Breadcrumb

Our Fall 21 Guest Faculty

We can't believe it's been two years since our last in-person residency! So we're rolling out the red-carpet for a great lineup of top writers, industry professionals, and esteemed alums! It's going to be an amazing residency. If you're interested in visiting during the week, please contact us to set up a visit: palmdesertmfa@ucr.edu


Emilie Pascale Beck's plays include Sovereign Body (Productions: Road Theatre, Winding Road Theatre; Workshops: Playwrights Theatre, Elephant Theatre, Road Theatre; 2011 Smith Prize Finalist),  Number of People (Production: Piven Theatre Workshop; Development: Hartford Stage, Pasadena Playhouse, Playwrights Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop), And Let the Skies Fall (Production: El Portal Theatre), and Trace (Development: Boston Court Pasadena). She is the Literary Manager/Director of New Play Development at Boston Court Pasadena, where she has directed How the Light Gets In (winner of 2020 Steinberg/ATCA Award for a new play), Shiv, and Cassiopeia, and numerous workshops and readings. Other directing credits: Miss Keller Has No Second Book (Gulfshore Playhouse), Block Nine (Elephant Theatre), Because They Have No Words (Lounge Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop), among others. Dramaturg: The Children, Heavier Than, Alcestis, RII, Everything You Touch, The House in Scarsdale, and Everything That Never Happened (Boston Court Pasadena). Publications: Colorado Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Waxwing, Howlround, LA Stage

Robin Benway is a National Book Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of seven novels for young adults, including Far From the Tree, Audrey, Wait!, the AKA series, and Emmy & Oliver. Her books have received numerous awards and recognition, including the PEN America Literary Award, the Blue Ribbon Award from the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults, and ALA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. In addition, her novels have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly, and have been published in more than 25 countries. Her sixth novel, Far From the Tree, won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the PEN America Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, PBS, Entertainment Weekly, and the Boston Globe. Her newest book, A Year To the Day, will be published on June 21, 2022. In addition to her fictional work, her non-fiction work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Bustle, Elle, and more.  Robin grew up in Orange County, California, attended NYU, where she was a recipient of the Seth Barkas Prize for Creative Writing, and is a graduate of UCLA. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Hudson.

Sean Berard is a literary agent at Grandview for books, film, and television.

Michael Besman is currently head of development at Arts District Entertainment. Previously Michael was Executive Producer for Caryn Mandabach Productions (Peaky Blinders, Nurse Jackie), Executive Vice President of Tri-Star Pictures, and Vice President of Gruber Peters Productions. His films include About Schmitd, The Opposite of Sex, Seven Years in Tibet, Georgia Rule, and countless others. Current projects include Ghost Boys, based on Jewell Parker Rhodes novel; Covenant, based on Elizabeth Bear's story; and the holiday film I Won't Be Home For Christmas.  

Bridgette Bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design. bridgette bianca has performed her poetry all around Southern California, including features at The World Stage, the Southern California Poetry Festival, Los Angeles Lit Crawl, the Table Lit, LitFest Pasadena, Rapp Saloon, La Palabra, and the un::fade::able Reading Series. She was most recently published on CulturalWeekly.com and in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. She is one half of the literary curating team, Making Room for Black Women, with Sanura Williams of My Lit Box and co-host of the quarterly reading series at the Women’s Center of Creative Work with Nina Rota. bridgette bianca’s work as a writer and an educator seeks to serve the people and moments most forget or ignore. Her first book of poetry, be/trouble, was just released by Writ Large Press in 2020. Find her on social media at @bridgettebianca on Instagram, @thebridgebianca on Twitter, and Bridgette Bianca on Facebook.

Yennie Cheung is the Executive Editor of the Coachella Review. She is the co-author of DTLA/37: Downtown Los Angeles in Thirty-seven Stories. As a journalist, she served as an editor for HITS Magazine, and has written for The Los Angeles Times and Blender. She was also the co-founder and co-editor of the now-defunct Hipster Book Club book review site. Yennie holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside-Palm Desert. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has been published in such places as Word Riot, Angels Flight • literary west, decomP magazinE, The Best Small Fictions 2015, and The Rattling Wall anthology Only Light Can Do That. She lives in Los Angeles.

