Alia Volz's writing appears in The Best American Essays 2017, The New York Times, Golden State 2017: Best New Writing from California, Tin House, Threepenny Review, New England Review, and the anthology Dig If You Will The Picture: Writers Reflect on Prince. At MacDowell, she worked on her memoir, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, the story of Sticky Fingers Brownies, San Francisco's first high-volume cannabis bakery. During the pivotal 1970s, Volz' parents delivered upwards of 10,000 illegal pot brownies per month throughout the city — often from her stroller. Later, in the 1980s, they worked with frontline activists to provide medical marijuana to friends and former customers now suffering the depredations of AIDS. The book went on submission during Volz' MacDowell residency, selling to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for spring 2020 publication.
Alia Volz
Studios
MacDowell
Alia Volz worked in the MacDowell studio.
Built in 1912, Pine Studio was renamed MacDowell Studio in 1943 in recognition of support from a group of Edward MacDowell’s music students. It was built as a composers’ studio and the stuccoed walls were intended to be soundproof. Like many of the studios on property, MacDowell was winterized in the 1950s when the program began welcoming…