Bio of Gina Shaffer

A playwright and poet, Professor Shaffer has enjoyed teaching creative writing, literature, and composition courses at Saddleback College since joining the English Department in 2010. She serves as faculty advisor for WALL Literary Journal, an award-winning campus publication featuring the short stories, poetry, personal narratives, art, and photography of students. A graduate of UC Irvine, where she received a Ph.D. in English, Shaffer formerly taught at UCLA Writing Programs. She has written several plays that have been staged in theaters throughout Southern California and off-Broadway. Her one-act play, Prufrock in the Park, was staged by the Wayward Artists in Santa Ana. Her two-act play Under the Cuban Moon was presented in a staged reading at Repertorio Español in New York City as a finalist in the MetLife Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition. War Spelled Backwards, her one-act play, was published in The Literary Experience, an anthology used in college classrooms. Her poem "Color Blind" was recently selected as a finalist in the Bedford Competition International Short Story & Poetry Awards in England and will be published in an anthology.