About
About Teresa Burns Gunther
Teresa Burns Gunther is an award-winning writer and teacher whose fiction and nonfiction have appeared widely in U.S. and international literary journals and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Mid-American Review, New Millennium Writings, Gemini Magazine, Litro, and Literary Mama.
Her story collection Hold Off the Night (Truth Serum Press, 2023) was a finalist for the Orison and Hudson Book Prizes. Her new collection, The Adjacent Possible, longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize, is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press. Her work has won the New Millennium Writings Award for Fiction and the Gemini Magazine Short Story Prize, and has been named a finalist for the New Letters Prize and the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award, among other honors. Her interviews with writers, including Dani Shapiro and Karen Joy Fowler, have appeared in Zyzzyva, Lion's Roar, and Glimmer Train's Writers Ask.
Her fiction is drawn to the turning points in ordinary lives — the quiet moments where people choose, or refuse, the step that changes everything. That fascination with family and character took root growing up the oldest daughter in a large, working-class Catholic family, and deepened across a working life that ranged from environmental planning to bartending.
The founder of Lakeshore Writers Workshop, Gunther has taught and coached writers since 2004, drawing on the Amherst Writers & Artists method to help writers find their voice in a supportive community. An avid painter, photographer, and birder, she lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Selected Honors
✦ Winner, 52nd New Millennium Writings Award for Fiction — "War Paint"
✦ Winner, Gemini Magazine Short Story Prize — "Conflagration"
✦Longlisted, Dzanc Books Prize — The Adjacent Possible
✦ Finalist, Orison Book Prize & Hudson Book Prize — Hold Off the Night
✦Finalist, New Letters Prize & the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award
Teaching
Since 2004, through Lakeshore Writers Workshop, Teresa has helped writers find their voice, strengthen their craft, and finish what they've started — in a small, supportive community of serious writers.
Teresa’s teaching is built on precise, positive feedback, always directed to the strength and the singular quality of the writer’s own voice. She keep groups small, treat all work as fiction so there's a safe distance between the writer and the page, and stay strict about keeping our focus on craft. Workshop attendees should leave each session flush with new ideas, new material, and fresh energy for their own work.
An AWA affiliate, Teresa draws on the teachings of Pat Schneider and the Amherst Writers & Artists method.
Teresa (right) and a student at the Lakeshore Writers Workshop in its original studio in Lake Merritt, 2019.
Stay in touch
Teresa sends new work, workshop news, and the occasional reading—now and then, never too often. Don’t miss out!