Natashia Deon is an NAACP Image Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney, and college professor at UCLA and Antioch University. Author of the critically acclaimed novel, GRACE, which was named a Best Debut Fiction by The American Library Associations, Black Caucus and was named Best Book by the New York Times, Deón is a Los Angeles native, wife, mother of two, and her new novel, The Perishing, is due out November 2021. Deón was a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia as part of the U.S. Embassy’s reconciliation project between Turkey and Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa and is a Pamela Krasney Moral Courage Fellow. In that role, she founded REDEEMED, a criminal record clearing and clemency project that pairs writers with those who have been convicted of crimes. A PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at  Prague’s Creative Writing Program in the Czech Republic, Dickinson House in Belgium and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has been featured in TIME MagazinePeople MagazineThe Root, Red Book, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed and other places. 

Jay Deratany went to law school at DePaul University College of Law and began his work with the Legal Aid Foundation of Chicago, helping those in poverty fight against slumlords. He eventually started his own law practice in Chicago, The Deratany Firm. During that time, he volunteered for the AIDS Legal Society, and went to hospitals to provide volunteer legal services for those who were dying of AIDS. He also volunteered for NEON Street, a shelter for homeless LGBT youth. Through his work as a human rights lawyer with his current firm, Deratany & Kosner, Jay focuses on cases related to foster care and adoption negligence, medical malpractice, sexual assault, and wrongful death. He is passionate about human rights issues, especially those that involve the mistreatment of foster children, sexual abuse, and LGBT issues. As an advocate for global LGBT youth rights, Jay has had the honor of serving on numerous boards including Howard Brown Health, Chicago House, Perspectives Charter Schools, Community Support Services, and the Family Equality Council, which advocates on behalf of LGBT families fighting against discrimination in adoption and fostering. He is an advisor and sponsor of Loyola University’s First Star Academy, which provides educational opportunities for foster children, and serves on the Chicago Committee of Human Rights Watch. He has received the Ekroth Award from Community Support Services for his legal work fighting for people with disabilities, was voted among the top 100 LGBT Executives by Chicago Magazine, recognized as a “Top Chicago Lawyer” by Super Lawyers for nine consecutive years, awarded the “Top 100” lawyers nationwide in his field from the National Trial Lawyers, received the 2015 Spirit Award from Chicago House for his work helping to establish the Trans-Life Center for trans individuals and their families, received the Chicago House award from the Board of Trustees for work on behalf of families with HIV and AIDS, received the 2017-2020 Award of Excellence from Lawyers of Distinction, recognized with the First Star Academy Award for his fight on behalf of foster children, and was one of Crain’s Chicago Business Top LGBT executives 2018. In addition to a successful law career, Jay is a writer, actor and playwright, obtaining his MFA from the University of California Riverside for Screenwriting. Not only does he fight for LGBT and human rights through his legal work, but he also brings these issues to light through the writing and producing of plays, musicals, and films including the GLAAD-nominated play “Haram Iran”, the Jeff Award-winning musical “The CiviliTy of Albert Cashier” (the true story of an American Civil War hero who was born female, but lived his life as a man) and the multi-award winning movie “Foster Boy”, co-produced with basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal. 

Maggie Downs is the bestselling author of the memoir Braver Than You Think. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the U.S., including the New York Times, the Washington Post,  the Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney’s, and has been anthologized in Lonely Planet’s True Stories From the World’s Best Writers and Best Women’s Travel Writing, and in digital media such as Today.com, Outside, Smithsonian, the BBC, and NPR. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from UC Riverside. 

Grace Doyle is the Editorial Director of Amazon Publishing's Thomas & Mercer and 47North imprints.

