Twice a year -- in December and June -- we gather for our intensive residencies. If you're interested in sitting in for a day prior to applying, we'd be happy to have you. Simply contact us at palmdesertmfa@ucr.edu and we'll set-up your visit. We'll even buy you lunch. 

Friday, December 2

3:00 – Check in

4:00 – Faculty & Staff meeting in Salon 6

5:00 – New Student Orientation in Salon 5

6:00 – Opening celebration on Sunrise Terrace.

 

Saturday December 3

8:00 Breakfast

9:00: All Student Orientation in Salon 5

*Required for ALL students

 

10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Chris Levinson with Bill Rabkin (S)

Writing & Selling the Pilot.

If you attend this lecture, you will sell your pilot. It’s just that simple. Chris Levinson has been writing and selling pilots for two decades…and Bill Rabkin has been for three…so there should be some things to learn here…

(Salon 5)

 

10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Vanessa Hua (F)

 Writing Across Cultures: Taking an Imaginative Leap of Empathy

Can I write about that? The question of cultural appropriation is a complicated one, and so too its answers. In this discussion class, we’ll examine strategies for researching and portraying lives unlike our own, that reflect social and historical context and the fullness of a character’s humanity. We'll also consider how we our are embedded in systems of power and how that shapes our continuing development as writers. We'll work on writing exercises and discuss texts by Elaine Castillo and Namwali Serpell, among other authors who write across race, age, gender, class, and other elements of identity. There is no required reading, but I’ll refer to a packet of excerpts during the seminar. (Salon 6)

 

10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Adam Deutsch (All)

Crafting Artifacts

Publication is important, and we all want readers to discover our work. That’s fine, but there’s that huge gap between what we write and how it finds new hands. Let’s fill that gap with zines! We’re going to talk about the cultural contributions of short low-budget hand-made books (zines), the power of the artifact, and the opportunities for promotion, community building, and equity that come with producing our work in quick & cheap formats that magically becomes treasures for people to love. We’re also going to make stuff that we can share with each other, so bring some writing with you. (Salon 4)

 

1:15 Main Genre Workshops

Birnbaum -- Plumeria

Crane/Ulin – Begonia

Espinoza – Gardenia

Essbaum/Roberge -- Larkspur

Goldberg – Lavender

Malkin – Hibiscus

Pochoda – Iris

Rabkin – Jasmine

Roberge/Essbaum – Larkspur

Schimmel – Lantana

Smith – Primrose

Ulin/Crane – Begonia  

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Joe Hackett (S)

The Greatest Elixir

In this lecture we will examine a subset of coming of age scripts that focus almost exclusively on an internal struggle and internal victory. We will look at a few great stories where the film demonstrates that perhaps getting “the external stuff”  might not be the most urgent goal.

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Cherie Smith (NF)

Why Won't David Die?

In this lecture, we will examine Dr. David Hawkins, MD, Ph.D.'s influential book  Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender.  Through carefully analyzing Hawkin's Map of Consciousness and his "letting go" technique, we will evaluate the patterns over time in the evolution of psychiatric medicine, addiction, and emotional well-being. Lastly, we will briefly examine how Hawkin's work served as the psychiatric and spiritual foundation for modern self-help writers such as Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. Joe Dispensa. 

 

8:00: Antoine Wilson in Conversation with Ivy Pochoda  

Antoine Wilson has had quite a year…his novel Mouth to Mouth was longlisted for the Giller Prize (the National Book Award of Canada, basically) and selected by former President Barack Obama as one of the best books of the year, was optioned for a TV series, and earned amazing reviews from literally every newspaper in the world. So, pretty much, a great year.

Antoine will be signing books after the event.

(Salon 5)

 

 

Sunday December 4

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Chris Fields (PL)

How to Build a Career in Theatre

…we’ll figure it out in just 90 minutes.

 (Salon 6)

 

9:00-10:00: Guest Faculty Lecture: Annmarie Sairrino (S)

From Video Game to Feature Film: The Odd Journey of ROOT LETTER

How does a best-selling Japanese video game become an indie film set in Louisiana? We’ll go through the long-strange trip of a true passion project…and then tonight, you’ll get to watch it!

 (Salon 5)

 

 

 

9:00-10:30: Faculty Lecture: Jill Essbaum (P,F)

Looking Down and to the Left: Thoughts on Pacing, Detail, Style and Writing the Thing that You and Only You Could Ever, Ever Write.

This lecture will discuss pacing, detail, style and writing the thing that you and only you could ever write (I know, right?). Hows and whats and hints and tricks and dos and do nots and why nots and no really why the hell nots will be included. Lecture appropriate for poetry and prose. (Salon 4)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Dan Smetanka (E)

The Small Print: Your Book Contract…Right Down to the Small Print

Want to know what you’re going to be getting into when you sell your first book? We’ll go through a standard publishing agreement (a copy of the contract will be sent to you before Residency) and break down what everything means. (Salon 4)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Don Handfield (S)

Adapting Yourself & Other Tales of Creating New Work from Underlying IP

Basically? How to be a professional screenwriter these days requires a lot more than a single idea or source of ideas. We’ll go through the pluses and minuses of adapting your own work, adapting other people’s work, underlying IP versus straight WGA deals…and other stuff you must know to survive. (Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Robert Mitas (S)

Creating Dynamic Dramatic Podcasts

There is no hotter marketplace for screenwriters than…podcasts? It’s true. And in this talk, veteran tv and film producer Robert Mitas will show you how you fit into this burgeoning industry. (Salon 5)

 

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops

Birnbaum – Plumeria

Pochoda – Iris

Crane – Gardenia

Essbaum – Larkspur

Goldberg – Salon 8

Malkin – Hibiscus

Rabkin – Jasmine

Roberge – Lavender

Schimmel – Lantana

Smith – Primrose

Ulin – Begonia

 

 

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Sara Grimes (P)

The Comedy of Poetry

What has six letters and is practiced by starving artists across the globe? The answer is: Comedy! And also: Poetry! The two arts share many other commonalities.  Both originated in ancient Sumeria and Greece between 1900-2000 BCE.  Both were derived from a desire to move people emotionally. While poetry is (most often) associated with vicissitudes of feeling and emotional extremes—love, despair, joy, sorrow, awe—comedy typically correlates to expressions of amusement and delight and reflexive laughter.  Both, however, share the incredible ability to subversively chronicle the experiences of people in society’s periphery.  As such, they both can provide an outsider’s perspective of looking in and commenting on the human condition, and they do so with great vulnerability and the conscious choice to put oneself in the line of critical, judgmental fire.  Both arts (at their best) balance the tenderness of vulnerability with playfulness, humor, and discovery.  In the process of navigating this balance, these comedians and poets create a space for social impact. This lecture explores the rarely spoken of relationship between these two crafts, and those on the margins of society (any margin) who have used each to make room for diverse voices and expressions in the American narrative.

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Loy Weissman (PL)

Form(at) as Content: From Page to Stage

Tired of Times New Roman? Courier New cramping your style? It’s time we explore a world beyond standardized format. The way a play looks on the page can communicate as much as the words themselves – or more! Playwrights are increasingly using unconventional formatting to create a more immersive reading experience, bridging the gap between the experience of the reader and the experience of the audience-member. Through examination of works by modern playwrights as well as translations of ancient Greek texts, we’ll explore ways to visually build the world of your play, how formatting choices can affect performance and production, and what this means for the theatrical landscape as a whole.

