Who's Here? The Grotto's Current Inhabitants

A working lunch: writers Melanie Gideon and Natalie Baszile.

MOLLY ANTOPOL is a Jones Lecturer of Creative Writing at Stanford, where she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction. She has an M.F.A. from Columbia, and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, The Mississippi Review Prize Stories of the Year, Nimrod's Prize Stories of the Year, The Southern Review, Esquire.com and elsewhere, and on NPR's This American Life and New York Public Radio.

TOM BARBASH was a winner of the California Book Award for his novel The Last Good Chance. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller On Top of the World. His short fiction has appeared in Tin House, Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review and other publications.

ALLISON HOOVER BARTLETT has written on a variety of topics for such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Salon.  She's a founding member of North 24th, a writing salon, and is currently at work on a book about rare book theft.

NATALIE BASZILE is currently at work on her first novel The Grinding Season, excerpts from which have won the Hurston/Wright College Award, been named a runner-up for the Faulkner Pirates Alley Novel-in-Progress Award, and been published in Cairn and Zyzzyva. She is a recent graduate of the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers, where she received a Holden Minority Scholarship.

J.D. BELTRAN is an artist interested in portraiture, and the integration of traditional and emerging art media. Her work has been screened and exhibited at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The MIT Media Lab, The Kitchen, New York, and at other museums, galleries, and film festivals internationally, and has been reviewed in the New York Times, as well as in Art In America, ArtNews, the New Art Examiner, and Art Papers.  Her latest project investigates the use of the short story form as portraiture.  Currently a faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute in New Genres, she is represented by Haines Gallery and lives and works in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN is a fiction writer, editor and screenwriter. She's also the founder and editor of The Big Ugly Review, an online literary magazine that showcases fiction, nonfiction, poetry, photo-essays, downloadable music and short films of five minutes or less, all related to the issue's theme. Elizabeth collaborates with filmmaker Kia Simon at Sneaky Little Sister Films. SLS Films is developing two of her screenplays, "Alice" and "Tinderbox." "Alice" is based on Elizabeth's short story of the same name, which won first prize in the San Francisco Bay Guardian fiction contest in 2004. Other short stories have been published in the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine and various literary journals. Her plays have been produced in several venues, including the Exit Theater, The PlayGround, Impact Theatre and Fringe of Marin. 
www.elizabethbernstein.com, www.ebcsf.com.

PO BRONSON is one of the founders of the Grotto. He has written five books. The most recent is Why Do I Love These People? - Honest and Amazing Stories of Real Families. His previous book, What Should I Do With My Life?, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Po has also written for the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR's Morning Edition. He is on the board of directors of Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, the exclusive representative of over 70 esteemed independent publishers. www.pobronson.com.

XANDRA CASTLETON is a writer and filmmaker whose first feature film, Full Grown Men, is currently in post-production. Xandra writes, develops and produces films through Grottofilms, the company she runs with her husband and partner, David Munro. The first two Grottofilms productions were the award-winning short films Compulsory Breathing and Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, which she co-wrote. Prior to founding Grottofilms, Xandra was the series producer of Independent View, a public television show about independent film, which earned her an Emmy award for her portrait of director John Waters. www.grottofilms.com www.fullgrownmenthemovie.com.

MARIANNA CHERRY likes to write stories, novels and screenplays. Her work hasappeared in The 2001 Pushcart Prize XXV,Chelsea Magazine, Fourteen Hills and Best Women's Erotica2005. She received a B.A. in English from Columbia University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and is currently working on her first novel. She is a long-time musician with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, with whom she has performed Balinese music in venues internationally, including remote Balinese temples, The Fillmore, the Hollywood Bowl, and Chico State University.

