Fall Residency Schedule

December 1-10^th

 

 

 

 

 

F: Fiction

NF: Nonfiction

P: Poetry

PL: Playwriting

S: Screenwriting

 

 

*All Students Must Attend At Least 10 Lectures To Earn Credit

 

 

Breakfast & Lunch will be served on Starlight Terrace

or in Salon 4, depending upon weather

 

All Graduate Lectures are in Salon 5

 

All Evening programs are in Salon 5

 

 

 

Lectures are held in Salons 4, 5, or 6, as noted.

All guests are available for office hours. Sign-up in the office.

 

 

 

Friday, December 1

3:00 – Check In

4:00 – Faculty & Staff meeting in Salon 6

5:00 – New Student Orientation in Salon 5

*Required for New Students

6:00 – Opening celebration on Sunrise Terrace.

 

Saturday December 2

8:00 Breakfast

9:00: All Student Orientation in Salon 5

*Required for ALL students

 

10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Phoef Sutton (S) w/Bill Rabkin

Showrunning 101.

Congratulations, you’ve sold a TV show. You’ve been hired as the EP. Now what? Veteran showrunner Phoef Sutton explains  it all. (Salon 5)

 

10:30:Faculty Lecture: Mark Haskell Smith (F)

Close Read-A-Palooza!  

We'll take a forensic look at a variety of different writers and try to figure out what they're doing and how they're doing it.  World building. Creating a vibe. Introducing characters and conflict. Bringing an element of change to hook a reader. All kinds of stuff will be discussed. (Salon 4)

 

 

10:30: Faculty Lecture: Elizabeth Crane (NF)

How to create dialogue in memoir when your memory sucks:

In this conversation, we will look closely at examples of dialogue from successful memoirs for techniques you can apply to your own work. Bring a passage from your own work you’re struggling with or your professor gave you the margin note “write a scene with dialogue here” and be prepared to write and discuss!

(Salon 6)

 

1:15 Main Genre Workshops

Birnbaum -- Plumeria

Crane – Begonia

Essbaum/Roberge -- Gardenia

Iglesias – Lavender

Malkin – Hibiscus

Pochoda – Lantana

Rabkin – Jasmine

Schimmel - Iris

Smith – Primrose

Ulin -- Larkspur

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Stephanie Harvey (F)

The Adventures of Super-Meh: The Half-Assed Hero’s Journey

Writers, when we talk about a hero, what do we mean? Does he gotta be strong? Does he gotta be fast? Does he have to be fresh from the fight? Does he even have to be a “he”?  The fact of the matter is that most of the time our main character isn’t going to be a guy in a cape with a Clark Kent jawline, but rather some ordinary Joe or Jane who isn’t from another planet.  Instead, they’re from up the road and they’re not here to save the goddamn day, they’re just here to get through it.  So what if their destination isn’t Mordor but the 7-11 or the dry cleaners?  Aren’t their stories worth telling, too?  They are.  And when told well their stories are equally as meaningful and heroic and breathtaking as the stories of those single-bounding building leapers.  And when told really well, their stories are a few things that the other ones aren’t (namely: funny and poignant and recognizable—and being bulletproof isn’t a prerequisite). 

 

 

7:00: Special Evening Program: Stephen Graham Jones in conversation with Gabino Iglesias

Followed by a booksigning.

Join us for the return of former faculty member (and NYT Bestselling author) Stephen Graham Jones as he sits down with fellow horror writer Gabino Iglesias to talk all things that go bump in the night.

 

 

 

Sunday December 3

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Anne-Marie Mackay (S) w/John Schimmel

Finding Talent

A discussion with producer and senior executive Anne-Marie Mackay. Anne-Marie has had a major impact in the industry as a prolific discoverer of talent, both directors and writers. Discussion will range from what producers and directors look for to what it takes to turn a screenplay into a film.

