Heidi Kasa (Heidi Smith, MFA '06)

Two new books are forthcoming from Heidi in October 2025: The Bullet Takes Forever (Mouthfeel Press) and The Beginners (Digging Press, winner of the 2023 chapbook prize). Heidi will also be reading at LitCrawl on October 25, 8–9 PM, at the San Francisco Mime Troupe, 855 Treat Ave., as part of Flying Rabbit Circus Presents: Damsels NOT in Distress, a multidisciplinary show that includes at least one professional circus performer.

 

Mady Jones

Mady has been accepted into the Advanced Fiction Writers Workshop with Tommy Orange at the Mechanics Institute this fall.

 

Nick Johnson and Zoe Young 

Our Litcrawl showcase on Oct. 25 will be all the more glorious for the addition of two program alum: Nick Johnson and Zoe Young. More about Nick below in this month's Alumni Spotlight.

 

Kristin Eade

Kristin has joined Club Chicxulub as their newest reader and editor!

Her connection with Club Chicxulub began during her brief "Club" experiment, where adventurous writers (including Kristin) faced off to defeat an AI in monthly writing prompts. She went on to appear in Club Chicxulub: Vol. 2 Thaw and at their live show, and now joins them in an editorial capacity.

 

Kate Colby

Kate's tenth book, Paradoxx, was released on September 30, 2025. A one-hundred-day chronicle of a dark period in the author's life, this tightly-wound lyric essay is also a memoir of growing up in the late 20th century and stumbling into the 21st. Full of insight and observational detail, the book teases out the tangles between memory, perception, and signification, showing a poet's mind deep in the trenches of thought and language. 

 

Read Kate's Literary Hub essay “A View with a Room: How Poetry Can Save the Human Brain: On Finding Inspiration in Edward Hopper's 'Cape Cod Morning'”

 

And! Kate will be visiting Tuesday Talks via Zoom on Nov. 11 at 5 pm PST and EVERYONE IS INVITED!