EL LEÓN AUTHORS:
Click on an author's name below to jump to a specific bio.
Aaron, Chester
Bac Sierra, Benjamin
Bautista, J.L.
Camuto, Andrea
Daws, Gavan
Dituri, Frank
Dubovsky, Anthony
Ellis, Ella Thorp
Entrekin, Charles
Farber, Norma
Farber, Thomas
Harris, L. John
Kessler, Stephen
Levin, Lawrence
Majia, Jidi
Marlantes, Karl
Matsueda, Pat
Ne Jame, Adele
Orozco-Lang, Isaías
Pan, Connie
Poverman, C.E.
Ryan, Shawna Yang
Schwartz, Ben
Bac Sierra (see Bac Sierra)
Smyth, Paul
Stewart, Frank
Sze-Lorrain, Fiona
Thomas, Rebecca
Chester Aaron | Born in 1923 in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town, Chester Aaron served in World War II. After attending UCLA, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State, he joined the faculty of Saint Mary's College, retiring in 1997. Author of novels, stories, and memoirs, he is known world-wide as an expert on garlic, growing more than fifty kinds on his farm in Sonoma County.
Aaron’s recent novel is About Them. His short story collection is Symptoms of Terminal Passion.
Benjamin Bac Sierra | The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Benjamin Bac Sierra was born and raised in San Francisco's Mission district, then the heart of Latino culture in Northern California. Living the brutal "homeboy" lifestyle, at seventeen he joined the United States Marine Corps and participated in front line combat during the first Gulf War. After his honorable discharge, he completed his Bachelor's degree at U.C. Berkeley, a Masters in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Currently, he is a professor at City College of San Francisco.
J. L. Bautista | The Road, and Nothing More is a first novel. Recipient of the 2005 George Garrett Prize in Fiction, and author of Fiestas, a short story collection, J. L. Bautista divides her time between northern California and Madrid, Spain.
Andrea Camuto | A graduate of the International Center of Photography, Andrea Camuto is a New York City-based photographer whose work explores issues of women and social justice in Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, India and Mali. Recipient of awards and fellowships from ICP/GFC, the Wilmer Shields Council on Foundations, PDN, Critical Mass and Jacob Riis, she has had solo gallery shows in New York City and San Francisco and contributed to numerous group shows. Currently, Andrea Camuto is preparing a solo show for the Bolinas Museum in California.
Terrain of Loss is her latest book.
Gavan Daws | Daws has written eleven books, published worldwide in a life that has taken him back and forth between the United States and Australia, with stints in Asia and Europe. His documentary films have won awards internationally; his songs have been performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the Waikiki Shell, and in clubs from San Francisco to Greenwich Village.
Daws' play is Bite The Hand.
Frank Dituri | Frank Dituri's photographs have been exhibited in the United States, Europe, Russia, and Asia with solo shows at the Venice Biennial and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, his images reviewed and published in publications including the New York Times, Harpers Magazine, Zoom Magazine, La Repubblica and the Corriere Della Sera. Formerly a teaching artist for the LTA/Guggenheim Museum Program, he is currently in the art department at Libera Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy.
Dituri's books are draite a u méure and Bluebird in My Window.
Anthony Dubovsky | Dubovsky was born in San Diego, California, in 1945. He studied with Willard Midgette at Reed College, and has lived in Warsaw, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Jerusalem. He is the recipient of the first annual Adler Award, and his paintings have been exhibited internationally. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dubovsky's book of drawings and prose is Jerusalem: To Know by Living.
Ella Thorp Ellis | Born in the Great Depression, author Ella Thorp Ellis grew up in a collective bohemian community on the California coast. Resident artists and writers, including her father and mother, were frequently visited by well-known figures including Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Edward Weston, and Meher Baba. Former lecturer at San Francisco State University, Ella Thorp Ellis has been celebrated for her young adult novels, six of which were American Library Honor Books of the Year. Married, with three sons and nine grandchildren, she divides her time between Berkeley and Santa Cruz, California.
Ellis's recent memoir is Dune Child.
Charles Entrekin | Born and raised in the Bible Belt, in Birmingham, Alabama, Charles Entrekin has lived in Northern California for more than thirty years. Author of several collections of poetry, including Casting for the Cutthroat, and for two decades managing editor of the Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press, he is currently managing editor of Hip Pocket Press. Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama, 1965, is his first novel.
Entrekin's book is Red Mountain.
Norma Farber | Poet, concert singer, actress, novelist, translator; wife, mother, grandmother, widow, Norma Farber (1909-1984) was the author of more than thirty books. Her poems appeared in periodicals including The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.
Farber's latest collection of poetry is Year of Reversible Loss.
Thomas Farber | Author of many works of fiction, literary nonfiction, and the epigrammatic, Thomas Farber has been awarded Guggenheim, National Endowment, Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor fellowships, and is Senior Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. Visit http://www.thomasfarber.org
Farber's recent book is The End of My Wits.
L. John Harris | Through the 1970's, working in some of Berkeley's most celebrated food shops and restaurants, including the Cheese Board, Chez Panisse and The Swallow cafe, John Harris also produced The Book of Garlic under his nom del'ail, Lloyd J. Harris. A garlic activist, Harris founded the Lovers of the Stinking Rose garlic club whose "Garlic Times" newsletter inspired garlic festivals and theme restaurants from California to New York. In 1981, Harris founded Aris Books, a cookbook publisher, and in 1998 wrote and co-produced Divine Food: 100 Years in the Kosher Delicatessen Trade in 1998. In 2001, Harris wrote and co-directed the Emmy-nominated PBS special "Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar," and since 2004 has produced annual programs at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music featuring world-class guitarists playing vintage classical and flamenco guitars from his personal collection.
Harris' book is Foodoodles: From the Museum of Culinary History —Collected Cartoons.