(Salon 6)

 

9:00-10:00: Guest Faculty Lecture: Daphne Durham, BJ Robbins, & Kent Wolf (F/NF) w/Tod Goldberg

The Publishing Marketplace

A candid conversation with agents and editors about what’s hot, what’s not, and if anyone knows anything at all, ever. (Salon 5)

 

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Jacqueline McKinley (S)

The Funniest Person in the Room

Ever want to know what it's like being in a comedy writer's room? Jacqueline McKinley, Co-Executive Producer of the CBS show, "The Neighborhood" will take you through the inner workings, the expectations and positive strategies for surviving "The Room."   (Salon 4)

 

10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Gabino Iglesias (F)

Killing Puppies: How to Effectively Use Violence in Fiction

In this class we will explore the most popular types of violence in fiction and work on bringing together elements of horror, crime, and a plethora of other genres while learning to use violence as a tool to improve storytelling. We will look at some of the most common violence types in contemporary fiction—physical, emotional, and sexual—and explore their do, don'ts, and grey areas in between. We will also explore the role of empathy in violent narratives, which means we'll discuss Otherness, physicality, and other core elements of great character development. We will talk about the explosive, messy nature of violence and how to pace it to serve our writing while also looking at the role of language and studying the violence formula and our power—and need—to subvert it.

 (Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Mickey Birnbaum (PL)

Breaking the Fourth Wall  

We love it when plays and movies shatter objective reality--at least, when they do it well. Direct address to the audience, voice-over, narration, and other theatrical techniques can add humor, complexity, and depth to dramatic work, but when badly done, they take us out of the story. Through playwriting examples and film clips, we'll examine ways in which contemporary playwrights and filmmakers have successfully broken the fourth wall to create memorable and unique plays and films. You'll come away with a greater understanding of how to use these techniques in your own work. 

(Salon 5)

 

 

 

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops

Birnbaum – Plumeria  

Crane – Begonia

Essbaum – Gardenia

Iglesias -- Lavender

Malkin – Hibiscus

Pochoda -- Lantana

Rabkin – Jasmine

Roberge – Salon 8

Schimmel – Iris

Smith -- Primrose

Ulin – Larkspur

 

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Allie Talavera (PL)

Monologues: Why we write them and what makes them good.

We all know that one monologue word for word from our favorite narrative. As writers, we also know what it can feel like when a monologue falls flat. In our own work, how do we know when the time is right to express a character's want or pain? We often wonder if it's too soon or if the reader will feel anything. When carefully placed and done effectively, emotionally devastating your audience or reader can be good (rather than manipulative.) Let’s discuss how monologues function as beats of narrative catharsis to express the speaker’s wants and how to portray that in your work. 

 

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Shane Elizabeth (NF)

The Seeker vs. The Dependent:  Drug writing versus addiction memoir, and how both paths lead to spiritual awakening.

Is it a drug memoir or is it an addiction memoir? The difference comes down to two concepts. First, it’s The Seeker vs. The Dependent. The drug memoirist is The Seeker. The addiction memoirist is The Dependent. The seeker is running towards something and turns to drugs for that exploration while the dependent is running away from something and turns to drugs for that escape. The second difference between drug memoir, and more specifically what is known as Trip Lit, the sub-genre I will be referencing, and addiction memoir comes down to the very drugs themselves. In this lecture, I will be examining psychedelics vs. alcohol and how these versions of memoir differ in subject, perspective, and tone. However, they are similar in terms of their quest for consciousness, self-reflection, and one’s ability to transform and heal. Both arrive at spiritual awakening; and both, share in the power of vulnerability through their ability to document personal growth within the realms of addiction and self-actualization. 

 

Dinner

 

Special Event! A staged reading of Allie Talavera’s “Playing God” directed by Katie Gilligan

7:00: Doors

7:30: Performance

UCR Palm Desert

75080 Frank Sinatra Drive,

Palm Desert, CA 92211

 

Monday December 4

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Maret Orliss (NF)

Writing the Op-Ed for Publication

An essential part of the nonfiction writer’s tool box, the op-ed is an art unto itself. You have 800 words to make an impression that might just change the world. No pressure. We’ll look at the elements of a great op-ed in this talk with LAT Opinion Page assistant editor Maret Orliss.

  (Salon 4)

 

9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Ruth Nolan (P) 

EcoPoetry: Mapping our Way through Eco Anxiety in a Time of Climate Crises Using the Power of Poetry, Place and Consciousness