Rae Dubow is the founder & director of Talking Out Loud. a communications company specifically to provide public speaking training in the professional and academic spheres. She has extensive performance training and worked as an actor for many years. This is the basis of her practice, which uses dramatic techniques to help clients relax and speak publicly as their most authentic selves. Public speaking is an enormous challenge for most people, outranking the fear of death. Having experienced her own performance anxieties, she discovered ways to work with these issues and keep them at bay. In addition to Talking Out Loud, Rae has taught at the University of Southern California, Antioch University Los Angeles, UC Riverside, and Woodbury University. Her private clients include actor/activist Edward Asner, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Kahn-Cullors, Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor, and actress Genevieve Angleson. Her corporate and nonprofit clients include The Southern California News Group (SCNG), Dress for Success, and MOSTe, which offers similar training to high school girls from disadvantaged backgrounds who are working towards college admission.

Charli Engelhorn struggled to understand her place in the world as a mixed-race girl growing up in Ames, Iowa. She turned to books, television, and movies to escape and satisfy her curiosity about life and eventually started writing her own stories. At the University of Kansas, she made the super-practical decision to drop journalism for creative writing, but any anxiety about this vanished when her first play was chosen as a semi-finalist for the Kennedy Center College Theater Festival and produced. Charli’s drive to define her identity led her to set off on a journey of discovery after college that would comprise five states and about thirty jobs. After landing in Los Angeles, she tried her hand at screenwriting, and when her first pilot advanced in several competitions, she enrolled in an MFA program to hone her craft. Charli’s travels gave her a deep understanding of the human condition, which she uses to inform stories about characters on their own journeys of discovery. When not writing, Charli can be found playing volleyball, walking her dog Jacopo, reading, and dancing in her kitchen, unless Jayhawk basketball is on…then all bets are off. She recently completed the Warner Brothers Television Workshop and promptly landed a staff writing position on The Cleaning Lady, debuting this year on Fox. 

Maria Amparo Escandon a best-selling bilingual author (English and Spanish), wrote her first novel, Esperanza’s Box of Saints and its Spanish version, Santitos, published in late 1999 by Simon & Schuster and Random House respectively. Her novel has been the number one best seller in the Los Angeles Times Best Sellers List, it has 21 foreign editions and is currently read in over 86 countries. Her new novel, González & Daughter Trucking Co. and its Spanish version, Transportes González e Hija, was published in 2005 by Random House. It has been in best sellers lists around the country and is the publisher’s “Book of the Year” in Spain. She has been named Writer to Watch by Newsweek magazine and by the Los Angeles Times. Her books have been chosen as the annual book selection for several Community Reads public library-funded projects, One City One Book, A Novel Idea. Also, many of her short stories have been published in journals and magazines, both in English and Spanish.
María wrote the screenplay Santitos, on which she based her novel. The film was produced by John Sayles and successfully released in Latin America in January of 2001. To date, the film has received awards in 14 international Film Festivals, such as the Latin Cinema Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Special Jury Award at the Rencontres Cinémas de Toulouse, France, and Best Opera Prima by the Critique Française.
She founded The Other Truth Productions, LLC, a content production company, where she has a pipeline of film and television projects in various stages of development. She is currently developing the television mini-series, Mudflap Girl, based on her second novel, González & Daughter Trucking Co. and a screenplay she co-wrote with Pepe Stepensky, Moishe is Moishe. She is also developing a television series based on her latest novel, L.A. Weather. María has taught numerous Creative Writing courses and workshops at UCLA Extension since 1994: Magic Realism, Written Voice and Short Story Writing. She has been an advisor at the Sundance Film Institute Screenwriters Labs in Mexico and Brazil. She has been a novel and screenplay advisor at the Creative Content Foundation in Barcelona and she has been a mentor for the PEN Center Emerging Voices Program since 2000.

