Kathleen Alcalá is the author of five books of fiction and nonfiction, based on her family history in Mexico and the U.S., and teaches creative writing at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts in Washington State. She was born in Compton and grew up in San Bernardino, and has work in the original Inlandia anthology edited by Gayle Wattawa. She was recently a guest at Writers Week at UC Riverside.
Cynthia Anderson is a writer and editor living in Yucca Valley, California. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, and she has received poetry awards from the Santa Barbara Arts Council and the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Her collaborations with photographer Bill Dahl are published in the book Shared Visions, available at http://www.rainbear.com.
While visiting Palm Springs a decade ago, Alaina Bixon became enchanted with the desert landscape and soon afterwards transplanted herself from San Francisco. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at UC-Riverside, Palm Desert, with an emphasis on creative nonfiction. This poem was composed in an Inlandia writing workshop. Ms. Bixon is a freelance writer, teacher and editor, currently working on profiles of local personalities and helping clients with their memoirs.
With their girls grown and independent, Marcyn Clements and her husband, Richard, have more time to pursue their favorite activities: birding, butterfly and dragonfly watching and fly- fishing.
Marcy’s been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Appalachia, Eureka Literary Magazine, Flyway, frogpond, Hollins Critic, Literary Review, Lyric, Sijo West, Snowy Egret, Wind, and was accepted by Yankee Magazine, before they eliminated poetry from their pages. She was very excited to be included in the anthology: Ravishing Disunities, Real Ghazals in English, edited by the late Agha Shahid Ali.
Myra Dutton lives in Idyllwild, CA with her husband. She is the author of Healing Ground: A Visionary Union of Earth and Spirit, published by Celestial Arts in Berkeley, CA.
Maureen Foley is a writer and artist who grew up on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria. She has an MFA in Prose from Naropa University. Her chapbook, Epileptic, won the 2002 Dead Metaphor Press Award. Also, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Santa Barbara Magazine, Bombay Gin, Skanky Possum and elsewhere.
Lucia Galloway has published a full-length collection of poems, Venus and Other Losses (Plain View, 2010), and a chapbook, Playing Outside (Finishing Line, 2005). Recent work appears or are forthcoming in Comstock Review, The Dirty Napkin, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Poemeleon, Red River Review, and Untitled Country Review. She is the recipient of several awards and prizes, and she curates a monthly poetry reading series in Claremont, California.
liz gonzález grew up in Rialto. Her family has been in Inlandia for 5 generations, since early 1900. liz’s work has most recently appeared in BorderSenses Literary Art Magazine and Don’t Blame the Ugly Mug Anthology and has been honored with the Arts Council for Long Beach’s 2005 Professional Artist Fellowship, an artistic grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation, and a residency at Hedgebrook: A Retreat for Women Writers. She is also a member of the Macondo Writer’s Workshop. liz teaches comp. at Long Beach City College and creative writing at community workshops and through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. For more info: lizgonzalez.com
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is, among other things, a clinical psychologist in California. In another life, she was a German Lit major, and read poetry for credit. She reviewed restaurants for the Claremont Courier from 1999 to 2005, sometimes in heroic couplets, sometimes imitating Hemingway. She has placed poems and photographs in many publications, most recently Off the Coast, qarrtsiluni, In Posse Review, Statushat Artzine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Inlandia Journal, dotdotdash, Waccamaw, and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. She was nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Eggs Satori, received Honorable Mention in Pudding House Publications’ 2010 competition, and will be published in 2011.
Hillary Gravendyk is an Assistant Professor of English at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as American Letters & Commentary, The Bellingham Review, The Colorado Review, The Eleventh Muse, Fourteen Hills, MARY, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Octopus Magazine, Tarpaulin Sky and other venues. Her chapbook, The Naturalist, was published by Achiote Press in 2008. Her book, Harm, will be out this fall from Omnidawn Press. She lives on the eastern edge of LA county.
Yi Shun Lai is a freelance writer and editor. She grew up in the Inland Valley and now lives near New York City. She is an MFA candidate at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts.
Richard Nester has twice been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has published poetry in a number of journals including Ploughshares, Callaloo, and Floyd County Moonshine.
Robbie Nester has lived in Southern California for 31 years, but publishes hither and yon. Besides publishing poems in California publications, such as Caesura, she also frequently publishes in the online journal Qarrtsiluni, writing to order for their thematically-oriented issues. Other recent publications include a poem in Floyd County Moonshine, and two non-fiction pieces in anthologies, Flashlight Memories and Hard to Raise But Easy to Love, the latter of which will be forthcoming in November from DRT Press.
Ruth Nolan, M.A, is Professor of English at College of the Desert, where she teaches California desert Indian literature and creative writing. A native of the Mojave Desert and former BLM wildland firefighter, she is also a writer and lecturer whose poetry and prose article related to the California desert is widely published, and is editor of No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California’s deserts (Heyday, 2009.) As a writer, she collaborated on a film about Joshua Tree, “Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps,” produced by the UC Riverside-California Museum of Photography (2008.) She was a featured speaker at the 2010 Western Wilderness Conference held in Berkeley, and is featured on the 2010-11 California Legacy “Nature Dreaming” radio project, sponsored by Santa Clara University.
Cindy Rinne has lived in the Inland Empire for 29 years. She is an artist and poet. Her poetry includes nature inspiration, parts of overheard conversations, observations on walks, life events and my response to my own artwork and the works of others.
Jacqueline Mantz Rodriguez was born in Great Falls, Montana but immigrated to the Inland Empire as a young child growing up in Ontario, California. She resides in Rancho Mirage and works as a special education teacher for Palm Springs High. She is working on her collection of short stories and poetry while preparing a documentary on her special education students. Jacqueline received her B.A. in literature and creative writing from Cal State San Bernardino and her Masters degree and teaching credentials from National University. Jacqueline’s loves are her new husband Joe and her Boston Terrier Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Ana Maria Spagna grew up in Riverside, California and now lives in Stehekin, Washington. Her books include Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey, winner of the 2009 River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw, named a Seattle Times Best Book of 2004.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 