Yefe Nof offers thinkers, artists, and design-makers opportunities for establishing new connections. It is targeted at authors unknown to the general public considering problems which anyone on earth can apply themselves to and solve. If it’s often people with the wrong pedigrees who find the right solutions, Yefe Nof is the place to discover new connective tissue between…

The ideal candidate is self-motivated, outgoing, interested in interdisciplinary work, not inhibited by group think or standards of their field, not afraid to fail, and has a desire to engage in a new culture. This talented candidate is strong in their field but quite possibly without the exposure or experience. They are cutting edge at…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Writer Based in: Paris, France About: Gil Soltz grew up in San Bernardino, California, went to college at Brandeis University, and later earned his MPA from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service and his MFA from Warren Wilson. He has interned for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, taught EBD special education in…

Discipline/Field: Writer / Filmmaker Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Ryan Connolly is a new writer and filmmaker who recently left behind a successful two-decade national security career to pursue the great passions of his life. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the U.S. Naval Academy. He later earned an MA in National…

Discipline/Field: Photography Based in: Paris, France About: Laura Stevens (b. 1977 England, UK) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Arts and Design from Leeds Metropolitan University, and a Master of Arts degree in Photography from the University of Brighton. Through portraiture and landscape photography, her artistic practice focuses on themes of relationships: between man…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Writer Based in: Mesa, AZ About: Meredith Martinez is a brave new voice in fiction and an accomplished dancer. Since earning her MFA from Warren Wilson she has been adjunct faculty at Mesa Community College and Education Programs Manager at Arizona State University’s Virginia C. Piper Center for Writing. At YNR Meredith will be…

Discipline/Field: Creative Nonfiction Based in: Palm Desert, CA About: Ruth Nolan is author, former seasonal wildland firefighter, and professor of American Indian Literature and creative writing at College of the Desert. She worked for the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management on line, engine and helicopter crews fighting fire throughout the Western U.S. As…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Writer Based in: Pasadena, CA About: William Deverell has been Professor of History at the University of Southern California since 2004. He founded and directs the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. As a California Writing Resident, Bill will finish two short stories that are part of a larger collection-in-progress. Project Title:  “Arraigned” and…

Discipline/Field: Poet Based in: Altadena, CA About: Elline Lipkin is the current Poet Laureate of Altadena and a Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. She is actively engaged in teaching and mentoring in literary organizations such as WriteGirl. As a California Writing Resident, Elline will finish her second book of poetry that has been…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Writer Based in: Orange, CA About: Jonelle Strickland is a determined talent and mother of two toddlers with ferocious commitment to craft and philosophical issues that cover a range of individual and societal questions. Along her journey for growth as an author, which includes earning an MFA, entering competitions, and attending conferences, she…

Discipline/Field: Memoir Based in: Oakland, CA About: Yodassa Williams is a writer/performer and business owner who has a rare talent for presenting stories that evoke the human potential to transcend circumstances. Since experiencing her own life-changing transformations she has connected with audiences around the Bay Area to increase their empathy for suffering. As a fashion…

Discipline/Field: Poetry Based in: The Bay Area (CA) About: Originally from Seattle, WA, Amber is a poet with magical reach, impressive accolades and a full-length collection of poetry to her credit. At YNR, Flame will finish a non-gendered love story of Biblical proportions, executing the final research and honoring the various languages being interwoven with her…

Discipline/Field: Experimental Fiction Based in: San Francisco Bay Area About: Amanda Kim is a fourth-generation Californian whose literary transgressions are dedicated to telling truthful, complex stories that inspire different ways of being and thinking. Her family has been farming in Southern California since the 1890s. She is a graduate of Brown University and the MFA program…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles About: James Sie is the author of Still Life Las Vegas (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), his debut novel about a boy growing behind the neon of Las Vegas, told in prose, sketch, and narrative art.  He is also a playwright and essayist and can currently be heard as a…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles About: Chris Daley is the Director of Writing Workshops Los Angeles and she also teaches at the California Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center where she wrote her dissertation on Los Angeles literature and alternative religion. As a California Writing…

Discipline/Field: Prison Reform Research Based in: Los Angeles About: Kenneth E. Hartman is author of the memoir, Mother California: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars (Atlas & Co. 2009), and numerous thought provoking essays about prison life that have been widely published. He is a leading prison reform advocate and a grassroots pioneer of the effort to end…

Discipline/Field: Creative Nonfiction Based in: New York, NY About: Recent UC Riverside MFA graduate, Natassja Schiel, completed her thesis work under the close tutelage of Emily Rapp Black. As a Redesign Resident she will be finishing the memoir about her time working as an exotic dancer on the island of Guam. Her fascinating story debunks common myths…

Discipline/Field: Poetry & Creative Nonfiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Amy Davis is a New Yorker who has lived in Southern California for forty years. She holds a doctorate in American history from Columbia University and has taught at Purdue and UCLA. Her eco-poetry is a conversation between verse and prose that presents an…

