ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTE SPEAKER, WRITER DOMINIC LIM
Dominic Lim’s debut novel, 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 is a member of the Writers Grotto and is a co-host of the long-running Babylon Salon reading and performance series in San Francisco. He holds a Master of Music from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, is an alum of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, and has sung with numerous professional early music and choral ensembles. As a proud member of the Actors’ Equity Association, he has performed Off-Broadway and in regional productions throughout the US. He lives in Oakland with his loving and supportive husband, Peter, and their whiny cat, Phoebe.
Dominic will be in conversation with Rita Chang-Eppig.
ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTE SPEAKER AUTHOR TONYA FOSTER
Tonya M. Foster is a poet, essayist, editor, and Black feminist scholar. The 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 work focuses on poetry, poetics, ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. Forthcoming publications include poetry collections—Thingifications (Ugly Duckling Presse); A History of the Bitch, as well as a 2-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop (Wesleyan University Press); and an anthology of experimental creative drafts (Nightboat Books). A Radcliffe Institute @ Harvard University, a Creative Capital awardee, recipient of awards from Macdowell, Headlands Center for the Arts, NYFA, SF MOAD, and the Ford and Mellon Foundations, among others, Dr. Foster is the inaugural George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University.
Tonya will be in conversation with Maw Shein Win.
ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTE SPEAKER AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS
Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It tells the story of the author's lineage of curanderos, shamans, and ghost whisperers, and her mother, who was the first woman in her family to become a curandera. The book 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. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor’s choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California.
Ingrid will be in conversation with Grace Loh Prasad.
2023 ROOTED & WRITTEN Seminar FACULTY
Roberto Lovato
Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir the New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” 2020 book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books of 2020. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In addition to receiving a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, journalist Lovato has reported on numerous issues—racism, criminal justice, psychedelics and health, violence, terrorism, the drug war and the immigration and refugee crisis—from across the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and France, among other countries. His essays and reports from around the world have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Guernica Magazine, The Believer, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy magazine, The Rumpus, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Der Spiegel, La Opinion, and other national and international publications.
2023 ROOTED & WRITTEN CORE FACULTY
WEEK-LONG TEACHERS
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.
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.
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.
Xandra Castleton
Brazilian American screenwriter, script consultant and filmmaker Xandra Castleton’s scripts have served as the basis for feature, television and documentary projects that include an Emmy Award-winning profile of John Waters and have premiered at the Tribeca, Sundance, AFI and Rotterdam film festivals. Her first feature as writer/producer was Full Grown Men, a Sundance Channel Audience Award winner and Critic’s Pick in the LA Weekly (“ lyrical and funny”), it stars Judah Friedlander, Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris and Debbie Harry. Critic Bilge Ebiri called it “…a lovely, bewitching film with a lot on its mind.” An adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts and the University of San Francisco, Xandra returned to producing briefly in 2013 to co-create the scripted documentary, Stand Up Planet, with Hasan Minhaj, Michele Buteau and the godfathers of TV comedy - Norman Lear and Carl Reiner.
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 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
Lisa D. Gray
Lisa D. Gray is a writer and leader who believes that it is necessary for black women and women of color to write and share our stories so that others do not erase or control our narratives. She is completing her first novel, Stolen Summer and you can find her poetry in the recently released Black Fire This Time and the Salmon Creek Journal. Follow her @randomlisasf.
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 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'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.
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.
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 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.
ROOTED & WRITTEN 2023 TEAM
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written
Rowena Leong Singer, Director of Marketing and Communications, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written
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, Founding Member
Rowena Leong Singer, Director of Marketing and Communications, 2023
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Director of Rooted and Written
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.
Rowena Leong Singer, Director of Marketing and Communications, 2023
Rowena Leong Singer, Director of Marketing and Communications, 2023
Rowena Leong Singer, Director of Marketing and Communications, 2023
Rowena Leong Singer has been published in Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, and KQED’s Perspectives. She has been selected as a showcase artist in Literary Fiction at APAture hosted by Kearny Street Workshop. She is the recipient of the grand prize in literary fiction for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, a semi-finalist for th
Rowena Leong Singer has been published in Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, and KQED’s Perspectives. She has been selected as a showcase artist in Literary Fiction at APAture hosted by Kearny Street Workshop. She is the recipient of the grand prize in literary fiction for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, a semi-finalist for the 2022 James Jones First Novel Fellowship Contest, and a runner up and fellowship recipient for the 2022 International Literary Seminar Fiction Contest. She is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was awarded the Barry Hannah Merit Scholarship in Fiction.
Roberto Lovato, Rooted and Written, Program Founder
Roberto Lovato, Rooted and Written, Program Founder
Rowena Leong Singer, Director of Marketing and Communications, 2023
Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir the New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” 2020 book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books of 2020. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at th
Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir the New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” 2020 book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books of 2020. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In addition to receiving a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, journalist Lovato has reported on numerous issues—racism, criminal justice, psychedelics and health, violence, terrorism, the drug war and the immigration and refugee crisis—from across the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and France, among other countries. His essays and reports from around the world have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Guernica Magazine, The Believer, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy magazine, The Rumpus, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Der Spiegel, La Opinion, and other national and international publications.
Aditi Malhotra, Rooted and Written, Founding Member
Roberto Lovato, Rooted and Written, Program Founder
Aditi Malhotra, Rooted and Written, Founding Member
Aditi Malhotra is a writer, independent journalist and spoken word artist from India based in Oakland, California. She is a professional juggler of many editorial hats. Currently, she’s writing a community health guidebook on epilepsy and seizures at Hesperian Health Guides. Her news writing and narrative nonfiction from India and the Uni
Aditi Malhotra is a writer, independent journalist and spoken word artist from India based in Oakland, California. She is a professional juggler of many editorial hats. Currently, she’s writing a community health guidebook on epilepsy and seizures at Hesperian Health Guides. Her news writing and narrative nonfiction from India and the United States have appeared in Huffington Post, PBS Newshour, theAtlantic.com, Hechinger Report and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Aditi's words and work are inspired by the intersections of gender and migration, mental health and education, food and identity, and books!
ROOTED & WRITTEN FOUNDERS
