Our BIPOC WRITER SCHOLARSHIP for full tuition (classes, panels, room and board) to our October 2024 Sonoma County Writers Camp is now open for submission, Here! DEADLINE: August 16, 2024

Sonoma County Writers Camp is a 4.5-day writing retreat that takes place in Cazadero, CA. SCWC is run by acclaimed authors and teachers Ellen Sussman and Elizabeth Stark. We are pleased to partner with a wonderful donor and Hedgebrook to offer a full tuition waiver for one recipient who is BIPOC and self-identifies as a woman or non-binary.

 Please also add yourself to our mailing list here to receive notifications of the upcoming deadlines and free classes. Thanks!

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Our 2024 Scholarship Winner thanks to Fleet Feet Menlo Park, Ratna Ling, and donations from campers and fans of SCWC!

Diana Veiga is a Spelman woman, a DC resident, and a DC Public Library employee. Her short stories have been published in Barrelhouse, The Northern Virginia Review, The Rumpus, and Apogee. She is an inaugural member of Kimbilio, a Fellowship dedicated to developing, empowering and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora.  She was the 2021 One Story Adina Talve-Goodman Fellow. A comedienne and storyteller, her one-woman show, I’m Just Doing My Job, premiered at the 2022 Capital Fringe Festival. Learn more at dianaveiga.com

Julie Ushio is Japanese-American, raised in western Nebraska, now living in Hawaii. Her work appears in Bamboo Ridge, Noyo River Review, and Brevity Blog. She is currently working on a historical fiction novel. She writes about Issei pioneer women, first generation Japanese immigrants.  She’s drawn to exploring the challenges these women faced, how they blended and melded a new identity, and the strength and resolve they drew on from their native culture as they navigated life in a new country.

Our 2023 Scholarship Winner thanks to Fleet Feet Menlo Park!

Amira Barger is a multi-award-winning Executive Vice President on the Global Health Sector and DEI team, providing senior Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Multicultural communications counsel to clients.

Recently named to Involved People’s Top 100 Executives list and Business Insiders’ 30 under 40 in healthcare innovation, Amira is a scholar, practitioner and thought leader who brings more than 18 years of experience in strategic communications that reach stakeholders, mobilize the community and inspire action. At California State University East Bay she serves as a lecturer in marketing and communications, joining the faculty in 2019. She also lectures at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the new Public Health for Business Leaders program. She is a data-informed, organizational architect who leverages design thinking to advance DEI and solve complex challenges.

She holds a B.A. in Marketing from Vanguard University, an MBA from Letourneau University, and invested in her professional development by receiving DEI Certifications from Cornell University, University of South Florida, and SDS Global Enterprises Inc. Amira is a passionate life-long learner, having received her CVA (Certified Volunteer Administrator) and CFRE (Certified Fund Raising Executive) designations. Amira maintains active memberships with: American Public Health Association, Public Relations Society of America, Association of Fundraising Professionals, and Chief (a private women’s network).​ She is an avid writer and her thought leadership, from bylines to webinars to podcasts, can be found here: https://www.clippings.me/amirabarger

Amira actively participates in organizations aligned to her passion for community service and efforts to empower historically underserved communities; she serves on the Board of By the Bay Health, Journalistic Learning Initiative, the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration, Valero-Benicia Refinery Community Advisory Board, and the City of Benicia Commission United for Racial Equity.

In her spare time, Amira and her family work their way through collecting stamps in the National Park Service Passport Cancellation Book. They plan to visit all 417 national parks/monuments in the U.S. as proud #RoadTripWarriors. Amira lives in Benicia, CA with Jonathan, her life partner of 18+ years, their 10-year-old daughter Audrey and their furry son Bucky the blue-eyed silver Labrador.

Our *Fourth* BIPOC Writer Scholarship, sponsored by Fleet Feet Menlo Park, was awarded to Lilly U. Nguyen!

Lilly U. Nguyen is a writer and editor based in San Diego. She is the American-born daughter of Vietnamese boat people and is currently preparing a memoir-in-essays on the questions of inheritance, obligation, and the refugee self. Several essays are forthcoming in River Teeth and The Southern Review. Her work has been recognized by awards from PEN Emerging Voices and TinHouse. 

We are thrilled to announce our March 2022 Winner!

Lakeya Omogun, Ph.D. is a Nigerian and Black American woman. Growing up between both cultures and places shaped her views on womanhood.

She identifies an artist first, and her artistic nature is infused in all her work as a professor, writer, and speaker. Her core mission remains the same in each of these roles — shifting static ideas about identity, culture, and language. She does this work across educational, community, and digital spaces.

Lakeya is a big advocate for women building and living the life of their dreams. When she’s not busy working, you can find her in motion — on a plane to visit her favorite people and new places, in the gym, or on a long-distance run.

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October 2021 Winner!

Once again, we had an incredible pool of talented, deserving applicants, driving us to work on expanding our scholarship program. Even so, Tria’s compelling writing stood out, and she was a generous community-building force at camp!

Tria Wen is a creative nonfiction and freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the NYT Now app, Narratively, and The Rumpus, among other places. 2021 California Arts Council Emerging Artist fellow, she is at work on a memoir manuscript, and is a founding editor of the Black Allyship column at Mochi Magazine. If literature is to be a representative record of our human existence, her goal as a writer and editor is to steward more stories from the margins to the page. You can find her on Instagram.

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May 2021 Winner!

Sonoma County Writers Camp is delighted to present our inaugural BIPOC Writer Scholarship winner for the May 2021 Session! We had an amazing, humbling turnout of talent, voices that need to be supported and heard. We were particularly blown away by our winner’s remarkable talent and vision, and are pleased to introduce you to Jordynn Paz.

Jordynn Paz is Apsaalooké from Garryowen, Montana on the Crow Indian Reservation. She grew up dancing at powwows, watching movies with her family and reading everything she could get her hands on. She recently graduated from the University of Montana with her bachelor’s in journalism and Native American studies. It’s her goal to share Indigenous stories and experiences through writing. She hopes to get her MFA in fiction.