THE 32nd ANNUAL
FOOTHILL WRITERS' CONFERENCE
Speakers

Kathleen de Azevedo
	Kathleen de Azevedo was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil but has lived most of her life in California. Her mixed heritage is reflected in her novel about Brazilians in Hollywood, Samba Dreamers (University of Arizona Press) which won a 2007 Pen Oakland National Book Award. Her other work has appeared in many publications including the Los Angeles Times, Américas, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and in two recently published anthologies, New Stories from the Southwest and Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and teaches English at Skyline College. www.kathleenazevedo.com/
Dan Bellm
	Dan Bellm’s third book of poetry, Practice, came out from Sixteen Rivers Press in March 2008. His first, One Hand on the Wheel, launched the California Poetry Series from Roundhouse Press; his second, Buried Treasure, won the Poetry Society of America’s DiCastagnola Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Best American Spiritual Writing, and Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. He is also a widely published translator of poetry and fiction from Spanish. His translation of The Legend of the Wandering King by Laura Gallego García (Scholastic) was an ALA Notable Book for Children and a School Library Journal Outstanding International Book for 2006. He lives in San Francisco.
Denny Berthiaume
	Denny Berthiaume is a playwright and musician-composer. He authored You've Never Left This Place, a one act play (in One Act Plays for Actors And Actresses, Vol 3). Berthiaume is a pianist with more than 20 records, including 4 with fusion band Solar Plexus; 3 solo piano projects - Sentimental Journey, One For The Road, And Summer Wishes Winter Dreams; 3 discs with Bay Area sextet Departure - Twelve Songs, Through The Trees, and The Open Path; and, most recently, 2 trio discs ("The Trio," Prayer For Peace; and America: Trio Plays The Music Of Paul Simon) and a duo project with guitarist Jeff Buenz (Love Ya Mean It!). Denny also authored Contemporary Musical Styles: Rock, Pop And Jazz. Denny's piano work can be heard on the HBO film, Fat Rose And Squeaky. His newest CD, with vocalist Catherine Seidel, "if you and i awakening: an e.e. cummings song cycle," will be released on OpenPath Records in July 2008. www.dennyberthiaume.com/
Bonnie Bonner
	Bonnie Bonner graduated from the University of California Berkeley to become a writer and actor. As an actor she's appeared television, film, and over 100 commercials. Bonnie Bonner is the pen and maiden name for Joanne Palamountain, her stage and married name. As a journalist and photographer, Bonnie has contributed to such publications as: San Francisco Chronicle and their Sunday Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, Stockton Record, Poetry Flash and Rugby Magazine. Her work appears in the award winning 2007 anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. Bonnie is also Events Coordinator for the anthology's publicity: www.vowvop.org. She is the recipient of the Lilli Fabilli/Eric Hoffer Essay Prize and the Irving Prize for American Wit and Humor.
Christopher Buckley
	Christopher Buckley’s most recent books are Flying Backbone: The Georgia O'Keeffe Poems (Blue Light Press 2008) and And The Sea, (2006), from The Sheep Meadow Press. His 16th book of poetry, Modern History: Prose Poems 1987-2007, will be published by Tupelo Press in 2008, and Rolling the Bones will be out from Eastern Washington University Press in early ’09. Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems & Poetics From California, edited with Gary Young, is just out from Alcatraz Editions, 2008. Buckley is a Guggenheim fellow in Poetry for 2007-2008. He teaches in the creative writing Program at the Univ. of California Riverside.
