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The Writers in Communities (WIC) program requires excellence from its writers-in-residence because the community deserves excellence. Our faculty is hand-picked for their talent and recognition as writers, as well as for their exceptional teaching experience.

Grisel Acosta is a multi-cultural writer originally from Chicago. She has a BA in journalism and a masters degree in English education. She is an experienced workshop facilitator, and her writing, which ranges from poetry to plays to songs to news and feature articles, has been published and presented throughout the United States. She is currently pursuing a PhD in English from UT San Antonio.

Mark Babino is a storyteller who has presented his art in a wide range of art and cultural venues, including the San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas Folklife Festival, San Antonio Public Library, and many schools and community centers. His stories were nominated for an Indie Award in 2003.

Formerly a writer for the Los Angeles Times, Gregg Barrios is a playwright, poet, and independent journalist. His award-winning play, Rancho Pancho, was published in a trade edition in 2009 (Hansen Publishing Group.) La Causa, a book of poetry, will appear from Hansen in fall 2010. Barrios is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.

Jesse Cardona is a 33-year veteran of the Texas public school system who has won many awards for teaching creative writing, including the Imagineer Award and the Trinity Prize for Teaching Excellence. In addition to publishing poetry in various journals and anthologies, Cardona is the author of Pan Dulce, a book of poems. He has also been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities visiting scholar grants to Harvard University, Boston University, and the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Cyra Dumitru is a published poet and has presented in-depth writing workshops designed for the Northeast School for the Arts Creative Writing Program and the Children’s Bereavement Center as well as “Awakenings,” a series of classes co-sponsored by Humana for Seniors. She currently serves as part-time adjunct faculty in the English Department at St. Mary’s University. Additionally, Dumitru manages a small publishing company called River Lily Press.

Carrie Fountain is an award-winning poet whose poems have appeared in a number of national publications. She was a fellow at the prestigious James. A. Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. In 2005, she received both Swink Magazine’s Award for Emerging Writers and the Marlboro Poetry Prize. Carrie lives and writes in Austin, where she is the co-managing program director of Grrl Action, a writing and performance group for teenage girls.

Xelena González has written for various local and national media outlets, including the San Antonio Current, the San Antonio Express-News, Voices of Art,  VIBE magazine,  and That’s China. Over the last five years she has led various workshops within the WIC program, including the Storybook Project, I Too Sing America, Beauty Is… and Redemption Songs. A performance and visual artist, Xelena has also worked within Jump-Start Performance Co.’s multi-disciplinary Historias y Cuentos program. She is the editor of the arts resource guide Smart Art by Jump-Start (2009).

Laurie Ann Guerrero is a writer who was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She is a two-time recipient of the Rosemary Thomas Poetry Prize, and her poems have appeared in Palo Alto Review, BorderSenses, Literary Mama, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, and others. She recently returned to Texas with her husband and three children, having recently received her BA in English from Smith College, with special commendation as a Sophia Smith Scholar for completing two award-winning manuscripts in poetry and creative nonfiction.

Rachel Jennings received her BA in English literature from the University of Tennessee and her MA and PhD in English literature from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently an English instructor at San Antonio College and participates in the Conjunto de Nepantleras at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. She has published her poems in journals and has also published a chapbook, Hedge Ghosts, and a book, Elijah’s Farm.

Diana López graduated from the Creative Writing Program at Texas State University and published her first novel, Sofia’s Saints (Bilingual Review Press), in 2002. Her second novel, A Daily Good Friday, won the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award. She has also been a featured guest on regional television’s Cover to Cover and National Public Radio’s Latino USA. She currently teaches English at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio.

Kirk Lynn is an accomplished Austin-based playwright whose work responds to the political crises of our day, often satirically. His plays have been enthusiastically reviewed by the Austin Chronicle and the New York Times. He is the co-Producing Artistic Director of Rude Mechanicals, an Austin-based theater company, and has been published in The Austin American Statesman, Dramatic Publishing, Quirk, and Theatre Topics.

Ignacio Magaloni, a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, has read his poems at the San Antonio Poetry Festival, The McNay Art Museum, the Floricanto Reading Series at Centro Cultural Aztlán, and at National Poetry Month events at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center. Magaloni coordinated poetry events at Bihl Haus Arts and at Northwest Vista College, where he co-founded the Trinidad Sanchez Art and Poetry Festival with another WIC faculty member, Natalia Treviño. Magaloni teaches literature and writing at Northwest Vista College.

