The Todos Santos Writers Workshop at Casa Dracula is led by a team of creative writers, editors, and publishing experts dedicated to inspiring and furthering the art of the written word. Established in 2014 in the pueblo magico of Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, the Todos Santos Writers Workshop offers courses for writers at all levels. Workshops and seminars are based at the historic Casa Dracula, a 19th Century hacienda renowned in local legend and myth. The Todos Santos Writers Workshop partners with local businesses, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations to support the community.
Jeanne McCulloch, co-founder/faculty
An editor at The Paris Review, Tin House, writer in the Features department at Vogue magazine, McCulloch’s work has appeared in Vogue, Tin House, Elle, Allure, O Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. Her interviews with writers have appeared in the legendary Writers at Work series at The Paris Review, and in Tin House. She is the founding Editorial Director of Tin House Books. McCulloch has taught fiction and non-fiction at The New School for Social Research and at numerous summer writers conferences. She is currently completing a memoir to be published by Harper Collins.
Rex Weiner, co-founder/faculty
Journalist, publisher, author and editor, Weiner’s articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Observer and The Paris Review, among others. Weiner co-authored
The Woodstock Census, a widely-hailed survey of the Sixties Generation’s impact on American society. As staff reporter for Variety from 1994-97 he covered the movie industry and is an investigative reporter for
Capital & Main. He serves on the Board of Trustees of
Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, CA. Pioneering print-on-demand publishing for books of fine art photography, Weiner conducts workshops on independent publishing. He is a co-owner of Casa Dracula since 1985.
Gordon Chaplin, co-founder/faculty
A former journalist (Washington Post, Newsweek, Baltimore Sun), Chaplin has written two novels and three memoirs, including the acclaimed memoir Full Fathom Five. He is a research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and a consultant with Niparaja, a non-profit marine conservation organization based in La Paz, Baja California Sur. He first visited Todos Santos in 1981 and is a co-owner of Casa Dracula since 1985. His latest novel, Paraíso, is available on Amazon. Gordon’s website – www.gordonchaplin.com
Christopher Merrill/Faculty Christopher Merrill is the director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He has published six collections of poetry, including Brilliant Water, and Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak’s Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; several edited volumes, among them, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon; and five books of nonfiction, The Grass of Another Country: A Journey Through the World of Soccer, The Old Bridge: The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War.
His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and his awards include a knighthood in arts and letters from the French government. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. He serves on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, he has conducted cultural diplomacy missions in over thirty countries for the U.S. State Department, and in April 2012 President Obama appointed Merrill to the National Council on the Humanities. www.christophermerrillbooks.com
Jonathan Penner/faculty
Jonathan Penner is the author of two novels, Going Blind and Natural Order, and two story collections, Private Parties and This Is My Voice. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Paris Review, and many other magazines. He has held writing fellowships from the Guggenheim and Fulbright Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts, and his many honors include the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Penner has taught fiction writing at the University of Arizona, the University of Hawaii, and Vanderbilt University, and has given lectures and readings abroad under the auspices of the U. S. State Department.
Nick Triolo/faculty
Nick Triolo is a writer, long-distance runner, and activist living in Missoula, Montana. Nick holds a M.S. in Environmental Studies (Focus Area: Creative Nonfiction.) His writing has been featured in Orion Magazine, Terrain.org, Trail Runner Magazine, Whitefish Review, Clackamas Review, and others. Nick has lived and visited Todos Santos for the past decade, and in 2014 he directed the documentary “The Crossing,” about resisting open-pit gold mining in Southern Baja. He’s currently at work on his first book. Learn more: The Jasmine Dialogues.
Merrill Feitell/Faculty Merrill Feitell’s first book, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. In addition to serving on MFA faculty in the creative writing programs at University of Maryland and Cal State San Bernardino, she has also taught fiction workshops at Pratt Institute, SUNY Purchase, Colorado College, and Columbia University. She is currently at work on a novel and a series of multi-media essays and she’s also fiction editor at Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Light Industrial Safety. She lives on the edge of Los Angeles. Her website is http://merrillfeitell.com
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