 

Dinner

 

8:00: Evening Program: Film Screening: ROOT LETTER

 

Monday December 5

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Francesca Lia Block (F)

SAVE THE…NOVEL? HOW TO STRUCTURE FICTION WITH SCREENPLAY BEATS

How do you tackle plot in your writing? How do you meet the demands of your audience and at the same time free yourself from what might otherwise feel formulaic? How do you use the alchemy of left-brain organization and right-brain intuition to create a story that is grounded but also natural and unique? More and more, novelists as well as screenwriters are applying Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat screenplay beats to their work in order to create powerful plots, and there are methods to using these beats in authentic, organic ways.   In this seminar, we will go over Snyder’s beats, give examples of them in film (Jordan Peele’s Get Out) and fiction (Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing), and look at other storytelling methods from Gustav Freytag, Vladimir Propp, Joseph Campbell and Maureen Murdock. Then we will combine formal beats with intuitive imagery to create a story as a class. You will leave the seminar with the tools to structure or restructure your novel, screenplay or short story. (Salon 5)

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Barbara VanDenburgh (All)

The Value of Commercial Film & Literary Criticism

What is the role of the critic in today’s creative discourse when everyone has the ability to weigh in on books and movies and tv? We’ll talk with USA Today’s books editor and the former film critic of the Arizona Republic about what we should take – and leave behind – from how critics view our art.

. (Salon 4)

 

9:00-10:30 Faculty Lecture: Bill Rabkin (S)

The One Sentence That Can Make Your Script – Or Kill It

For many writers, coming up with a logline is last thing to do before sending the script off to a prospective manager or the next contest. It’s a tedious chore to be put off as long as possible and then gotten over with quickly – like doing taxes or going to the dentist. But the logline is actually the most important element of your entire project. Done correctly, it’s a tool that can save you months of work and hundreds of pages of wasted effort. And it can be the difference between a script that readers can’t wait to tell people about… and one they can’t bear to keep reading. (Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Rob Roberge (F)

HISTORICAL NOVELS ARE NOT HISTORY: AND WHY FACTS DESERVE TO BE STOMPED BY IMAGINATION IN EVERY STEEL CAGE DEATH MATCH EVER (WELL, NO…THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS…MAJOR ONES, BUT ANYWAY):

Yup…we could go into the nature of truth and memory and how history is written by the winners and so on and so forth, and there is no single correct historical narrative, but let’s just dive in to the topic at hand, and surely that will come up…Okay—Historical novels. Too many people privilege the first word and forget the second. We are writing fiction, people. And THAT is more important than history, in many ways (and we will discuss where the boundaries are, as they do exist). You want to heavily privilege history, write a history book. They sell for more money and you have a better chance of meeting or at least being interviewed by Mary Gross or Ira Glass. You will be taken more seriously. You won’t have to think up a plot for your next book. But to fiction…Just because something is based in history, you’re still making shit up. So, allow yourself the freedom to explore the inevitable, and to explore the imagined space of the novel—it’s fiction…try as you may, you’re making shit up. So go for it. From John Hodgeman’s delightfully insane and brilliant un-categorizeable book, THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE: Frederick Chopin was a Polish composer in the Romantic style who wrote primarily for the piano.Versus:Frederick Chopin was a Polish composer in the Romantic style who was obsessed with ladybugs, often letting dozens of them gallop over his neck, arms, and long, tapering fingers while playing the piano.That’s an extreme to make a point. Or it’s simply a funny quotation. But/and, we will explore the above topic in greater depth than me simply telling you to add ladybugs to every scene with Ambrose Bierce. Or Typhoid Mary. Or Morey Amsterdam. Or, you know…whoever you’re writing about. (Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Toni Ann Johnson (All)

Careers in Playwriting, Screenwriting, and Fiction

How can a writer negotiate the complex, at times intimidating worlds of writing for the stage, writing for the screen, and writing fiction? In this seminar, students will learn options for charting a career path as a playwright, screenwriter, writer of fiction, or all three.  Johnson will share her story of how she began as a young playwright, and then navigated a career as a Hollywood screenwriter working in film and television on such projects as Step up 2: The Streets and ABC/Disney’s Ruby Bridges, and then transitioned into writing fiction. She’ll discuss how the craft of these different genres can inform one another.  This talk will also cover the practicalities of writing for hire, writing contests, finding an agent, and being published and produced. Students will have an opportunity to identify their goals and begin a plan for how to achieve them.

 (Salon 5)

 

 

12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15: Main Genre Workshops

 

4:30:  Graduate Lecture: Paula Flores (S)

Magic: Why it works and why it doesn’t

Have you ever been watching a tv show or a movie, and they build this entire world with its own rules and magic and it is amazing and then it just fails? It sucks right? But how amazing is it when the rules and the magic make sense? In this lecture we’ll be exploring the grand catalog of entertainment that includes magic in them. By providing examples of well and badly executed uses of magic in mainstream media and other forms of entertainment, I hope to show how magic influences the everyday lives of people around the world. We will dissect how it is interpreted, represented and finally delivered to an audience, as well as what works and what doesn’t, and why.

 

5:10 Graduate Lecture: Rachel Spalding (NF)

The "Where" Wins It: The Absolutely Vital Role of Setting in Nonfiction (& Storytelling)

In this talk, we'll discuss how place interacts with people in your story, and the best ways to make your geography more specific and spectacular. All genres welcome!

 

 

Dinner

 

8:00: Evening Program: Feature Reading: Toni Ann Johnson followed by…the Twice-Annual Student Reading in R Bar

 

 

 

Tuesday December 6 

8:00 Breakfast

 

9:00-10:00: The Coachella Review Needs You

Join Executive Editor Yennie Cheung to learn about working on our premier literary journal, The Coachella Review. We need editors! We need writers! We need you!

(Salon 6)

 

10:00-11:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Brian Asman (F/S)

From DIY to Mainstream

Brian Asman, author of the viral sensation Man, F*ck This House, discusses how to build an independent platform, generate buzz, and leverage your work/notoriety into mainstream success. He'll discuss his path through publishing and film, social media, what NOT to do, and more.

(Salon 5)

 

10:00-11:00: Tomas Rivera Lecture: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo with Alex Espinoza (P)

Xochitl-Julisa is in the midst of an important career in the arts – from her award-winning poetry to her cofounding of Women Who Submit to her role as poet in residence at Gettysburg(!), she’s found a way to marry her writing with a unique kind of cultural activism, which she and Alex will discuss at length.

(Salon 6)

 

10:00-11:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Sara Marchant (NF)

Writing the Personal Essay

Come learn Sara’s secret formula for writing personal essay worth a Notable Mention. There will be an in class exercise but Sara is not one of those sadists who makes you read in public. (Salon 4)

 

Please read Joanne Beard’s The Fourth State of Matter and Sabrina Orah Mark’s Fuck the Bread, The Bread is Over:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter

 

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/07/fuck-the-bread-the-bread-is-over

 

 

11:00-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Patrick Newman (S)

The Art of Getting Along

How to work with your manager/agent without both of you losing your wits in the process.

(Salon 5)

 

11:00-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Grace Doyle (F/NF)

Writing for the Commercial Fiction Market

You’re not out to win the Pulitzer…you just want to reach as many readers as humanly possible. What goes into writing and publishing a bonafide bestseller in today’s world? We’ll find out.

 

(Salon 6)

 

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Carmen Williams (S)

Hispanic Characters in Screenplays

Come learn about key elements for writing realistic and complex Hispanic characters for the 21stCentury. We will explore different topics and general guidelines to create a protagonist that will more fully represent the nonhomogeneous group that is the Hispanic population.

