LISTEN: https://www.kqed.org/news/11810528/home-baked-one-womans-subversive-response-to-the-aids-crisis
Read More
All articles filed in Alia Volz
Author of HOME BAKED: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).
Entertainment Weekly: “strikingly relevant and beautifully written”
“The subtitle, “My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco” tells you much of what you need to know in terms of content. But as a portrait of a heroics, innovation, grit, and pot-baking in an epidemic (in this case, the AIDS crisis), it’s also strikingly relevant. And beautifully written, too.” –David Canfield for…
Read More
Kirkus Reviews: “A sometimes-sad but stirring love song to San Francisco full of profundity and pride.”
Shereads.com’s “Most Anticipated Memoirs of 2020”
New essay in River Teeth
We were early birds, bad girls, schemers, druggies. Aria and I only attended high school as freshmen; after that, we were independent study kids. While Analy High’s class of ’96 amassed memories to chronicle in yearbooks, we skulked around our small California town, smoking weed and later meth, hitchhiking, getting fucked up with grown men.…
Read More
“Snakebit” in The Best American Essays 2017!
I’m over the moon! My essay “Snakebit,” originally published in The Threepenny Review, has been chosen for The Best American Essays 2017, edited by one of my literary heroes, Leslie Jamison. “Chasing Arrows,” published in New England Review, also received an honorable mention. This is proof positive that a new writer can still gain entrance to…
Read More
“Finding El Saez” receives Honorable Mentions in Best American Essays 2018 and Best American Travel Writing 2018
We head west out of Havana in the early afternoon, my husband, Kevin, behind the wheel of our circa 1990 rented Geely sedan. The air feels like the inside of a mouth, and even though third gear sounds like an opera singer warming up and the stereo doesn’t work, we’re grateful for air conditioning. The…
Read More
Golden State 2017: Best New Writing from California
I’m delighted to see my essay, “In Any Light, By Any Name,” originally published in Tin House, included in this gorgeous anthology of California prose released by Outpost19. Lisa Locascio edited this fine collection and I couldn’t be more pleased to be part of it. Available at independent bookstores throughout California and, of course, online. http://outpost19.com/California/
Read More
When dealers became healers…
“Chasing Arrows” receives Honorable Mention in The Best American Essays 2017
He came from Florida, though I forgot which part as soon as he said it. Definitely not Miami. His skin was a fierce pink and he wore a turquoise Marlins baseball cap on backwards, a loose-fitting tank top, and board shorts. Pudgy, thirty-something, and reeking of booze. Something about the guy I liked. He had…
Read More
Alia Volz 