Lorene V. Garrett was born in Northern California to an Air Force family. She called Okinawa, Italy, Taiwan, Texas and Alabama home prior to graduating from high school in Huber Heights, Ohio. A lifelong poet-and recently, a recovering engineer-Lorene lives in Lancaster, California. Her current project, Still Life, is a memoir about chasing her dream of becoming the first black female astronaut.

 

Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet who grew up in the Imperial Valley, a small, border community in the Southern California desert. She is currently working on a poetry collection titled Aunt Lucy Packs A Suitcase. Givhan lives in Whittier with her husband and toddler son.

 

Simone Kang is a second generation Korean American, born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and currently residing in Los Angeles. Inspired by her multicultural roots, she is completing a debut collection of short stories entitled Wrong Way Down.

 

Beverley Magennis was born in Toronto, Canada in 1942. A New Mexican artist for 34 years, she lives in Apache Creek, where her passion shifted from creating visual art to writing literary fiction. Her current project is the novel Equity.

 

Natashia Deón is a fiction writer from Valencia, CA. She is currently working on her novel The Spinning Wheel.

 

Emerging Voices is made possible in part by grants and donations from the Rosenthal Family Foundation, the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, The Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts and individual PEN members. The intensive 8-month program begins in January 2010. For more information on the Fellowship, please visit http://penusa.org/programs/emerging-voices.