2020 Faculty

Meet the fantastic editors, agents and authors who were on the faculty at the 2020 Writing for Change: Worldwide conference.

Anita Felicelli is the author of Chimerica: A Novel (WTAW Press) and the short story collection Love Songs for a Lost Continent (Stillhouse Press), which won the 2016 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award. Anita’s stories have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Terrain, The Normal School, Joyland, Kweli Journal, Eckleburg, and elsewhere. Her essays, reviews, and criticism have appeared in the SF Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Catapult, the New York Times (Modern Love), Slate, and elsewhere. She graduated from UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley School of Law. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her work has received a Puffin Foundation grant, two Greater Bay Area Journalism awards, and Pushcart Prize nominations, and has placed as a finalist in several Glimmer Train contests. She grew up in the Bay Area, where she lives with her family.

 

Joey Garcia coaches writers and authors on effective strategies to boost their books and platforms. An award-winning essayist, poet, and short story writer, she’s the author of When Your Heart Breaks, It’s Opening to Love. Joey also offers love advice live on-air for a network TV station and writes a newspaper advice column. She is the founder of The Belize Writers Conference and coordinates the book marketing track for the SFWC. www.joeygarcia.com

 

 

Cali Gilbert is an international bestselling author, award winning filmmaker and photographer. After publishing several bestselling books of her own, she now supports other creatives through her company, Tower 15 Productions. Cali has a passion for supporting women in transition as an inspirational speaker and transformational book coach. She splits her time between Los Angeles and San Diego, California.

 

 

Tisha Janigian is the Founder of SHE IS HOPE LA, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission to educate and empower single mothers starting over in the workplace and provide affordable, transitional housing and childcare. Tisha is also the Broker of SHE IS HOPE Realty where a percentage of every transaction goes back to the nonprofit. As a single mother of two teenage boys, Tisha’s drive comes from her passion to give back and desire to prevent anyone else from dealing with the difficulties she experienced.

 

C. S. Lakin is an award-winning blogger and author of thirty fiction and nonfiction books. She works full-time as a copyeditor and writing coach, specializing in manuscript critiques. Her online video school, Writing for Life Workshops, goes deep into writing craft for novelists, as does her writing craft book series The Writer’s Toolbox. More than a million words of instruction and marketing tips can be found at her websites Live Write Thrive and The Self-Publisher. She teaches workshops and boot camps around the country and is the fiction track coordinator of the San Francisco Writers’ Conference.

 

Carla King is a travel writer, a geek, a self-publishing expert, and an adventure traveler who is best known for her solo journeys around the world on unreliable indigenous motorcycles. Her misadventures are published widely online and print and her self-publishing guide is now in its 5th edition. She runs the Self-Pub Boot Camp educational program of books and workshops, the Destination Published book coaching service, and designs the SF Writers Conference independent publishing and technology track. Carla also runs a Virtual Travel Writing Group and spreads her enthusiasm about independent travel and independent-publishing at travel, writing, and publishing events and conferences around the world. Though her roots are in the San Francisco Bay Area, Carla tends to wander, enjoying the digital nomad lifestyle. Wherever she is, you can always find her at CarlaKing.com.

 

Laurie McLean is the director of Writing for Change, the San Francisco Writers Conference, and the San Francisco Writers Foundation. She spent 20 years as the CEO of a multi-million dollar marketing agency and 8 years as an agent/senior agent at Larsen Pomada Literary Agents before co-founding Fuse Literary in 2013. At Fuse Lit Laurie specializes in middle grade, young adult and adult genre fiction (romance, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, suspense, thrillers). Laurie also co-founded two ePublishing companies: JoyrideBooks.com for romance, and Ambush Books for tween and teen books (acquired by Short Fuse Publishing in 2015). Find out more at FuseLiterary.com and @FuseLiterary & @AgentSavant.

 

Mary Rakow, Ph.D comes to writing from advanced degrees in theology from Harvard Divinity School and Boston College. This Is Why I Came is described as “miraculous,” a “Blakean tour de force,” “rapturously beautiful, tender, complex,” receiving outstanding reviews in The Atlantic, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Ploughshare, Commonweal and Christian Century. www.thisiswhybook.com. Responding to the pandemic’s urgency she published a book of prayer/images on Instagram and FB. Please visit instagram.com/prayers_for_o#480 or www.facebook.com/pg#482 Mary lives in San Francisco where she edits everything but screenplay. “Mary is a legendary editor,” Ilya Kaminsky. Please visit www.maryrakow.com. And good writing to you!