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Ashley Granillo (F)

Writing from the Intersections

Writing what you know can be a difficult task and getting an audience to accept your truths as authentic and relatable is difficult especially if you are a BIPOC woman at the intersections. In this talk, we will explore how BIPOC women authors break the standardized expectations of craft by writing from a culturally emotional place that defies language, genre, and the “universal” experience.

 

8:00: Evening Program: Screening of Brian Asman’s award-winning short horror spectacular REEL TROUBLE.

 

 

Wednesday  December  7

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00 Graduate Lecture: Tyrena Williams (F)

Black Skin Matters: Black Writers and Colorism

I was seven years old and my auntie brought my cousins over to play. One was of lighter skin like my auntie, while my other cousin took after my uncle whose skin tone was darker. A mixed-race friend (White and Black) wanted to join us, but my auntie intervened and stopped my cousins from accompanying me. When asked why, she said it was because her darker skinned daughter wouldn’t fit in. Later, I asked my mom what my auntie meant by not fitting in.  She said because my auntie had a complex about the difference in her daughters' skin tones, and felt they would be put at odds if they were around other light skinned children, like my mixed-race friend. I didn’t understand it then, but what my auntie exercised that day was colorism. Some Black writers address the dilemma of colorism directly using the mirror strategy—that is, they confront the issue by explaining it, and exploring its effects within the Black  community.  Others take a different approach-- they simply gloss over the issue. In this lecture, I will discuss colorism as a theme in some Black writers’ body of work. I will also demonstrate the origins of this theme, how it developed, and how it’s viewed and expressed in the postmodern era.

 

9:30-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Jennie Dunham (All)

Crafting the Perfect Query

You’ve finished your book. You need an agent. You need to write a query letter that will get your dream agent to sit up and take notice. How on earth do you do that? Jennie Dunham reveals all!

(Salon 5)

 

9:30-10:30: Faculty Lecture: David Ulin (NF)

The World is Chaos, But Narrative Requires Shaping: Nonfiction that Blurs the Line

Genre can be a useful rubric but it isn’t always enough. This is particularly true in nonfiction writing, where we write directly from our own experience, with a certain expectation (on readers’ parts, at any rate) that what we are presenting is “true.” Yet what is truth in a subjective universe? How do we address its complexities. In this seminar, we will consider the problem of truth and narrative, using handout readings to discuss such issues as memory, extrapolation, conjecture, and autofictional technique as among the many tools a nonfiction writer can bring to the work.

(Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Faculty Lecture: Mark Haskell Smith (All)

AMA with MHS

I've been a professional writer for 35 years and have worked in multiple areas.  So ask me anything about fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, essays, reviews, op/eds, writing best practices and process, how to get an agent, publishing, publicity, and the writing life.  Talk will include tips on physical fitness and income tax prep for creatives. (Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: John Schimmel & Joshua Malkin (S)

A Close Examination: Get Out and Moonlight

We’ll take a look at scenes from both films to figure out just how the writers were able to make them work on the page…and on the screen. (Salon 5)

 

12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15: Main Genre Workshops

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Jack Novak (PL)

Play the -Linear Writing Non-

Cause and effect, chronologicality, and even narrative itself are overrated! Embrace the subjective. But don’t be pretentious about it. In this talk we’ll explore and experience a different way of composing drama. 

 

5:10 Graduate Lecture: McKinnon Powell (S)

The Critical First Five Pages and How to Magically Open Your Script 

The first five pages of any script are very important to hooking the audience, but in the magical realism genre it is even more important to set up the reader for what is to come.  Through the lens of magical realism master, Guillermo del Toro, we will look at how he opens two of his greatest films.  Then we will take a look at another film from the magical realism genre that does not quite get the job done.  With the fast-paced world of today and the ease of clicking back and forth between content providers, it is more important than ever to make your mark with the opening of your script.   

 

 

Dark Night

 

 

Thursday December 8

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-9:30 Graduate Lecture: Brady Huffman (S)

What Makes A Successful MCU Installment

Through examining Phase 1-3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we will explore the possible reasons for why some MCU films succeed and others aren't as successful.

 

9:30-11:00 Faculty Lecture: Elizabeth Crane (NF)

Writing Sex in Memoir, aka My Least Favorite Thing to Write: how to do it well, how to do it badly, how to avoid it entirely but make it seem like you didn’t! In this lecture we will look closely at some great examples, some not great examples, we will squirm, and we will write our own! (Salon 4)

 

 

9:30-11:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Lia Langworthy (S)

Winning a TV Writing Fellowship to Jumpstart Your Career: Get the inside scoop on landing one of the big six coveted TV fellowship programs that help writers break into the TV writing business. One of the best ways to launch a T.V. writing career is to participate in a T.V. writing program from one of the major television networks. These programs typically give you a period of intense instruction and pair you with working writers and producers. The goal is to launch your writing career, and give the network a new, qualified, writer. This workshop is taught by a WGA writer who won three TV writing fellowships (Fox Diversity, ABC Daytime TV Fellowship and Writer's Bootcamp Diversity Fellowship). In this workshop you'll learn about the fellowship process from application to participation. You'll also learn which program is right for you and how the many fellowships differ. In the ever changing TV writing landscape, TV fellowships still remain a great way to launch your TV writing career. (Salon 5)

 

9:30-11:00 Faculty Lecture: Mickey Birnbaum (PL)

OuLiPo for Playwrights  

Since its inception in Paris in 1960, the OuLiPo literary movement―ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or workshop for potential literature―has continually expanded our sense of what writing can do. It’s produced, among many other marvels, a detective novel without the letter e; an epic poem structured by the Parisian métro system; a story in the form of a tarot reading; and a suite of sonnets that would take almost 200 million years to read completely. Now, we’ll explore the relevance of OuLiPo to playwriting. Through discussion of key OuLiPo texts and games, we’ll discover new ways to approach dramatic structure, and we’ll try out OuLiPo exercises too, a fun and effective way to jumpstart the writing process. (Salon 6)

 

11:00-12:00: Faculty Lecture: Alex Espinoza, Ivy Pochoda, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Bill Rabkin (All)

How Did You Write That?

In this talk, we’ll take a look at short pieces of work from each writer to figure out how, exactly, they wrote what they wrote. What were they thinking? How did they get that onto the page? Is this how it always looked? We’ll break it down from thought to execution. (Salon 6)

 

11:00-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Casey Dolan (All)

Branding Yourself

How you look online is a huge part of creating a brand for yourself. In this talk with marketing guru Casey Dolan, we’ll look at excellent websites that sell you and your work before a single page is ever read. (Salon 5)

 

12:00-1:00        Lunch

 

1:00-2:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Edan Lepucki (F/N)

Just Do It (Again): Notes on Revision

 What does it mean to revise a book-length manuscript, and how can we get better at this essential stage of writing? In this lecture, Edan Lepucki will discuss what she’s learned from helping her students rework their books, as well as the lessons gleaned from revising her own forthcoming novel. This presentation will include a lecture, writing exercises, and discussion.

(Salon 6)

 

1:00-2:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Bridget Smith (All)

Trend Map

What’s are people writing? What are people selling? What have we seen enough of, thank you very much? We’ll get an agent’s-eye view on what’s happening in publishing. (Salon 5)

 

 

2:30:  Graduate Lecture: Emily Schleiger (S)

Elements of a Great “Family Dysfunction” Dramedy

"Dramedy” is a word used over the last thirty-five years to describe films and television shows that blend comedy and drama. There’s nothing more dramatic and comedic than family, am I right? Let’s look at some great “family dysfunction”-centered dramedies that can teach us how to get that emotional mix right.  Maybe you’ll be inspired to use real-life family conflict as a starting point for your next screenplay.