Discipline/Field: Playwright & Performance Artist Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Linda Ravenswood is a prolific poet scholar who over the past decade has accumulated impressive commissions, publications, and accolades for her dedication to the stories of marginalized and disenfranchised people. Part First Nation, part Mayflower descendant, part Indigenous Baja Californian, and raised in Los…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Seattle, WA About: Ari McKenna grew up in Jamaica Plain, Boston and went to The New School University where he began a manuscript with the working title, Solace and the Frolicking Personas to synthesize his interests in linguistics, political science, philosophy, oil painting, journalism, and poetry into a unified thesis. He met his wife…

Discipline/Field: Poet / Comic Book Writer Based in: San Jose, CA About: Julia Tranchina is a municipal employee, a 2016 Lambda Literary Fellow, and a seventh generation Californian who can trace her Bay Area ancestry back to Spain. She was born and raised in San Jose where she lives still with her wife and seven-year…

Discipline/Field: Nonfiction Journalism Based in: Pasadena, CA About: Christopher DeWan is a prolific storyteller and screen writer, an avid hiker, and has taught at Idyllwild Arts. His most recent work of fiction is HOOPTY TIME MACHINES: fairy tales for grown ups, a collection of domestic fabulism from Atticus Books. As a California Writing Resident, Christopher…

Discipline/Field: Short Story Fiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About:  Kamala Puligandla attended the MFA program at UC Riverside and writes autobiographical fiction and essays about her radical, queer, multi-ethnic world, and the questions she has about building a better future. As a California Writing Resident, Kamala will be finding the end of a short…

Discipline/Field: Creative Nonfiction Based in: Riverside, CA About: UC Riverside MFA candidate, Amanda Oliver, has a keen interest in using research to identify and help solve social problems. Originally from Buffalo, New York, she worked as a librarian in the New York City Public Schools and in Washington, D.C. As a Redesign Resident she will…

Discipline/Field: Poetry Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: After living in South Korea for 20 years, Kim Stoker returned to the U.S. in 2017. During her time in Seoul she taught at various universities and was a leading activist for adoptee rights. Since her return she received an MFA in poetry from Antioch University and…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Born in Taiwan, raised in Southern California, Jean is a doctoral candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Fellow in fiction. She is also currently a W.M. Keck and George & Arlene Cheng Research Fellow at the…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Oakland, CA About: Rona Fernandez is a writer, activist, dancer, wife and #stillmother. She has returned to writing after enduring tragic loss. Project Title: The Marsh is a climate fiction novel set in the San Francisco Bay Area thirty years in the future in a world pulled between two extremes: at…

Discipline/Field: Nonfiction Based in: Claremont, CA About: Andrea Bennett holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College and is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. She is the former editor-in-chief of Vegas magazine and group editor-in-chief of several city and custom-published magazines. As a Redesign Resident, she will…

Discipline/Field: Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Based in: Long Beach, CA About: Madeline is a veteran journalist who grew up in Kansas, lived in Switzerland, Japan, and Spain, and has called California home for the last 15 years. As a recent graduate from UC Riverside’s MFA program in fiction, she has studied craft with Jane Smiley,…

Discipline/Field: Mental Health Research Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Omid Naim is an Integrative Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist. He is the founder of a nonprofit called the La Maida Project whose mission is to rewrite the story of mental health and well being. His life’s work is dedicated to creating new models of mental…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Dawn Dorland is an alumna of Harvard Divinity School and the MFA program at the University of Maryland. Her writing is concerned with the powerful politics of an American class system facing demographic and structural changes in the latter part of the twentieth century. At Yefe Nof…

Discipline/Field: Creative Nonfiction Based in: Los Angeles About: Joseph Cardenas is a musician/writer and the owner of Radio Tirado. The son of migrants, he has lived all over the U.S. gathering the experiences of different people and cultures, which ultimately led him to writing concerned with the personal histories of his father, uncle, and grandfather….

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Riverside, CA About: Alicia Mosley is a community educator, adjunct professor, and a mother of four whose creative work explores the magical labor of mothering while black and mothering black children. She honors the grief just as she celebrates familial survival and perseverance in the ever-present threat of violence and anti-Blackness….

