Faculty & Guest Faculty Bios

Mickey Birnbaum’s play Big Death & Little Death inaugurated Woolly Mammoth’s new Washington D.C. theatre in 2005. It has been produced subsequently at Perishable Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island; Crowded Fire in San Francisco; the Road Theatre in Los Angeles; and the Catastrophic Theater in Houston. The play was nominated for a 2006 Helen Hayes/Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play, and was a 2006 PEN USA Literary Awards Finalist. His play Bleed Rail premiered at the Theatre@Boston Court in Los Angeles in 2007, and won a 2008 Garland Award for Playwriting. Mickey spent two months living in playwright William Inge’s boyhood home in Independence, Kansas as the recipient of a 2006 Inge Fellowship. He has written numerous children’s plays for L.A.’s celebrated non-profit organization, Virginia Avenue Project. He is a founding member of Dog Ear, a Los Angeles collective of nationally-renowned playwrights (visit www.dogear.org), as well as The Playwrights’ Union, and was a member of the 2008-2009 Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop. Over a thirty year career, Mickey has written screenplays for Universal, Paramount, Columbia/Sony, Interscope, Warner Brothers, and Leonardo di Caprio’s Appian Way Productions. He collaborated with director Steven Shainberg (Secretary, Fur) on the screenplay for The Big Shoe and recently adapted the John Irving novel The Fourth Hand in collaboration with Shainberg. He wrote The Tie that Binds (1995), starring Keith Carradine and Darryl Hannah, for Interscope/Hollywood Pictures. Mickey received his MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of Riverside, Palm Desert in 2013. He teaches screenwriting at Santa Monica College as well. Mickey plays bass accordion for the Accordionaires, an accordion orchestra. Hs most recent play, Backyard, was a finalist for the 2015 PEN Center USA Award for Drama.

Yennie Cheung is the Executive Editor of the Coachella Review and co-author of DTLA/37: Downtown Los Angeles in Thirty-seven Stories. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside-Palm Desert, and her writing has been published in such places as The Los Angeles Times, Writers Resist, Angels Flight • Literary West, The Rattling Wall, and The Best Small Fictions.

Elizabeth Crane is the author of four collections of short stories, When the Messenger is Hot, All this Heavenly Glory, You Must Be This Happy to Enter, and Turf, and the novels The History of Great Things and We Only Know So Much.  Her work has been translated into several languages and has been featured in numerous publications including Other Voices, Ecotone, Guernica, Catapult, Electric Literature, Coachella Review, Mississippi Review, Florida Review, Bat City Review, Hobart, Rookie, Fairy Tale Review, The Huffington Post, Eating Well, Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader and The Believer, and anthologies including Altared, The Show I’ll Never Forget, The Best Underground Fiction, Who Can Save Us Now?, Brute Neighbors and Dzanc’s Best of the Web.  Her stories have been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts.  She is a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, and her work has been adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater company.  A feature film adaptation of her debut novel, We Only Know So Much, won Best Feature at the Big Apple Film Festival in 2018.  Her debut memoir, This Story Will Change (Counterpoint), was released in 2022 and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico to parents from the state of Michoacán and raised in suburban Los Angeles. In high school and afterwards, he worked a series of retail jobs, selling everything from eggs and milk to used appliances, custom furniture, rock T-shirts, and body jewelry. After graduating from the University of California-Riverside, he went on to earn an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints, was published by Random House in 2007 and was named a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. The book was released simultaneously in Spanish, under the title Los santos de Agua Mansa, California, translated by Lilliana Valenzuela. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was also published by Random House in March 2013. Alex’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies and journals, including Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California’s Inland Empire, The Southern California Review, Flaunt, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. His essays have been published at Salon.com, in the New York Times Magazine, in The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity, in The Los Angeles Review of Books, and as part of the historic Chicano Chapbook Series. He has also reviewed books for the LA Times, the American Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and NPR. His awards include a 2009 Margaret Bridgeman Fellowship in Fiction to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a 2014 Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2014 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Five Acts of Diego León, and a 2019 Fellowship from MacDowell and inclusion in Best American Mystery & Suspense. He is also the author of the nonfiction work  Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, which was published by The Unnamed Press in December, 2019. An active participant in Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Workshop and the Community of Writers, Alex is also deeply involved with the Puente Project, a program designed to help first-generation community college students make a successful transition to a university. Alex is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at UC Riverside. His latest novel book, Sons of El Rey, is out now.