 

3:10: Graduate Lecture: Luree Scott (F)

Believing the Impossible: How Genre Secretly Gets You to Play Make Believe

When reading a fantasy novel, have you ever wondered why you’ve become so attached to the talking unicorn, or why the robot in that new sci-fi thriller is so cool and relatable? Why are you scared out of your mind while reading that gory haunted house story? The answer is easier than you thought. Craftier. There are a few narrative tricks you might have never noticed. In this lecture, we’ll be looking at the ins and outs of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror to see what compels us to read forward. We’ll be discussing some familiar elements of craft such as dialogue, point of view, setting, structure, and world building to hopefully give us a better understanding of the ways writers make magic on the page. Quite literally. 

 

3:45: Graduate Lecture: Adam Zemel (F)

Extended Adolescence: Coming-of-Age Novels Across Genre

You see coming-of-age novels as you want to see them. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what Adam learned and will share in this lecture is that each one can be a literary ghost story, a young adult contemporary, a domestic Ozarks crime thriller, a Western, a young adult speculative, and a post-literary eco-gothic climate dystopia. Does that answer your question? Sincerely, a comparative-literary exploration of coming-of-age novels. We'll only meet once, but it will change our lives forever.

 

4:15: Graduate Lecture: Joe Waugh (F)

Postmodern Progress or Glossy Gimmick

In this talk we'll explore examples of effective vs. ineffective postmodern literature.  Maybe together we can save the future of literature!

 

8:00 Evening Program: Panel: The Best Things In the World – Your faculty tell you the best books, essays, poems, plays, movies, and TV shows of the year, that you must absolutely consume before you go about living your lives. And then they fight about it.

 

Friday December 9

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Ahmed Best (S)

The Emotional Engine

Every work needs it. We’ll discuss it.

(Salon 5)

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: HelenKay Dimon/Darby Kane (F)

The 15 Year Overnight Success

In this conversation, we’ll track the career of HelenKay Dimon from writing category romance…to being one of the biggest thriller writers on the planet…and what it’s like to be two people at once. (Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Heather Scott Partington (All)

Authority in Reviews and Critical Papers

Who are you to say what you think about a book, a film, or a piece of art? It's someone's life's work, and you're just... you. The truth is that you're exactly the right person to write criticism. We'll explore the idea of critical authority and discover what makes each of us a worthy critic. You'll learn how to identify your own critical perspective, and get past the fear that tells you to keep quiet. (Salon 5)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Patrick O’Neil (NF)

Are You Talkin’ To Me? The How and Why, and the Do and Don’ts for Dialogue in Creative Nonfiction Memoir.

Does your dialogue suck? So did mine when I first started. It was stiff, lifeless, boring—about as memorable as a bank transaction—and I found myself avoiding it. But without dialogue our creative nonfiction memoirs would just be long blocks of narrative text describing action and implying what was being said. With it our “characters” and “scenes” come alive and when our dialogue flows like a “real conversation” it adds the illusion of reality to our writing. However, if we use too much it becomes too conversational and we might as well be writing a play. Yet there is a happy medium in between, and there is also what works for whatever given piece of writing we are working on. In other words, there are rules, and there are rules to be broken. In this seminar we’ll discuss how to write kick ass dialogue through examining what works, what doesn’t, word choices, less is better, cadence, rhythm, and the dreaded punctuational gymnastics when writing dialect. I can even help you recreate that difficult talk with your mom that you've repressed for the last ten years. (Salon 6)

 

Lunch

 

1:15-4:15 Main Genre Workshops

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Emily St. Martin (NF)

Say Yes to Drugs! . . . in Literature

Drug literature is just as crucial to society as stories about love, loss, family, grief, and anything else that consumes or afflicts us along the way.  In this lecture we’ll discuss the ways in which drug lit is much more than a one-trick pony–it’s humanity and depravity, addiction and relief, self-indulgence and pain, suffering and need. Sometimes drug use is just drug use—we’ll look at some of those stories too. BYOD!

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Jeanne Van Blankenstein (F)

Small Towns in Fiction and the Characters That Spring From Them

In this talk we'll explore characters as products and symbols of their environments as well as being agents for change within the confines of those environments.

 

Dark Night 2: The Spawning

 

(It’s the alumni party, so you get the night off, too! To prepare to be alumni!)

 

Saturday December 10

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00: Graduating Student Meeting: ALL STUDENTS GRADUATING Spring 2023 MUST ATTEND  (Salon 6)

 

9:30-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Luke Yankee (PL)

The Art of Writing for the Theatre

The elements of successful playwriting – character development, strong storytelling and the tools of script analysis - can crossover into many other genres. In this workshop, playwright, director, memoir writer (and UCR alum)  Luke Yankee will share some of the best ways to use these elements, including video excerpts from interviews with Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning playwrights, lyricists and critics, including Marsha Norman, David Henry Hwang, Octavio Solis, David Zippel and Ben Brantley. (Salon 5)

 

9:30-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Samantha Dunn (NF)

This is the Voice

"Finding your voice" is one of the old saws you're bound to hear in writing workshops. But what does it really mean – and how do you know when you've found it? Better yet, where do you even look for it? (Salon 4)

 

10:30-11:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Marya Mazor (PL)

How to Think Like a Director

In this participatory workshop, participants will be introduced to the art of directing for the stage, from collaborating with actors, to developing a visual and auditory approach. These tools will be relevant to both stage and screen directing. (Salon 6)

 

11:30 Private Graduate Lunch

 

11:30: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops

 

 

Dinner

 

7:30: Graduation & Farewell Party in Grand Ballroom

Presentation of Graduates

Desserts, drinks, and dancing!

 

Sunday, December 11

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00am-12:00: Main Genre Workshops & Final Meetings

 

12:00: Lunch….and then why don’t you come back in June! We’ll have class in the Lazy River.

Guest MFA Faculty

 

 

Brian Asman is a writer, actor, director, and producer from San Diego, CA. He’s the author of the hit indie novella Man, Fuck this House (recently optioned by a major streaming service). His other books include I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today from Eraserhead Press, Neo Arcana, Nunchuck City and Jailbroke from Mutated Media, and the forthcoming Return of the Living Elves. He’s recently published short stories in Pulp Modern, Kelp, Welcome to the Splatter Club and Lost Films, and comics in Tales of Horrorgasm. A film he co-wrote and produced, A Haunting in Ravenwood, is available now on DVD and VOD from Breaking Glass. His short “Reel Trouble” won Best Short Film at Gen Con 2022 and Best Horror Short at the Indie Gathering. Brian holds an MFA from UCR-Palm Desert. He’s represented by Dunham Literary, Inc. Max Booth III is his hype man. Find him on social media (@thebrianasman) or his website www.brianasmanbooks.com

 

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a first generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, California, who fondly remembers weekends spent haciendo travesuras with her cousins around her grandparents’ Boyle Heights home. Her debut collection, Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016), was written while living in a house in the shadows of Dodger Stadium in historic Solano Canyon. Most recently, Bermejo was chosen as the first “Poet in the Parks” resident at Gettysburg National Military Park in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and the National Parks Arts Foundation. She is a former Steinbeck fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women grantee, Los Angeles Central Library ALOUD newer poet, and her poetry received 3rd place in the 2015 Tucson Festival of Books literary awards. She has received residencies with Hedgebrook and the Ragdale Foundation and is a proud member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop. Bermejo is a cofounder of Women Who Submit, a literary organization using social media and community events to empower women and non-binary authors to submit work for publication. She received a BA in Theatre Arts from California State University, Long Beach and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She facilitates online and in-person workshops in poetry and submission strategies with UCLA Extension, Antioch University Los Angeles, Los Angeles Writing Classes as well as being available for classroom visits for university, high school, and junior high communities. She is a workshop coordinator for teen art classes with ArtworxLA.

