nation. She works
as the Interim Director of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts
Center in San Francisco, teaches writing at San Francisco
State University and the University of San Francisco, and
lives in northern California with her family.
*Page (PK) McBee has been an
artist-in-residence and guest teacher for the last three
years at SOTA. This year, she is also teaching a
year-long creative writing course at the Academy. Her
other jobs include teaching English at California College
Preparatory Academy and educational/technical writing.
She's an MFA candidate at San Francisco State University.
Page's writing has been published in Boston's "Weekly Dig,"
Pittsburgh's "City Paper," "Lifeboat: A Journal of Memoir,"
"Deek Magazine," "Curve Magazine," and the anthology "Baby,
Remember My Name," edited by Michelle Tea.
Gail Mitchell is a poet and
artist living in San Francisco. She's the author of
Bone Songs, a poetry collection that is in its second
printing. She received her MFA from San Francisco
State University and is putting the finishing touches on her
Blues Opera. She writes: "In the beginning was the
word and I've drawn on it, to map the internal terrain, to
make sense of the external world, to investigate life and
death, to traverse a language that leaves me spellbound.
Word as element for alchemy, word as a cradle for the heart,
word as staff and staff as always something to lean on, to
get one from darkness to light."
*Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney is a
performer, teacher, and "cultureworker." He has taught
and performed around the U.S. and Canada for almost twenty
years. He just finished a successful run as
musician/composer with Kirk Readin in This Is The Thing,
and was this year nominated for an IZZY award for his music
with Sean Dorsey in Bully.
Katia Noyes's debut novel,
Crashing America, was a Book Sense Notable Book and was
chosen as one of the Ten Best Gay/Lesbian Books of 2005 by
Amazon.com and the United Kingdom's Rainbow Network.
It was also nominated for the Northern California Book
Award, Publishing Triangle Award, and Lambda Literary Award.
Her short stories have been published by Cleis Press.
She lives in the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco.
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Marisela Treviño
Orta is a Poet and Playwright living in San
Francisco. Her first play Braided Sorrow won UC
Irvine's Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in drama and will be
the season opener for Denver's El Centro Su Theatre. Her
short play Woman on Fire was read at the 2007 Bay
Area Playwrights Festival and at the Latino Playwrights
Initiative's 2006 playfest. Marisela is currently
developing Woman on Fire into a full-length play as
part of a commission from LPI corrdinators Austin Script
Works and Teatro Vivo. Marisela is Marin Theatre
Company's resident playwright and is currently writing a
commissioned play for MTC's Nu Works workshop productions.
This fall she has been slated to work with Just Theatre as
part of their New Plays Lab. Marisela's poetry has
been published in BorderSenses, Double Room,
Pomona Valley Review, 26: A Journal of
Poetry and Poetics, and Traverse. Her
literary blog can be found at
http://xanga.com/mtorta.
Liz Perle spent more than
twenty-five years in the publishing business as an editor,
marketer, and ultimately, publisher of several New York
publishing concerns. She is the author of numerous
non-fiction works. Her most recent book, Money, A
Memoir, will be published in the spring of 2006 by Henry
Holt.
Kirk Read is the author of
How I Learned to Snap, a memoir about being openly gay
in a small southern high school. He has recently been
raising money to donate 1300 copies of this book to queer
youth groups, high school libraries, and LGBT campus
resource centers. His second book, This is the
Thing, is a collection of performance essays which will
be published in 2008. How I Learned to Snap has
been translated into German and was named an American
Library Association Honor Book. Read co-curates the
two longest-running queer open mic events in San Francisco,
Smack Dab and K'vetsh. He received an MFA in Creative
Writing from San Francisco State University. He has
worked at the St. James Infirmary, a free health care clinic
for sex workers. At St. James, has has been volunteer
coordinator, an HIV/STD counselor, a phlebotomist, a shift
manager and a food and clothing donations coordinator.
He was part of the Gay Men's Health Summit collective, which
produced two national conferences to broaden conversations
and movements around gay men's health. He has toured
the United States extensively as a solo performer and as
part of a collective. He was part of the Neo-Dandy
Cabaret, directed by Keith Hennessy, which ran for six weeks
at the New Conservatory Theater. He is a frequent
performer at the Porchlight storytelling series and many
other Bay Area venues. He is currently at work on a
third book and is editing two anthologies.
