Gaia Patience Veenis is a prose writer originally from the North Bay Area who currently resides in San Francisco. She is working on a memoir titled I’m Sorry I Have to Do This about her chaotic adolescence in the late ‘90s/Y2K era, including tales of running away at age 15, joining a street crew called The Horribles in San Francisco, courting death on several occasions, and eventually finding a way to save her life and finish high school. The manuscript is in the revision/editing stages and she is looking for an agent and publisher to help her share it with the world.

Gaia’s nonfiction and fiction prose has appeared in Y2K Quarterly, Writing Without Walls, The VelRo Reader 2, Toad the Journal, The Bicycle Review, and Airplane Reading. She loves sharing her work aloud at reading series and open mics all over the San Francisco Bay Area as well. She is also co-host of Patron Saints of Influence—a quarterly literary series & open mic in Santa Rosa, CA—along with co-host/co-curator Sarah Broderick. Its inaugural event took place at Shady Oak Barrel House on September 15, 2024.

Gaia holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing & Master of Arts in English from San Francisco State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from San Diego State University, and has taught College English in Northern California and Northern Ireland.

Some of her favorite memories as an adult involve traveling the world and sleeping on strangers’ couches as part of the couchsurfing community.