Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California explores California through unique essays that look beyond the clichés of the “California Dream” to the
realities of a complex and ever-changing state, delving into the themes of familial genealogy, migration, land and housing, national belonging, and identity.

The essays come from a range of emerging writers and established voices, including Myriam Gurba, David L. Ulin, Ruth Nolan, Wendy Cheng, and Susan Straight.

Writing the Golden State portrays a California that, as the editors note, can be “deviant and recalcitrant, proud and humble, joyful and communal. It is a California that reclaims the beauty of the unwanted, the quotidian, and the out-of-place.” A California for us all.

Praise for Writing the Golden State

“Beautiful! Essential! Writing the Golden State is like California itself-full of life and surprises. The voices in this book are poignant, funny, moving, and sharp-eyed. And they reveal our fraught and magnificent California as it truly is.”
-Héctor Tobar, author of Our Migrant Souls