What is EcoPoetry, and why does it matter so much in a time of unfolding climate crises and growing eco anxiety? Far from being lovely odes to nature, the growing and evolving body of EcoPoetry is a powerful force in literary letters that seeks to embody interdisciplinary understanding, build on intersectional relationships between human, built and environmental ecologies, and evoke conscious enactments of environmental and social awareness and justice – through the art of poetic language and verse that aspires to impart message of hope and calls to action alongside loss and uncertainty. In this session, we will explore how the works of ecopoets Craig Santos Perez; Camille Dungy; Natalie Diaz; Ruth Nolan; Forrest Gander; Lorna Dee Cervantes and others create deeply mapped and unique eco-relationships grounded in place and precedent yet inspired by new discoveries in both the recognizable and unknown in evolving landscapes of environmental crises and social upheavals that loom up around all of us, as evoked in fresh eco-language tongues and tones. Participants in this session will also be guided to map their way into an ecopoem or two of their own using conventional and creative poetic tropes. (Salon 6)

 

9:00-10:30 Faculty Lecture: Susan Straight (F)

The Polyphonic Novel:  Writing in Multiple Points of View

Along with some of my favorite writers, Louise Erdrich, Ernest J. Gaines, Helena Maria Viramontes, and Dennis Lehane, my novels are set in complicated communities, with many characters.  How do we make our people vivid, including main and secondary characters?  How do we create dialogue and narrative voices to carry the plot or memoir forward?

(Salon 5)

 

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Heather Scott Partington (F/NF)

So You Want to Be a Critic
You’ve written some critical papers for UCR. You like that kind of thing, and now you’re ready to quit your day job to review books. Problem is, you don’t know how the job works, how much money you can make, or where to even find work. First: don’t quit your job. But please join me in this session to learn about building a critical life. Whether criticism is your vocation, your side hustle, your MFA requirement, or your barbaric yawp, it has value. I’ll teach you how to get started, how to build a career, and how to shut down the voice in your head that says you don’t have the authority. Have questions about your critical papers? I’ll answer those too.

(Salon 6)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Lilliana Winkworth (S)

Improvisation In The Writer’s Room

Second City and UCB comedian Lilliana Winkworth shows you how the secrets of improv can help you succeed in the writer’s room. Off her recent gig working on a Nick Jr. animated series, Lilliana wants to show you that whether you’re working solo on a screenplay or collaborating in the room, the tenants and improv can help you break story, enhance character arcs, and come up with an endless stream of ideas to take your script to the next level. 

 

(Salon 5)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Grace Jasmine (PL)

Musical Theatre Writing 101--or So You Want to Write a Musical? 

Have you always dreamed about opening your own show on Broadway? Do you see yourself at the Tonys giving your acceptance speech for Best New Musical, Best Book of a Musical, or Best Score? Well, before you pick out your gown or tux, this presentation will teach you:

• How to start writing your musical, the musical play form, and how to work as a book writer and/or lyricist. 
• How to find and work with composers. How a straight play varies from a musical play. 
• How to write musical form-- including how to move from an idea to the first outline and to the first draft. 
• How to write and pitch musical ideas, how to work with collaborators to move a first-draft book to a show with musical numbers. 
• How to write a song in a musical including: scansion, prosody, song spotting, and more. We will work together to write a "quickie musical number" with the participants joining in a fun improv group activity where students walk out with the basics of their first lyrics for a musical song in their hands. Students will hands-on learn to "song spot" --that is, to find the best place in their script for a song--and how to use their script as a springboard for creating lyrics.  
• Where to find resources for musical theatre writers, plus some history and examples of the best of musical theatre, and some original new works.
• How to actually get started. Where to find support, where to continue training, and how to move that show from in your head to on paper, to a reading, then a first production, a regional production, to Off-Broadway and finally, to Broadway!

The presentation will feature Broadway music and video--and be entertaining and interactive. 

(Salon 4)

 

12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15: Main Genre Workshops

 

4:30:  Graduate Lecture: Ty Landers (F)

The Rural Noir: Essential Elements and the Evolution of Southern Gothic Fiction

Writers of rural noir or any crime fiction taking place in small southern places, take the Southern gothic of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, and fuse it to the noir of Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson. Writers like Daniel Woodrell, Attica Locke, and S.A. Cosby moved the snappy dialogue and fast-moving plots of classic noir out to the country to create an evolutionary variation of the Southern gothic tradition. This lecture will examine the essential elements of each genre and explore the rural noir’s convergence of old southern beliefs and the modern disillusionment infecting the impoverished places where the stories unfold.

 

5:10 Graduate Lecture: Katherine Hinterberger (F)

It Takes More Than Happily Ever After

Remember studying literature for its arguments? To analyze elements like theme and setting and motif? Alternatively, many of us know the real reason we pick up the next book is to experience emotion, to enrich our emotional lives. What if we think of this quality as a technology that can be replicated? Come listen as we explore the literary tools of emotional evocation. Specifically, how, despite our troubled times, we can formulate authentic and resonate stories, both fictional and true, to uplift our reader’s lives and spread hope. 

