The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices), the only multigenre workshop for writers of color, will, after fifteen years at the University of California at Berkley, relocate to the University of Miami.

The University of Miami’s Director of Creative Writing, M. Evelina Galang, who has herself taught in the VONA/Voices program, says the impending move is “exciting.” “Teaching in that program, I’ve had such a positive experience,” said Galang. “I came out of a program where I was the only woman of color. Often, my stories were misunderstood by well-meaning teachers. . . . This is giving writers an opportunity to have something I didn’t have.”

VONA/Voices, founded in 1999, acts as a “refuge for writers of color who may feel silenced or isolated in standard workshop environments where matters of race and cultural identity tend to be avoided or dismissed as irrelevant,” said writer and VONA alumna Patricia Engel. “Such omissions can be extremely detrimental.”

Two faculty readings, including one on Thursday with Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz, one of the workshop’s cofounders, will inaugurate the program’s arrival.

Learn more about VONA/Voices’s mission and its founders, or about its upcoming faculty readings.