the 9th annual
Taos Writers Conference
Sponsored by SOMOS, Taos, NM
Early Bird Registration by end of day 6/28/25:
All workshops (except for the ones designated online via Zoom) are located at SOMOS, 108 Civic Plaza Dr, Taos, NM 87571, unless otherwise specified.
Early Bird Registration by end of day 6/28/25:
Registration closes 7/23/25
Faculty
Nick Flynn
Keynote Speaker
Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn (writer, playwright, poet) has published twelve books, most recently This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire (2020), a hybrid memoir; and Stay: threads, collaborations, and conversations (2020), which documents twenty-five years of his collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and composers. He is also the author of five collections of poetry, including I Will Destroy You (2019). He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress, and is on the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston. His acclaimed memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), was made into a film starring Robert DeNiro, and has been translated into fifteen languages.
Connie Josefs
Susan Mihalic
Critically acclaimed author Susan Mihalic (Dark Horses, Scout Press, 2021) believes the best stories are character-driven—and that characters are inextricably woven with plot. Her workshops offer a supportive atmosphere in which to discover both.
Veronica Golos
Veronica Golos is the author of GIRL, awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize for Poetry, (Beirut, Lebanon); Rootwork; Vocabulary of Silence winner of the New Mexico Book Award, poems from which are translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, adapted for stage and performed at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA. She is the former editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Golos writes book reviews for Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches for Gemini Ink, Hugo House, and SOMOS and privately. She lives in Taos with her husband, David Pérez.
Aaron Abeyta
Aaron A. Abeyta is an award winning poet from Antonito, Colorado – where he and his family have lived for 9 generations. Growing up on a family ranch instilled in Abeyta the importance of home, hope, healing, work, stewardship and storytelling, all of which are essential to his writing. Abeyta is the recipient of The American Book Award; Colorado Book Award; Governor’s Creative Leadership Award and his most recent poetry collection was shortlisted for The Reading the West Award. Abeyta and his family still call Antonito home
EJ Levy
EJ Levy’s novel, The Cape Doctor, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Barnes & Noble’s Best Book of Summer, and won a 2022 Colorado Book Award; Booklist named it among the year’s Ten Best Historical Novels. A French edition won the Prix Libr’a Nous for Best Foreign Fiction. Her story collection, Love, In Theory, won a Flannery O’Connor Award and GLCA New Writers Award; Kirkus named it a Best Indie Book of 2013. Levy’s anthology, Tasting Life Twice: Literary Lesbian Fiction by New American Writers, won a Lambda Award. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Best American Essays, Orion, The Nation, The Washington Post, and twice was named among Distinguished Stories in Best American Short Stories.
Helen Rynaski
After many years of writing nonfiction (newspaper/magazine articles), Helen Rynaski discovered the magic of theatre, acting for the first time at age 62. Once she trod the boards, the leap to playwriting was swift. She has taken several Zoom classes with the Einhorn School of Performing Arts in New York City. Her one-act plays have been performed in various venues in Taos, the Santa Fe Playhouse, and the Los Alamos Little Theatre. She brought Flash Theatre to the Taos Center for the Arts. She has written and produced two full-length shows at Wildflower Playhouse in Taos. She loves to see others get bitten by the theatre bug.
She also works as a copyeditor: helen@taoseditor.com.
Johnny Boggs
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses (breaking two ribs last time), shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives — all in the name of finding a good story. He was won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and has been called by Booklist magazine “among the best western writers at work today.” He also writes for numerous magazines, including True West, Wild West, Boys’ Life and Western Art & Architecture, speaks and lectures often, studies old movies (Westerns and film noir) and even finds time to coach and umpire Little League. A native of South Carolina and former newspaper journalist, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and son.
Naomi Wax
Naomi Wax is the co-author of What We Keep (Running Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in the Iowa Review, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Elle, and other publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars and an MA in English from the Bread Loaf School of English. She has taught at Gotham Writers Workshop and led workshops at SXSW and cultural institutions nationwide. As an editorial consultant, she has helped shape numerous bestselling books and worked closely with emerging as well as established authors to develop and refine their manuscripts.
Sharon Oard Warner
Sharon Oard Warner is Professor Emerita of English/Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of two novels, a short story collection, and an edited anthology of stories on AIDS. Her craft book, Writing the Novella, was published in 2021 and is one of Poets &; Writers Best Books for Writers. Warner’s essays and articles have appeared in The AWP Chronicle, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Studies in Short Fiction, Studies in the Novel and elsewhere. A guest blogger for janefriedman.com, she is currently revising a historical novella set at New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch.
Jean-Marie Saporito
Jean-Marie Saporito was most recently a finalist in the Writing by Writers short fiction contest. Her prose has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, River Teeth, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the AWP Kurt Brown prize, the Taos Resident award, and nominated for a Pushcart. Her novel, Safe, is based on her experiences as a cardiothoracic critical care nurse. She’s currently writing a memoir. She’s taught creative writing for over two decades and has participated in numerous readings, conferences, and has served as a literary judge for several writing contests. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Linda Michel-Cassidy
Linda Michel-Cassidy’s story collection, When We Were Hardcore was released in early 2025. Her writing has appeared in Rattle, Catamaran, December Magazine, Tahoma Review and elsewhere. Her criticism and interviews appear in The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Heavy Feather Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, where she is senior reviews editor and a hybrid/collaboration editor. She has edited several anthologies and essay collections, and is a judge for the Northern California Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle awards. In addition, she is the Residency Coordinator for VCFA’s MFA in Writing Program at CalArts. She holds MFAs from VCFA (poetry), Bennington (fiction), and California College of the Arts (visual art).