Gina Frangello's fifth book, the memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason (Counterpoint), has been selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice and received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and BookPage. She is also the author of four books of fiction, including A Life in Men (Algonquin), which is currently under development by Charlize Theron’s production company, Denver & Delilah, and Every Kind of Wanting (Counterpoint), which was included on several “best of” lists for 2016, including Chicago Magazine’s and The Chicago Review of Books’. Now the Creative Nonfiction Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Gina brings more than two decades of experience as an editor, having founded both the independent press Other Voices Books and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. She has also served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus, and as the faculty editor for both TriQuarterly Online and The Coachella Review. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in such venues as Salon, the LA Times, Ploughshares, the Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, Dame, and in many other magazines and anthologies, and she writes a column, “Not the Norm,” for Psychology Today. She also runs Circe Consulting, a full-service company for writers, with UCRPD professor Emily Rapp Black, and can be found at www.ginafrangello.org.

Prince Gomolvilas is a Thai-American writer and winner of a PEN Center USA Literary Award for Drama. His critically acclaimed play, The Brothers Paranormal, debuted Off-Broadway at the Beckett Theatre, in a production by Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. It has since been published by Dramatic Publishing, performed across the country, and scheduled for productions in Juneau, Anchorage, and Los Angeles. He is the co-creator of a new TV series currently in development at Amazon Studios. His work also includes Big Hunk o’ Burnin’ Love, a groundbreaking play about a Thai-American family; The Theory of Everything, which won the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Drama; Mysterious Skin, which is based on the cult novel by Scott Heim; and the critically acclaimed comedy/horror/drama play, The Brothers Paranormal, which received five productions the first year of its debut. His plays have been produced at The Drill Hall (London), East West Players (Los Angeles), Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (San Francisco), Pan Asian Repertory Theatre (New York City), Penumbra Theatre Company (St. Paul, Minn.) and Singapore Repertory Theatre. His work has also been developed at the Alley Theatre (Houston), Center Theatre Group (Los Angeles), Geva Theatre Center (Rochester, N.Y.), La Jolla Playhouse (La Jolla, Calif.), The Lark (New York City), Ma-Yi Theater Company (New York City), Pork Filled Productions (Seattle), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, Calif.), Theatre Diaspora (Portland, Ore.), Theatre Mu (St. Paul, Minn.) and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley (Palo Alto, Calif.). Prince is a former Assistant Professor of Writing at the University of Southern California.

Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for And Now She’s Gone. A New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson, Rachel is an Anthony, International Thriller Writers and Left Award nominee and the author of They All Fall Down, Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. She is a past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America and 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 Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. For more information, visit www.rachelhowzell.com

Dara Hyde is a senior agent at Hill/Nadell.

Liska Jacobs is the acclaimed author of three novels, Catalina, The Worst Kind of Want, and The Pink Hotel, which will be released in 2022. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions and The Hairpin among others. She has an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. She teaches creative writing in the Writers' Program at UCLA Extension. 

Stefanie Leder has been a staff writer and producer for a number of network, cable, and streaming shows, including 10 Things I Hate About You, Men at Work,  Melissa & Joey, Faking It, and No Good Nick and has sold projects to the CBS, CW, and every streaming platform currently on planet earth.

Pam Munter has authored several books including When Teens Were Keen: Freddie Stewart and The Teen Agers of Monogram (Nicholas Lawrence Press, 2005) and Almost Famous: In and Out of Show Biz (Westgate Press, 1986). She’s a retired clinical psychologist, former performer and film historian. Her many lengthy retrospectives on the lives of often-forgotten Hollywood performers and others have appeared in Classic Images and Films of the Golden Age. More recently, her essays and short stories have been published in The Rumpus, The Manifest-Station, The Coachella Review, Lady Literary Review, The Creative Truth, Adelaide, Litro, Angels Flight—Literary West, TreeHouse Arts, Persephone’s Daughters, Canyon Voices, Open Thought Vortex, Fourth and Sycamore, Nixes Mate, Scarlet Leaf Review, Cold Creek Review, Communicators League, I Come From The World, Switchback, The Legendary, bioStories and others. Her play Life Without was a semi-finalist in the Ebell of Los Angeles Playwriting Competition and has been nominated for Outstanding Play by the Desert Theatre League. She has also been nominated for the Bill Groves Award for Outstanding Original Writing. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California at Riverside/Palm Desert.