Andrea Hollander Budy
Photo credit Marcus Cafagña	Andrea Hollander Budy's third full-length poetry collection is Woman in the Painting (Autumn House Press, 2006). Her honors include the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize for her first book, the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize for prose memoir, and two poetry fellowships the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, college textbooks, and literary journals including Poetry, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, FIELD, and Creative Nonfiction. Budy lives in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains near Mountain View, where she and her husband and son ran a bed-and-breakfast inn for fifteen years. Since 1991 she has worked as the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College, where she was awarded the Lamar Williamson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. www.andreahollanderbudy.com/
Alan Cheuse
	Alan Cheuse is the author of the novels The Bohemians (1982), The Grandmothers' Club (1986), and The Light Possessed (1990),three collections of short fiction, a pair of novellas The Fires (2007), as well as the nonfiction work Fall Out of Heaven: An Autobiographical Journey (1987). As a book commentator, Cheuse is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered". He is also the editor of Seeing Ourselves, Great American Short Fiction (2007) and co-editor, with Lisa Alvarez, of Writers Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction (2007). His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, and elsewhere. His new novel, To Catch the Lightning, will appear in October. www.alancheuse.com/
Geri Digiorno
	Geri Digiorno, a former Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, is also a visual artist, and the founder and director of the annual Petaluma Poetry Walk, now going into its thirteenth year, in 2008. She is the author of two chapbooks: Marilyn and Me, I'm Tap Dancing and full-length collections: Rosetta Mary and White Lipstick. Her poems have appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Sonoma Mandala, Bogg, Tomcat Magazine, Lips, Noe Valley Voice, Haight Ashbury Literary Review, North Coast Review, Cyanosis and Syllabus. She has taught poetry to battered women at a women's shelter in Santa Rosa, CA, and poetry and collage at homeless programs, including the Family Shelter and the Opportunity Center, in Petaluma. She is the publisher and editor (along with Bill Vartnaw) of the Petaluma Poetry Walk Anthology. http://geri-digiorno.petaluma360.com/default.asp?mode=author .
Sharon Doubiago
	Sharon Doubiago has written two dozen books of poetry and prose, most notably, the epic poem Hard Country (West End Press), the book-length poem South America Mi Hija (University of Pittsburgh) which was nominated twice for the National Book Award, and the stories The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (Graywolf), which in 2005 was selected to the list, Literary Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000. She holds three Pushcart Prizes for poetry and fiction and the Hazel Hall Oregon Book Award for Poetry for Psyche Drives the Coast. Volume one of her memoir, My Father’s Love/Portrait of the Poet as a Girl, will be published next year. She’s an online mentor in Creative Writing for the University of Minnesota.
Dennis Drury
	Dennis Drury lives on Main Street in Sebastopol, California. He was drafted in 1970 and served as a company clerk in the army in Vietnam in 1971 and 1972. He was educated at Santa Barbara City College and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he studied English literature and worked in the university library. His story “Good Time” was included in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006).
Uri Hertz
	Uri Hertz's new book, Poems Torn from a Life (highmoonoon) was published earlier this year. He released Inner Cities, a CD of his jazz-poetry performances, in 2005. Hertz's first journalistic assignment was in 1968 covering historic antiwar protests outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Beginning in the early 70's, his interviews with Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Tadeusz Kantor and Alejandro Jodorowsky, among others, have appeared in periodicals nationwide. Hertz edited international literary/arts magazine Third Rail until publication was suspended in 1989. He now continues to publish Third Rail online, currently featuring a new Kenneth Rexroth Festschrift, at www.literatureandarts.com. Hertz teaches English at Santa Monica College and performs his poetry with jazz at college campuses and other venues.
Linda Janakos
	L.D. Janakos is fiction writer, poet, and filmmaker. She is the author of the novel oldest show (after the abandonment) and a poetry chapbook The Letter. She has received several awards for her writing: a Bumbershoot Literary Award in Fiction, a University of Oregon Award in Fiction, and several finalist awards including one for the Plover Press Nivola Award in Fiction and one for the National Fiction Award given by FC2 (Fiction Collective II, an imprint of Black Ice Books). She is currently working on Brancusi’s Back.
