Alia Volz

I joined the living in 1977, the only offspring of an artist couple living in the Mission district of San Francisco. Mine was an eccentric upbringing, colored by freaky characters and unusual parenting choices. Our small family bounced between the vibrant city and the secretive backwoods of the Emerald Triangle.

After highschool, I smuggled my soul out of the U.S., and discovered that I felt more at peace in foreign territory than in my own bedroom. It was during a 750km trek across the Iberian Penninsula that I started writing. Thereafter, I studied Creative Writing at the College of Santa Fe and attended universities in Ecuador and Cuba. La Habana was my home for a spectacular year.

 In 2010, I became Producer and Host of Literary Death Match in San Francisco–a raucous international reading series. My fiction, fact and translations appear in ZYZZYVA, Dark Sky Magazine, Nerve, The Writing Disorder, Instant City and elsewhere. I have received a Pushcart Prize nomination and was honored with the 2011 Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship.

Nonfiction flash will appear in The Writing Disorder’s forthcoming anthology The Best Fiction and Nonfiction of 2012.

Novel excerpt is forthcoming in Instant City.