Introducing our Literary Escape Speakers and Participants
Please join us and meet our exciting line up of talented and compelling authors. You will have opportunities to hear them in conversations and enjoy unique Literary Escapes with them throughout the weekend.
Katie Arnoldi
Katie Arnoldi's critically acclaimed debut novel CHEMICAL PINK, set in the competitive world of female body building, became a surprise bestseller, winning Arnoldi praise from critics and readers alike, THE WENTWORTHS, also graced the bestseller list. Her latest novel POINT DUME, is a timely novel dealing with the death of surf culture, human trafficking, the Mexican drug cartel, illegal pot farms on public lands, and environmental devastation. She lives in Venice, California with her husband, the painter Charles Arnoldi, and their two children.
Charles Lynn Batten
Lynn Batten came to UCLA in 1969 after receiving a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Although his research interests focus on British literature from 1660 to 1800, he has taught a wide spectrum of courses ranging from freshman composition and Shakespeare surveys to graduate courses in bibliography and literary criticism. In addition, he has taught the Bible as literature. He recently appeared on two programs in A&E's series, Mysteries of the Bible. A recipient of UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award, Lynn lives in Woodland Hills with his wife Anne.
Events
Aimee Bender
Aimee Bender is the author of four books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010). Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and many more places, as well as heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. She's received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005, and the Shirley Jackson short story award in 2010. Her fiction has been translated into ten languages. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing at USC.
Sylvia Boorstein
Sylvia Boorstein is a co-founding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, where she leads a popular weekly class on Wednesday mornings. She is also a Senior Teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She lectures nationally on Buddhism and mindfulness; she teaches vipassana and metta meditation. She emphasizes seeing daily life as practice and has a special ability to illustrate how we can be mindful standing in a grocery store checkout line as well as sitting on a meditation cushion.
Ethan Canin
Highly regarded as both a novelist and a short story writer, Ethan Canin has ranged in his career from the "breathtaking short stories of Emperor of the Air to the "stunning novellas of The Palace Thief, from the "wise and beautiful"short novel Carry Me Across the Water to the "epic America America. He attended Stanford University, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and then Harvard Medical School. He is currently on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and divides his time between Iowa and northern Michigan.
Heidi Durrow
A graduate of Stanford University, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Yale Law School, HEIDI W. DURROW has won the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Competition, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the Lois Roth Endowment and a Fellowship for Emerging Writers from the Jerome Foundation. She is cofounder and coproducer of the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival.
Karen Essex
Karen Essex is the author of the recently published DRACULA IN LOVE, a Victorian gothic novel; historical novel STEALING ATHENA, which chronicles the fantastic journey of the controversial Elgin Marbles; the national and international bestseller LEONARDO'S SWANS, for which she won Italy's prestigious 2007 Premio Roma for foreign fiction; and two acclaimed biographical novels, KLEOPATRA and PHARAOH. She is also an award winning journalist and a screenwriter, and wrote BETTIE PAGE: LIFE OF A PINUP LEGEND, the only authorized biography of the late pin-up icon.
Deanna Fei
Deanna Fei was born in Flushing, New York, and has lived in Beijing and Shanghai, China. A graduate of Amherst College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has received a Fulbright grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a Chinese cultural scholarship, among other awards. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she teaches in public schools and is at work on her second novel.
Robert Goolrick
Robert Goolrick is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir The End of the World as We Know It. He lives in New York City
Michelle Huneven
Michelle Huneven is the author of two previous novels, Round Rock and Jamesland. She has received a General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers and a Whiting Writers’ Award for fiction. She lives in Altadena, California.
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