Prose Workshop 2024
introducing the writers of the 2024 workshop with Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
Aishatu Ado
Aishatu Ado is a Peace Technologist, AI Ethicist & writer who advocates for social justice. She is an alumna of various speculative fiction & poetry fellowships, including programs at Hurston/Wright, Kweli, Roots Words Wounds, among others. As a visual & literary artist, she weaves transformative Afro-feminist cosmovisions & quantum narratives, channeling ancestral oral traditions & mythologies. Her notable contributions are featured in anthologies such as "Parables of AI in/from the Majority World" & the literary NFT collection "To Each Their Own Reality."
Lilliana Mendez-Soto
Lilliana Mendez-Soto, Pharm.D.(she/her) is a Cuban-American novelist, poet, and essayist currently working on a nonfiction project. She is an alum of the Community of Writers Fiction Workshops, Las Dos Brujas Workshop, and a San Francisco Writer’s Grotto Rooted and Written Fellow in Memoir for 2023. She practiced clinical pharmacy for over 25 years. Her work has appeared in the anthology: Blood on the Page, Writings of Sutterwriters and is forthcoming in Peregrine. She can usually be found outdoors with her pack of hounds.
Anthony Yooshin Kim
Anthony Yooshin Kim (he/him) is a Korean American storyteller in Los Angeles, working in digital programming at American Documentary, the producer of 'POV' and 'America ReFramed.' A product of SF Bay Area public schools, he holds a PhD in Literature from UC-San Diego. His work focuses on regenerating narratives of the Korean diaspora amid ongoing war, national division, and authoritarianism. Anthony is an Aries, avid long-distance runner, and karaoke singer who can out-Sinatra anyone.
Alysia Han
Alysia “Alyse” Han she/her is a Korean-American psychiatrist and emerging writer in San Francisco. She has taken writing courses at the San Francisco Writing Salon and the Stanford Online Writing Certificate program. Her first work “Raw Potatoes” received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. Her writing explores themes of family life, illness, war, trauma and dislocation, which are also her clinical interests. VONA is her first writing workshop. Before turning to creative writing, she completed a dissertation in history at UC Berkeley. Alyse enjoys biking her son to school through Golden Gate Park and playing chamber music with a motley crew of parents.
(K^nikanlahtá:sa’)
Tonya Shenandoah
(K^nikanlahtá:sa’) Tonya Shenandoah (she/her) is a member of the Oneida Nation and mother of four. Her work moves into the depths of urban Native experiences, exposing the chain-link fences of colonialism entangled and embedded within the ancestral roots of families. Through the cultural strengths of community, her work highlights pathways for balance and healing. When she’s not reading, writing or spending time with family, she can be found rescuing four-legged friends. A MFA fiction candidate at the University of California Irvine, her work has appeared in One Hundred Word Story and Eunoia Review.
Sammy Solis
Sammy Solis (they/them) is a Maryland-raised writer living in Los Angeles. They hold a PhD in English from UCLA, where they studied contemporary American fiction. Since completing their dissertation on Latinx literature and culture in May of 2024, they have dedicated their time to listening to DnD podcasts and recovering from graduate school. They previously attended VONA in 2023, and they are excited to be back this summer. You can find their work in Issue 11 of Nat.
Sammy is the recipient of the Elmaz Abinader Founder’s Scholarship. The scholarship is new this year and will be awarded annually to a returning VONA participant who actively centers social justice, reverses the erasure of historically marginalized voices, and promotes a sense of belonging in their work and actions.
Erica L. Williams
Erica L. Williams (she/her/hers) is a Black feminist anthropologist/HBCU professor with degrees in Cultural Anthropology & Africana Studies from NYU and Stanford. The author of Sex Tourism in Bahia (2013) and co-editor of two scholarly books, she is excited to venture into the world of creative non-fiction with her memoir, Take Flight: Finding Myself through Travel. She is a Hurston/Wright Fellow (2022) and member of The Sanctuary, a writing community for BIPOC women. An avid globe-trotter, she is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish, and has dabbled in French, Yorùbá, Wolof, and Arabic. Her happy place is Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, where she enjoys dancing samba, eating guava and papaya, and drinking fresh coconut water and the occasional passion fruit cocktail.
Sarah Woo
Sarah Woo is a writer whose stories explore questions of alienation, agency, and gender. Her writing is influenced by her experience growing up in a small town, raised by Korean parents who lived rich lives in South Korea before experiencing a harsh about-face in the U.S. The expressive possibilities of fiction lured Sarah away from an early interest in journalism. She has found community through the former Writing Workshops of Los Angeles and in the classroom of Jim Krusoe at Santa Monica College. She holds a BA from Yale University and a JD from UCLA. When not writing, Sarah sits in an old trailer, sewing, or chases her two small children.
Charles Stephens
Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based writer. His writings have been published in Copper Nickel, The Lumiere Review, Isele Magazine, and Queerlings. His work has been supported by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the Lambda Literary Foundation, Roots.Wounds.Words, and Periplus.
Angeline Meitzler
Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler is a writer and experimental animator from the Detroit Metro. She is the 2nd daughter of a Filipino nurse and a German-American scientist. Her work and research utilize fiction and myth to deconstruct how power, race and colonialism are entangled in political and personal narratives of worth and value. Her work has received fellowships and been supported by The Studios at MASS MoCA Fellowship, Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, NYSCA and Harvestworks. She holds an MFA from School the Arts Institute of Chicago. She loves to surf and practice tagalog.
Angeline is the recipient of a scholarship from the Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA) / Manuel and Penelope Flores Scholarship. PAWA has been supporting VONA writers since 2011.
Mays Kuhail
Mays Kuhail is a writer born and raised in Ramallah, Palestine. Mays’s writing grapples with nostalgia and memory, generational trauma, spatial politics, hope, and joy. She recently received an MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University. Mays' stories appear in So To Speak and Fahmidan Journal.
Leydi Ferreira
Leydi Margaret Ferreira is a Dominican American writer whose work lies within the intersecting identities of immigration, Black womanhood, motherhood and intergenerational relationships. Her work looks to explore the interiority of these crossroads. She loves to run which helps her work out her stories. She lives in New Jersey with her family and rescue dog.