 

 

Dinner

 

8:00: Evening Program: The Student Reading in the R Bar hosted by the Coachella Review

 

 

Tuesday December 5 

8:00 Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty: Megan Beatie (All)

Publicity 101

Top publicist Megan Beatie will step you through all you need to know about how to promote yourself in this crowded world.

(Salon 6)

 

9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty: Jon Lawrence Rivera (PL)

The Playwrights’ Arena & Self Producing

A candid look at the history of the Playwrights’ Arena and their centering of diverse artists as well as an intensive examination at the importance of self-producing: Where do you start? How do you partner withother people? Where do you find mentorship? We’ll answer all those questions and more.

 (Salon 5)

 

9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty: Katherine MacDonald (S)

HOW TO WRITE A MARKETABLE MOVIE 

In the current landscape of the entertainment industry where there are endless options to watch, stream and binge, Marketing has become crucially important. The marketing teams now have significant impact on what gets bought, made and greenlit at the studios and streamers. In this talk, I'll draw on my twenty years of experience as a studio marketing executive to show you how they will look at your script, what they want to see in a project and what small changes you can make for big impact. Having a highly marketable script will give you a major advantage in this competitive industry - this talk will show you how!

(Salon 4)

 

 

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty: Grace Doyle (F/NF) w/Tod Goldberg

From Acceptance to the Shelf

How does a book become a book? In this talk, we’ll go from acceptance to publication – with all the steps in between – to show you how a manuscript becomes a something you can actually buy, along with timelines you can expect if you find yourself (hopefully!) in that situation sometime very soon.

(Salon 5)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty: Ryan Wilson (S) w/Joshua Malkin

The Script Marketplace

We’ll look at the marketplace for tv, film and streaming platforms.

(Salon 6)

 

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Perrin Pring (F)
Writing The Police

Have you ever wanted to write a scene involving a cop, but you’ve never actually talked to a cop beyond what was absolutely necessary? Well, come to this lecture! We will talk about the essence of what a cop should be and then how to deviate from that ideal to best fit your literary needs. We will also look at films and books and dissect cop scenes so you can better understand how things are supposed to work. This is not a political discussion. It is simply designed to give you a foundation from which you can better craft your future literary characters.

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Dannah Eckhardt (S)

Femcels & Feminine Rage: Writing Bad Women 

“You’re killing people.”

“No, I’m killing boys.”

 - Jennifer’s Body 

In this lecture, I will discuss the techniques used in the TikTok-coined sub genre of ‘femcel films’. Films of this sub genre include Jennifer’s Body, Gone Girl, Midsommar, Pearl, Black Swan, and Promising Young Woman. 

 

 

8:00: Evening Program:

Rejection: A Panel w/ Ivy Pochoda, Rob Roberge, Ashley Granillo, & Leena Pendharkar

 

Wednesday  December  6

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Isaiah Mustafa (S)

Writing for Actors

Harrison Ford famously said of George Lucas’s dialog, “You can type this…but you can’t say it.” So let’s try to avoid that. In this talk, actor & writer Isaiah Mustafa will discuss writing dialog your actors can actually say without sounding like…well, a George Lucas character.

(Salon 6)

 

9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Chih Wang (All)

Copyediting, Copy Editing, Copy-Editing?

So, you've finished your novel, complete with beta reads and revisions. Do you need to hire an editor? What's the difference between developmental, line/copyediting, and proofreading? Editors can be expensive, so how do you get the most bang for your buck? This workshop will help you answer these questions, as well as walk you through the process of hiring and working with an editor. And yes, I will be throwing in some common grammar/mechanic issues to up your writing game and help you say what you mean to say. And no, I'm not talking about serial commas (they are useful) and double spaces after periods (they are obsolete).

(Salon 5)

 

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

You Aren't Trying Doing Hard Enough
You know what they say about running with the big dogs.  This is a come-to-Jesus talk about learning to piss in the tall grass, and by that I mean doing everything possible to write better.  Like, lots better.  Look, we're all guilty of half-assing our work, and that has to stop.  This lecture will offer practical, applicable, actionable advice on both granular and big-picture levels.  It's nose-to-grindstone time, Baby.

