Tony R. Rodriguez is an American novelist residing in the Bay Area of California. He is the former board chairman of the literary collective PEN Oakland, [1] a chapter of Pen America Center, which is an affiliate of PEN International. His novels have been published in Scotland and the United States of America. They include the best-selling titles Under These Stars (Beatdom Books, 2014) [2] and When I Followed the Elephant (Cauliay Publishing and Distribution, 2011). [3] His books have been studied at various high schools and universities, including the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, formerly known as the University of Texas-Pan American. [4] Rodriguez has also been published in various anthologies and literary journals. His works have been widely reviewed, especially through the East Bay Review, [5] View From Here magazine, [6] as well as local Bay Area press. [7] Rodriguez has been featured in many Bay Area literary festivals, including LitQuake, [8] the Oakland Book Festival [9] and 100,000 Poets for Change. [10]
Novels
Anthologies
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at 5:04 p.m. local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately 10 mi (16 km) northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With an Mw magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), the shock was responsible for 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault System had been relatively inactive since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake until two moderate foreshocks occurred in June 1988 and again in August 1989.
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Called the "Sweet Singer of California", she was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state.
William Anthony Parker White, better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher, was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett".
Gregory Stanley Kihn is an American rock musician, radio personality, and novelist. He founded and led The Greg Kihn Band, which scored hit songs in the 1980s, and has written several horror novels.
The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with Alene Lee (1931–1991), an African-American woman, in Greenwich Village, New York. It was the first work of Kerouac’s to be released following the success of On the Road. The Subterraneans and its following novel,The Dharma Bums, both proved to be popular when released in 1958, and are now seen as important works of the Beat Literature. A Hollywood film adaptation would be released in 1960.
John Edgar Wideman is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus on the African-American experience.
Josephine Louise Miles was an American poet and literary critic; the first woman tenured in the English department at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote over a dozen books of poetry and several works of criticism. She was a foundational scholar of quantitative and computational methods, and is considered a pioneer of the field of digital humanities. Benjamin H. Lehman and Josephine Miles' interdepartmental "Prose Improvement Project" was the basis for James Gray's Bay Area Writing Project, which later become the National Writing Project. The "Prose Improvement Project" was one of the first efforts at creating a writing across the curriculum program.
Gerald William Haslam was an author focused on rural and small towns in California's Great Central Valley including its poor and working-class people of all colors. A native of Oildale, California, Haslam has received numerous literary awards.
Heyday is an independent nonprofit publisher based in Berkeley, California.
Elana Dykewomon was an American lesbian activist, author, editor, and teacher. She was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
North Atlantic Books is a non-profit, independent publisher based in Berkeley, California, United States. Distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher Services, North Atlantic Books is a mission-driven social justice-oriented publisher. Founded by authors Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough in Vermont, North Atlantic Books was named partly for the North Atlantic region where it began in 1974, as well as Alan Van Newkirk's Geographic Foundation of the North Atlantic, an early (1970) ecological center founded in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, by radicals from Detroit. The publisher also cites Edward Dorn's 1960s poem, "North Atlantic Turbine: A Theory of Truth", which very early described the dangers of global commoditization by the Western World, as an inspiration in the company's name.
The PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award is for U.S. multicultural writers, to "promote works of excellence by writers of all cultural and racial backgrounds and to educate both the public and the media as to the nature of multicultural work." It was founded by PEN Oakland in 1991 and named in honor of Josephine Miles. PEN Oakland was founded in 1989. The award was dubbed the "Blue Collar PEN Award" by The New York Times.
Christian Hawkey, is an American poet, translator, editor, activist, and educator.
Alma Luz Villanueva is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist.
William Bayer is an American novelist, the author of twenty-one books including The New York Times best-sellers Switch and Pattern Crimes.
Ella Sterling Mighels was a California pioneer, author and literary historian. She was born in Mormon Island, California, but grew up in the town of Aurora, Esmeralda County, Nevada, leading her to adopt the pen name, "Aurora Esmeralda". She founded the California Literature Society (1913), and was named the "First Literary Historian of California" (1919). She died in San Francisco, and is buried in Oakland, California at the Mountain View Cemetery.
PEN Oakland is a branch of PEN, an international literary and human rights organization. PEN Oakland was founded in 1989 by Ishmael Reed and co-founders Floyd Salas, Claire Ortalda and Reginald Lockett. PEN Oakland annually sponsors the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, named for the late poet and faculty member of U.C. Berkeley’s English Department. The award honors well-known and emerging Bay Area and international authors for excellence in multicultural literature. Past and present PEN Oakland board members include: Elmaz Abinader, Opal Palmer Adisa, Kim Addonizio, Robert Mailer Anderson, Jesse Beagle, Judith Cody, Lucha Corpi, Nicole Corrales, John Curl, Lucille Lang Day, Sharon Doubiago, Cheryl Fabio, Adelle Foley, Jack Foley, Andrew Phillip Hayes, Herbert R. Kohl, Reginald Lockett, Kirk Lumpkin, Kim McMillon, Gerald Nicosia, Linda Noel, Claire Ortalda, Ishmael Reed, Tennessee Reed, Tony R. Rodriguez, Floyd Salas, Nina Serrano, Ntozake Shange, Gary Soto, Al Young, and Maw Shein Win. PEN Oakland is based in Oakland, California.
Julie Shigekuni is an American writer and professor. Her novels include A Bridge Between Us, Invisible Gardens, Unending Nora, and In Plain View, and she has won a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico.
Pauline Periwinkle was the pen name of S. Isadore Callaway an American journalist, poet, teacher, and feminist of the long nineteenth century. She served as the first corresponding secretary of the Michigan Woman's Press Association and was a staff member of Good Health, Battle Creek, Michigan. Using the pen name of "Pauline Periwinkle", Miner was the founder and editor of the "Woman's Century" page of The Dallas Morning News. She was "one of the most widely-read columnists in the early twentieth century."
Lucille Lang Day is an American poet, writer, and science and health educator. Day has authored or edited 20 books and is a contributor to over 50 anthologies. She is best known as a poet and writer for her award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, for her integration of science imagery and concepts into poetry and for advocating use of poetry as a tool in environmental activism. As a science and health educator, her many achievements have included promoting science education for girls and serving as codirector of Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community, a project that was funded by the National Institutes of Health and aimed to make biomedical science more accessible to underrepresented minorities.