About Yvonne
At the age of ten, Yvonne became a lover of words and visual art. It was in the year 1981 when she discovered one of the most transformative television shows on PBS: John Robbins' Cover to Cover. She watched as Robbins would craft a pastel drawing of a scene from a popular book, mesmerized by the artist's graceful strokes while narrating a fantastic tale. In the afternoons, Yvonne's mother drove her and her sister to the nearby library, where she indulged in stories like The Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Mouse and the Motorcycle, stories that taught her about love, life, and friendships. These are the stories that still remain embedded within her heart.
During high school, specifically in her sophomore English class, Yvonne discovered the linguistic voyage of words in the form of poems, like "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, and literary works like Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. It was Trumbo's work that made one of the biggest impacts in her life, due to various members of her family having to continually suffer from PTSD after being sent off to fight in wars around the world. Yvonne is still consistently drawn to the changing role of identity during and after times of trauma. These types of identity changes, stemming from chaos and trauma, have come to be a central force in much of her writing today.
Yvonne holds an M.A in English, with a concentration on Literature and RTW (Rhetoric & Teaching Writing) from California State University, Stanislaus and is a current MFA candidate for Fiction & Writing for Young People at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She tries to divide her time between teaching composition and literature at Modesto Junior College, working as an Assistant Editor of Art and Writing for Young People Fiction at Lunch Ticket, not becoming too much of a hermit as she secludes herself during "writing time," and finding a delicate balance of nurturing and care with the very different personalities of her three beautiful daughters.
Yvonne has numerous poems and short stories published in different literary journals. Her current projects are three separate novels in the making: The Ninth Planisphere, Cæspeia Rising, and The Art of Escapism.
Some of the authors and poets who have been an inspiration, in whole or part, for Yvonne are: Flannery O'Connor, Gary Soto, Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Leslie Marmon Silko, Juan Felipe Herrera, Toni Morrison, Francesca Lia Block, Sandra Cisneros, Franz Kafka, N.K. Jemisin, Isabel Allende, Rivers Solomon, David Mitchell, Lilliam Rivera, Philip K. Dick, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Richard Matheson, Tananarive Due, and Roxane Gay.
During high school, specifically in her sophomore English class, Yvonne discovered the linguistic voyage of words in the form of poems, like "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, and literary works like Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. It was Trumbo's work that made one of the biggest impacts in her life, due to various members of her family having to continually suffer from PTSD after being sent off to fight in wars around the world. Yvonne is still consistently drawn to the changing role of identity during and after times of trauma. These types of identity changes, stemming from chaos and trauma, have come to be a central force in much of her writing today.
Yvonne holds an M.A in English, with a concentration on Literature and RTW (Rhetoric & Teaching Writing) from California State University, Stanislaus and is a current MFA candidate for Fiction & Writing for Young People at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She tries to divide her time between teaching composition and literature at Modesto Junior College, working as an Assistant Editor of Art and Writing for Young People Fiction at Lunch Ticket, not becoming too much of a hermit as she secludes herself during "writing time," and finding a delicate balance of nurturing and care with the very different personalities of her three beautiful daughters.
Yvonne has numerous poems and short stories published in different literary journals. Her current projects are three separate novels in the making: The Ninth Planisphere, Cæspeia Rising, and The Art of Escapism.
Some of the authors and poets who have been an inspiration, in whole or part, for Yvonne are: Flannery O'Connor, Gary Soto, Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Leslie Marmon Silko, Juan Felipe Herrera, Toni Morrison, Francesca Lia Block, Sandra Cisneros, Franz Kafka, N.K. Jemisin, Isabel Allende, Rivers Solomon, David Mitchell, Lilliam Rivera, Philip K. Dick, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Richard Matheson, Tananarive Due, and Roxane Gay.