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Speakers

Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and grew up in Trinidad. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel Cereus Blooms at Night, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Chapters First Novel Award and for the Ethel Wilson BC Book Prize and long listed for the Man Booker Prize, and He Drown She in the Sea which was long listed for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Mootoo’s collection of short stories is Out on Main Street and her book of poetry is titled The Predicament of Or. She is also a visual and video artist whose work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, and at the Venice Biennale in the 1995 TransCulture Pavillion. Her novels have been translated into thirteen languages.  Her most recent novel, long listed for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Award, is Valmiki’s Daughter.  She lives in Toronto, Canada, and is currently Writer in Residence at The University of Guelph.

Manuel Muñoz is the author of two collections of short stories: The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2007, and Zigzagger, published by Northwestern University Press in 2003.  A recipient of a Whiting Writers Award in 2008, Manuel was a finalist for the 2007 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize and the recipient of a Constance Saltonstall Foundation Individual Artist's Grant in Fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a 2009 O.Henry Prize for a short story.  His work has appeared in The New York Times, Rush Hour, Swink, Epoch, Glimmer Train, Edinburgh Review and Boston Review, and has aired on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts.  A native of Dinuba, California, he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona at Tucson.  His first novel, What You See in the Dark, will be published by Algonquin Books in the spring of 2011.

Felicia Luna Lemus was born on the East Coast in 1975 to two science nerds with stars in their eyes and flowers in their hair, and she was raised by an extended network of familiain in Southern California. Felicia is the author of Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003; Seal Press, 2004) and Like Son (Akashic Books, 2007), which was a 2008 Ferro-Grumley Award Finalist. Felicia has taught writing at The New School and the UCLA Writers’ Program; she is currently Associate Faculty at Antioch University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Felicia graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Irvine, earned an MFA in Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, and she is currently working toward a Master of Education (M.Ed) and a Credential at UCLA. By fall 2011, she hopes to be teaching 1st grade in a community much like the one she grew up in. 

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