Marcus Shelby
is an award-winning composer, arranger, educator and bassist
working and residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. He
studied under James Newton and Charlie Haden and his credits
include original scoring for film, theater, and dance, as
well as jazz composition for his own groups, the 15-piece
Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, the Marcus Shelby Trio and the
Marcus Shelby Septet. He is nationally recognized for his
innovative and collaborative approach to composing and
arranging for text, the visual arts, dance and theater. In
2000, Marcus’ interest in composing for jazz orchestra, and
his work in collaboration with the Bay Area
multidisciplinary arts organization Intersection for the
Arts, led him to form the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra. The
MSJO is comprised of some of the Bay Area’s most respected
and sought-after young musicians. Marcus has been awarded
two residencies with Intersection for the Arts, through
Theater Communications Group and Meet the Composer, and in
2000 was awarded the Creative Work Fund grant to compose for
the MSJO. The project resulted in the recording, “The
Light.” In 2002, Shelby was commissioned by the Equal
Justice Society to compose a suite for jazz ballet in honor
of the 40th anniversary of the Port Chicago
Mutiny. At present, in addition to composing and
performing, Shelby is on the faculty at San Francisco State
University, and on the UC Berkeley faculty for the Young
Musicians Program.
CityFlight named him one of the ten most influential
African-Americans in the Bay Area for 2005 -- read about it
here.
Erika Shuch
is a choreographer, director, and teacher living in San
Francisco. In 2007-2008, CW is excited to have her
returning
for a second guest artist stint
in its “Writing Through the Arts” unit. Ms. Shuch is
the artistic director of the Erika Shuch Performance Project
(ESP Project), a resident performance company of Intersection for the Arts. Her work
incorporates movement, text, music, and imagery. The ESP
Project has performed and been given residencies at theaters
such as Intersection, ODC, the Magic Theatre, and Theater
Artaud (SF International Arts Festival). She has received a
Goldie Award from the SF Bay Guardian and been granted a
CHIME award (Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange). Erika
is a co-director and co-founder of the Experimental
Performance Institute, an interdisciplinary BA, MA, and MFA
program in residence at New College of California, and also
teaches through Intersection’s Alternative Theater Institute
and Dancers’ Group’s 2005 Summer Dance Intensive.
A San Francisco Chronicle review (September 15, 2007)
of her show 51802 can be found at this
SF Gate link.
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giovanni singleton
received an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from The New
College of California. She is a recipient of a New Langton
Bay Area Award Show for Literature, and founding editor of
nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts. Her work
has appeared in a number of publications including Chain,
Fence, Five Fingers Review, Callaloo,
The Breast: An Anthology (Global City Press; New
York, 1994), Beyond the Frontier: African American Poets
for the Millenium (Black Classics Press; MD, 2002), and
on the building of Yerba Buena Center for Arts. In 2002,
she was featured guest on NPR’s “Fresh Air” hosted by
Michael Krasny. She has taught poetry in the San Francisco
Unified School District and at Saint Mary’s College in
Moraga, CA.
Octavio Solis
is a playwright and director living in San Francisco. His
works Man of the Flesh, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos &
Santos, La Posada Mágica, El Otro, Dreamlandia, The 7
Visions of Encarnacion, Bethlehem,
The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, Gibralter, Lethe, and
Marfa Lights
have been mounted
at
the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the New York
Summer Play Festival, the Dallas Theater Center, the Magic
Theater, Intersection for the Arts,
South Coast Repertory Theatre, the San Diego Repertory
Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Shadowlight in San
Francisco, the Venture Theatre in Philadelphia, Latino
Chicago Theatre Company, Teatro Vista in Chicago, Thick
Description, Artattack, Campo Santo, the Imua Theatre
Company in New York, and Cornerstone Theatre. Solis
has received an NEA Playwriting Fellowship, the Will
Glickman Playwright Award, a production grant from the
Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the 1998 TCG/NEA
Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight
Fellowship from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and
the National Latino Playwriting Award for 2003. He is
the recipient of the 2000-2001 National Theatre Artists
Residency Grant from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust for
Gibralter at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His
new anthology, Plays by Ocatvio Solis, is published
by
Broadway Play Publishing.