Jill Alexander Essbaum is the New York Times bestselling author the novel Hausfrau, which was translated into 26 languages, and several prize-winning collections of poetry, including Heaven (winner of the Katherine Bakeless Nason prize), Necropolis, Harlot, and most recently, Would-Land. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals including Poetry, The Christian Century, Image,  and The Rumpus, and has been included in textbooks and anthologies including The Best American Erotic Poems and two editions of the annual Best American Poetry anthology. A two-time NEA fellow, Jill lives and writes in Austin, Tx.

Tod Goldberg is the New York Times-bestselling author of over fifteen prize-winning books, including the acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy – Gangsterland, a finalist the Hammett Prize, Gangster Nation, a Times of London Best Book of the Year, and Gangsters Don’t Die, named both an Amazon Best Book of the Year and Southwest Book of the Year – the novels The House of Secrets, which he co-authored with Brad Meltzer, and Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and three acclaimed collections of short fiction, most recently The Low Desert, named a Southwest Book of the Year and the finalist for numerous literary awards. His short fiction has been widely anthologized, including in Palm Springs Noir, Las Vegas Noir, and Best American Mystery & Suspense, where he has also twice received Distinguished Story of the Year citations. His nonfiction appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Alta and has been widely anthologized as well, including in Best American Essays, and has won five Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence. For his body of work, Tod was honored with the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Tod Goldberg holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College and is a Professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book critic living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, The Devil Takes You Home, and House of Bone and Rain. His work has won the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Wonderland Book Award, among others. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Locus Magazine, and the Boston Globe and he is the horror fiction columnist for the New York Times. Iglesias teaches creative writing at the UC Riverside Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program. You can find him online talking books on X at @gabino_iglesias.

Joshua Malkin has written feature projects for Sony, Fox, Universal Pictures among more than a dozen other companies. He also wrote and produced three documentaries: two about the art of puppetry, and the other about underground comics. In 2008 he wrote Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever for Lionsgate. Joshua co-authored top-selling fantasy comic book series The Source (Scout Comics, Publisher – top title, 2018) and the upcoming YA graphic novel, Unikorn. The book and screenplay for Unikorn have been acquired by Armory Films and is slated to be the directorial debut of Marvel editor Debbie Berman (Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Spiderman Homecoming.) Joshua is a professor of screenwriting at the University of California Riverside, an occasional story architect for the video game industry, and the proud – if bewildered - father of twins.

Kathryn E. McGee is the Program Manager for and a graduate of the UC Riverside Palm Desert MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. Her horror stories have appeared in Kelp Journal, Ladies of the Fright, Scoundrel Time, Gamut Magazine, and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Chromophobia anthology. Her story, “Mondays Are for Meat,” was recently optioned for film. “The Creek Keepers’ Lodge” (Horror Library Vol. 6) was an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Vol. 10. She writes about horror books and film for The Lineup. She also co-authored a book about downtown Los Angeles, DTLA37: Downtown Los Angeles in Thirty-seven Stories (Enville Publishing). Kathryn is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and represented by Dara Hyde at Hill Nadell Literary Agency. For more information, visit www.kathrynemcgee.com.

Ivy Pochoda holds a BA in Classics and Literature, with a focus on Dramatic Literature, from Harvard, where she graduated cum laude, and an MFA in fiction from Bennington College. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels These Women, Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and The Art of Disappearing, and has won or been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (twice!), the California Book Award, the International Thriller Award, the Strand Critics Award, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award, the Macavity Award, and others too numerous to list. Ivy is also the author of the YA/fantasy series created by the late Kobe Bryant,  Epoca: The Tree of Ecrof, an immediate New York Times bestseller, and Epoca: The River of Sand, and is an in-demand ghost writer as well. Her nonfiction and criticism appears regularly in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Wall Street Journal, among others. Her latest novel, Sing Her Down, was released last summer and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

William Rabkin creator and writer of HBOAsia’s science fiction series Dream Raider, has written and/or produced hundreds of hours of dramatic television. He served as show runner on the long-running Dick Van Dyke mystery series “Diagnosis Murder” and on the action-adventure spectacle “Martial Law” and is currently creating series in Asia and Europe. He has also written a dozen network TV pilots. His work has twice been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Television Episode from the Mystery Writers of America. He has written four books on writing for television, “Writing the Pilot” (2011), “Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series” (2017), Writing the Pilot: Streaming and, with Lee Goldberg, “Successful Television Writing” (2003) and seven novels. He is the co-creator and co-editor of “The Dead Man,” a 28-book series of supernatural action thrillers published by Amazon’s 47 North imprint. Rabkin is part of the core faculty of UCR-Palm Desert’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. He is currently co-writing the miniseries Estonia: The Last Wave for the Nordic Entertainment Group and ITV. 

