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Inlandia:
A Literary Journey Through California’s Inland Empire

Edited by Gayle Wattawa
Introduction by Susan Straight

See the Inlandia Map
Take a tour of the Inland Empire as seen through the lens of the Inlandia Anthology. Our interactive map will allow you to see the locations mentioned in the Anthology stories.

“The new voices in lnlandia represent the best of my hopes and dreams and literary desires, the eloquent renderings of how the old worlds and new have collided and melded in this place like no other.” —Susan Straight, from the Introduction

Coyotes howling at the moon, gang warfare, neighborhoods of tract homes for an exploding population. miles of orange groves now abandoned, the prattle of military training guns jarring the desert quiet. a landscape rich with the stories of Native American tribes.

These disparate images are inspired by one of the fastest growing regions in America, California’s Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, the so-called Inland Empire. A land of juxtapositions in geography, ethnic diversity, and wealth, compounded by the dramas of opportunity and loss in a burgeoning region, the Inland Empire is becoming much more than “the area east of Los Angeles.” With a culture and landscape of its own, it is a breeding ground for passionate literature.

“A literary anthology with all the twists and turns of a sticky, can’t-put-it-down novel.” —Dan Bernstein, columnist, Riverside Press-Enterprise

Gayle Wattawa

Gayle Wattawa

Gayle Wattawa made her way to California via the mountains of Colorado and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received degrees in English literature and mathematics. She is currently the acquisitions editor for Heyday Books.

Susan Straight

Susan Straight

Susan Straight, professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, has won the Gold Medal for Fiction from the San Francisco-based Commonwealth Club for her fifth novel, “Highwire Moon.” All her novels are set in the fictitious town of Rio Seco, a loose parallel to her hometown of Riverside, where she still lives.

Contributing Authors:
Kathleen Alcalá, Juan Bautista de Anza, Mary Austin, Joan Baez, Dick Barnes, Horace Bell, Gina Berriault, Gayle Brandeis, Larry E. Burgess, Brandy Burrows, Raymond Chandler, Mark Chapman, J. Smeaton Chase, Mary Jo Churchwell, Lori Davis, Mike Davis, Celeste DeBlasis, Juan Delgado, Joan Didion, Michael David Egelin, Eric Elliott, Alex Espinoza, Percival Everett, M. F. K. Fisher, George Fujimoto, Jr., Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert Gonzales Vasquez, Sumi Harada, William S. Hart, Scott Hernandez, Villiana Hyde, Helen Hunt Jackson, Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Edmund C. Jaeger, Michael Jaime-Becerra, John Jakes, Aris Janigian, Gordon Johnson, E. J. Jones, Laura Kalpakian, Larry Kramer, Harry Lawton, W. Storrs Lee, José del Carmen Lugo, Norman Mailer, R. S. Malloch, Malcolm Margolin, Dionisio D. Martínez, Carey McWilliams, Ruth Nolan, Charles Nordhoff, Keenan Norris, Mary Paik Lee, Francisco Patencio, Polingaysi Qoyawayma, Dorothy Ramon, Marc Reisner, José Romero, Kate Sanborn, James A. Sandos, Katherine Siva Saubel, Eric Schlosser, Marisa Silver, Rowena Silver, John Steinbeck, Susan Straight, Charles Tomlinson, Calvin Trillin, George Weeks, Sholeh Wolpé, Harold Bell Wright, Dwight Yates