Stephen Kessler | Stephen Kessler is a poet, translator, essayist and editor whose writings have appeared in books, anthologies, magazines and newspapers across the United States since the late 1960s. Born in Los Angeles in 1947, he has degrees in literature from Bard College and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of eight books and chapbooks of original poetry and more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction in translation, including Written in Water: The Prose Poems of Luis Cernuda, which received a 2004 Lambda Literary Award. Recent books include a novel, The Mental Traveler, and Moving Targets—essays selected from published articles on artists and poets in California. He was a founding editor and publisher of Alcatraz, an international journal, and The Sun, a Santa Cruz weekly, among other periodicals and independent publishing ventures. He is a contributing editor of Poetry Flash and the editor of The Redwood Coast Review. For more about Stephen Kessler visit www.stephenkessler.com.
Kessler's recent book is Need I Say More?.
Lawrence Levin | Always an active sportsman and physician, Lawrence Levin became disabled in March of 2009. This book is a collection of prose and poetry that represents his personal journey through anger, resentment, fear and sadness to acceptance and an embrace of the richness of life.
Levin's recent book is Poems and Essays from an Ordinary Room.
Leo Litwak | Recipient of John Simon Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Leo Litwak has published two novels, two works of non-fiction, and articles in publications including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Tikkun. His novel Waiting for the News received the National Jewish Book Award; his short fiction has appeared in Best American Stories; and "The Eleventh Edition" received first prize in the 1990 O. Henry Prize Stories collection. Professor at San Francisco State University for more than thirty years, Leo Litwak lives in San Francisco.
Litwak's recent book is Home for Sale.
Laura Glen Louis | Laura Glen Louis is the author of Talking in the Dark, a Barnes & Noble Discover book, and recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for short fiction, Laura Glen Louis has had work included in Best American Short Stories. Some, like elephants is her first book of poems.
Louis' recent book is Some, like elephants.
Jidi Majia | is an indigenous poet of the Nuosu (Yi) people of mountainous southwestern China. His work expresses the mythic world and cultural tradition of the Nuosu, while being deeply concerned with the urgent problems of global strife. Born in 1961 in Sichuan, Jidi Majia has published over twenty books of poetry in several languages, and been awarded his countries most important literary prizes. He is president of the China Minority Writers Association and director of the Qinghai Lake Poetry Festival..
Majia's latest book is I, Snow Leopard.
Karl Marlantes | A graduate of Yale University and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He and his wife Anne live by a small lake in Western Washington.
Matterhorn is his first novel.
Pat Matsueda | Managing editor of Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, and recipient of an Elliott Cades Award for Literature, Pat Matsueda is the author of Stray, and, with Sheyene Foster Heller, co-editor of the anthology Ms. Aligned: Women Writing About Men.
Matsueda is co-editor of ms. aligned 2..
Adele Ne Jame | is the author of Inheritance, Field Work, and Poems, Land & Spirit. Recipient of a Pablo Neruda prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, she teaches at Hawai‘i Pacific University.
Ne Jame's recent book is The South Wind.
Isaías Orozco-Lang | Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1974, Orozco-Lang has traveled extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean. He currently lives in New York City.
Orozco-Lang's recent documentary photography book is Glimpses of La Yaguita.
Connie Pan | is an instructor of English at West Virginia University, where she earned her MFA in fiction. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Prairie Schooner, and The Massachusetts Review, among other places.
Pan is co-editor of ms. aligned 2.
C. E. Poverman | C. E. Poverman’s first book of stories, The Black Velvet Girl, won the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction. His second, Skin, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His stories have appeared in the O’Henry, Pushcart, and other anthologies. His previous novels are Susan, Solomon’s Daughter, My Father in Dreams, and On the Edge.
His recent novel is Love by Drowning.
Shawna Yang Ryan | Child of parents who met during the Vietnam War when her father was stationed in Taiwan, Shawna Yang Ryan received a M.A. from the University of California, Davis, and teaches at City College of San Francisco. In 2002, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, and in 2006 received the Maurice Prize for Fiction.
Locke 1928 is her first book.
Ben Schwartz | Ben Schwartz lives in Northern California with his wife and two children. His website is https://bgschwartz.com
Ben Bac Sierra | (see Bac Sierra)
Paul Smyth | The poems of Paul Smyth have appeared in magazines and journals including The Atlantic Monthly and Poetry (which awarded him the Dillon Memorial Prize). His first collection, Conversions, published in 1974 by the University of Georgia Press, was followed by two books of poems illustrated by artist Barry Moser and a collection of epigrams. Paul Smyth died in late 2006, just after completing last corrections on the manuscript.
Smyth's book of poetry is A Plausible Light.
Frank Stewart | Frank Stewart is the author of three previous books of poetry and the editor of over two dozen anthologies featuring contemporary translations of literature from throughout Asia and the Pacific. A recipient of the Whiting Writer's Award for his poetry, he has edited Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing since 1989. He lives in Hawai'i.
Stewart's collection of poems is By All Means.
Fiona Sze-Lorrain | Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s debut collection of poetry, Water the Moon, was published in 2010. In addition to her books of translation of Chinese poets from Zephyr Press, she has translated several contemporary French and American authors, and co-edited the Mãnoa anthologies, Sky Lanterns (2012) and On Freedom (2013), both from the University of Hawai’i Press. An editor at Cerise Press and Vif éditions, she is also a zheng harpist and orchid healer. She lives in France.
Sze-Lorrain's recent collection of poems is My Funeral Gondola.
Rebecca Thomas | Rebecca Thomas teaches at West Virginia University, Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in periodicals including ZYZZYVA, Prairie Schooner, and The Massachusetts Review.
Thomas most recently edited ms. aligned 3.