Rob Roberge is the acclaimed author of several books, including the memoir Liar, named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and best of the year selection by Powell’s and Entropy, the novels The Cost of Living, More Than They Could Chew, and Drive, and the short story collection Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life. His short fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized, most recently in Palm Springs Noir and Silver Waves of Summer, and acclaimed by media outlets such as the New York Times Book Review, NPR, and the LA Times. In addition to writing and teaching, he is a guitarist and singer/songwriter in The Hitchcock Brunettes and the seminal LA art punk band, The Urinals, who’ve shared bills with Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, The Dream Syndicate, and the Go-Go’s, and whose songs have been covered by Yo La Tengo, The Minutemen, The Gun Club, No Age, and many others. He also wrote and directed the short film This Regrettable Event. He holds an MFA from Vermont College is an assistant professor and core faculty member of the Low Residency MFA at UC Riverside. He is at work on a new novel and several music projects and lives in Chicago with his wife and fellow Hitchcock Brunette, the writer Gina Frangello, along with their daughter and two astonishingly overweight cats.

John Schimmel is in the middle of an extraordinarily diverse career as a writer/producer. He’s been the President of Michael Douglas’ Furthur Films and President of Production at Ascendant Pictures, an executive at Douglas-Reuther Productions, Belair Entertainment, and Warner Bros, co-penned the Tony-nominated musical “Pump Boys And Dinettes,” published fiction and nonfiction, including his first book, Screenwriting Behind Enemy Lines: Lessons from Inside the Studio Gates. He currently works as Executive Producer for Cloud Imperium Games which is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest crowd funding effort in history. He recently executive produced the films Shaquile O’Neal Presents Foster Boy with Matthew Modine and Lou Gossett Jr., written and produced by his student Jay Paul Deratany; and The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatzo, The 14th Dalai Lama, In His Own Words. John is also part of the core screenwriting faculty at the University of California at Riverside’s Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, providing not just an insight into how to write screenplays, but how to write screenplays that sell.

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of six novels with one word titles including Moist, Baked, and Blown; and the nonfiction books Rude Talk In Athens: Ancient Rivals, the Birth of Comedy, and a Writer’s Journey through Greece, Naked at Lunch: A Reluctant Nudist's Adventures in the Clothing-Optional World and Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. He has written extensively for film and television. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Independent, Vulture and others. His next book, Memoir: a Novel, was just released in France.

David L. Ulin  is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times, he has written for Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review; his essay “Bed” was selected for The Best American Essays 2020. He is a professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary journal Air/Light. Most recently, he has edited Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Didion: The 1980s and 90s for Library of America. His most recent book, Thirteen Question Method, was released this fall.

In addition, each residency we're joined by over two dozen guest faculty members, ranging from winners of the Pulitzer Prize, to top agents and producers, and a variety of industry professionals. Below was our Spring 2024 Guest Faculty: 

Karam Abulhusn is currently a partner at Boo Pictures and has over 15 years of industry experience in film finance, production, and development. His passion for filmmaking has led him to work in finance at major studios throughout his career including NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.  At Boo Pictures, Karam spearheaded the production of many critically acclaimed films- most notably, the Oscar-nominated film CAPERNAUM, which follows the heart-wrenching struggles of a marginalized minority in Beirut, Lebanon. CAPERNAUM went on to break barriers as one of the first female produced, female directed, and female-led Lebanese films to receive international accolades in 2018. Other films include COSTA BRAVA LEBANON, 1982, SONG OF BACK & NECK, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE, and JOSIE. Karam's values are based on the belief that filmmaking thrives from diversity, inclusion, and gender equality. He is proud to uphold these standards through on and off-screen representation of women and minorities in every area across Boo Pictures' body of work -- from selecting narratives, to storytelling, production, and casting. In 2022, Boo Pictures established a partnership with the WGA’s Middle Eastern Writers Committee to continuously support their efforts to boost visibility and employment of under-represented writers in the entertainment industry. Karam's goal is to tell human stories that push boundaries and are universally inspiring. He continues to empower the next generation of storytellers with the confidence to nurture their creativity. Karam lives in LA with his wife and two young daughters. In his free time, he's playing basketball and coaching girls’ soccer.

