Rising Writers Series: An Evening with Steinbeck Fellows - Writers in Residence Program
Rising Writers Series Co-curated by Ted Gioia

Cosponsored by ZYZZYVA Magazine

Co-curated by Ted Gioia

Now in its second season, Rising Writers offers a series of readings and conversations about the art of writing fiction, poetry, short story, narrative and essay.  The first program features Steinbeck Fellows Yalitza Ferreras, Gabriela Garcia and Meron Hadero, moderated by Oscar Villalon, Managing Editor, ZYZZYVA.

Rising Writers continues on Wednesday, May 20, 6:30 pm with a night of cultish obsessions featuring Adam Jay Morris (American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation) and Molly Dektar (The Ash Family: A Novel), moderated by Julia Scheeres, (Jesus Land: A Memoir).  On June 11, 6:30 pm watch for an evening of magic and adventure with Peg Alford Pursell (A Girl Goes into the Forest) in conversation with Lillian Howan (The Charm Buyers). 

The Steinbeck Fellows Program of San José State University was endowed through the generosity of Martha Heasley Cox. It offers writers of any age and background a fellowship to finish a significant writing project. Named in honor of author John Steinbeck, the program is guided by his lifetime of work in literature, the media, and environmental activism.

Bios

Yalitza Ferreras is a recent Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. Her writing appears in Best American Short Stories 2016, Colorado Review, and the anthologies: Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education and Daring to Write: Contemporary Narratives by Dominican Women. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan where she won the Thesis Prize, and is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Yaddo, Djerassi Resident Artists, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and Voices of Our Nation.

Gabriela Garcia is a fiction writer and poet. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Tin House, Zyzzyva, Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, and many other journals. She is the winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and has received fellowships and residencies from Lighthouse Works, the Keller Estate, Sarabande Books, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Gabriela received an MFA in fiction from Purdue University and is at work on a novel.

Meron Hadero was born in Ethiopia and came to the U.S. in her childhood via East and West Germany. Her short stories have been published in Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, ZYZZYVA, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, among others, and her writing also appears in The New York Times Book Review and the anthology The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. She's been a fellow at Yaddo, Ragdale, and The MacDowell Colony, and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale Law School (Washington State Bar), and an AB from Princeton in history with a certificate in American studies.