Nathania Seales Oh. Originally from the Cayman Islands, Nathania Oh is an entertainment industry veteran with more than 20 years of production experience that started with hosting a music video show (remember those?). After earning her B.A. in Telecommunications from Pepperdine University, she went on to earn her animation stripes working on the groundbreaking series “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and has worked with such media giants as Sony Pictures Entertainment, HBO and Cartoon Network. She first discovered her enthusiasm for mentoring as an entertainment and marketing executive where she was proficient in leading large, interdisciplinary work teams. Through strategic communication she found ways to lead her team and colleagues in ways to blend well-reasoned instincts and theory with best practices to execute unparalleled brand extension and storytelling. Eager to share this real-world industry experience with collegiate students, she completed her MFA in nonfiction and screenwriting with University of California, Riverside where she worked on The Coachella Review, the low residency program’s literary journal. Prior to joining Dodge College, she was a visiting professor at The Oregon Extension where she led and taught the Creative Writing component to university students recruited nationwide for a semester spent in the mountains of Southern Oregon rooted in Environmental Studies and Sustainability. Through instruction she inspires students on ways to harness their passion and authenticity while making their mark on the world. She believes and teaches that humor coupled with candor are the key to a great narrative. Recently published in Coast Magazine of The Orange County Register, The Coachella Review, the Redlands Review, Anastamos and The Kelp Journal, she lives, writes and teaches in Orange County, CA. In between teaching, working on her first full-length memoir and volunteering with the Newport/Mesa ProLiteracy program, she explores the world through food and travel with her husband and young daughter by her side.

Maret Orliss is an assistant Op-Ed editor for the Los Angeles Times. She previously helped lead The Times events department, including programming the Festival of Books for 15 years. She is a former bookseller, a regular visiting faculty member for UC Riverside-Palm Desert’s MFA program, a lifelong Californian and a graduate of Occidental College.

Peter Samuelson is the CEO & Co-Founder of Philmco. He is the Producer and Executive Producer of 25 motion pictures over 25 years, including ARLINGTON ROAD, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, WILDE, TOM & VIV, THE LIBERTINE, STORMBREAKER, etc. Production Manager of RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER.  He previously served as a mdia executive, strategy, operations and corporate governance expert, including Chairman of Executive Committee of Panavision, Inc., member of the three-person Founding Board of Participant Media, and Executive Vice President of the Interscope Group of Companies. A noted public speaker, lecturer and teacher, Peter is also the founder and operator of five substantial charities: www.starlight.org, www.starbrightworld.org (with Steven Spielberg), www.firststar.org , www.edar.org and www.aspirelab.org . Peter holds an MA from Cambridge University, England and an Executive Certificate in Management, UCLA. 2016 Encore Fellow. Final Round Committee Judge of (Oscars) Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.

Dan Smetanka has worked in the publishing industry for over twenty-five years, acquiring a mix of fiction and nonfiction. As an Executive Editor at Ballantine/Random House, Inc., his list included books by Elizabeth Rosner, Thomas Steinbeck, and Dan Chaon, a 2001 Finalist for the National Book Award. He is currently Vice President, Editor in Chief of Counterpoint Press where his books have won or been a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The Hammett Prize, The Edgar Award, NAACP Image Award, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Story Prize.  His authors include Natashia Deon, Gina Frangello, Elizabeth Crane, Tod Goldberg, Maggie Downs, Dana Johnson, Joan Silber, Ben Ehrenreich, Karen Bender, Elizabeth Rosner, Jaret Yates Sexton, Nawaaz Ahmed, Maria Hummel, Joe Meno, Jaime Harrison, and countless others. 