 

 

Ahmed Best is a Futurist, Writer, Director, Producer, Actor, Musician, and Host. Ahmed was a founding member of the acid jazz group The Jazzhole and starred in the Broadway musical Stomp. He then he went on to be the first CGI lead character in a motion picture starring as Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. A graduate of the the American Film Institute, Ahmed is an Ovation Award, LACC Award, Stage Raw Award, and an ANNIE award winner. He’s the Executive Producer of The DL Chronicles(GLAAD award winner for Best Anthology series) Co- Director of the web series Bandwagon, Creator writer and director for the web series This Can’t Be My Life, and the Sci-fi comedy The Nebula. He is a senior fellow at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC and is the Echo Theater Company's associate artistic director.

 

 

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, including House of Hearts and The Thorn Necklace: Healing Through Writing and the Creative Process and many bestselling and award-winning novels, including The Elementals, Beyond the Pale Motel, Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books, Necklace of Kisses, and Roses and Bones and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly.Her work has been translated into Italian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese. Francesca has also published stories, poems, essays and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock, The Fairy Tale Review and Rattle among others. In addition to writing, Francesca is a beloved and devoted teacher. She was named Writer-in-Residence at Pasadena City College in 2014 and in 2018-19 became a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Redlands where she was a finalist for Professor of the Year award. Currently she teaches fiction at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, and privately in Los Angeles where she was born and raised. She holds an MFA from UC Riverside.

 

Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission, forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 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. AdamDeutsch.com

 

 

HelenKay Dimon/Darby Kane is a former divorce lawyer turned bestselling author of more than 40 Romantic Suspense, Contemporary, and Erotic Romance books and novellas. Her books have been featured in various national and international venues and she has had two books named Red-Hot Reads in Cosmo magazine. She is a four-time RITA® Award finalist in romantic suspense (for Mr. and Mr. Smith, Facing Fire, Guarding Mr. Fine and The Fixer) and is 2018 RITA® Award winner for The Fixer. She’s also a Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award winner in romantic suspense for The Fixer. In addition to writing, HelenKay is Chair of the Policy Advisory Committee of the Romance Writers of America and frequently teaches workshops and classes on fiction writing and romance writing. She lives in San Diego where she is (or should be) working on her next series but might be streaming a show on Netflix. Just in case you were wondering…HelenKay is her real name. Yes, that’s a capital K in the middle, all one word and no space (blame her two grandmothers – Helen and Kay). Dimon is pronounced Die-Mon. HelenKay is also…Darby Kane who is the #1 international bestselling author of domestic suspense. Her first two thrillers, Pretty Little Wife and The Replacement Wife, have been optioned for television and featured in numerous venues, including The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, The New York Post, Popsugar, Refinery29, Goodreads, The Skimm, and The Huffington Post. Her new book The Last Invitation is out in December.

 

 

Casey Dolan is a digital consultant, web designer, and radio host living and working in the Palm Springs, California Area.

 

Grace Doyle is the associate publisher of Amazon Publishing. Her bestselling authors include Patricia Cornwell, Robert Dugoni, Barry Eisler, Dean Koontz, Lee Goldberg, Kendra Elliott, Melinda Leigh, and countless others.

 

Jennie Dunham has been a literary agent in New York, New York since May 1992. In August 2000 she founded Dunham Literary, Inc. She represents literary fiction and non-fiction for adults and children. Her clients have had both critical and commercial success. Books she has represented have appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers in adult hardcover fiction, children’s books, and children’s book series. Her clients have won numerous awards including: New York Times Best Illustrated Book, The Schneider Family Award, Boston Globe Horn Book Honor, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. She has been a member of AALA (American Association of Literary Agents, formerly AAR) since 1993. She served on the Program Committee and was Program Committee Director for several years. She was also a member of the Electronic Committee. She started her career at John Brockman Associates and then Mildred Marmur Associates. She was employed by Russell & Volkening for 6 years before she left to found Dunham Literary, Inc. She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Anthropology and .has a master's degree in Social Work from New York University (although she only practices with characters on the page).

 

 

Samantha Dunn is senior editor of engagement/premium content of the OC Register and the former executive editor of Coast Magazine. She is the author of several books including the novel Failing Paris, a finalist for the PEN Center Fiction, and the bestselling memoirs, Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life and Faith in Carlos Gomez. Dunn’s writing has been featured in many publications including O the Oprah Magazine, Ms., Glamour and the Los Angeles Times. Her work is anthologized in a number of places, including the short story anthology, Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles, which she co-edited. Dunn is a member of the Writers Guild of America and teaches memoir writing at Chapman University. Also, she directs Writers Camp founded by Cheryl Strayed at the Esalen Institute and is on the faculty of the literary nonprofit begun by Pam Houston, WritingxWriters.

 

Chris Fields is a Los Angeles based director, actor and teacher. As founding Artistic Director of The Echo, he’s produced, to date, 63 Los Angeles premieres, 48 of which were world premieres, and of those, 28 were commissioned. As a director, most recently: the Los Angeles Premiere of Miki Johnson’s AMERICAN FALLS, and the World Premieres of Tommy Smith’s FUGUE and FIREMEN He won the LADCC award for direction for FIREMEN as well as winning the LA Weekly Award for Best Comedy Direction for his production of Gary Lennon’s A FAMILY THING. Additionally, among many others: the world premiere of Kate Robin’s WHAT THEY HAVE at South Coast Repertory, the Los Angeles Premiere of Jessica Goldberg’s BODY POLITIC which received four Ovation nominations, the World Premiere of THE ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH OF PADRAIC DUFFY, the Los Angeles Premieres of Kate Robin’s ANON and Sarah Ruhl’s MELANCHOLY PLAY, the World Premiere of Paul Zimmerman’s PIGS AND BUGS, and the World Premiere of EAT ME by Jacqueline Wright, which was nominated for six LA Weekly Awards including Best Director. His work in film includes his adaptation of Neal Bell’s OUT THE WINDOW, which he produced and directed, and his recent short SUNNSLOPE, which was awarded Best New York Film at the New York Film and Video Festival and nominated for Best in Fest at the Great Lakes Film Festival. In 1995, he founded the Ojai Playwrights Conference, serving as Artistic Director until 2000. While there, he was responsible for bringing David Lindsay-Abaire, Adam Rapp, Kira Obolensky, Deborah Jo Laufer, Neena Beber and Ari Roth, to Southern California as well as work-shopping BETTY’S SUMMER VACATIION by Christopher Durang and David Ives’ POLISH JOKE, among many others. As an actor, he has appeared on Broadway in James Duff’s HOMEFORNT with Carroll O’Connor and Frances Sternhagen directed by Michael Attenborough, off Broadway in Gary Sinise’s original Steppenwolf production of ORPHANS, Michael Greif’s MACHINAL at both Naked Angels and The Public and the world premiere of David Ives’ WORDS WORDS WORDS at The Manhattan Punchline, to name just a few. Regionally, he’s worked at The Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, The Philadelphia Drama Guild, The Rep Theatre of St. Louis, and The Missouri Repertory Theatre and was a proud member of the acting ensemble for Lloyd Richards at The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. On film: ALIEN3, THE GAME, FIGHT CLUB and ZODIAC for David Fincher as well as JURASSIC PARK, APOLLO 13 and STARGATE among others. He’s also been in numerous hour, half-hour, mini-series and mow’s on television. Chris was an adjunct professor of drama at SUNY Purchase and maintains a workshop in Los Angeles

 

 

Don Handfield was the co-creator and Executive Producer of History Channel's drama series Knightfall and producer of critically-acclaimed films The Founder starring Michael Keaton, and Kill The Messenger starring two-time Academy-Award nominated actor Jeremy Renner.