Chad
Sweeney
is the author of two full-length poetry collections,
An
Architecture (Blaze VOX, Buffalo 2007) and Arranging
the Blaze (Anhinga, Tallahaassee 2008/9) as well as four
chapbooks, most recently A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer
(Tarpaulin Sky, VT 2006). His poems and translations
have lived recently in New American Writing,
Colorado Review, Slope, Denver Qtly,
Poetry Flash, American Letters & Commentary,
Indiana Review, Poetry International, 5fr,
Runes and Verse, where he was nominated for
"New Best Poets 2007." With David Holler, he edits and
publishes Parthenon West Review, a journal of
contemporary poetry, translation and essays. He has
taught creative writing and literature in San Francisco for
thirteen years, the past seven years with WritersCorps,
where he led creative writing workshops, events and
publications with San Francisco youth, especially
newly-arrived teenagers from Latin America and Asia.
With Mojdeh Marashi, Sweeney is translating a book of Farsi
poetry, Arghavaan, the Selected Poems of H.E. Sayeh,
for which he was awarded a Cultural Equities Grant from the
San Francisco Arts Commission. He holds an MFA in creative
writing from San Francisco State University and lives on
Potrero Hill with his wife, poet Jennifer K. Sweeney.
Michelle Tea
is a
memoirist and novelist. Her most recent book is
Rose of No Man's Land. She also edits anthologies
and has a collection of poetry, The Beautiful.
Her writing crops up in places such as The Believer
and 7X7 Magazine. She is the creator of Radar
Productions, which curates literary events throughout San
Francisco.
*Niloufar Talebi is an award-winning translator, born in
London to Iranian parents. She received a BA in
Comparative Literature from UC Irvine, and an MFA in Writing
and Literature from Bennington College. She studied
theater with Jean Shelton and Cyril Clayton and has produced
and performed nationally. In 2003 she founded The
Translation Project (www.thetranslationproject.org),
a literary organization and production company with
innovative multimedia projects that bring contemporary
Iranian literature to wide audiences. She edited and
translated Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the
World (North Atlantic Books, August 2008).
Niloufar has presented at numerous venues including the PEN
World Voices Festival of International Literature in New
York City, The New School, The National Arts Club, St.
Mark's Poetry Project, Asia Society, the New York Public
Library, Litquake, SF Public Library, ODC Theater, Theater
Artaud, Berkeley Reportory Theater, Actor's Theater, and
Intersection for the Arts. She created "Midnight
Approaches," a DVD of short videos based on new Iranian
poetry, as well as "Four Springs" and "ICARUS/RISE,"
multimedia theatrical pieces also based on new Iranian
poetry. She is the recipient of translation prizes
from the International Center for Writing and Translation
(2004), the American Literary Translators Association
(2005), the PEN/New York State Council on the Arts (2006)
and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize (2006).
Visit her at
www.niloufartalebi.com.
*Brian Thorstenson is a playwright whose works include:
Wakefield; or, Hello Sophia
 and Shadow Crossing (Central Works Theater Ensemble),
Drop (Alternative Theater Ensemble), Tuesday
(Stephen Pelton Dance Theater), Heading South (The
Studio at Theater Rhinoceros, The 450 Geary Theater),
Summerland (Alternative Theater Ensemble, 2000 Bay Area
Playwrights Festival, Wings Theatre Co., NYC) and Over
The Mountain (2003 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2007
Global Age Project, opening 2009 at Brava Center for Women
in the Arts). Brian is an associate artist at The Z Space
Studio, a member of the Dramatists Guild, and a 2008
Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation. He
currently teaches at San Francisco State University and
Santa Clara University. Brian received a B.A. in Theater
from Willamette University, and an M.F.A. in Creative
Writing from San Francisco State University. He lives in San
Francisco.
*Amy Trachtenberg is a visual artist whose practice
explores contexts of space, light, materiality and history.
Projects and collaborations with poets, architects, and
composers include permanent and temporary public artworks:
Groundwork, for a San Jose, CA library and The Atrium
Project at Children's Hospital-Oakland. The
Natural History of Market Street was commissioned by Art
in Transit of the San Francisco Art Commission and
Illuminance was installed for the inauguration of
Pixar's Emeryville campus. She is currently designing
artwork for the BART extension between Oakland and San Jose.
