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Featured Authors for 2012
View Comments from Past Participating Authors
Susan Dunlap
Susan has been writing well-loved mysteries since 1981, making her a true pioneer in the field of crime novels with female protagonists. Among her popular heroines are Berkeley police officer Jill Smith, medical examiner Kiernan O'Shaughnessy, and stunt double Darcy Lott. Her latest novel, Power Slide (2011), is her fourth Darcy Lott mystery. She is an active member of Sisters in Crime, has taught yoga and was part of the private investigative defense team in a capital murder case. She lives near Berkeley, California.
www.susandunlapmysteries.com
Heidi Durrow
Heidi is the daughter of a white Danish mother and an African-American Air Force father. She describes herself as a former corporate attorney, a former journalist, a former life skills trainer for NBA and NFL athletes and a podcaster. Oh, and a writer. Her debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, was named one of the best novels of 2010 by the Washington Post and was the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.
www.heididurrow.com
Melinda Palacio
An accomplished poet and novelist, Melinda holds two degrees in Comparative Literature, a BA from Berkeley and an MA from UC Santa Cruz. She wrote her first novel, Ocotillo Dreams (2011), with the aid of a 2007 fellowship from PEN Center USA Emerging Voices. Ocotillo Dreams addresses the racist events that transpired during the 1997 INS “sweeps” of illegals in Chandler, Arizona, and looks at the lives of those caught in the fray of immigration control. Melinda currently lives in Santa Barbara.
www.melindapalacio.com
Michelle Serros
Named by Newsweek as “one of the top young women to watch for in the new century,” Michele is an award-winning poet whose book Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death, Identity and Oxnard (1998) led to a stint with the touring music festival, Lollapalooza. Her novel, How to be a Chicana Role Model (2000), was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. She has written for the Los Angeles Times and Ms. Magazine, and contributes satirical commentaries regularly for National Public Radio.
www.muchamichele.com
Candacy Taylor
Candacy is an award-winning photographer, writer, and cultural critic, whose graduate project at California College of the Arts examined the role of career waitresses and related issues of labor and gender. Candacy (a former waitress herself) crossed the US gathering stories of these “lifers,” as they are affectionately known. The resulting work, Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress (2009) is a collection of first-person anecdotes complemented by Candacy's striking color photographs of the waitresses at work.
www.taylormadeculture.com
Rebecca Tinsley
A journalist and human rights activist, Rebecca is a former BBC reporter and holds a law degree from the London School of Economics. She is best known, perhaps, for her tireless efforts on behalf of the survivors of genocide in African countries. Her third novel, When the Stars Fall to Earth: A Novel of Africa (2011), is based on her interviews with the survivors of the genocide in Darfur. She donates all author royalties to the Darfur Refugee Rescue Efforts.
www.rebeccatinsley.com
Karen Tei Yamashita
Karen’s novel, I Hotel, describes The International Hotel in San Francisco’s Chinatown, which became the center of the burgeoning Asian-American civil rights movement in the 1960s after its tenants were threatened with eviction. The author of four previous novels, Karen received an American Book Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A California native who has also lived in Brazil and Japan, she currently teaches at UC Santa Cruz, where she received the Chancellor's Award for Diversity in 2009.
(no website presently listed)
