Laurie Ann Doyle

My writing is grounded in my home state of California, its foggy coastlines, sky-crushing redwoods, and jagged cityscapes. When I write, even the air around me seems filled with the sights and sounds that shape my characters.

So it’s probably no coincidence that my newly finished novel LIGHT AND ASH, as well as my story collection WORLD GONE MISSING, are set in and around San Francisco. My novel takes place during the 1906 earthquake and features a cast of purely fictional characters as well as those based on historical figures, including the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, photographer Arnold Genthe, and an eccentric Emperor Norton lookalike. My collection is linked by what most of us know but never talk about: people can literally and figuratively disappear in more ways than you can count.  (Read an excerpt here.)

My stories and essays have appeared in McSweeny’s, The Rumpus, Alta Journal, Fourth Genre, 100 Word Story, The Los Angeles Review, and many other publications. I am winner of the Alligator Juniper National Fiction Award and have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. I co-founded  Babylon Salon, a long-running literary series in San Francisco, and teach at The Writers Grotto, as well as UC Berkeley Extension, where I am an honored instructor.

My husband, son, and I live in Berkeley’s Elmwood District, just a few blocks from the house that my mother and grandmother once called home.

Natalie Baszile, Laurie, Molly Giles, and Candy Shue at Babylon Salon