Maureen O'Leary- The Friends of the Clarksburg Library was proud to welcome Maureen O’Leary as our Annual Community Meeting guest speaker in January 2025. Her short stories, poems, and essays can be found in Akashic Books’ Sacramento Noir, Electric Literature Recommended Reading, Bourbon Penn, Nightmare Magazine, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, Penumbra: A Journal of Weird Fiction and Criticism, Reckon Review, Occulum Journal, Cold Signal Press, Querencia Anthology, Black Glass Pages, Flame Tree Press’ Alternate History, Sycamore Review, Sundog Lit and other places. She has a story in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2026 and her forthcoming novel will be released in January 2027 from Counterpoint Press. Photo credit: April Melarkey

José Vadi- José Vadi is an award-winning essayist, poet, playwright and film producer. He is the author of the nonfiction books Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens (2024) and Inter State: Essays from California (2021). His short fiction appears in the anthology Sacramento Noir (2025). His work has been featured by the Paris Review, The Atlantic, the PBS NewsHour, KQED, Free Skate Magazine, Quartersnacks, Alta Journal, McSweeney’s and the Yale Review. He is also a cofounder of the photography zine project, Discantbelife Press (DCBL).

Priya Balasubramanian- Priya Balasubramanian is an Indian-American author and practicing gastroenterologist and transplant hepatologist based in Sacramento, California. She is best known for her debut novel, The Alchemy of Secrets, published by Westland in January 2020.

Ted Smith- The Friends of the Clarksburg Library nominated Ted Smith a Yolo County Philanthropy award for his outstanding contributions to our library, our community, and the preservation of our local history. Ted has long been a cornerstone of both the Clarksburg Library and the wider Clarksburg community. His work, particularly the creation of Clarksburg: The Water, the Land, and Its People, a detailed and beautifully illustrated history of our town, stands as a remarkable testament to his passion for preserving and sharing the rich cultural heritage of our area. The book spans thousands of years, beginning with the Miwok people who first inhabited this land around 500 A.D., and continues to explore the evolution of Clarksburg through to 2016. Ted's careful research and storytelling bring to life the diverse peoples, events, and milestones that have shaped our community. His work is invaluable not just as a historical record, but as a resource that deepens our collective understanding of where we come from and who we are today.

Janet Rodriguez- Making an American Family: A Recipe in Five Generations, the progressive story of one family is told through five generations, beginning with their journey into the United States during the Mexican Revolution, and culminating with their posterity, attending school online during the COVID19 pandemic. A family memoir, told through a chorus of voices, invites the reader into the multi-sensorial experience of memory and story. At first glance, Rodriguez’s family memoir is a unique culinary journey, chronicling the growth and development of one family through five generations, using a chorus of voices, but upon closer examination, the family memoir is a picture of erasure and homogenization through generations, as illustrated by the faded pictures in the cover. Rodriguez is faithful to show how her immigrant family, like most families who came from Mexico in the early 20th century, were systematically stripped of their language, heritage, culture, and their given names, all for the price of “becoming American” in the USA. With passion and precision, Rodriguez serves the reader a family feast of memories, a microcosm of the American family.

Nora Rodriguez Camagna- The Friends of the Clarksburg Library was proud to welcome Maureen O’Leary as our Annual Community Meeting guest speaker in February 2026. Nora Rodriguez Camagna grew up in the California migrant camps, Texas, and Mexico, and graduated from UC Berkeley. Her work has been featured in The Common’s Farmworker Portfolio, the Bay Area Book Festival, Stories on Stage Sacramento, and in the anthology, Sacramento Noir. She works at 916 Ink, a Sacramento non-profit youth literacy organization, teaching creative writing. She lives in California with her husband and is the mother of three wonderful sons.

Erika Mailman- Erika Mailman is the author of six traditionally-published novels. Her adult novels include The Witch’s Trinity, a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book which Khaled Hosseini called “gripping”; Woman of Ill Fame which Diana Gabaldon of the Outlander series called, “one of the best books I’ve read in a long time,” and the award-winning The Murderer’s Maid: a Lizzie Borden Novel. She holds an MFA in poetry and has been a Yaddo fellow and Bram Stoker Award finalist. Under the pen name Lynn Carthage, her young adult trilogy includes Haunted, Betrayed and Avenged. As a travel writer, her articles have appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Lit Hub, and more. She is a day-rate freelancer for Time Out’s US and San Francisco teams. More recently, she has joined the San Francisco Writers Conference as a volunteer organizing the nonfiction presenters track.

Anara Guard- Anara studied writing with Kathleen Agena at the Urban Gateways Young Writers Workshop of Chicago, at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts with Norman Corwin, at Columbia College Story Workshop, at St. Joseph’s College with Stu Dybek, at Bread Loaf Writers Conference with Robert Cohen and Alix Ohlin, and at the Community of Writers. She was awarded the John Crowe Ransom Prize in poetry from Kenyon College and has had a poem nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Anara has worked as a small town librarian, public health consultant, editor, self-defense instructor, and produce buyer for a food co-operative, among other jobs.