clubs and Book Recommendations

Penumbra Writing club

​Thank you to those who participated in the Penumbra Online writing club last fall! Every year, Penumbra holds writing club sessions for fellow writers to learn more about the writing process, hone their skills, and connect with fellow writers. Our workshops provide a chance for creative writers to build community and work together on their creative endeavors. This year we're excited to offer in-person sessions for Stanislaus State students for both fiction and poetry writing. All four sessions will be held at the Stanislaus State Writing Center, which is located in the J. Burton Vashé Library room 222 (L222), and run from 2-3:30 PM.
Below are the days we plan to meet:

Fiction
March 10th
March 24th

Poetry
April 14th
April 28th

All writers are welcome to attend, whether you've been writing novels for years or have yet to write a poem! We're excited to see you and work on our creative pieces together. If you're interested in attending, please sign up below with our interest form.

Meet our past workshop Speakers

​Dottie Lo Bue is an artist, writer, and editor who holds a BFA in Pictorial Art from San Jose State University. She is currently an MFA candidate at California College of the Arts and is the author of the poetry chapbook On Birds/Wings/Roads/Silence, which was chosen as a winner in the first Penumbra Press chapbook contest. 
​Val Neil was diagnosed with autism at the age of forty-one and couldn't be happier to have her weirdness professionally validated. She lives in California with her ADHDer spouse, three children (two neurodiverse and one undecided), a normal number of dogs, and an abnormal number of birds. Val's works include The Dark Apprentice and Dark Mind of their Fall of Magic series and short stories including "Insatiable" featured in The Rebel Diaries. ​

Penumbra Book Club

Last year, Penumbra Online continued "Totally Booked! A Penumbra Podcast" with our summer and fall book club reads. We read the 2022 novel Yerba Buena, by bestselling and Printz Award-winning author Nina Lacour and the groundbreaking and spooky novel Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Check out our podcast page to listen to our first in-person podcast episode that talks all about what we loved about Mexican Gothic, featuring our friends at Stanislaus State's Language Circle. 
This spring, we'll be reading Sandra Cisneros' Woman Without Shame, a collection of poetry that highlights Cisneros' experience as an aging Mexican woman, with all the gruesome, comical, and heartwarming details. This book club is again in partnership with Stanislaus State's Language Circle, hosted by the lovely Maria Camarena. Book Club sign ups will be held in person February 20th, from 3-4 PM in L222. Meeting times are still TBD. 
​To keep up to date with our book club, follow us at @csustanpenumbra on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Book Recommendations

Here is our list of Spring reads that we hope you will enjoy! 
Click on a book to learn more! 
We have provided links for these books to a local bookstore "A Seat at the Table Books" that is dedicated to equality.  While Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the like are the typical one-stop shops for books, we encourage you to support small businesses such as "A Seat at the Table Books" and other diverse-owned bookstores. The link will take you to a comprehensive list of other small diverse-owned bookstores.