The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology
Edited by Gary Noy and Rick Heide; Illustrations by Joe Medeiros

The essays, poetry, and stories presented in The Illuminated Landscape encompass the entire Sierra Nevada experience: an ancient creation myth involving an unlikely contest between Hawk and Crow, vignettes of life in mining camps, a curious deer taking a stroll...

No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California's Deserts
Edited by Ruth Nolan

Feared and romanticized throughout the ages, the desert has a hold on our imagination that is never more evident than in the literature it has inspired. From Mary Austin's meditations in The Land of Little Rain to Joan Didion's acerbic...

Wallace Stegner's West
Edited with an introduction by Page Stegner

This collection of Wallace Stegner's fiction and essays is as broad as the Great Basin and as dynamic as California's coastline. Considered one of the foremost writers of the West, Stegner ranges with ease from Utah to California, and from...

Where Light Takes Its Color from the Sea: A California Notebook
James D. Houston;
 Foreword by Alan Cheuse

Taking inspiration from California's breathtaking landscapes, history, and distinctive ways of life, Where Light Take Its Color from the Sea reveals a writer's keen appreciation of place. This selection of James D. Houston's essays and short stories illuminates the themes...

Unfolding Beauty: Celebrating California's Landscapes
Edited by Terry Beers

California, the Golden State, conjures up visions of mountains, water, vistas, and vast landscapes. The astounding beauty of California is reflected not only in the works of authors like John Muir, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, Robinson Jeffers, Gretel Ehrlich, and...

Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California
Edited by Rick Heide; Foreword by Juan Velasco

Under the Fifth Sun collects stories of love, family, work, exploration, politics, history, culture, and survival—fiction, poetry, memoirs, commentary, and drama—covering more than two centuries of Latino presence in California, from missionaries and soldiers to gold miners, farmworkers, and political...

A Sweetness Rising: 
New and Selected Poems
Roberta Spear; Edited with an Introduction by Philip Levine

The first retrospective of the life's work of Roberta Spear (1948-2003), A Sweetness Rising includes newly published work as well as poems from her previous volumes. Nationally acclaimed and admired by both readers and peers, she wrote poems that touch...

Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me!: The Seasons of Native California
Edited by Margaret Dubin and Kim Hogeland

Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me! offers a literary calendar at once ancient and yet in some ways more relevant than the markers of time we are accustomed to. Combining old-time stories and sacred myths with contemporary poems and short stories,...

A Separate Star: 
Selected Writings of Helen Hunt Jackson
Edited by Michelle Burnham

Best known for the books A Century of Dishonor and Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson was revered for her depictions of social issues facing the West at the end of the nineteenth century. At a time when women writers struggled to...

No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California, 1849-1869
Edited by Ida Rae Egli

In the wild, isolated Western frontier, where laws, traditions, and living conditions were like nowhere else in America, it was a bold act for a woman to write and to seek publication. Dame Shirley, Ina Coolbrith, and Mary Hallock Foote...

The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California
Edited by Lauren Coodley

Novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair will forever be associated with The Jungle, however, Sinclair deserves equal accolades for his entertaining critiques of Southern California's oil industry, movie studios, and urban sprawl—most of which still apply today. The Land of Orange...

Inlandia: A Literary Journey through California's Inland Empire
Edited by Gayle Wattawa; Introduction by Susan Straight

Showcasing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and other literature by such luminaries as Joan Didion, Raymond Chandler, M.F.K. Fisher, and others, Inlandia puts a new literary region on the map. A land of dramatic landscapes and increasingly dynamic human developments, the...

Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley
Edited by Stan Yogi, Gayle Mak, and Patricia Wakida; Foreword by Mark Arax

This is American literature at its best—literature as authentic and powerful as the land that inspired it. From the myths of the Yokuts Indians to stories and poems by famous contemporary writers, this anthology showcases the best literature of California's...

Haslam's Valley
Gerald Haslam

Gerald Haslam picks up where Mark Twain left off in this career-spanning collection brimming with life and humor—but this is Kern County instead of Calaveras, Oildale instead of Nevada City, a great alligator hunt instead of a celebrated jumping frog....

Gold Rush: A Literary Exploration
Edited by Michael Kowalewski

The news of gold in California beckoned people from every continent on earth. This astonishing and instant migration would leave its mark forever on California and, indeed, the entire world. Taking a comprehensive look at the excitement, unrest, exploitation, and...

Forgotten Bread: First-Generation Armenian American Writers
Edited by David Kherdian

This outstanding collection of literature from seventeen first-generation Armenian American authors, each introduced by a member of the second generation, is intense, magical, and filled with the love of life. It is also characterized by the unspeakable sadness that accompanies...

Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader
Introduction by Gray Brechin;
 Preface by Wilson Carey McWilliams

"It suddenly occurred to me that, in all the world, there neither was nor would ever be another place like this City of the Angels. Here the American people were erupting, like lava from a volcano; here, indeed, was the...

Califauna: A Literary Field Guide
Edited by Terry Beers and Emily Elrod

From Native American tales and explorers' accounts to fiction and poetry by established and emerging writers, this new anthology is a playful exploration of how animals excite our imagination and compassion. Each piece in the anthology is a snapshot of...

Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader
Edited with an Introduction by Albert Gelpi

William Everson (1912-1994), aka Brother Antoninus, was a poet, monk, letterpress printer, and a quintessential Californian. Originally from the San Joaquin Valley, Everson was part of the Beat poet movement in San Francisco during the 1950s. Charismatic, Everson was a...

California Uncovered:
 Stories for the 21st Century
Edited by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,
 William E. Justice, and James Quay

As the centerpiece of the California Stories Uncovered program of the California Council for the Humanities, this literary anthology blends the fresh new voices of this state with established California writers like Joan Didion and John Steinbeck. In poems, excerpts...

California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present
Edited by Dana Gioia, Chryss Yost, and Jack Hicks

California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present is a groundbreaking new book presenting the work of 101 writers, the first historical anthology to provide a comprehensive survey of California poetry. An authoritative yet accessible collection, it brings together...

AutoBioDiversity:
 True Stories from ZYZZYVA
Edited by Howard Junker

This collection of true stories celebrates the 20th anniversary of ZYZZYVA, the journal of West Coast writers and artists. Founding editor Howard Junker selects his fifth anthology from the pages of ZYZZYVA, and includes voices from across the full spectrum...

The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley's Poetry Walk
Edited by Robert Hass and Jessica Fisher

Berkeley is a wellspring of literary and artistic history. As a way of preserving and celebrating that history, the City of Berkeley called on former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass and award-winning artist David Goines to design a series of...