Holly Day
Holly Day has worked as a freelance writer for over 30 years, with over 7,000 published articles, poems, and short stories and 40 books and chapbooks, including the nonfiction books, Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Walking Twin Cities, Stillwater, Minnesota: A Brief History, Nordeast Minneapolis: A History, Tattoo FAQ, and History Lover’s Guide to Minneapolis; and the poetry books, A Book of Beasts (Weasel Press), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Press), Bound in Ice (Shanti Arts Publishing), and Cross-Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing). Her writing has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, a 49th Parallel Prize, an Isaac Asimov Award, several dozen Pushcart awards, and a Rhysling Award, and she has received two Midwest Writer’s Grants, a Plainsongs Award, the Sam Ragan Prize for Poetry, and the Dwarf Star Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
Radha Marcum
A poet with a keen interest in the landscapes of the physical world and of the mind, Radha Marcum won the 2023 Washington Prize for her collection Pine Soot Tendon Bone. She was als awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline, ab her grandfather’s work building the first atomic bombs in New Mexico during World War II. He poetry has been commissioned by the Clyfford Still Museum and appears frequently in journ including Conjunctions, EcoTheo, North American Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, an others. Working as a prose writer, Marcum has written for American Rivers, Colorado Wate Trust, Outside, and The Wilderness Society. She lives in Colorado where she teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop and privately.
Sallie Bingham
Sallie Bingham is a writer, teacher, feminist activist, and philanthropist.
Sallie’s first novel was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1961; she has since published six additional novels and the well-known family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (Knopf, 1989). Her latest book, The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, is now available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
She is founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which published The American Voice, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.
David Pérez
Born and raised in the South Bronx, David Pérez is a writer, journalist, editor, actor, teacher, performance coach, radio host, and author of two memoirs: WOW! (11B Press, 2011, Gold Medal winner for “Multicultural Non-Fiction” in the Global EBooks Awards) and WOW! 2 (Nighthawk Press, 2016). His “Read Your Work Aloud” workshops have been featured at the Taos Writers Conference, Gemini Ink Writing Conference in San Antonio, TX, and the Tupelo Press Poetry Conference, among others. His acting roles range from Othello to Santa Claus. David lives in Taos, NM with his wife, poet Veronica Golos.
Allegra Huston
Allegra Huston is the co-author of the book Write What You Don’t Know, based on the Imaginative Storm method which she developed in collaboration with poet and creativity coach James Navé. She has published four other books: Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, the novel A Stolen Summer, How to Edit and Be Edited, and How to Read for an Audience (with James Navé). She has taught memoir, screenwriting, and creative writing workshops around the world, including for the University of Oklahoma, the National University of Ireland, Galway, and the UK’s prestigious Arvon Foundation.
She recently completed a Teachable course also titled Write What You Don’t Know, and is currently working on a book and course on how to write a memoir.
Interview with Allegra Huston: “Memoir: Write What You Don’t Know”
Chelsea Jackson
Chelsea Jackson is a cross-genre writer, editor, and writing coach, and author of the poetry collection All Things Holy and Heathen (April Gloaming, 2024). They believe creativity is a catalyst for change and use their work to ask hard questions and explore what it means to be human. Chelsea has an MFA from Drew University, is Co-Editor of The Maine Review, and is published in Beyond Queer Words, Driftwood, Hearth and Coffin, Fatal Flaw, and Riverfeet Press, among other publications. After over a decade away, they recently returned to their home state of Virginia to be near family (and the water) and vie for the title of “Coolest Auntie.” They live in Richmond with their partner and cuddly pitbull.
You can find them at chelsea-jackson.com.
Jamie Figueroa
Jamie Figueroa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, which “brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page” (Publishers Weekly). Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and shortlisted for Reading the West Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Boston Review, Elle, McSweeney’s and Kweli Journal among others. Figueroa’s memoir in essays, Mother Island, received a starred Kirkus review and was named among the LA Times “6 books to shake off colonialism and rethink our Latino stories.” In addition, Mother Island has been included in the “most anticipated” and “best non-fiction books of 2024” lists by SheReads, Ms. Magazine, Elle, and Hispanic Executive. Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico.
Early Bird Registration ends 6/28/25. All registration closes on 7/23/25.
PLEASE NOTE OUR CANCELLATION POLICY: 100% refund minus a $35 administrative fee for cancellations dated 6/28/25 or earlier; 50% refund minus a $35 administrative fee for cancellations received between 6/29/25 – 7/23/25. No refunds given for cancellations received after 7/23/25.
Open Tues-Sat 12pm-4pm 575.758.0081 108 Civic Plaza Drive
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 3225, Taos, NM 87571
THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS
SOMOS programs are made possible in part by these organizations: New Mexico Arts, a Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts • Taos Community Foundation • The McCune Foundation • The National Endowment For The Arts • The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation • Taos County Lodgers Tax • TaosNetLLC for high speed internet service • LANL (Los Alamos National Labs) • New Mexico Humanities Council • Nusenda Foundation • Witter Bynner Foundation • Amazon Literary Partnership • Literary Emergency Fund