Avotcja Jiltonilro
	Avotcja Jiltonilro is a poet, composer, musician and published author. She has opened for Betty Carter. She's played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Luis & Bobi Cespedes and John Handy, Dimensions Dance Theater and Nikki Giovanni, and with the Diamano Coura West African Dance Company. She has performed at Lorraine Hansberry Theater in San Francisco, the Scottish Rite Temple & Yoshi's in Oakland, Club le Monmartre in Copenhagen, at Stanford University, and has been featured four times for Afro Solo. Avotcja was the Staff Storyteller for Louisah Teish's "Word Conjurers," and she's founder and co-director of "The Clean Scene Theater Project/Proyecto Tea tral de la Escena Sobria." Avotcja teaches poetry, creative writing, music & drama in the public schools and the penal system. She is a member of the National Writers' Union - all this while living with multiple sclerosis.
Carol Lem
	Carol Lem teaches creative writing and literature at East Los Angeles College. Her work appears in such publications as Asian Pacific American Journal, Bloomsbury Review, The Illinois Review, Onthebus, Visions International, and others. Her books include Searchings, Grassroots, Don't Ask Why, The Hermit, The Hermit's Journey: Tarot Poems for Meditation, Moe (Remembrance), and The Shadow of the Plum. A reading of selected poems from her current book, Shadow of the Plum, may be heard on her CD, Shadow of the Bamboo, with music by Masakazu Yoshizawa. In 2002, her poem, "Japanese American National Museum Concert," was one of eight poems selected for the Sense of Site postcard series, which was made possible in part by grants from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and the Durfee Foundation. www.carollem.com
Anne Marie Macari
	Anne Marie Macari's most recent book, She Heads Into the Wilderness, will be published by Autumn House Press in fall 2008. Her book Ivory Cradle won the 2000 APR/Honickman first book prize for poetry, chosen by Robert Creeley, followed by Gloryland (Alice James Books, 2005). Her poems have appeared in many magazines such as: The Iowa Review, APR, Field and TriQuarterly. Macari has won the James Dickey Prize for Poetry from Five Points magazine, and is director of the Drew University Low-Residency MFA Program in Poetry & Poetry in Translation.
Morton Marcus
	Morton Marcus is the author of ten volumes of poetry and one novel, including The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems, Pages From A Scrapbook of Immigrants and recently Moments Without Names: New & Selected Prose Poems and Shouting Down The Silence: Verse Poems 1988-2001. In 2007, he published a new volume of prose poems, Pursuing The Dream Bone. He has had more than 450 poems in literary journals, and his work has been selected to appear in over 86 anthologies. This spring his literary memoir, Striking Through The Masks, was published. His website is www.mortonmarcus.com.
David Meltzer
	One of the key poets of the Beat generation, David Meltzer is also a jazz guitarist and Cabalist scholar and the author of more than 50 books of poetry and prose. 2005 saw the publication of David's Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer (edited by Michael Rothenberg, with an introduction by Jerome Rothenberg) which provides a current "overview" of Meltzer's work. Meltzer's other books include No Eyes, poems on Lester Young, and a book of interviews, San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets (City Lights Books). Meltzer teaches at the New College of California in the Poetic s Program which was originally founded by Duncan. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Clare Morris
	Clare Morris has published several articles on spirituality, psychology and social change in periodicals, including Creation, The Face of the Deep, Breakthrough, Intersection, and Fellowship. She has published two books of poetry, In Transit: Love Poems to the City (2005) and Child of the Longest Night (2006). Her poems have appeared in The Oakland Tribune, Integrities, and Inquiring Mind. Her memoir of committing civil disobedience with her mother is included in the anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006). Clare is a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco, as well as a leader of seminars for the Guild for Psychological Studies.
