
Authors


Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the National Bestselling novels The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader's Choice Award, and the novel Dora: A Headcase, Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her nonfiction book based on her TED Talk, The Misfit's Manifesto, is forthcoming from TED Books. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland Oregon, where she teaches both in person and online. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon. She lives in Oregon with her husband Andy Mingo and their renaissance man son, Miles. She is a very good swimmer.



Michelle Cruz Gonzales, a Xicana writer, writes memoir and fiction. Born in East LA in 1969, MCG grew up in Tuolumne, a tiny California Gold Rush town. She played drums and wrote lyrics for three bands during the 1980s and 1990s, Bitch Fight, Spitboy, and Instant Girl. Spitboy, not a riot grrl band, toured extensively in the US and overseas and released several albums. The author of The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band, PM Press, MCG earned degrees in 2001 and 2003, in English/Creative Writing from Mills College, where she also minored in Ethnic Studies. She has been a regular contributor to Hip Mama Magazine, published by Seal Press in Book Lovers Anthology: Sexy Stories from Under the Covers, in the Listen To Your Mother Anthology on Putnam, and her story “Juan, El Pájaro” one Honorable Mention in Riversedge Literary Journal contest Currently, MCG is at work on a satirical novel about forced intermarriage between whites and Mexicans for the purpose of creating a race of beautiful, hardworking people. She lives with her husband, son, and their three Mexican dogs in Oakland, California.