Ioannis Argiris is a first generation Greek American writer. He is driven to tell stories about working class immigrants, crime, and mental health. He shows symbolism of larger themes through surrealism because the world is mysterious and abstract. He expresses his stories with lots of color and offbeat visuals–blending his love of Rothko with the weirdness of Cronenberg. ioannis’s short film Blends is making its way through the film festival circuit, picking up multiple wins and selections. He is working on new short stories for his collection Encinal Nights. His work has been featured in the Kelp Journal, Coachella Review, and his zines are in many bookstores across the country (Powells, Silver Sprocket, spectators). He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from UCR Palm Desert. You can find him urban cycling through Oakland while he thinks of new tattoos to add to his sleeves.

Alexandra Barreto has been working on sets for over twenty years as an actress, writer, producer and director. Alexandra’s directorial debut, “Lady Hater,” premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and was named “Top 5 Not-to-be Missed Shorts from the Tribeca Film Festival,” by FORBES. She recently directed the Audible Original Series, “Cut and Run,” starring Meg Ryan, Rachel Bloom and Sam Richardson. She wrote and directed a horror/comedy short film, “Welcome to the 90s,” for the follow up to the popular Shudder anthology, “Scare Package.” Alexandra recently produced the Sundance supported feature film, LATE BLOOMERS, starring Karen Gillan, Margaret Sophie Stein, Jermaine Fowler and Kevin Nealon. An earlier feature she produced, TOO LATE, starring Academy Award Nominees John Hawkes and Robert Forster was released theatrically in over thirty cities and secured a worldwide deal with Netflix. Past projects include writing and directing the first political commercial to air on Comedy Central, and she’s produced seven short films including “The Dungeon Master” which won the Best Short at the Tribeca (Online) Film Festival, and “F*ck the Parents,” starring Pamela Adlon and Rob Delaney.As an actress she’s guest starred and/or recurred on television shows spanning all genres from “Justified” to “Parenthood” to, most recently, recurring on CW’s “All American, a five year run on “The Fosters,” and recurring on the FX breakout hit, “Mayans MC.” She is a Film Independent, IFP and Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow.

Duncan Birmingham is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His short films have premiered at various festivals including Sundance and his feature directorial debut "Who Invited Them" was named one of the best horror films of the year by The Hollywood Reporter. His screenplay Swingles was bought by Paramount and appeared on The Black List. He was the writer and executive producer of the Marc Maron IFC comedy "Maron" and has worked as a writer-producer on various shows including the Starz comedy "Blunt Talk" starring Patrick Stewart and David Fincher's "Videosyncrazy" for HBO. The title story of his short story collection, "The Cult in My Garage" (Maudlin House, 2021), was chosen for the Selected Shorts radio show.

Natashia Deon is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, practicing criminal attorney and author of the critically acclaimed novels, GRACE andThe Perishing. GRACE was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and awarded Best Debut Novel by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. A Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee for Outstanding Fiction and a PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is a professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University. Her personal essays have been featured in The New York Times,Harper’s, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed and other places.

Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission (Fernwood Press 2023). He has work recently in Poetry International, Thrush, Juked, AMP Magazine, Ping Pong, and Typo, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He teaches in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego, CA

Maggie Downs is an award–winning writer based in Palm Springs, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Palm Springs Life, and McSweeney’s, where she writes a monthly column, and has been anthologized in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World’s Best Writers and Best Women’s Travel Writing. Braver Than You Think, her first book, was an instant Amazon bestseller. Her latest book 50 Things to do Before You’re 5 has just been released.