Handfield is currently writing an original scripted comedy series for Paramount + and adapting the graphic novel UNIKORN for Stampede Ventures with Debbie Berman (editor of Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Homecoming) attached to direct. Handfield is a partner and board member of top-indie comic label Scout Comics and his original comic series The Rift was optioned by Steven Spielberg and produced as the season finale for the Apple + reboot of Amazing Stories.  Handfield is a fellow of the WGA Showrunner Training Program, the Film Independent's Director's Lab and was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine.

 

 

Vanessa Hua is an award-winning, best-selling author and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, A River of Stars, was named to the Washington Post and NPR’s Best Books of 2018 lists, and has been called a "marvel" by O, The Oprah Magazine, and "delightful" by The Economist. Her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities,  a New York Times Editors' Choice, received an Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature and was a finalist for a California Book Award, and a New American Voices Award.  Her  novel, Forbidden City—called “magnificent” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “new classic” by the San Francisco Chronicle,  and “masterful” by the Washington Post— is a national bestseller. For more than two decades, she has been writing about Asia and the diaspora, filing stories from China, Burma, Panama, South Korea, and Ecuador. She began her career at the Los Angeles Times before heading east to the Hartford Courant. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among other publications. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she also received a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan literary award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing.  She is a graduate of Stanford University and UC Riverside's MFA program. Other achievements include the Dr. Suzanne Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice coverage; the Asian American Journalists Association’s National Journalism Award — online/broadcast, print, and radio; the Society of Professional Journalists,  the James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the San Francisco Press Club Greater Bay Area Journalism Award, San Francisco Press Club, and Best of the West. She was the Featured Literary Artist at APAture, an Asian American arts festival in San Francisco, and her short story collection was El Cerrito's pick for One City, One Book. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Guernica,  The Sun, and elsewhere. She received an Emerging Writer Fellowship from Aspen Words,  a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,  and a writer's residency at Hedgebrook, among other honors.  She has taught at the  University of San Francisco, Sewanee Writers’ Workshop,  Aspen Autumn Words., Warren Wilson MFA program, Writers’ Grotto, Hedgebrook, Writer’s Winter Break,  Community of Writers , Tin House Workshop,  Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Rooted & Written, Kearny Street Workshop, and elsewhere.

 

Toni Ann Johnson is the winner of the 2021 Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction with her linked collection Light Skin Gone to Waste, forthcoming on October 15, 2022, by UGA Press. Roxane Gay selected the book for the prize and is also editing. Johnson’s novella Homegoing was a semi-finalist for the William Faulkner Wisdom Award in fiction. It won Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest in 2020 and was released in May of 2021. The novel Remedy For a Broken Angel was released in 2014 and earned Johnson a 2015 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. In 1998 Johnson won the Christopher Award and the Humanitas Prize for her screenplay “Ruby Bridges,” the Disney/ABC movie and true story of the young girl who integrated into the New Orleans Public School system. In 2004 Johnson won a second Humanitas Prize for her screenplay “Crown Heights” (Showtime), also a true story. The film examined the relationship between a Hasidic Jewish teen and an African-American teen that came together to form a hip hop group in the wake of the 1991 Crown Heights Riots. In 2000, Johnson wrote the Lifetime movie “The Courage to Love,” starring Vanessa L. Williams, based on the life of Henriette Delille, a free woman of color in mid-19th Century New Orleans, who became one of the first nuns of African descent. In 2002, she wrote the television pilot “Save The Last Dance,” produced for Fox Television and based on the hit feature film, on which she was a participating writer. Johnson also co-wrote the 2008 feature, “Step Up 2: The Streets,” the second installment of the international Step Up franchise. The Fountainhead Theater Company produced Johnson’s stage play Gramercy Park is Closed to the Public in Los Angeles in 1994 with Johnson in the lead role of Luna. The play subsequently received a main-stage production by The New York Stage and Film Company at Vassar College in 1999 and starred Nicole Ari Parker, David Warshofsky, and Eddie Cahill.  She co-wrote the play “Here In My Father’s House” along with Leslie Lee, Ellen Cleghorne, Cheryl Lane, Zelda Patterson, and Jewel Brimage. It was directed by DouglasTurner Ward, produced Off-Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company, and starred, James Pickens Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson. Johnson, along with the other participating women writers also appeared in the production. In 2013, Johnson began publishing short stories based on her experience as a person of color, growing up in Monroe, New York, which at the time was a conservative town with few people of color. The stories examine race and class and have appeared in Callaloo, Hunger Mountain, Vida Review, The Coachella Review, The Emerson Review, Aunt Chloe: A Journal of Artful Candor, Elohi Gadugi Journal, Arlijo Journal, Red Fez, Serving House Journal, Soundings Review, Xavier Review, the Reading Out Loud podcast, and The Missouri Review’s Miller Aud-Cast. She won the 2021 Miller Audio Prize for prose with her reading of her short story “Time Travel.” Johnson holds a BFA in Drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She’s an alumna of the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab and the Prague Summer Program For Writers. She was a 2016 Callaloo Writer’s Workshop Fellow, and in 2018, Johnson was a participant in the One Story Summer Conference. In 2017, Johnson joined the University of Southern California faculty, where she taught screenwriting to undergraduates and graduate students in the School of Cinematic Arts through 2020. In the spring of 2022, she joined the faculty of Antioch University Los Angeles where she teaches fiction and screenwriting.

 

 

Lia Langworthy is a published essayist, screenwriter, filmmaker and educator. She has published essays in Mutha Magazine, Angel’s Flight Literary West and Writers Resist. She has written for CBS (Young and the Restless), Showtime (Soul Food), FX (The Shield), TvOne (Media) and ABC (General Hospital). She has appeared in Rogue Theatre’s writers-who-read series, Rant & Rave, sharing her original narrative non-fiction. She appeared in Survivors, a Stand Up 2 Cancer short film shot by Errol Morris. In 2018, Lia was a semi-finalist for Universal’s Writing Program and a semi-finalist for Imagine Impact. Lia attened UC Berkeley (BS) and UC Riverside (MFA). Lia currently has several film and TV projects in development. She is a professor of screenwriting at Toronto Metropolitan University.

 

Edan Lepucki is the author of the novella If You’re Not Yet Like Me and the novels California and Woman No. 17. California debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller  List and was a #1 bestseller on the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers lists. California was a fall 2014 selection of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program. Edan and Stephen Colbert are now besties. Woman No. 17 received rave reviews from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, and was #3 on Entertainment Weekly’s Must List. People Magazine’s books editor Kim Hubbard selected Woman No. 17 for the Book of the Month Club. It was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, PopSugar, and The Maine Edge. Edan created the popular Instagram Mothers Before, and she has edited a book inspired by the project, published by Abrams Press in 2020. Edan is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, The Cut, and McSweeney’s, among others. The Los Angeles Times named her a Face to Watch for 2014. She is contributing editor to The Millions and the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles.