 

Nonieqa Ramos is an educator, literary activist, and writer of “intense” literature. She wrote The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary, a 2018 New York Public Library Best Book for Teens, a 2019 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection, and a 2019 In the Margins Award Top Ten pick. It earned starred reviews from Booklist, Voya, and Foreword. Lilliam Rivera, author of DEALING in DREAMS, selected The Truth Is as a Bustle Book Club selection. Hip Latina included TTI in the “10 of the Best Latinx Young Adult Books of 2019.” Remezcla included TTI in the “15 Best Books by Latino and Latin American Authors of 2019.” Versify will publish her debut picture books Beauty Woke January 2021 and Your Mama April 2021 . For more information about NoNieqa, check out https://www.soaring20spb.com/ and https://www.lasmusasbooks.com/nonieqa-ramos.html.

 

Jordan Rosenfeld is author of three novels and six books on the craft of writing, most recently How to Write a Page Turner, as well as the bestselling Make a Scene, and Writing the Intimate Character, Writing Deep Scenes (with Martha Alderson) and A Writer’s Guide to Persistence. Her articles and essays have appeared in such places as The Atlantic, The New York Times, Salon.com, Scientific American, The Washington Post and more. She teaches online writing classes and groups. Visit jordanrosenfeld.net for more info.

 

Randy Shaw is Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, San Francisco’s leading provider of permanent housing to homeless single adults. Shaw’s latest book, Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America, offers strategies for making cities more racially and economically inclusive. Shaw’s prior books include The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century and The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. He is also editor of BeyondChron.org

 

Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl are the author and illustrator of the NYT-bestselling “Rad Women” book series, which include Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, and Rad American History A-Z, which Congresswoman Barbara Lee calls “An engaging, fascinating, and necessary book that speaks truth to power.” In addition to creating empowering books that center the stories of marginalized communities who’ve fought for justice they both work as activists, educators, and parents.

 

Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books for kids, teens and grown-ups. Her memoir, Valencia, winner of a Lambda Literary Award, is a cult classic and was made into a man experimental feature film with 21 different directors. Her essay collection Against Memoir won the PEN/America Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the Art of the Essay. Her autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics.

 

 

Brooke Warner is the publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of “Write-minded” with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly. For more information visit  http://brookewarner.com/ and https://shewritespress.com/

 

Tawni Waters’s debut novel, Beauty of the Broken (Simon & Schuster) won the prestigious International Literacy Association’s Award for Young Adult Literature, the Housatonic Book Award, was named an exceptional book of 2015 by the Children’s Book Council, was shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award, and was included on the Kansas State Reading Circle List. It was adapted for the stage and performed by Sacramento’s Now Here This and is being adapted for the screen. Her second novel, The Long Ride Home, was released by Sourcebooks Fire in September 2017 to glowing reviews, including being named one of the best New Adult novels of the season by Kirkus. She is the author of two poetry collections: Siren Song (Burlesque Press) and So Speak the Stars (Texture Press). Her work was anthologized in Best Travel Writing 2010, The Soul of a Great Traveler, and Monday Nights, and has been published in myriad journals and magazines. She has been a Writer in Residence at Rosemont College, Western Connecticut State University, the DARE County Arts Council, and Centre Intermondes in La Rochelle, France, where she spent time in French High Schools, speaking to students who were studying her novels. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and teaches creative writing at various universities, conferences, and writers retreats throughout the U.S., Europe, and Mexico. In her spare time, she talks to angels in her home in the New Mexico mountains, intermittently rescuing ill-fated lizards from the jaws of her fierce chihuahua companions.

 

Harry “OG Rev” Louis Williams II. A hail of bullets outside his East Oakland window changed OG Rev’s life in the fall of 2002. The next morning, as he traveled down the street to the neighborhood stores, he noticed that a shrine comprised of teddy bears, balloons, and empty Remy Martin bottles had been erected overnight. Someone had lost their life in that hail of bullets. In the aftermath of the shooting, Reverend Williams took to the streets for answers. He spoke to both drug users and drug traffickers about the madness that had engulfed the community. What he found shifted his focus a minister. The emphasis of his work came to involve the incarcerated and those returning to the society. He mentored gang-involved youth and foster children. Williams founded a ministry for human trafficking victims. He became a board member for Homies Empowerment, a community-based outreach organization for gang-involved youth. In between his street ministry, OG Rev has written 9 novels and nonfiction books. His latest is entitled: Taking It To The Streets: Lessons From A Life Of Urban Ministry. Williams was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Asbury Park, NJ. He holds a B.A. degree from Kean University and a Master of Divinity Degree from Palmer Theological Seminary. Currently, Reverend Williams serves as a community minister/activist in Oakland and is the Interim Minister of Compassionate Care at the historic Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.