Susan Straight was born in Riverside, and still lives there with her family. She’s passionate about home, California, the Santa Ana River, the foothills and the deserts, and has been writing about southern California and the inland area for forty years. From her kitchen window, she can see the hospital where she was born, which her three daughters find kind of hilarious and pathetic; most days, she walks her dog Angel beside the Santa Ana River as she has since childhood, and then past the classrooms at Riverside City College, where she wrote her first short story, at 16, which is also kind of hilarious, but hopeful. She has written about the people of California for her new memoir, In the Country of Women, based on women’s stories told for five generations to Straight and her daughters, in driveways and trucks, at parks and funerals. She’s published that memoir, eight novels, and two books for children. Her short stories and essays have been published everywhere from The New YorkerThe New York TimesThe Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian to AltaThe BelieverMcSweeneysZoetropeReader’s DigestReal Simple, and Family Circle. She’s been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Prize for Fiction, a California Gold Medal for Fiction, and the Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.

Kent Wolf founding partner and rights director, launched his agenting career in the depths of the 2008 recession—a fitting start, given his affinity for forging new markets in a risk-averse industry. A lover of the bizarre, the profane, the unsettling, the dark, and the darkly funny, he is drawn to writing that occupies a literary uncanny valley and to writers who move the cultural needle through direct confrontation, self-interrogation, the blurring of genres, the bending of language, and damn good writing. Once told that he would “be more successful if he weren’t so intentionally weird,” Kent has sold multiple bestselling and award-winning books to publishers both large and small. His clients’ titles have been translated into dozens of languages and many are in active TV/film development. He represents literary fiction (story collections and novels) and narrative nonfiction in the areas of immersive journalism, personal essay, pop culture, memoir, “anti-lifestyle,” and anything that aims to dismantle prevailing power structures. Raised in rural Illinois, Kent lives in Manhattan with his husband. He currently serves on the board of Lambda Literary and is a member of The Association of Authors’ Representatives.

Matthew Zapruder was born in Washington, DC. in 1967. He earned a BA in Russian literature at Amherst College, an MA in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he studied with Dara Wier, James Tate, and Agha Shahid Ali. Zapruder is the author most recently of Father’s Day, Copper Canyon, 2019, and Why Poetry, a book of prose, Ecco/Harper Collins, 2017. He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine. He teaches in the MFA and English Department at Saint Mary’s College of California. He also plays lead guitar in the rock band The Figments, a Western Massachusetts based band led by songwriter Thane Thomsen. Zapruder’s other collections of poetry include Sun Bear (2014), Come On All You Ghosts (2010), The Pajamaist (2006), and American Linden (2002). He collaborated with painter Chris Uphues on For You in Full Bloom (2009) and co-translated, with historian Radu Ioanid, Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu’s last collection, Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems (Coffee House, 2008). Come on All You Ghosts was selected as one of the year’s top 5 poetry books by Publishers Weekly, the 2010 Booklist Editors’ Choice for poetry, the 2010 Northern California Independent Booksellers Association poetry book of the year, and as one of the New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2011. His second collection, The Pajamaist, was selected by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was chosen by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. His first book, American Linden, was the winner of the Tupelo Press Editors Prize, and was published by Tupelo in 2002. German and Slovenian language editions of his poems have been published by Luxbooks and Serpa Editions; in 2009, Luxbooks also published a separate German language graphic novel version of the poem “The Pajamaist.” A collaborative book with painter Chris Uphues, For You in Full Bloom, was published by Pilot Press in 2009. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in many publications, including Harper’sBombSlate, American Poetry Review, Tin House, Paris ReviewThe New RepublicThe Boston ReviewThe New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Real Simple, and The Los Angeles Times. His work has also appeared in many anthologies, including Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll; Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century; Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything; and Best American Poetry 2009, 2013, 2017, and 2019. His awards include a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship in Marfa, TX, and the May Sarton prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has taught at New York University, The New School, the University of Houston, and at the University of California at Berkeley as the 2010 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry. With Brian Henry, Zapruder co-founded Verse Press, which later became Wave Books. As an editor for Wave Books, Zapruder co-edited, with Joshua Beckman, the political poetry anthology State of the Union: 50 Political Poems (2008). He was the editor of Tyehimba Jess’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning volume of poetry, Olio.