[3.30.06]
Kathleen Alcala always has plenty of news to share with us. She recently attended the AWP Conference in Austin, contributing to a reading which honored the 30th anniversary of Calyx. Alcala writes: "This was a magazine started with the expectation that after five years, there would no longer be a need for a feminist press!" She's recently published essays in Re-Markings, The Pen and the Key and One Wound for Another / Una herida por otra, Testimonios de Latinos in the U.S. through Cyberspace. Nibir Ghosh, the editor of Re-Markings, also recently published Multicultural America: Conversations with Contemporary Authors, in which Alcala was profiled along with Octavia Butler, Colleen McElroy and others. Alcala also reports "I was privileged to work with the science fiction cooperative on Bainbridge Island as it published its second anthology, Obliquity."

She's done some teaching as well for Seattle's premier writing hub, The Richard Hugo House, where she also serves as secretary; her class, entitled “Called to Witness,” discussed writing after disaster, which led to some excellent essays.

And speaking of Octavia Butler, Alcala will speak about the much-beloved science fiction writer, who recently passed away, at this year's Rainbow Bookfest on April 29 (Margin will be there, too, selling Southern Revival: Deep Magic for Hurricane Relief). She will also present before a conference of educators in June concerning her book, The Flower in the Skull, and if that weren't enough, she's shopping an essay collection right now and working to complete a second collection of short stories under the working title, Cities of Gold.

[3.30.06]
Margin contributor Katherine Grace Bond has been running a series of workshops and events geared toward teenage writers for quite a while now. Today, she announces Teen Write 2006, a 3-day "hero's journey" scheduled to take place at Fort Worden (near Port Townsend, WA) on August 18-20. For more info

[3.30.06]
Zelda Leah Gatuskin, whose Ancestral Notes excerpts we reprinted, with accompanying digital collages, back in 2001, announces the Ancestral Notes website, a repository for all the family history information, interviews and stories she gathered while writing her book, as well as related research and creative writing she has done since. One of her first big projects is a virtual tribute to her grandmother, Sadie Gordon, a prolific artist/craftswoman who served as her first mentor and role model. Writes Gatuskin: "I hope she will inspire other creative women in all fields as she continues to inspire me."

[3.30.06]
The Underwater Hospital, Jan Steckel's first poetry chapbook,will be released from Zeitgeist Press next week. Steckel points out: "The title poem, which I consider magical realist, is appearing until April 21 in The Pedestal Magazine." She'll be reading and signing copies of her chapbook at the Albany Library in Albany, California on Thursday April 6 at 7 pm. You can pick up a copy of her book through her website.

[3.30.06]
Dan Jaffe's interview with Ruth Knafo Setton appears on the online literary journal, Bibliobuffet. Setton will also be reading, with other contributors, from the literary journal, Zeek, at Makor in New York City on May 18th. Read her poem, "Holy Thighs," here. Meanwhile, she's just finished her latest novel, Darktown Blues, and a poetry collection, Dance of the Seven Skins, which she describes as "prose/poetry that interweaves the Hansel and Gretel story."