ROOTED & WRITTEN 2023 CONFERENCE on November 4-12! APPLY now!
In-person conference featuring Bay Area Writers of Color
Email director@rooted-written.org for more information!
ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTE SPEAKER, WRITER DOMINIC LIM
Dominic Lim's book, All the Right Notes, has been named a best new book or most anticipated novel by USA Today, the SF Chronicle, Goodreads, BookRiot, Library Journal, Buzzfeed, and Entertainment Weekly, who called it “a swoony, joyful rom-com to take readers into a love story worthy of a Broadway stage.”
Dominic will be in conversation with Rita Chang-Eppig.
ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTE SPEAKER AUTHOR TONYA FOSTER
Award-winning author and poet author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; and coeditor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Dr. Foster’s poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day online journal, Entropy Magazine, the A-Line Journal, Callaloo, boundary2, Best American Experimental Writing, Letters to the Future: Black Women/Radical Writing, and elsewhere.
Tonya will be in conversation with Maw Shein Win.
ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTE SPEAKER AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS
Writer and the author of the award-winning memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won a Medal in Nonfiction from the California Book Awards, was a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and was long-listed for a Carnegie Medal in Excellence in Nonfiction. It was named a “Best Book of the Year” by TIME, People, NPR, Vanity Fair, Boston Globe, among others.
Ingrid will be in conversation with Grace Loh Prasad.
2023 ROOTED & WRITTEN CORE FACULTY
Eirinie Carson
Eirinie Carson is a Black British Londoner and writer living in California. She is a mother of two children, Luka and Selah. A member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, Eirinie is a frequent contributor to Mother magazine, and her work has also appeared in Mother Muse and You Might Need To Hear This, with an upcoming piece in The Sonora Review’s Fall edition. Eirinie contributes to her local paper, The Argus Courier, via a column, Eirinie Asks. She mostly writes about motherhood, grief and relationships and the release of her first book, The Dead Are Gods (from on Melville House, 2023) was a critically acclaimed Spring release, with Oprah Daily, Shondaland, People Magazine and the Washington Post sharing rave reviews on their platforms. Most recently, Eirinie was asked to be a featured author at 2023 Texas Book Festival, and is also the Program Coordinator for the Mesa Refuge, a writers residency out of Point Reyes Station, California.
Jenny Qi
Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her essays and poems appear in The New York Times, The Atlantic, ZYZZYVAand elsewhere, and she has received support from such organizations as Tin House, Kearny Street Workshop, and the San Francisco Foundation. As a Brown Handler resident in 2022-23, she translated her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. and is working on more essays and poems in conversation with this work. She lives in San Francisco, where she completed her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology.
Grace Loh Prasad
Asian American author Grace Loh Prasad received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and is an alumna of Tin House and VONA. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Longreads, Artsy, Hyperallergic, Catapult, Jellyfish Review, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. Grace is a member of The Writers Grotto and Seventeen Syllables, an AAPI writers collective. Follow her on Twitter @GraceLP.
Danny Thiemann
Danny Thiemann is a recipient of the 2021 Nelligan Prize for Fiction for his story “One Bad Night in San Jose, Costa Rica”, the 2020 Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction for “Echolocation for Mixed Race Runaways”, a Table4 Foundation New Writer Award for “Gotham, Mexico”, a Madalyn Lamont Award for fiction from the American University in Cairo, and his story "Our Bodies Are in the Clouds Above Their Cities" was a finalist for the 2023 Kurt Vonnegut prize. He has published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the New Delta Review, Bosque Magazine, the Idaho Review, and elsewhere. His story "The Invented Languages Adela Arkani" received an award from a story competition in London that will be announced in late October. He is an attorney at Earthjustice and has worked in the Migrant Farmworker Program at Oregon Law Center.
Xandra Castleton
Brazilian screenwriter, producer and filmmaker Xandra Castleton's scripts have served as the basis for an award-winning documentary and television and narrative film projects, among them an Emmy Award-winning profile of John Waters. Her films have premiered at festivals such as Sundance, Tribeca, AFI, and Rotterdam, while her feature dramatic comedy, Full Grown Men, was the winner of the 2007 Sundance Channel Audience Award prior to a critically successful theatrical release by Emerging Pictures. Xandra was the co-creator and writer of the scripted television documentary Stand Up Planet, starring Hasan Minhaj of The Daily Show.