CHRIS COLIN is a former writer/editor for Salon and the author of What Really Happened to the Class of '93, which GQ called "essential reading" and the National Press Club selected for its 2004 author awards. He writes the "On the Job" column for the San Francisco Chronicle and freelances for the New York Times, Smithsonian, Mother Jones and other publications. He's co-author of The Blue Pages and a contributing editor at Meatpaper magazine. His next book is about people becoming free, sort of. www.chriscolin.com

CHRISTOPHER D. COOK is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us, (New Press, 2004).  His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor,The Nation and elsewhere. In 1998 he won an Aronson Award for his investigation into welfare agencies requiring recipients to work in dangerous meatpacking plants. Other honors include a 2001 Project Censored Award, finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and two-time finalist for the Livingston Award. He has been a reporter for The Oakland Tribune and United Press International. www.dietforadeadplanet.com.

KATIE CROUCH is the author of the novel Girls in Trucks (Little, Brown), which was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Her writing has also appeared in Tin House, Glamour, and the New York Observer. www.katiecrouch.com.

DAVID EWING DUNCAN is an award-winning science journalist and a bestselling author, with books published in 19 languages. He regularly writes for Wired,Discover, Fortune, Atlantic, and many others; he is a special correspondent and producer for ABC's Nightline and NOVA; and a commentator for NPR's "Morning Edition." David is the Founder and Editorial Director of the BioAgenda Institute for Life Science Policy. In 2004, Duncan won the prestigious AAAS Magazine Journalism Award.  www.davidewingduncan.com.

HELENA ECHLIN is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of the novel Gone (Secker &Warburg/Random House UK, 2002) and she writes a weekly etiquette advice column, "Table Manners," for CHOW, a food magazine. Her articles have been published in UK newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times, and The Sunday Telegraph. www.helenaechlin.com.

STEPHEN ELLIOTT is a former stripper and the author of six books including Happy Baby, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lion Award as well as a best book of 2004 in Salon.com, Newsday, Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice. His most recent book is an almost all true sexual memoir called My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up. His writing has been featured in Esquire, The New York Times, GQ, Best American Non-Required Reading, Best American Erotica, and Best Sex Writing 2006. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

RODES FISHBURNE's first novel, Going to See the Elephant, has been sold to an imprint of Random House. In the past ten years he has written for magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and Forbes ASAP, where he was the editor of the acclaimed "Big Issue," an annual magazine of literary essays from leading writers and thinkers. His plays have been performed off-Broadway in New York City, San Francisco, and Palm Springs. www.rodesfishburne.com

LAURA FRASER is a long-time freelance writer, San Franciscan, and Grotto denizen. She is the author of the best-selling travel memoir An Italian Affair. She also wrote Losing It: America's Obsession with Weight and the Industry that Feeds on It, an expose of the diet industry. An award-winning journalist, she has written features for many national magazines, including Gourmet, More, O the Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Glamour, Self, the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Good Housekeeping, Salon.com, Bon Appetit, Town and Country Travel, Islands, Yoga Journal, and others. Her work has been frequently anthologized, including in Best Food Writing of 2001 and 2002, and Best Women's Travel Writing of 2005. She has taught magazine writing at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, Aspen Summer Words, U.C. Extension, and other venues. She co-authored The War on Choice with former Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Gloria Feldt. A frequent traveler, last year she visited Sydney, Tasmania, Baja, Buenos Aires, Rome, and her favorite island in the Mediterranean, which she refuses to name.

SUSAN GERHARD is a journalist and culture critic. She is currently San Francisco Bureau Chief for indieWIRE and editor of the web film magazine sf360.org.  Her creative nonfiction, journalism, criticism, and/or critical opinions have appeared in many other publications, including McSweeneys.net, Salon, Mothering, Poz, Mamm, Cinemascope, Film Comment, and the Village Voice. She was a Sundance Arts Writing Fellow 2002-4, a senior editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian for many years, and is now developing nonfiction book and film projects.

