The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
Writers Conference

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Conference Schedule 2019

Conference Schedule 2019

Friday, February 22, 2019, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Writers Relationship to Reading with Tara Ison, Deborah Miranda, Patricia Colleen Murphy, Mark Athitakis

Date(s): Friday, February 22, 2019, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Location: Carson Ballroom, Old Main (view map)
Type(s): Panel
Genre and Form(s): 
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Meet our Faculty

About the Session

Many of us come to writing through a love of reading: the strike of literary lightning, a certain line or phrase that stays with us for years. As we continue to grow as writers and participate in the community, our creative process evolves, being shaped and informed by the relationships we have with the works of others. Join authors Deborah Miranda, Patricia Murphy, and Tara Ison for a discussion on the intimate and necessary relationships we have with literature: what books woke them up for the first time, how active reading impacts their lives and their art, and how reading is part of their writing rituals. 

Meet the Presenter(s)

Picture of Tara Ison


Tara Ison

Tara Ison is the author of three novels: The List (Scribner), A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber), a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Rockaway (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press), featured as one of the "Best Books of Summer" in O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2013. Ball, a short story collection, was published in 2015, and her collection of essays, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, was the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award winner for Creative Nonfiction. Her short fiction, essays, poetry and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Salon, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Nerve.com, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, The Mississippi Review, The Santa Monica Review, Publishers Weekly, The Week, LA Weekly, O, the Oprah Magazine, numerous anthologies. She is also the co-writer of the cult film Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead.


Learn more about Tara Ison

Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference Faculty 2019 Deborah Miranda


Deborah Miranda

Deborah A. Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen.  Her mixed-genre book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, received the PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, a Gold Medal from the Independent Publishers Association, and was short-listed for the William Saroyan Literary Award.  Her most recent poetry collection is Raised by Humans; previous collections include The Zen of La Llorona and Indian Cartography. An unpublished manuscript, Altar for Broken Things, is looking for a publisher. Miranda is Professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia where she teaches literature and creative writing.


Learn more about Deborah Miranda

Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference Faculty 2019 Patricia Colleen Murphy


Patricia Colleen Murphy

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her book Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir in progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, and most recently in Copper Nickel, Black Warrior Review, North American Review, Smartish Pace, Burnside Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, Hobart, decomP, Midway Journal, Armchair/Shotgun, and Natural Bridge. She lives in Phoenix, AZ.


Learn more about Patricia Colleen Murphy

Photograph of Mark Athitakis


Mark Athitakis

Mark Athitakis is a journalist and critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Humanities Magazine, and numerous other publications. His 2017 book, The New Midwest (Belt Publishing), is a critical study of contemporary fiction set in the region, and he has been a featured speaker on the subject for BBC Radio, the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and other venues. A member of the board of the National Book Critics Circle, he lives in Chandler.


Learn more about Mark Athitakis