Celeste Chan
Celeste Chan: Queer Rebels co-founder, Sister Spit performer, MIX NYC guest curator, Celeste is an incoming Artist in Residence at San Francisco Public Library. She grew up in alternative education. Celeste collaborated as a student-teacher in the Bay Area's DIY Art School, served on Foglifter Journal's board, and facilitated LGBTQ history workshops for youth through Queer Ancestors Project. She's published her work in AWAY, Alta, cream city review, and elsewhere. Celeste is now focused on writing her hybrid memoir.
Maw Shein Win
Maw Shein Win
Maw Shein Win
Maw Shein Win
Maw Shein Win
Maw Shein Win's most recent poetry collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) which was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. Win's previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks
Maw Shein Win's most recent poetry collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) which was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. Win's previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. Win’s Process Note Series features poets and their process. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA and teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. Win often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and was recently selected as a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a new literary community. Win’s full-length collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in 2024. mawsheinwin.com
Maw Shein Win
Lisa D. Gray
Lisa D. Gray
Maw Shein Win
Lisa D. Gray
Lisa D. Gray reads, writes, and rants about the things that tick her off and amuse her. She follows trends and looks back at how the past affects our present. She lives and writes in the Bay Area. Her writing focuses on intersections of blackness, womanhood, and Americaness. She earned her BA in English from Spelman College and an MFA in
Lisa D. Gray reads, writes, and rants about the things that tick her off and amuse her. She follows trends and looks back at how the past affects our present. She lives and writes in the Bay Area. Her writing focuses on intersections of blackness, womanhood, and Americaness. She earned her BA in English from Spelman College and an MFA in English & Creative Writing from Mills College. Lisa won the Henry Joseph Jackson Prize for Distinguished Fiction in 2014 and earned scholarships to the Fine Arts Works Center, The Voices of Our Nations Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center where she completed a residency.
Preeti Vangani
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Preeti Vangani
Preeti Vangani
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Preeti Vangani
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet and writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), winner of RL India Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Threepenny Review, The Margins among other places. And has been supported by Ucross, Djerassi and California Center for Innovation. Her de
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet and writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), winner of RL India Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Threepenny Review, The Margins among other places. And has been supported by Ucross, Djerassi and California Center for Innovation. Her debut short story won the 2022 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She currently teaches in the MFA program at University of San Francisco.
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who emigrated in 1969 to San Francisco’s Mission District. His writing has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Bare Life Review, The Acentos Review, The Caribbean Writer, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, and Lunch Ticket among others. He is a member The
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who emigrated in 1969 to San Francisco’s Mission District. His writing has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Bare Life Review, The Acentos Review, The Caribbean Writer, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, and Lunch Ticket among others. He is a member The Writers Grotto in San Francisco, and alum of VONA Voices. He has done writing residency at Mesa Refuge, and is a founding member of Rooted & Written. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. He is currently at work on his first novel.
Rita Chang-Eppig
Rita Chang-Eppig
Rita Chang-Eppig
Rita Chang-Eppig
Rita Chang-Eppig
Rita Chang-Eppig's novel about an infamous Chinese pirate queen, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, was a Barnes & Noble Discover, Indie Next, Indies Introduce, and Good Morning America Buzz pick. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, Clarkesworld, Virginia Quarterly
Rita Chang-Eppig's novel about an infamous Chinese pirate queen, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, was a Barnes & Noble Discover, Indie Next, Indies Introduce, and Good Morning America Buzz pick. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, Clarkesworld, Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Writers Grotto, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.
ROOTED & WRITTEN 2023 TEAM
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra writer/poet and teacher. She is currently working on completing her chapbook, new vocabulary, and her novel, The Poppy Flower. Her poetry, short stories and creative nonfictions have been published in various journals and anthologies, including Non-White and Women, Taboos and Transgressions, both published within the pa
Sabina Khan-Ibarra writer/poet and teacher. She is currently working on completing her chapbook, new vocabulary, and her novel, The Poppy Flower. Her poetry, short stories and creative nonfictions have been published in various journals and anthologies, including Non-White and Women, Taboos and Transgressions, both published within the past two years. She worked as a Communications Director at MuslimARC (Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative) for ten years and is still a member. Sabina has taught Creative Writing in SFSU and now teaches at the Grotto. She lives in Half Moon Bay, California with her husband, two children and two cats, Twyla and Aslan.
Susan Ito, Rooted and Written, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written, 2023
Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen,The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a
Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen,The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell colony Fellow, and has also been awarded residencies at The Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US. Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto, and teaches at Mills College/Northeastern University and Bay Path University. She was one of the co-organizers of Rooted and Written, a no-fee writing workshop for writers of color. She lives in Northern California.
ROOTED & WRITTEN FOUNDERS
