Chia-Chia Lin is the author of The Unpassing, which was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She graduated with an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her short stories have been published in The Paris Review and Zyzzyva.
Joy Ding will read “Practicing,” by Chia-Chia Lin. Ding is a writer and performer based in San Francisco. She has recorded a number of short stories, including Italo Calvino’s “Mushrooms in the City”. She has also performed a staged reading of “Light Delay” for UC Davis’ 2018 Ground and Field Festival. She is a proud graduate of UC Davis’ master’s program in creative writing, where she studied writing and acting.
Yalitza Ferreras is a recent Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Short Stories, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Aster(ix) and Daring to Write: Contemporary Narratives by Dominican Women. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan where she won the Thesis Prize, and is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Djerassi, Yaddo, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and Voices of Our Nation
Monica Vejar will read “You Must Be this Tall,” by Yalitza Ferreras. Vejar, a granddaughter of farm workers and the first college graduate within the family, discovered her love of words in junior college while taking courses in British, American, and Third World Literature. She graduated from Sac State, where she performed in Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues and played Lil Bit in Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive (receiving the Jeffrey award for Best Actress). Over the years Monica has performed in various stage productions throughout the Sacramento region. Recently, she was in the Ensemble of Tenth Muse at the Davis Shakespeare Festival. And she read the part of Vicki in Over There Outside a Salon Reading produced by Bike City Theatre Company in partnership with UCD’s Ground and Field Theatre. She also played the roles of Marietta Fail, Wall Clock and Mae the parakeet in the Elly Award-winning production of Failure: A Love Story at Errant Phoenix Productions. Ms. Vejar hopes to continue to be a player in bringing short stories and plays to the stage.