Litquake 2019 Festival

Janine deBoisblanc is a co-founder of Diablo Writers' Workshop with Andrea Firth, where she teaches Writing From Life Experience classes for adults of all ages and backgrounds. Students work in creative nonfiction, fiction, as well as poetry. Janine is currently working on a memo... Read More →

Andrea Firth partnered with her graduate school friend Janine deBoisblanc to create Diablo Writers’ Workshop, a home for writers in the East Bay. Andrea is a journalist and specializes in healthcare reporting. She is working on a collection of essays which combines her love of... Read More →

Monica Brar is a mother, a wife, and a physician who has called Alamo home for 20 years. Through the serendipity of finding the Diablo Writers class at Orinda Books, she has also found her voice in creative nonfiction. Her superpower is making exact change at the grocery store.

Joanne Durkee is a retired education administrator and an education/social justice advocate who has discovered a new passion for writing about authentic human struggles and victories. She lives in Pleasant Hill with her husband and also enjoys time with her two adult children and... Read More →

Tim Eliason grew up in a small farm town in Iowa. He graduated from the University of Iowa, where he spent no time in the famed Writer’s Workshop but much time in bars. He’s built a career in print management, and enjoys family, travel, golf and literary fiction. He lives in... Read More →

Sharon Iversen was a nurse and an attorney in her working life. She lives in Orinda, now writing about those lives and a secret one as well.

Sonali Jolly-Wadhwa is a writer and poet. She writes in English, Hindi and Punjabi and has published poetry collections in all three languages. A wife, and mother living in Walnut Creek, she grew up in India and moved to San Francisco 23 years ago and often writes about the intersection... Read More →

Lauren Matthews grew up in Orinda and graduated from Barnard College. She writes about women, desire, and their intersection with society.

Maria Rowland lives in Orinda and writes both fiction and nonfiction. Even though she has lived in California for most of her adult life, she has deep Southern roots which anchor much of her storytelling and inspires her cooking too.

Joan Smith has lived in Lamorinda since 1969. Born and raised under the blue skies of the Sunflower State, she uses Kansas history and family experiences in her stories reflecting country and small town life from the end of the Civil War to the present. Joan also writes stories in... Read More →