Announcing our Special Guest Author for July 2024!

Agent and Editor Bios Coming soon…

For our Get the Drama on the Page retreat, we will bring in the amazing Aya De Leon for several days. Aya will lead the Master Class and introduce us to her agent and editor, and her books. She will show us the drama on the page and behind the scenes!

Aya de León teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. She is the author of ten novels, and has won the Northern California Book Award, the Jane Addams  prize for social justice children’s literature, two first-place International Latino Book Awards and three first place Independent Publisher Awards. Her “Justice Hustlers” series has also been optioned for television. A former spoken word poet and hip hop theater artist, she was selected as Poet Laureate for the City of Berkeley for 2024 and 2025. Aya’s work has also appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Ebony, Guernica, Writers Digest, Bitch Magazine, VICE, The Root, Ploughshares, on Def Poetry, and in 2023 she was featured in “By the Book” in The New York Times. In spring 2022, she organized an online conference entitled Black Literature vs. the Climate Emergency (available on YouTube). In addition, she does climate organizing with the Black Hive, the climate justice formation at the Movement for Black Lives.

Buy the Books Here & Support Sonoma County’s Local Bookstore, Copperfield’s!

Past Presenters Here