 

 

 

Chris Levinson is a writer and executive producer whose credits include Party of Five, Charmed, Dawson’s Creek, Law & Order, Law & Order:SVU, Tyrant, and many more, including several pilots.

 

 

Sara Marchant received her MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert. Her work has been published by The Manifest Station, Every Writer’s Resource, Full Grown People, Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Coachella Review, Writers Resist, East Jasmine Review, ROAR, and Desert Magazine. Her work has been anthologized in  All the Women in My Family Sing, and by Running Wild Press.  Her novella, The Driveway Has Two Sides, was published by Fairlight Books.  Her memoir, Proof of Loss, was published by Otis Books. Her essay Haunted recent was named a Notable Essay by Best American Essays. Long ago and far away, she worked at The San Diego Natural History Museum in their Bi-national Education Department utilizing her BA in Latin American History. In her spare time, she teaches Critical Thinking and Writing at Mt. San Jacinto College to the new generation that she hopes will someday save our society from its nihilistic impulses. She lives in the high desert of Southern California with her husband, two dogs, two horses, a goat, and five chickens. She is working on a memoir reflecting upon her experience as Mexican-Jewish woman in our current political hellscape. Sara is a founding editor of Writers Resist. 

 

Marya Mazor is an award winning and critically acclaimed director of theatre & film. Mazor’s February 2020 production of Fun Home won the Ovation Award for Best Production of a Musical. She also recently directed the web series Sophie in Hollywood (coming soon to Amazon Prime and Now Streaming on Asian American Movies). Her productions have received multiple LA Times Critic's Pick designations, Ovation Award Nominations, and Stage Raw Award Nominations. She directed Donald Margulies' The Model Apartment for The Geffen Playhouse, Tribes at The Chance Theater (OC Register Best Play 2017) and The Rescued at The Road Theater Company (Stage Raw Award Nominee), as well as Ivy & Bean at South Coast Repertory, Out of Our Father's House for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, That Pretty Pretty... or the Rape Play at Son of Semele, Mad Forest at the Open Fist, The English Bride at the Road, and The Goat (OC Weekly Best Play). She also directed a Broadway scale Aladdin for the Disney Cruise Lines. Her AFI Directing Workshop for Women short film The Winged Man was lauded at festivals worldwide including ComiCon and Rhode Island International. Marya was a founding Artistic Director of Voice & Vison, a theatre developing the voices of women and girls in New York. She is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts TCG Fellowship and holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Marya has taught at USC, Pepperdine University, Fordham University, and Chapman University among others.

 

Robert Mitas is a film and TV producer and screenwriter. Robert ran Furthur Films, the production company of Academy Award-winning actor/producer Michael Douglas from 2010-2017. During his tenure at Furthur, Robert was responsible for development, production, and delivery of all film and television projects. He is the executive producer of Ratched on Netflix and previously was the producer of Flatliners and executive producer of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. He is currently Head of Originals for Voyage Media an innovative production company, incubating client IP for film, television, podcast and all media.

 

 

Patrick Newman is a manager at Mosaic Media Group.

 

Patrick O’Neil is the author of the memoirs Anarchy At The Circle K (Punk Hostage Press, 2022), Gun, Needle, Spoon (Dzanc Books, 2015), and Hold-Up (13e Note Editions, 2013). He is the co-author of two instructional writing manuals, Writing Your Way to Recovery: How Stories Can Save Our Lives (Independent Press, 2021), with the author James Brown. And The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, 2022), for PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing Program. In 1978 O’Neil was a 19-year-old film major at the San Francisco Art Institute when the Sex Pistols played Winterland. Two years later he graduated with a minor drug habit and signed on as a roadie for the seminal punk bands Dead Kennedys and T.S.O.L. He eventually worked his way up the food chain to road manager for Subhumans, Flipper, The Dickies, and Dead Kennedys. In 1986 O'Neil hung up his tour jacket and left town for New York City and Managua, Nicaragua, only to eventually returning to the music industry working stage in L.A. for Goldenvoice Productions. In 1991 he was kicked off the first Lollapalooza tour for being "more loaded than Perry Farrell" and subsequently quit to be a full-time drug addict. After years of heroin addiction, he turned to crime to support his habit, got busted, and was convicted on numerous counts of armed bank robbery. Getting clean off drugs in 2001 he started working as a drug and alcohol counselor and in 2016 California Governor Brown awarded him a Governor’s Pardon. O’Neil holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. He has taught writing in numerous correctional facilities, universities, and institutions, and continues to work for prison reform.

 

Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic.  She lives in Elk Grove, California with her husband and two kids. Her criticism and interviews have appeared in major newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, the Star Tribune, and Paste Magazine, as well as top literary publications such as The Believer, The National Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, The Millions, On the Seawall, The Nervous Breakdown, Entropy, Kirkus, and Literary Hub. She is a contributor to Alta Magazine and the inaugural Critic-in-Residence for UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program. She is currently a board member and Vice President of the Emerging Critics program for the National Book Critics Circle. In 2017, Heather was awarded one of seven inaugural emerging critic fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle. Her nonfiction, journalism, and features have appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Las Vegas Weekly, Sacramento News & Review, Electric Literature, and Goodreads, among others. Heather’s interview of author Yann Martel was included in the paperback edition of his novel, The High Mountains of Portugal. Heather is the former book reviews editor of The Coachella Review and has appeared as a guest on Literary Disco and KCOD’s Open Book. A classically trained dancer, Heather’s pre-writing life included decades of ballet and contemporary dance. She performed as an apprentice to Sacramento Ballet, and was a company member of CORE Contemporary Dance. Heather earned her Associate professional certificate in Cecchetti Classical Ballet from the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. Since 2002, Heather has been teaching in the Elk Grove Unified School District, where she has served at various points as a dance teacher, English teacher, Independent Study Teacher, AVID teacher, Performing Arts Department Chair, and AVID Program Coordinator. Heather holds a BA in English Literature from the University of California, Davis and an MFA in Fiction from the University of California, Riverside.

 

Annmarie Sairrino is CEO of Ammo Entertainment. s an experienced international producer who has specialized in adapting Japanese creative properties for global, English-language production. She has led AMMO Entertainment since establishing the company in 2020. Ms. Sairrino began her entertainment career in 2003 with Golden Globe-winning producer Sandy Climan (THE AVIATOR) and his firm Entertainment Media Ventures. In 2012, she joined All Nippon Entertainment Works (ANEW), rising to senior vice president of development and production and serving with the company for five years. During her time with ANEW, Ms. Sairrino set up a diverse slate of projects derived from Japanese properties, including the superhero action title TIGER & BUNNY (Imagine Entertainment), the action-thriller SHIELD OF STRAW (Depth of Field), the horror-thriller GHOST TRAIN (Depth of Field, with Sonic the Hedgehog franchise screenwriters Josh Miller and Patrick Casey), the action-horror SOUL REVIVER (Bedford Falls), the dramatic horror BIRTHRIGHT (Depth of Field), the action-sci-fi GAIKING (Valhalla Entertainment), and the survival horror 6000 (Phoenix Pictures). In 2017, Ms. Sairrino left ANEW and established Akatsuki Entertainment USA, a film division of leading Japanese mobile game developer Akatsuki. While leading the company, she developed a large slate of projects and produced the feature films ROOM 203 and ROOT LETTER. Today, under the auspices of her AMMO Entertainment banner, Ms. Sairrino manages the properties and slate of projects initiated by Akatsuki Entertainment USA, and is additionally developing further adapted and original properties from across the globe. 