Emily Ziff Griffin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel, LIGHT YEARS which she developed for television with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Currently, she's writing LAST DANCE, a feature for Fifth Season based on her New Yorker essay “The Last Dance With My Dad” with The Hunger Games’ Rachel Zegler set to star, as well as original TV series EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD for Fat City and Anonymous Content, and feature HERE I GO AGAIN for Heyday Films. Previously, she served as a writer on Apple TV+’s miniseries based on the life of legendary screen actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr and developed a teen eco-activist heist show for Makeready and Joey Soloway. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the LA Times, the Yale Review, Self, Culture Trip, Rookie, Refinery29, and beyond. Formerly, she co-founded Cooper’s Town Productions with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a company she ran for ten years. There, she developed and produced numerous projects, including CAPOTE and Hoffman’s directorial debut, JACK GOES BOATING. She is the Co-Founder of the Industry Professional Mentorship Program at Cal State University, Dominguez Hills where she frequently guest lectures. She has run three marathons, slowly, and holds a degree from Brown University in art-semiotics, the study of how images make meaning.

Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last One; What Never Happened; We Lie Here; These Toxic Things; And Now She's Gone; They All Fall Down; and, with James Patterson, The Good Sister, which was included in Patterson's collection The Family Lawyer. A two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist as well as an Anthony, Edgar, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty Award nominee, Rachel is also the author of Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes, and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. A past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, Rachel has been a featured writer on NPR's acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Matt Horwitz is a a manager at Echo Lake Entertainment. He got his start at Sleeping Giant Entertainment before joining Echo Lake in 2013 focusing on writers and directors in all aspects of TV and film. His clients have worked on such hit shows as AMERICAN DAD, CALL YOUR MOTHER, TACOMA FD, MAGNUM PI, THE YOUNG ROCK, ARROW, THE FLASH, STRANGER THINGS, and THE CONNERS just to name a few. He has set up client projects at just about every network or streamer that you can think of, (and several that you probably didn’t even know existed). Originally from the Washington DC area, he attended Indiana University and has had a passion for TV and Film since a young age when he discovered that people actually made the things he was watching every day, and that passion has helped him guide and build the careers of creative people from the lowest levels all the way to the top.

Amara Hoshijo a senior editor at Saga Press. Her authors include #1 New York Times bestseller Chloe Gong, USA TODAY bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Sascha Stronach, M. J. Kuhn, Rin Chupeco, and Matt Wallace. She loves science fiction and fantasy with a focus on world-building and complex systems, as well as stories with a unique cultural lens. Originally from Honolulu and a graduate of the University of Southern California, Amara moved to New York City over a decade ago, then returned to Los Angeles this summer. Prior to joining Saga Press, she was an editor at Soho Press, where she published Chana Porter’s The Seep, Clarissa Goenawan’s Rainbirds, and Chris McKinney’s Midnight, Water City. She also managed the company’s subrights initiative and is a former Frankfurt Fellow.

Jud Laghi Launched in 2010, The Jud Laghi Agency is a full-service literary agency that represents fiction and non-fiction at every stage of the publishing process. Jud’s hands-on style includes significant editorial guidance on proposals and manuscripts for the strongest possible publisher submission, and an exploration of all potential opportunities for boosting the marketing and publicity of his clients’ books once they have been published, as well as licensing foreign and translation, audio, serial, film, television, and other digital and online rights. His clients include Jaime Lowe, Peter Zeihan, Dakin Campbell, Davy Rothbart, Brian Raftery, Tim Layden, Jason Turbow, Farah Pandith, Sally Hogshead, Justin and Sydnee McElroy, Portlandia star and Sleater-Kinney guitarist and vocalist Carrie Brownstein, all-time Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, and rock legends Gene Simmons and Kenny Loggins.Jud has represented, developed and launched a broad spectrum of trendsetting and bestselling books throughout his career, by authors of narrative nonfiction, journalism, cultural criticism, memoir, popular culture, prescriptive nonfiction and business, as well as select fiction, middle grade and YA. Before forming JLA, Jud worked as a literary agent at LJK Literary Management and at ICM, where he began his agenting career. He is a graduate of Trinity College with a B.A. in English and creative writing.

Boris Kachka is the former books editor of the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was an editor and writer at New York magazine for two decades. He has written profiles of authors including Joan Didion, Toni Morrison and Harper Lee; investigated turmoil at various cultural and media institutions; expanded books coverage across the publication’s many verticals; and covered film, television, theater and book publishing. He is also the author of “Hothouse,” a cultural history of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux; “Becoming a Veterinarian”; and “Becoming a Producer.”