Visual design for theater has been performed at venues
including The Magic Theater, ODC, the LAB, Intersection for
the Arts, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Trachtenberg's work is exhibited and collected nationally
and internationally and represented by Brian Gross Fine Art.
She received a BA in French and Liberal Studies from
California State University-Sonoma and the Diplôme d'Art
Plastique from L'école Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.
She lives and works in San Francisco. Her website:
www.amytrachtenberg.com
Truong Tran
received his BA from University of California, Santa Cruz
and MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State
University. He has published four volumes of poetry:
Placing the Accents (Apogee Press, 1999); The Book of
Perceptions (Kearny Street Workshoop, 1999); dust and
conscience (Apogee Press, 2002), which received the 2002
Poetry Center Book Prize; and within the margin
(Apogee Press, 2004). He is also the author of a children’s
book entitled Going Home Coming Home (Children’s Book
Press, 2003). Tran, the 2003 Writer-in-Residence for
Intersection for the Arts, lives in San Francisco, where he
teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco
State University.
Antigone Trimis
is known for her distinguished work in arts and education,
most recently as art consultant and curriculum specialist
for the federal Arts-in-the-City grant. Antigone has a
strong background in both arts and education, having worked
extensively with the Magic Theatre, World Arts West
(producer of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and
People Like Me), the Playwrights Foundation, and the
Engineers Alliance for the Arts in artistic and
administrative positions. She has served as Board President
for Intersection for the Arts (2001-2002) and the
Playwrights Foundation (2003 & 2004), and took on the role
of SOTA’s Director of Outreach and Recruitment in Fall
2004. Antigone has a background in music, has curated
visual arts exhibits, and has directed and dramaturged for
the theatre. She holds a BA in Classics from Aristotle
University (Greece) and an MA in Theatre from Brown
University (RI).
Howard
Wiley
is a jazz musician who first found his talents nurtured, to
quote his website, "in the most nurturing of all
environments for young African American musicians: the
church." He has recorded and performed with the likes
of Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lauryn Hill, and Lavay Smith,
as well as receiving numerous awards and accolades from the
Thelonious Monk Institute, including MVP honors for the
Grammy All-American Jazz Band and the Berklee College of
Music Scholarship Award. At the age of 15, Wiley
released his first CD as a leader, signaling the arrival of
the San Francisco Bay Area's newest diamond in the rough.
In 2007 he released his third album, The Angola Project,
comprising ensemble pieces inspired by 1950s recordings from
Angola State Prison. According to jazz critic Daniel
King of the San Francisco Chronicle, "What makes
Wiley's album a great artifact (and great listen) is his
textural range, his less-is-more compositional approach, and
his patience as a soloist." Wiley was born in
Berkeley, California. He attended SF School of the
Arts, and enjoyed coming back to teach a Creative Writing
unit on Writing Through Music. To read more about him,
and see a YouTube video, check out his website,
www.howardwiley.com.
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GUEST SPEAKERS
Thanks both to its
San Francisco location and its increasing visibility in the
literary community, SOTA Creative Writing has hosted a variety of guest speakers of regional, national, and
international reputation. These include, in
alphabetical order:
Dorothy Allison (novelist and essayist; Bastard
Out of Carolina, Skin, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure)
Summer Brenner (young adult lit author)
Maxine Chernoff (author, poet, chair of SFSU Creative
Writing department)
Judith Coburn (war reporter in Vietnam, Central
America, and Middle East for the Village Voice and
others)
Paul Cox (Veterans for Peace)
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius; founder of 826 Valencia)
Landis Everson ("Berkeley Renaissance" poet)
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated;
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
David Ford (playwright and director)
Robert Gluck
(fiction, poetry; San Francisco State Creative Writing
faculty)
Samara Halperin (filmmaker)
Robby Hecht (songwriter)
Paul Hoover (poet)
Lewis MacAdams (activist poet and journalist;
Birth of the Cool)
Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior, The Journeys of Socrates)
Katia Noyes (freelance writer, novelist; Crashing
America)
Hoa Nguyen (poet)
Liz Perle (editor, publisher, non-fiction author)
Tennessee Reed (poet)
Donald Revell (poet and editor)
Robert Rosenthal (Vice-President and Managing Editor,
SF Chronicle)
James Tracy (Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troupe)
Marianne Villanueva (Filipina writer and teacher)
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