Doren Robbins
	Doren Robbins' is the author of nine collections, including Parking Lot Mood Swing: Autobiographical Monologues and Prose Poetry, and Driving Face Down, winner of The Blue Lynx Prize (Lynx House Press, Eastern Washington University, 2001). Robbins has received a state fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts, as well as prizes, grants, and awards from Passaic Poetry Center, the Loft Foundation, The Centrum Residency Program, The Judah Magnes Museum, The Lane Literary Guild, The Seattle Arts Commission, and The California Arts Council. Currently, he is professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Foothill College. His new book of poems, My Piece of the Puzzle, is just out from Eastern Washington University. www.Dorenrobbins.com.
Floyd Salas
	Floyd Salas is an award-winning and critically-acclaimed author of seven books, including the novels Tattoo the Wicked Cross, What Now My Love, Lay My Body on the Line, and State of Emergency, the memoir Buffalo Nickel, and two books of poetry, Color of My Living Heart and, most recently, Love Bites: Poetry in Celebration of Dogs and Cats. He was Regent’s Lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, and a staff writer for the NBC drama series, Kingpin. Tattoo the Wicked Cross and Buffalo Nickel are featured in Masterpieces of Hispanic Literature (HarperCollins 1994). His other awards and honors include a California Arts Council Literary Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation Fiction Scholarship, an NEA creative writing fellowship, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, a Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship and two outstanding teaching awards from the University of California, Berkeley. His novel, Tattoo the Wicked Cross, earned a place on the San Francisco Chronicle's Western 100 List of Best 20th Century Fiction. www.floydsalas.com/
Dixie Salazar
	Dixie Salazar has published three books of poetry: Hotel Fresno (Blue Moon Press 1988), Reincarnation of the Commonplace (national poetry award winner, Salmon Run Press 1999), and Blood Mysteries (Arizona UP 2003). Limbo, a novel, was published by White Pine Press in 1995. She has published numerous poems and short stories in about sixty different literary journals and anthologies including, The Missouri Review, The Red Brick Review, Poetry International, Ploughshares, Many Californias, Unsettling America and Highway 99. She has taught extensively in the California prisons and the Fresno County jail. Currently, she teaches writing and literature at California State University Fresno. Her talents extend into the visual arts; her paintings and collage work are available at the Silva/ Salazar studios in Fresno, California.
Greg Sarris
	Greg Sarris received his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Walter Gore Award for excellence in teaching. He has published several books, including Grand Avenue (1994), an award-winning collection of short stories, which he adapted for an HBO miniseries and co-executive produced with Robert Redford. He is serving his seventh elected term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Formerly a full professor of English at UCLA, and then the Fletcher Jones Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University, Greg now holds the position of Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair of Sonoma State University, where he teaches a number of courses in Creative Writing, American Literature, and American Indian Literature.
Catherine Seidel
	Soprano Catherine Seidel has performed in recent years in a broad range of musical styles, from modern classical music to jazz/art song and folk. As a regular performer with the San Francisco ensemble Adesso she has sung modern chamber music and works by living composers. This past winter she sang Stravinsky song cycles as a guest artist with San Francisco's Laurel Ensemble. She appears on several recordings of original music by the sextet Departure, as well as her own collection of songs on the Open Path Music label. She is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, as well as a professional horse trainer.
John Solt
	John Solt is the author of three books of poetry: The Memories are More Than I Can Remember (Tokyo: One Mind Don't Press, 1980), Underwater Balcony (Ito, Japan: Kaijinsha, 1988) and Anything You Don't Want You Can Have (Bangkok: Amarin Press, 1988). Solt is an award-winning translator of Japanese modern poetry and an authority on 20th-century, avant-garde Japanese culture who has organized numerous performance events and exhibits. He has written on poetry (notably Kitasono Katue), butoh dance (Ohno K azuo), photography (Yamamoto Kansuke) and art, some of which is online.