Rosemary King is an award-winning speechwriter who has worked directly for the Secretary of Defense as well as executives of Fortune 500 companies and national nonprofits. Her speeches have been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and USA Today and reached international audiences in Taiwan, Russia, Hungary, Belgium, Mexico, Colombia, Estonia, Macedonia, and Kosovo among others. Rose holds degrees from Arizona State University, Harvard University, and the Air Force Academy. In December, she earned an MFA/screenwriting from the University of CA/Riverside. She was recently accepted to The Veterans Writing Project, a mentorship program run by the Writers Guild of America. Rose is obsessed with stories about underdogs, outsiders, and rebels – characters who are part of a tribe yet feel like they don’t belong.Rose serves on the Advisory Board of the Professional Speechwriters Association, a worldwide network of leadership communication professionals. She is also on the Board of Directors of Rose City Hockey Club, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2013 for girls ages 5-18. Rose lives in Portland, OR, with her wife, Kristin, and their feisty cat, Piper.

David Martinez earned his MFA from University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert, and previously taught English and creative writing at Glendale Community College in Arizona. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Brazil and has lived in both countries as well as in Puerto Rico. His work has appeared in The Coachella Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Broken Pencil, and Automata Review. He lives in Glendale, Arizona. His debut memoir, Bones Worth Breaking, has just been released and was already named a best book of the year by Esquire.

Tiffany Colli Moon is a producer, dramaturg and theatre manager devoted to the development and production of new works. She has been an active member of the Los Angeles and Southern California theatre community for the last decade, working with companies such as Center Theatre Group, South Coast Repertory, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Greenway Arts Alliance, California Repertory Company, and Rogue Artists Ensemble; and previously spent six years in NYC working in various capacities at theatres such as BAM, Summer Play Festival, and Theater for the New City. Tiffany is currently the Literary Manager of Ojai Playwrights Conference, where she has been a staff member since 2012, most recently completing two seasons (2015 and 2016) as Managing Director. Tiffany holds an MFA/MBA in Theatre Management from CSULB, a BFA in Theatre Performance from Chapman University and a Certificate in Musical Theatre Performance from Circle in the Square Theatre School.

Celeste Holben Pecar is Director of Development for filmmaker Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, with whom she is producing several film and TV projects, including an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s bestselling novel, The Fortress of Solitude.

David Holben Pecar is a Sr. Director of Development & Strategy at 101 Studios (producer of major series such as Yellowstone, Tulsa King, and Mayor of Kingstown). His journey from the pastoral fields of Indiana to the garbage-ridden thoroughfares of Los Angeles was first marked by an untimely stint at The Weinstein Company, followed by the birth of 101 Studios. David is involved in the development, production, and marketing of 101 Studios’ wide content slate. Much of his work revolves around bridging the gap between studios and their audiences, better connecting viewers to the content they consume through a spectrum of emerging channels - immersive experiences, interactive e-commerce, fanbase engagement, and more.

Gideon Pine is interested in representing writers in the nonfiction space with a focus on historical narrative nonfiction, true crime, health and wellness, and long form investigative journalism. He is also looking for voice-driven debut novels, including but not limited to the following genres: thriller, mystery, horror, or literary fiction. Whether a book is destined to be the next book club bestseller or a cult classic that will live on forever, he wants to read it. Gideon has a B.A in Political Science from Indiana University. Prior to working in publishing, he worked in commercial production and advertising.

Olivia Taylor Smith is a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster where she acquires literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, and memoir. She is looking for emerging voices with a profound literary talent, inventiveness, and humor, groundbreaking international authors, works of literary suspense, mystery and adventure, and literary fiction that is surprising and unexpected, evocative and hilarious, emotionally impactful and occasionally, unhinged. She is actively seeking to expand her non-fiction list, and is interested in literary memoir, progressive issues, current affairs, and geopolitics. Titles Olivia has acquired and are forthcoming at S&S include Heartwood by Amity Gaige, Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp, At Last by Marisa Silver, Blackcurrant by Kerry Cullen, Oddbody by Rose Keating, and What Hunger by Cat Dang.

