The Disobedient Writer

I’m an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, and a long-time teacher of fiction, memoir and poetry. This website is certainly where you might see what I’ve been up to; but, just as much, it is a place to support you in taking steps in your own work, and to know that there is community of others doing the same. With the jolting changes we are experiencing, this is a place to think together, a place to re-examine our writing, our focus, our writing’s responsiveness to the world. 

Through Anya’s teaching techniques and working with her for a year, she helped transform my 70-page book into a 190-page memoir. By giving me the tools and skills to see the world through my characters’ eyes, I was able to birth them from a life of black and white into a life full of color.

Jonean Walton

If my house were burning down, I would grab artwork, my book, and the notebooks I wrote in Anya’s classes. If you’re looking for an average writing teacher or editor, go elsewhere. Anya resides in the upper stratosphere of creativity and, if you let her, will lift your writing to heights you never dreamed possible. I won the 2006 New Mexico Discovery Award, first prize in non-fiction, for a story I began in Anya’s class. I divide my writing into two phases: pre-Anya and post-Anya. There is no comparison.

Amy Fisher