 

Dan Smetanka is the Senior Vice President and Editorial Director of the Catapult Book Group, which includes Counterpoint Press, for which he is Editor-in-Chief, Catapult, and Soft Skull. Books he's acquired recently include winners and finalists 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, plus countless New York Times Best Books of the Year, LA Times Best Books of the Year, USA Today Best Books of the Year, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist STARRED titles, national and international bestsellers, and so much more...all while currently corralling a motley crew of authors including Natashia Deon, Gina Frangello, Maggie Downs, Elizabeth Crane, Dana Johnson, Joan Silber, Ben Ehrenreich, Karen Bender, Elizabeth Rosner, Jaret Yates Sexton, Nawaaz Ahmed, Maria Hummel, Joe Meno, Jaime Harrison, Tod Goldberg, and many more.

 

 

Bridget Smith joined JABberwocky as an agent in May 2019. She grew up in Connecticut and graduated from Brown University with a BA in anthropology in 2010. After graduation, she interned at Don Congdon Associates, worked at a secondhand bookstore, and read submissions for Tor.com. In 2011, she started as an assistant at Dunham Literary, and she remained there as an agent for nearly eight years. In her spare time, she runs, plays Irish fiddle, and co-hosts the podcast Shipping & Handling with agent-turned-freelance-editor Jennifer Udden.

 

 

Barbara VanDenburgh is the books editor of USA Today and the former film critic of the Arizona Republic.

 

Antoine Wilson’s new novel, Mouth to Mouth, recently named one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022, is out from Avid Reader (Simon + Schuster) in the US and Canada, and from Atlantic Books in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Antoine is also the author of the novels The Interloper and Panorama City. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications. He is a contributing editor at A Public Space. He has received the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the San Fernando Valley Award for Fiction, and has been a finalist for The National Magazine Award, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, and the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award. He has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of California San Diego, the University of California Los Angeles Extension Writers’ Program, Stanford Continuing Studies, and the Otis School of Art and Design. Born in Montreal and raised in California and Saudi Arabia, he now lives with his family in Los Angeles.

 

Luke Yankee is a writer, director, producer, actor and teacher. He is the author of the memoir, Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart (published by Random House, with a foreword by Mary Tyler Moore).  Critics have called it “One of the most compassionate, illuminating showbiz books ever written.” His play, The Last Lifeboat is published by Dramatists Play Service and has had more than 40 productions in North America.  His other plays include The Lavender Mafia, and The Man Who Killed the Cure. His play The Jesus Hickey is the winner of the TRU Voices Award, as well as the Joel and Phyllis Ehrlich Award, given for “a socially relevant, commercially viable, new work of theatre.”  He directed the Los Angeles premiere at the Skylight Theatre, starring Harry Hamlin. Luke’s first play, A Place at Forest Lawn has been produced at several regional theatres around the country. It is the recipient of the New Noises Award as well as the Palm Springs International Playwriting Festival. It was developed in workshops in New York and Los Angeles featuring Betty White, Marion Ross, Tony Goldwyn, Marcia Cross, Barbara Rush, Pat Carroll, Frances Sternhagen, John Glover and Millicent Martin. Luke has served as the Producing Artistic Director of the Long Beach Civic Light Opera (one of the largest musical theatres in America) and the Struthers Library Theatre (an historic opera house in Northwestern Pennsylvania). He has assistant directed six Broadway plays, including The Circle starring Sir Rex Harrison, Light Up the Sky with Peter Falk, Grind starring Ben Vereen (directed by Harold Prince) and has directed and produced Off-Broadway and at regional theatres throughout the country and abroad. For several years, he wrote, directed and produced the Los Angeles Actors Fund Tony Awards gala, honoring some of the biggest names in show business, including Barbara Cook, Tim Curry, Joe Morton, Jason Alexander, June Lockhart and Theodore Bikel.  Celebrity hosts and presenters have included Sean Penn, Tommy Tune, Martin Sheen, Bryan Cranston, Kate Burton, Florence Henderson and Annie Potts. He has taught and guest directed extensively at colleges, universities and conservatories throughout the U.S. and abroad. He holds an MFA in Playwriting and Screenwriting from UC Riverside. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Cal State Fullerton and Chapman University. Luke also studied at the Juilliard School of Drama, NYU, Circle in the Square and Northwestern. His new book is The Art of Writing for Theater.

MFA Faculty

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.

 

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. His newest book is 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. 

 

 

Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of several collections of poetry including Heaven (winner of the Katherine Bakeless Nason prize), Necropolis, Harlot, and most recently, Would-Land. Her first novel, Hausfrau, was a New York Times Bestseller and has been translated into 26 languages.  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 a dozen books, including The Low Desert (named Southwest Book of the Year), Gangsterland (a finalist for the Hammett Prize), Gangster Nation, The House of Secrets (which he co-authored with Brad Meltzer), Living Dead Girl (a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and the popular Burn Notice series, three times a finalist for the Scribe Award. His books have been published in a dozen languages and around the world and were twice named a finalist for the VN international Thriller of the Year Award. His short fiction has been collected in three volumes — Simplify, which won the Other Voices Book Prize and was a finalist for the SCBA Award, Other Resort Cities, and his latest book, The Low Desert: Gangster Stories — and has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Mystery & Suspense. His nonfiction has appeared in numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal, among countless others, and has earned five Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence, while his essay “When They Let Them Bleed” was selected for Best American Essays. For his body of work, Tod was honored with the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. In addition to his work on the page, Tod is also the cohost of the podcast Literary Disco, along with Julia Pistell & Rider Strong, which has been named a top podcast by the Washington Post, The Guardian, Mashable, and even Good Housekeeping. 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. His next book, Gangsters Don’t Die, will be out in 2023.  

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.

Agam Patel is the Associate Director of both the MFA program and of the UCR Palm Desert campus and is the President of the UCR Staff Assembly. He is also on the board of directors of Lotus Outreach International, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the education, health and safety of vulnerable women and children in the developing world. He holds an MBA in Strategic Management from Alliant International University and lives in Rancho Mirage, CA with his wife and two children. 

 

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 #1 bestselling author of the novels These Women, Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and The Art of Disappearing, for which she has rightfully earned a place as one of the premier writers of crime fiction in the world, including winning or being 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 next novel, Sing Her Down, will be released this summer.

 

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 three books on writing for television, “Writing the Pilot” (2011), “Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series” (2017), 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 most recent book, the memoir Liar (Crown), was named a Spring 2016 Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick. It was singled out in the New Yorker, which wrote, “…both the smallest and the biggest pieces of his memoir fascinate,” and was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2016 by both Powell’s Bookstore and Entropy Magazine. A former instructor of the year at UCLA Extension, where he taught for nearly a decade (along with numerous other schools, conferences and MFA programs), he is also the author of four books of fiction, most recently the novel The Cost of Living (OV Books, 2013), which Cheryl Strayed said “is both drop dead gorgeous and mind-bendingly smart.” He is an Assistant Professor and Core Faculty at UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA in Writing Program. 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, as well as by writers and musicians as diverse as Lydia Yuknavitch, Jerry Stahl, Janet Fitch, Steve Almond, Jillian Lauren, Wayne Kramer, Kinky Friedman, and Steve Wynn. 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. There is a woman on Goodreads named Seattle Book Mama who called his memoir “the second worst book I have ever read.” 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, will be out in 2024.

 

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 an associate 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.