Instructor Bio

I've been teaching at City College of San Francisco since 2008. I'm a native Californian and if I'm not teaching, I enjoy cooking with fresh ingredients and going on hikes with my two children and husband.

Like many others, I believe good writing is a result of a lot of revision and willingness to think about a given topic deeply and with mindful curiosity. I also believe that writing brings us into a community of thinkers and visionaries.

I earned a Bachelor's degree in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master's degree in English and American Literature from New York University.

I am also a poet. My work has appeared in The Nation, Tin House, New England Review, Seneca Review and other magazines. I am a recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and grants from the Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, The National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the LEF Foundation. My poetry and essays have been anthologized, most recently in Other Musics: New Latina Poetry, The Poetry of Capital, and The Awesome Difficult Work of Love: June Jordan’s Legacy. I have some new poems here: https://2river.org/2RView/27_3/poems/candelari.html