MELANIE GIDEON is the author of the novel The Girl Who Swallowed the Moon and two novels for young adults: The Map that Breathed (A Girl's Life Top Ten Pick and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age) and Pucker (a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age and ALA Best Book Finalist). Melanie's first foray into non-fiction, The Slippery Year, will be published by Knopf sometime in 2009. www.melaniegideon.com

RACHEL HOWARD is the author of The Lost Night, a memoir about the emotional aftermath of her father's unsolved murder.  She writes frequently about dance for the San Francisco Chronicle, and is currently at work on a novel. The Lost Night will be released in paperback in June 2006. www.rachelhoward.com

GERARD JONES's book in progress, coming from Farrar Straus & Giroux in 2009, is The Undressing of America: How a Bodybuilder, a Swimming Queen and a Magician Created Reality Media. His previous books include Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (Basic Books 2005), Killing Monsters (Basic 2002), Honey I'm Home (St. Martin's 1993) and The Beaver Papers (Crown 1983). He's also done some screenwriting and written a whole lot of comic books.

DIANA KAPP is a magazine journalist who writes about a broad range of political, educational and cultural topics. She has written on the $3B California stem cell initiative, the tragic suicide of UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton, New York's arcane, fault-based divorce law and San Francisco's slick-haired mayor, Gavin Newsom. Her work has appeared in ELLE, O The Oprah Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Magazine, where she is a contributing writer.  Her circuitous career path includes stints in a biotechnology start-up, on Nike ad campaigns, and currently, as the owner of the Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch, a historic guest ranch located in the Sawtooth Valley, a place best described as "What would it look like if the Tetons married the Sierra Nevada - and nobody came to the wedding? This is it!" She has an English degree from University of Michigan and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, which, of course, is a whole other story.

CONSTANCE (Connie) LOIZOS is a magazine writer who has written for a more than a dozen outlets, including Barron's, Business 2.0, Yoga Journal, National Geographic, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, I.D., Inc., 7x7, San Francisco Magazine, MBA Jungle, Corporate Board Member, and Technology Review. An editor at Red Herring magazine in the mid- to late-'90s, Connie also remains a fixture on Silicon Valley's venture capital scene, writing about everything from entrepreneurs and illicit love affairs to the occasional kidnapping for several publications, including the national magazine Venture Capital Journal. She is currently working on her first novel, Funeral Parlors, a romantic comedy.

KATHRYN MA is the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award for her book, All That Work and Still No Boys, forthcoming in September 2009 (University of Iowa Press). Her stories have appeared in The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and other publications. She won the 2008 David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction. www.kathrynma.com.

JORDAN MACKAY writes mainly about wine, spirits, cocktails, beer and food (when necessary). His work has appeared in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as magazines from Gourmet and Food & Wine to Wine and Spirits, Decanter and InStyle. He is the wine and spirits editor for San Francisco's metropolitan magazine 7x7 and writes a weekly column on drink for Chow.

VICTOR MARTINEZ is a poet, fiction writer, and recipient of the National Book Award for his novel PARROT IN THE OVEN: Mi Vida (HarperCollins).

JOSH MCHUGH is a contributing editor at Wired and has written for Outside, Vanity Fair, Slate, Forbes, and The Montgomeryville Spirit, among other publications. He once expired briefly while working as a test subject in a NASA hypergravity experiment, and spent 2004 training to dunk a basketball on a regulation rim. He was listed as one of the nation's 30 finest business journalists under the age of 30 in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 by TJFR, a now-defunct business journalism trade rag. He graduated from Yale in 1992 with a B.A. in English.

DAVID MUNRO's debut feature Full Grown Men premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival en route to winning the IndieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems Sundance Channel Audience Award. Starring Matt McGrath, Judah Friedlander, Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris, and Deborah Harry, Full Grown Men will be released in theaters in Summer '08 followed by a broadcast on the Sundance Channel. David's short films have won awards at festivals worldwide including Sundance and Berlin. Filmmaker Magazine named David "One of 25 Filmmakers to Watch." David and his wife (and fellow Grotto resident) Xandra Castleton develop original film stories through their company Grottofilms. David is represented by The Gersh Agency and directs commercials through San Francisco-based Kontent Films.

