Writers in Residence
The Ruby's Writer in Residence program seeks to support the best writers writing, and to bring writers from outside the Bay Area to The Ruby to read. Writers in residence stay in The Ruby's upstairs writers loft for up to three nights.
Past residents
February 2018
Morgan Parker
Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House Books 2017) and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015). Her third collection of poems, Magical Negro, will be published by Tin House in 2019, and her debut book of nonfiction will be published later that year by One World, an imprint of Random House. She is the creator and host of Reparations, Live! at the Ace Hotel in New York. With Tommy Pico, she co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series, and with Angel Nafis, she is The Other Black Girl Collective. She is a Sagittarius, and she lives in Los Angeles.
April 2018
Jami Attenberg
Jami Attenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of five novels, including The Middlesteins, Saint Mazie, and All Grown Up. She has contributed essays about sex, urban life, and food to the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and Lenny Letter, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans.
April 2018
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi is the author of Fra Keeler and Call Me Zebra. She is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Writers' Award, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree, the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Fiction to Catalonia, Spain. She has lived in Iran, Spain, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and currently teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame. She splits her time between South Bend, Indiana and Florence, Italy.
Upcoming residents
Brit Bennett
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. Her debut novel, The Mothers, is a dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community—and the things that ultimately haunt us most. britbennett.com
Friday, June 13, 7 p.m. Tickets here.
Rachel Heng
Rachel Heng is a Singaporean novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel, Suicide Club, will be published by Sceptre, Hachette (UK) and Henry Holt, Macmillan (US) in July 2018.
Rachel was born and raised in Singapore. After graduating from Columbia University with a BA in Comparative Literature & Society, she spent several years working in private equity in London. She now lives in Austin, where she is pursuing her MFA in Fiction and Screenwriting at UT Austin's Michener Center for Writers with the support of the James A. Michener Fellowship. rachelhengqp.com
Friday, July 20, 7 p.m. Tickets here.
Laura van den berg
Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of two collections of stories, The Isle of Youth (FSG, 2013) and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), and the novel Find Me (FSG, 2015). Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish her next novel, The Third Hotel, in August 2018. lauravandenberg.com
Tuesday, August 28, 6:30 p.m. Tickets here.
Aja gabel
Aja Gabel's debut novel, The Ensemble, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House. Aja has been the recipient of awards from Atlantic Monthly and Inprint, as well as fellowships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a fellow in fiction 2012-2013.
She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Bear. ajagabel.com
Friday, September 28, 7 p.m. Tickets here.