Lawrence R. Smith
	Lawrence R. Smith is a novelist, poet, translator, editor, and filmmaker. His novels are Annie's Soup Kitchen (Oklahoma, 2003) and The Map of Who We Are (Oklahoma, 1997). He also wrote The Plain Talk of the Dead (Montparnasse, 1988), a book of poems, and three translations: The King of the Storeroom (Wesleyan, 1992), from Antonio Porta's Italian, The New Italian Poetry: 1945 to the Present (University of California Press, 1981), and No Trace of the Gardener: Poems of Yang Mu (Yale, 1998). Smith edited Caliban, an international journal of literature and the arts, from 1986 to 1996, winning three NEA grants. His “Truck Girl” won the Award of Excellence for Short Features at the 2003 Berkeley Video & Film Festival.
Gerald Stern
	Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1925. He is the author of 15 books of poetry, including, most recently, Save the Last Dance (Norton, 2008) and Everything is Burning (Norton, 2005), as well as This Time: New and Selected Poems, which won the 1998 National Book Award and a book of personal essays titled What I Can't Bear Losing. He was awarded the 2005 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets and is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He is retired from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Jon Veinberg
	Jon Veinberg is the author of several poetry collections including An Owl's Landscape, Stickball Till Dawn. Oarless Boats, Vacant Lots and soon to be published The Speed Limit Of Clouds. In addition, he was co-editor of Piecework; 19 Fresno Poets. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines including Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Missouri Review. His work has also been included in numerous anthologies such as Highway 99; A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley. The Geography Of Home; California's Poetry Of Place, What Will Suffice:Contemporary American Poets On The Art Of Poetry, and Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems And Poetics From California.
Marianne Villanueva
	Marianne Villanueva has a Masters in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary journals including The Threepenny Review, ZYZZYVA, The Literary Review, and Puerto Del Sol. She was a finalist for the O. Henry Literature Prize, and has twice been a recipient of a California Arts Council Literary Fellowship. Her first short story collection, Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Press), was one of five finalists for the Philippines’ National Book Award. Her second manuscript of short stories, Mayor of the Roses, was a semi-finalist for the Sarabande Prize, and was published in 2005 by Miami University Press, which chose it as the inaugural publication of the press's fiction series. She teaches English at Foothill College and at Notre Dame de Namur University.
Kim Silveira Wolterbeek
	Kim Silveira Wolterbeek's fiction has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Bellowing Ark, Buffalo Spree, CALYX, City Primeval: Narratives of Urban Reality, New Millennium Writings, Other Voices, Ratapallax, Room of One's Own, Santa Clara Review, West Wind Review, Willow Springs, been anthologized in A Line of Cutting Women (CALYX) and has been read on National Public Radio's "The Sound of Writing." She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of The Glass Museum (Bellowing Ark Press), a collection of eleven inter-related stories that depict the life of a woman from childhood to adulthood. She is currently at work on a novel.
Fan Wu
	Fan Wu grew up on a state-run farm in southern China, where her parents were exiled during the Cultural Revolution. She came to the United States in 1997 to attend graduate studies at Stanford University and started writing in 2002. Her debut novel February Flowers is the inaugural book of Picador Asia and has been translated into eight languages. Her new novel Beautiful as Yesterday is forthcoming in 2009. Her short stories have appeared in Granta and The Missouri Review. She lives in Northern California, where she writes in both English and Chinese. www.FanWuWrites.com.
Al Young
	A teacher of creative writing for over thirty-five years, Al Young's honors include Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Young's many books include novels, essays, memoirs, and poetry, including Heaven: Collected Poems 1956-1990. His work has appeared in Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, the New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and The Oxford Anthology of African American Literature. His poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Urdu, Korean, and other languages. He is the Poet Laureate of California.
Gary Young
	Gary Young’s books include Hands, The Dream of A Moral Life, winner of the James D. Phelan Award, Days, Braver Deeds, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize, and No Other Life, which won the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America. His most recent books are Pleasure, and Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California. He has received a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He edits the Greenhouse Review Press, and his print work is represented in many collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Getty Center for the Arts. He teaches at the University of California Santa Cruz.

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