Mike Sonksen is a 3rd-generation Los Angeles native that teaches several course in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department including Conflicts, Journeys, Knowledges, LA Stories, Natures and PPDV. Sonksen earned his Bachelors’ Degree at UCLA in 1997. In June 2014, he completed an Interdisciplinary Master of Arts in English and History from the California State University of Los Angeles. Following his graduation from U.C.L.A. in 1997, he has published over 500 essays and poems with publications and websites like the Academy of American Poets, KCET, Poets & Writers Magazine, BOOM, Wax Poetics, Southern California Quarterly, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Lana Turner, The Architect’s Newspaper, LA Alternative Press, Los Angeles Review of Books, Cultural Weekly, Angel’s Flight, Angel City Review, Entropy, LA Taco, Lummox and many others. Most recently, one of his KCET essays was Awarded for Excellence by the Los Angeles Press Club. Sonksen’s prose and poetry have been published on a building at 7th and Olive in Downtown Los Angeles and on banners on Santa Monica and Venice Boulevards and included in programs with the Mayor’s Office, the Los Angeles Public Library’s “Made in LA,” series, Grand Park, the Music Center, the Friends of the Los Angeles River and Glendale Central Library. On three separate occasions, the City of Los Angeles has awarded Sonksen “Certificates of Commendation” for his poetic contributions to the city. In May 2018, Sonksen was awarded by the Associated Students Organization of Woodbury University for Excellence in Teaching. He has also been a guest speaker at over 80 universities and high schools.

Jaime Parker Stickle a writer, actor, podcaster, and college professor, and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. She is the creator and host of the true crime investigative podcast, The Girl with the Same Name as well as the hilarious and popular podcast, Make That Paper. She is the recipient of the Virginia G. Piper Desert Nights Rising Stars Fellowship. She teaches L.A. Media Studies, Podcasting, and Creative Writing for Montclair State University.

Susan Straight’s most recent novel, Mecca, was a Finalist for the Kirkus Prize and named by The New York Times as a Top Ten California Book of the Year, one of the Best Ten Books of 2022 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and the best book of 2022 by NPR. Her 2019 memoir, In the Country of Women, was a national bestseller, named the best book of the year by NPR and CodeSwitch, and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She has published eight previous novels, including the bestseller Highwire Moon, a Finalist for the National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in O Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, Harpers, and elsewhere. Her awards include the Lannan Prize for Fiction, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Story, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Arabic, Swedish, Polish, and Japanese. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family; she has taught at the University of California, Riverside, since 1988.

Rider Strong After being cast as Gavroche in Les Miserables at nine years old, Rider Strong began his career as an actor, becoming best known for his roles on Boy Meets World and the cult horror film, Cabin Fever. Moving behind the camera, Rider wrote and directed short films that have played over 60 festivals worldwide and won both audience and juried awards. He returned to his roots, this time as a director, for three seasons of the Emmy-nominated Girl Meets World. In addition to his screenwriting, Rider’s writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Believer, Bullet Magazine, Shondaland, and more. His play Never Ever Land premiered at Theatre Unleashed in Los Angeles in the fall of 2019. Since 2022, he’s cohosted the immensely popular Pod Meets World podcast, alongside Danielle Fishel and Will Friedel, and previously co-hosted Literary Disco for a decade. He graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University and received his M.F.A. in Fiction and Literature from Bennington College. He’s taught screenwriting at both Chapman College and UC Riverside.

Sarah Tomlinson is a Los Angeles-based writer and the author of The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers. She has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist, music critic, writer, ghostwriter, and editor. She has ghostwritten or co-written fourteen books, including the New York Times bestseller, Fast Girl, with Suzy Favor Hamilton, and two uncredited New York Times-bestsellers. Her father-daughter memoir, Good Girl, was published by Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster) in April 2015. She has extensive experience serving as a bridge between the creative minds and personalities of her clients and the rigorous attention-to-detail and deadline-oriented demands of the publishing world. She has long turned her passion for music, literature, and pop culture trends into cutting-edge coverage and cultural criticism. Her personal essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in publications including Marie Claire, MORE, Salon.com, Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Huffington Post. Her fiction has appeared on Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Her articles and music reviews have appeared in publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Boston magazine, Spin.com, Billboard.com, Alternative Press, Swindle, Preen, Rockpile, The OC Weekly, and The Willamette Week. She wrote a weekly local music column, “Notes,” for The Boston Phoenix. She has written bios for bands on Virgin, Red Ink/Columbia, and MySpace Records and contributed to the electronic press kits for artists on Warner Bros. Records. After growing up in Maine, Sarah attended the early college, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and then earned a BA in Creative Writing at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. After four years spent writing and buying records in Portland, Oregon, she earned an MA in Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston. While in Boston, she launched her journalism career. Sarah currently writes novels, memoirs, screenplays, TV pilots, personal essays, short stories and online dating profiles for her friends. She has read at Los Angeles literary happenings including Sit ‘n Spin, Vermin on the Mount, Tongue and Groove and Little Birds. Her favorite band is T. Rex. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

Oscar Villalon is the editor of ZYZZYVA, a recipient of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. His work has been published in several publications, including The Believer, Stranger’s Guide, Alta, and Lit Hub, where he is a contributing editor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their son.