Trey Moore, a Texas native and a fourth- generation carpenter, has taught as a poet in public schools and at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas. His work has appeared in the Texas Observer and a number of anthologies. Also an arts activist, and builder of community gardens, Trey’s poems investigate “our intimate, indivisible relationship to nature” from a city-dweller’s perspective. Moore recently released a book of poetry, Some Will Play the Cello (Pecan Grove Press, 2010).

Regina Moya was born in Mexico City. She graduated in Communications in Anahuac del Sur University in Mexico City, and has studied Literature from Centro de Estudios Casa Lamm. Moya has studied graphic design and journalism at Harvard University. Beside her passion for literature, Moya has also found a form of expression in plastic arts. Moya has worked with several textures and has worked in drawing and painting courses and labs.

Dr. Ben Olguin has written refereed articles in journals, anthologies, editorial review publications, and more, as well as the co-translated Cantos de Adolescencia/Songs of Youth by Américo Paredes and My Weapon is My Pen: raúlrsalinas’ Selected Writings from the Jail Machine (1963-1974).  Dr. Olguin currently works with Writers in Communities and Wood Middle School.

Donna Peacock is the author of two published non-fiction works and was the first Director of Creative Writing at The North East School of the Arts, where she created what was then the nation’s only four-year creative writing program. Cited for excellence and outstanding innovation in the teaching of the Humanities by the Texas Committee for the Humanities, she is a frequent workshop presenter and curriculum designer in creative writing and theater.

D. Ellis Phelps is a published poet and journalist, visual artist, arts educator and creative process consultant.  Her visual art has shown in galleries and exhibitions in Texas, Massachusetts, and New York; Phelps facilitates creative writing experiences and the creation of performance art pieces in schools, libraries, museums, and universities throughout the San Antonio area.  In 2009, Phelps finished her first novel, Making Room for George for which she is currently seeking literary agency representation.

Carlos Ponce writes short stories, poetry and non-fiction articles about social problems. Mr. Ponce’s first fiction book Pláticas de mi Barrio, was published by the Bilingual Review Press. He also wrote two children’s books, Ay Mi Espalda, Scholastics, New York 1998 and Baja Gregorio Baja, Scholastics, New York, 1998.

Sheila Rinear is a playwright and screenwriter who has won a number of awards for her work and has had over two dozen of her plays produced. She has worked as a Theatre Arts and English teacher from 1989 to 2004 during which time she won NEISD’s Teacher of the Year Award and the Trinity Award for Teaching Excellence. She currently teaches Playwriting at Trinity University, San Antonio.

Lyle Rosdahl is a San Antonio transplant who has taken root. He writes for the San Antonio Current (where he also edits the flash fiction section), teaches English at Palo Alto College, and works at the public library. Rosdahl has a fascination with Oulipo (a constraint group) and regularly uses different constraints in his own work.

Claudia Smith is a graduate of John Hopkins University where she received a Master’s degree in writing. Her fiction has appeared in several literary journals, including Failbetter, Redivider, Elimae, Night Train and Juked. Her stories have been anthologized in W.W. Norton’s The New Sudden Fiction: Short Short Stories From America and Beyond and So New Media’s Consumed: Women on Excess. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart. She has worked as a librarian in Austin and as an English teacher in Beijing, China.

Michele Stanush is a native Texan who has worked as a journalist, video-editor, free-lance book-editor, and fiction writer. As a journalist, she wrote for the Austin American-Statesman and the San Antonio Express-News and has won numerous awards for her reporting. A novel she wrote with her father received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the “Best First Novel” Spur Award, given by the Western Writers of America.

Vincent Toro is a Puerto Rican poet, playwright, performer, and music producer from New York. Currently the Theater Arts Director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas. He has won numerous awards for his work in all arenas. Mr. Toro has worked as an artist and teacher for many community groups, including Teachers & Writers Collaborative, the Dreamyard Drama Project, and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences.

Natalia Treviño is a poet and fiction writer from San Antonio, who currently serves as a tenured professor at Northwest Vista College. The winner of Wal-Mart’s prestigious Teacher of the Year Award in 1998, Trevino’s joy for teaching stems from much the same source as her writing—a distinctly bi-lingual and family-oriented life. She has served as Resident Poet in The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Barrio Neighborhood Project and has taught numerous classes aimed at connecting the community with the joys of writing.

Kirk Walsh is an award-winning novelist, essayist, poet, and journalist who has published in a number of national periodicals. She’s worked as a copy writer/editor for New York’s renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a senior editor at American Express Publishing, and an assistant editor at Rolling Stone. She has extensive experience teaching creative writing to children and adults in academic, community, and therapeutic settings.

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