Porchlight Storytelling: Checking Out

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Nandita Dinesh holds a PhD in Drama from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and an MA in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Focused on the role that theatre and writing can play during and after violent conflict, Nandita has conducted community-based theatre projects in Kashmir, India, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. She has written multiple books about her work and in 2017 she was awarded the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy by Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. This Place That Place is her first novel.

 

Rebecca Handler is a writer who lives and works in San Francisco. Rebecca’s stories have been published and awarded in several anthologies, and she blogs regularly at www.onewomanparty.com. Edie Richter is Not Alone (Unnamed Press, 2021) is her debut novel and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. In a Starred Review, Kirkus writes, “A tragicomic exploration of the collateral damage of Alzheimer‘s disease… Handler gets it right from the title on out. Edie is definitely not alone.” Rebecca was recently awarded a MacDowell fellowship and spent the month of April in New Hampshire, writing her second novel.

Daniel Handler is the author of seven novels, including Why We Broke Up, All The Dirty Parts, and Bottle Grove. As Lemony Snicket, he is the author of far too many books for children, including Poison for Breakfast, the four-volume All The Wrong Questions, and the 13-volume A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has been adapted for screen and television. He lives in San Francisco with the illustrator Lisa Brown, to whom he is married.

Charlie Haas’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, New West, The Threepenny Review, and Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing. His screenwriting credits include Over the Edge, Tex, Gremlins 2 and Matinee. His novel The Enthusiast was published by HarperPerennial. His new novel Sunland is podcasting here.

Gary Singh is a journalist with a music degree, a published poet and a long-time newspaper columnist at Metro Silicon Valley. His byline has appeared over 1400 times in various commercial and trade publications, including travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry and short fiction. He is author of Silicon Alleys: Selected Metro Silicon Valley Columns 2005-2020 (2022) and The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy (2015) and was recently a Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. He still lives in San Jose.

Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is a humanitarian, mountaineer, explorer, social entrepreneur, technologist, and author of the new memoir In the Shadow of the Mountain. In 2014, she launched Courageous Girls, a nonprofit that helps survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking with opportunities to find inner strength and cultivate their voices by demonstrating their physical strength. Courageous Girls has had projects in Nepal, India, the United States, and Peru. Vasquez-Lavado was recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the Corporate Heroes of 2015. CNET named her one of the 20 Most Influential Latinos in Silicon Valley. She has also been recognized by the Peruvian government as one of the “Marca Peru” ambassadors (country brand ambassadors). She is a member of the Explorers Club and one of the few women in the world to complete the Seven Summits. She lives in San Francisco.