Jennie Webb is an independent Los Angeles writer, dramaturg and playwright. Her plays, including Currency, Yard Sale Signs, Remodeling Plans, Unclaimed Assets, GreenHouse, On Tuesday, Brand New Script, It’s Not About Race, Buying a House, About What Matters, Reach, Smiling Cat Candy Heart and Carry On have been produced locally (by Inkwell Theater, Santa Monica Rep, Rogue Machine Theatre, The Road Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival, EST/LA and others), at colleges and universities across the country and in India, Iceland, Canada and the UK. She has been a part of The Playwright Center’s PlayLabs, Great Plains Theatre Conferences, Little Black Dress INK Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Festivals, Protest Plays Project, the Virginia Avenue Project, 365 Women a Year, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, The Road Theatre Company Summer Playwrights Festivals and Under Construction 1, PlayGround-LA, Moving Arts MADlab, Blank Theatre’s Living Room Series and Rogue Artists Ensemble’s inaugural Rogue Lab with plays including The Complete Story of the War, Rebecca on the Bus, Seperate Loads, Crazy Bitch, Jilt, Into the Gobpile, Not Cake, adaptation.resilience and Footprint; her work is published by Heinemann Press, Smith & Kraus, Next Stage Press and ICWP. Her plays have been named finalist (O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Gulfshore Playhouse New Play and City Theatre National Short Play Awards) and semi-finalists (PlayPenn, Athena Project, Trustus Theatre Festival, O’Neill) in numerous competitions and she is a two-time winner of a Max K. Lerner Playwriting Fellowship. She is currently a member of the Playwrights Union, EST/LA, Honor Roll!, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatists Guild. She is the recipient of a Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award and is co-founder and editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative.

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She is also a researcher of Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. She was a co-convener of Dark Matter: Cosmic Probes in the 2021 Snowmass particle physics community planning process, and she is a member of the National Academies Elementary Particles: Progress and Promise decadal committee. She is the creator of the Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography. Nature recognized Dr. Prescod-Weinstein as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence magazine has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” A co-creator of the Particles for Justice letter against sexism in particle physics and 2020 Strike for Black Lives, she received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics and the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology.

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her first book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books) won the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the science and technology category, the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Science Award, and a 2022 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. It was named a Best Book of 2021 by Publishers Weekly, Smithsonian Magazine, and Kirkus and was a finalist for multiple awards including the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. The Disordered Cosmos was also longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature. In 2022, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein was the inaugural top prize winner in the mid-career researcher category of the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication. She is now working on her second book for general audiences, The Edge of Space-Time (Pantheon Books), and an academic book, The Cosmos is a Black Aesthetic (Duke University Press). Originally from East L.A., she divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Chris Wiley is a California poet and playwright. He has published two chapbooks of poetry: Some Men and Stillness After Thrashing. Some of his recent poetry has been published in Bending Genres and Peculiar. He co-founded Theater Bobo in the 1980s, the first openly queer theater in Washington, D.C. Several of his stage plays have been produced in San Francisco, California; Washington, D.C.; Long Island, New York; Memphis, Tennessee, Boston, Massachusetts and St. Louis, Missouri. He has a BA in English Literature from James Madison University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside.

Ben Winters is the New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award–winning, and Philip K. Dick Award–winning author of Big Time, The Quiet Boy, Golden State, Underground Airlines, the Last Policeman trilogy, and the mash-up novel Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Ben has also worked extensively in television. He is the creator of the smash-hit CBS show TRACKER and has served as a writer/producer on the FX cult hit Legion as well as Manhunt on Apple TV+. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.

Blaise P. Zerega is Alta Journal's editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor and part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, and other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley. Throughout his career, he has helped lead teams small and large to numerous honors including multiple National Magazine Awards. He attended the United States Military Academy, New York University, and received a Michener Fellowship for fiction from the Texas Center for Writers.