Tag: Cynthia Gómez

Muñeca

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

by Cynthia Gómez

It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic.

A vivid, surreal Gothic about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process.

A regular of both the San Francisco Writers Workshop and the Zoom-based Wednesday Edition, where she workshopped this novel, Cynthia Gómez is also the author of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories. Her short fiction has published in Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Pseudopod, Nightmare Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She lives in Oakland.

Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Preorder on Bookshop.com or at your favorite local bookstore.

San Francisco Writers Workshop at Beastcrawl 2024!

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

On July 27, 2024, San Francisco Writers Workshop will take part in Oakland’s Festival for Literary Arts & Performance, the annual BEASTCRAWL. Please come to support our writers in the Phase 2 of the fesitval and come early to attend Phase 1, and stay late to cheer for groups reading in Phase 3. Study the FULL PROGRAM of the festival in advance and make a walking map!

Details for our event:

July 27, 5:30 pm
Binny’s Cocktail Lounge
532 8th St, Oakland, CA

Connor O’Mara is a writer from northern Colorado. He often writes about tragedy set in the Mountain-West, finding inspiration from the people and towns he loved.

Cynthia Gómez writes horror and other types of speculative fiction, set primarily in Oakland. The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, her first collection, was released in July 2024.

Oakland-based David Ira Cleary has published in Asimov’s, Interzone, Persistent Visions, and elsewhere. His work is included in The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories, coming out in October 2024.

Joel Streicker’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations of Spanish-language literature have appeared hither and yon. He’s literally a prize-winning author—just ask him! Or check out his website: https://joelstreicker.com.

Madison Wilson is a fiction writer from the Bay Area. She is interested in telling stories about forgotten women and their inner lives. 

Tahirah Nailah Dean writes about the difficulties of finding love and marriage from the perspective of a Muslim woman. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera and Insider. 

San Francisco Writers Workshop at Beastcrawl 2024!

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

On July 27, 2024, San Francisco Writers Workshop will take part in Oakland’s Festival for Literary Arts & Performance, the annual BEASTCRAWL. Please come to support our writers in the Phase 2 of the fesitval and come early to attend Phase 1, and stay late to cheer for groups reading in Phase 3. Study the FULL PROGRAM of the festival in advance and make a walking map!

Details for our event:

July 27, 5:30 pm
Binny’s Cocktail Lounge
532 8th St, Oakland, CA

Connor O’Mara is a writer from northern Colorado. He often writes about tragedy set in the Mountain-West, finding inspiration from the people and towns he loved.

Cynthia Gómez writes horror and other types of speculative fiction, set primarily in Oakland. The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, her first collection, was released in July 2024.

Oakland-based David Ira Cleary has published in Asimov’s, Interzone, Persistent Visions, and elsewhere. His work is included in The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories, coming out in October 2024.

Joel Streicker’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations of Spanish-language literature have appeared hither and yon. He’s literally a prize-winning author—just ask him! Or check out his website: https://joelstreicker.com.

Madison Wilson is a fiction writer from the Bay Area. She is interested in telling stories about forgotten women and their inner lives. 

Tahirah Nailah Dean writes about the difficulties of finding love and marriage from the perspective of a Muslim woman. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera and Insider. 

The Nightmare Box and Other Stories

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

by Cynthia Gómez

A young queer man finds love at a magical clothing shop—and the courage to stand up to the homophobic cops. A witch who makes custom nightmares wonders why all her victims are connected to the Black Panthers—and who she’s really working for. A soon-to-be father encounters a mysterious hitchhiker who tries pulling him back to the days of his violent past. A brand-new vampire, freshly hired at the blood bank, delights in her heightened sexual desire and superhuman strength.

Cynthia Gómez’s debut collection from Cursed Morsels Press is a magic-soaked love letter to Oakland, brimming with feminist rage. Its twelve stories center ordinary people—Latine, queer, working class-as they wield supernatural powers against oppression, loneliness, and dread.

Buy this book from the publisher or on Amazon. Don’t forget to rate and review.

San Francisco Writers Workshop Presents: Lit Crawl Reading

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

San Francisco Writers Workshop is proud to participate in San Francisco’s Lit Crawl 2023 festival. For more than eight decades, this free, drop-in critique group has met weekly, nurturing a wide range of local authors. Come hear from the recent participants at our home base!

Event details:
October 21, 5 pm
Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street

Originally from the North of England, Jo Beckett-King is a writer and translator currently based in San Francisco. Her fiction has been short- or longlisted for the UK’s Bridport Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and the Bath Children’s Novel Award. She is represented by Elise Howard at DeFiore & Company.

Tahirah Nailah Dean is a lawyer by day and writer by night. She writes about the difficulties of finding love and marriage from the perspective of a Muslim woman. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera and Insider. She is a recipient of the 2023 Hurston/Wright Fellowship and winner of the 2021 MFest Short-Story Competition. Tahirah is currently working on a novel.

Cynthia Gómez writes feminist anti-capitalist horror and speculative fiction. Her work has been published in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere. Her collection, “The Nightmare Box and Other Stories,” will be published by Dread Stone Press in summer 2023.

Mike Karpa’s short fiction and memoir has appeared in Tin House, Tahoma Literary Review, Oyster River Pages and Foglifter Journal. His first novel Criminals was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2022. His new novel, The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg, won best gay book at the 2023 SF Book Festival.

Graham Smith built a solar-powered car in a locomotive shop and once traveled to an uninhabited island just to get some eggs. He was dredged, like an ancient bicycle, from the mud of the Upper Mississippi and continues to roll on through the hinterlands of San Francisco Bay.

Joel Streicker’s stories have been published widely. Recent winner of Cutthroat Magazine’s and Blood Orange Review’s fiction contests, he has also published poetry and nonfiction in English and Spanish. His translations of such writers as Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez, and Pilar Quintana have appeared in numerous journals.

Jason Tan graduated from St. Olaf college with a degree in Latin and Asian Studies. He writes primarily fantastical novels about people who are trying to figure out the rest of their lives. He lives in San Francisco.