Presentation: Rooted and Written Grotto Night at the Library

This month's Grotto Night at the Library features a panel of writers of color writing about family and identity. The panel features members of the Grotto's Rooted & Written program, the USA’s first tuition-free professional creative writing conference for BIPOC writers: Swetha Amit, Chino Lee Chung,  Alejandro Lazo, and Dera Williams. In addition,one of the Rooted & Written co-directors, Rowena Leong Singer, will moderate the discussion.

Swetha Amit is the author of three chapbooks, Cotton Candy from the Sky, Mango Pickle in Summer, and Sailing Paper Boats. Her works appear in Had, Ghost Parachute, Cream City Review, Oyez Review, and others. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fiction. She is working on two chapbooks and a novel about an Indian woman battling with her culture and identity.

Chino Lee Chung is a queer Chinese Mexican personal essay writer and is currently working on a collection of essays that integrate his social activism with his intersectional identities. He is a recipient of the 2024-2025 San Jose State Steinbeck Fellowship and holds an MFA from the California College of Arts and San Francisco State University. His work appears in Invitation to Joy – Writer’s Creating in Community, Gender Queer: voices from beyond the sexual binary, Our Family Coalition Newsletter, and is an Assistant Fiction Editor at 14 Hills Literary Magazine.

Alejandro Lazo is a writer and journalist living in San Francisco and busy at work on his first novel. He was a 2023 fellow at the Grotto's annual Rooted & Written conference and is the climate reporter for CalMatters, the nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering statewide issues impacting Californians. He was previously a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He is originally from the San Joaquin Valley.

Dera R. Williams is an Oakland resident whose family was a part of the Great Migration. She has published writings in both fiction and nonfiction. Dera published an edition of her childhood story collection, In My Backyard: Stories of Growing Up in Oakland and the second volume was published in March 2025. Her novel is also forthcoming in 2025. She is a correspondent for Oakland Voices and honors the tradition of oral history and the voices of her ancestors.

Moderator: Rowena Leong Singer is a Chinese-Filipino writer whose writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The New York Times, North American Review, Black Warrior Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. She is the grand prize winner in literary fiction for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship Contest, and an inaugural Rooted & Written Fellow. She is a member of The Writers Grotto where she co-directs the Rooted & Written program. She is also an associate editor at CRAFT Literary.

Connect: 

Swetha Amit's Website

Dera R. Williams Website

The Writers Grotto is a community of working writers and narrative artists who connect in physical and virtual space, pooling our talents to support each other, mentor and teach others, and engage the wider world. The Grotto fosters a literary culture that is generous in spirit and deeply inclusive, elevating writers of all backgrounds.

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