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: San Francisco, CA About: Alysia Gonzales attends the MFA program at San Francisco State in the city where she was born and raised. She is of Chicanx, Latinx, Filipinx, Indigineous and other diverse ancestry, and her work grapples with cultural colonization and fostering a reunification, or decolonization of self to conserve…

Discipline/Field: Poetry Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is a political strategist, storyteller, and poet who has devoted her professional career to empowering and mobilizing South Asian Americans, particularly muslim women. She focuses her creativity on counternarratives and culture-shifting to move hearts and minds and reckon with social justice issues. Holding a…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Lina Abascal is a journalist whose writing has appeared in many of today’s edgiest publications, as well as in self-published zines/chapbooks. She is an MFA candidate at CSU Long Beach and the host of the Junior High Book Club in Los Angeles, where she curates selections from…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Stefani Cox is an MFA candidate at UC Riverside who originally hails from Northern California. Her work explores Black womanhood, environmental issues, mental health, and belonging, usually through a speculative lens. She has experience as an editor and an instructor, and also holds a masters in urban…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Altadena, CA About: Geoffrey Sharp is a long time television writer and director. He has produced hundreds of hours of non-fiction television focusing mainly on religion, science and international cultural topics. His work has been seen on Discovery, National Geographic, History, Showtime, HBO Max and other outlets. At YNR Geoffrey will…

Discipline/Field: Poetry Based in: Los Angeles About: Amber West is the author of two books of poetry as well as a variety of “puppet poems.” A native of San Luis Obispo, California with sharecropper roots in Tennessee and Oklahoma, West is a community arts and public humanities producer who lives in North Hollywood with her…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles About: Neelanjana Banerjee is the Managing Editor of Kaya Press, an independent press dedicated to Asian Pacific American and Asian Diasporic literature. She is co-editor of two poetry anthologies and her writing has appeared widely in places like Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, World Literature Today and PANK Magazine. She…

Discipline/Field: Historical Fiction Based in: London, England About: Katherine Lim is passionate about writing fiction that challenges how we view history. She holds a BA in English Literature from Brown University and an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford University. Her writing centers around gender, sexuality, and female agency and has been recognized with prestigious…

Discipline/Field: Performance Poetry Based in: Phoenix, AZ About: Robert Farid Karimi designs games and interactive performance experiences to spark audiences/players, in all manner of civic spaces, to imagine worlds of mutual community nourishment. They serve as Associate Professor in the Film, Dance and Theater department at Arizona State University. Project Title: ForTheFutureHybridsConfused2BeCylonsWhoMayHave2WorkAsStormTroopers2MakeEndsMeet or Poems Para…

Discipline/Field: Design – Podcast Based in: Los Angeles + Brooklyn About: April is an author, journalist and podcaster who has written a few books about digestive disorders. Catherine leads communications for an environmental nonprofit in New York City and teaches writing at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. Falls Creek is the product of Catherine’s fascination…

Discipline/Field: Poetry, modern drama, music Based in: Claremont, CA About: Hao Huang is the Frankel Endowed Chair in Music at Scripps College. He is a founding member of the Animas Music Festival in Durango Colorado, the Belle Terre Chamber Players, and the Gold Coast Trio. He has recently ventured into performance art and transart projects…

Discipline/Field: Nonfiction Essay Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Vickie Vértiz is the Author of Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, winner of the 2018 PEN America Poetry Prize. Twenty years ago, in the middle of a public policy career in anti-poverty work and advocacy, she changed course to begin telling stories of real families who are…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Atascadero, CA About: Tasia Trevino is a writer and musician who holds a BA in History from UCLA and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She works as an editor for social studies curriculum used in public schools across the country. As a California Writing Resident, she will…

Discipline/Field: Fiction, Playwriting, Performance Art Based in: Chicago + Los Angeles About: Sandra Jackson-Opoku is an award-winning author of a range of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic works, including the novels, The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny (and the Women Whom Loved Him). She is also co-editor of the anthology, Revise the Psalm:…

Discipline/Field: Literary Nonfiction and Poetry Based in: Riverside, CA About: Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a queer essayist and poet living in Southern California. She is co-founder of Boshemia Magazine, a British-American feminist arts and culture magazine, co-host of the pop culture podcast What Else Are We Mad At? and has written for a variety of…

Discipline/Field: Fiction Based in: Los Angeles, CA About: Ilana Masad is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism whose work has appeared widely. She’s currently a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is the author of the novel All My Mother’s Lovers. As a queer and nonbinary person with footholds in two distinct countries…

Discipline/Field: Playwright  Based in: Sacramento, CA About: Joanna Glum has unequivocally devoted her career and writing to social justice issues with a local focus. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Playwriting from the University of Edinburgh. In her 20s she was part- and then full-time caregiving for the…

Discipline/Field: Prose Writer Based: Los Angeles, CA About: Suhasini Yeeda is a first-generation queer Indian American from Dallas, Texas. She is the owner of NITI Communications, an independent consultancy dedicated to uplifting QTBIPOC small businesses and creatives. Her writing focuses on themes of grief and loss, intergenerational conflict, intersectional feminism, and class privilege among Asian…

Discipline/Field: Translation Based in: Berkeley, CA About: Laila Riazi is an interdisciplinary writer, teacher, translator, and editor born in California to Iranian immigrants. She earned her B.A. in Comparative Literature and Economics at UCLA and is currently a doctoral student at University of California, Berkeley, working and thinking across French, English, Arabic, and Persian traditions….