JANIS COOKE NEWMAN is the author of the Bay Area Bestseller Mary (published in hardcover by MacAdam/Cage, and in paperback by Harcourt), a historical novel about Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, chosen as USA Today's Best Historical Fiction of the Year, and a Booksense Year-End Highlight. Newman is also the author of The Russian Word for Snow (St. Martin's Press, 2001), a memoir about adopting her son from a Moscow orphanage. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives (Inner Ocean, 2006) and four Travelers' Tales editions. Newman's travel writing has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Backpacker. She lives in San Francisco, where she teaches classes in creative writing.

TODD OPPENHEIMER is the author of The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved (Random House). He has won numerous awards for his writing and investigative reporting, and has been featured on radio and television shows such as ABC's "Nightline." The Flickering Mind was a book award finalist from Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc. It is based on "The Computer Delusion," a cover story Oppenheimer wrote for The Atlantic's July, 1997, issue, which won the year's National Magazine Award for public interest reporting.

PETER ORNER is the author of Esther Stories and the forthcoming novel The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Best American Stories, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Bomb, The Southern Review, and other publications. Esther Stories was named a New York Times Notable book, and was named a top five book of the year by National Public Radio's All Things Considered. He has been been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the Goldberg Award from the National Foundation of Jewish Culture, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is on the M.F.A. faculty at San Francisco State University.

CAROLINE PAUL graduated from Stanford University with plans to be a documentary film maker. Instead, she became a San Francisco firefighter. Fighting Fire chronicles those years spent running into burning buildings, birthing babies on sidewalks, and scuba diving for dead bodies, when few women were doing the job. Fighting Fire was a Book of the Month Club selection, named a Top Ten Summer Read by the Today Show, and given a starred review by the Library Association. It was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in nonfiction. Her first work of fiction, East Wind, Rain, is based on the true story of a Japanese-American couple faced with a terrible choice when a Japanese soldier, who has just attacked Pearl Harbor, crash lands his plane on their small Hawai'ian island. "When it's over we don't want to leave," said the New York Times book review. www.carolinepaul.com

ANDY RASKIN is the author of THE RAMEN KING AND I: How the Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life . His personal non-fiction narratives and essays have appeared on public radio's All Things Considered and This American Life and in publications such as Gourmet, The New York Times, Wired, Women's Health, Inc. Magazine, CNN/Money and Playboy (Japanese edition). Andy is a judge for the 2009 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards. www.andyraskin.com

JASON ROBERTS is the author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins), a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the international Guardian First Book Award and named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and Kirkus Reviews. He's also the inaugural winner of the Van Zorn Prize for emerging fiction writers, sponsored by Michael Chabon, and a contributor to McSweeney's, The Believer, the Village Voice and other publications. Roberts is currently at work on two books: a nonfiction narrative, centered on the opening of Japan in 1853, and a novel set in Northern California and post-unification Germany.

JULIA SCHEERES is a journalist and the author of Jesus Land an award-winning memoir about her relationship with her adopted black brother, their fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and their stint together at an Evangelical reform school in the Dominican Republic. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other outlets. She is fluent in Spanish. www.juliascheeres.com

MEGHAN WARD is currently at work on her memoir, Paris on Less Than $10,000 a Day, excerpts from which have been published in the fashion anthology It's So You and performed at Porchlight and Litquake. She earned a BA in English from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and her writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune. www.meghanward.com

ETHAN WATTERS is a co-founder of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. His most recent book is Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? He's written for many of national magazines including New York Times Magazine, Spin, Discover, Details, Men Journal, Mother Jones, GQ, and Esquire. He has written two previous books about recovered memory therapy and the mental health profession. The movie rights for Urban Tribes have been optioned by Ira Glass and are in development for a feature film at Warner Bros. Currently, he is working on a book about evolutionary medicine.