(Salon 4)

 

10:30-12:00: Guest Faculty Lecture: Ashley Granillo (F)

Writing For Kids for Adults

Writing for kids is easy, right? It’s less of a commitment and involves little to no craft. I wish!

In this talk, I’ll lead you through how I untrained my adult-writer brain to write for a middle-grade and young adult audience. We’ll touch on some technical aspects of writing in these genres, along with elements of craft such as plot, emotional landscape, themes, voice and identity.

(Salon 6)

 

10:30-1200 Guest Faculty Lecture: Leena Pendharkar (S)

Writing the Short Film
What’s a short film and why write one? Because it’s a great medium for telling a self-contained, bite-sized story. In this seminar we will define what makes a great short film, how you can write a strong one, and how you can collaborate with a filmmaker to make your short film. Like the short story, we will define the short film as it’s own thing, rather than a feature stuffed into 10 minutes or part of a pilot or feature. Additionally, we discuss how a great short has the potential to captivate an audience. It can showcase your talent in festivals, or be distributed on any number of platforms. We will also discuss how a strong short film can serve as a great “proof of concept” piece for a feature. But we will make a distinction that a short film is not a feature stuffed into 10 minutes, and it’s not the first 10 minutes of a feature or pilot. Through this seminar, I hope you’ll come to appreciate the short film as its own medium.

(Salon 5)

 

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

Dialog: There’s more to it than you think….even if you already think there’s a lot to it…there’s still more…and we still won’t have time for it all. 

 We’ll look at (among other things):

1)    Dialog that sucks. We’ve all written it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of…except, yeah, it kind of is. So, we’ll look at all the ways dialog can suck. Every mistake that screams “amateur!” And—very importantly—why. AKA: How to lose the reader one scene into a book. AKA: Things editors wearily complain about over drinks and laugh in exhausted agreement and woe and wallow in their sorrow and rage at seeing such dialog. Let’s save some trees here. And editors’ livers.

2)    Dialog that’s competent to the point that you’ll only bore, rather than annoy the reader (see #1). It’s important to know competent dialog and how maybe, possibly it won’t kill your book, but it’ll break its femur. Or something. Something bad. Showing bland competent dialog is essential to seeing both how little and how much it takes to make that leap to… 

3)    Great dialog, and how to analyze and read it and then how to apply it to our work. 

One of the most (incredibly) common misconceptions about dialog is that it’s supposed to mirror people’s real life speech. Realistic dialog is not at all a mirror to the way people speak. It’s a highly coded and sophisticated distillation of language and rhythm and sound built with the clash and flow of words. It’s its own narrative language, and here we’ll look at the more common errors and doomed strategies and how to avoid them…and how to craft original, memorable dialog unique to your voice and your characters in all current and future projects. Bring a notebook. And a can of Vienna Sausages. 

(Salon 4)

 

12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch

 

1:15-4:15: Main Genre Workshops

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Debbie Carillo (NF)

The Social Impact of Memoir on Society

 Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted while unconscious, behind a garbage bin at Stanford University. Thus began her involuntary victim’s journey through the destructive gauntlet of the criminal justice system.  She was vilified as a drunken local seeking attention from Stanford frat boys.  At trial, however, blond, blue-eyed champion Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner was convicted by a jury.  The prosecution sought a sentence of 6 years in state prison. Judge Adam Persky was required by Marsy’s Law to allow Chanel to make a Victim Impact Statement in court.  She had observed the dismissive manner in which the Judge treated victims in the courtroom, while allowing Turner’s father to speak for 20 minutes, stressing that this was only “30 seconds” of his son’s life.   The Judge sentenced Brock Turner to a mere 6 months in county jail. The next day, Buzzfeed went viral releasing Chanel’s 7,000 word Victim’s Impact Statement that would became the foundation of her New York Times Bestselling memoir, Know My Name.   This lecture will examine how her memoir connected with others and lives in dialogue with a world bigger than the author and the events of her life. 

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Katie Dugan (F)

Creating Effective Magic Systems in Fantasy 
Just as a magician has an entire system behind their tricks—a fantasy novel has an entire magic system weaved throughout. Depending on how writers want magic to affect their book, these systems can be soft, hard, or a hybrid of both. These classifications, coined by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, each have their own benefits and risks. A consistent magic system can sweep readers off their feet. But poke a hole in that system, and their suspension of disbelief may come crashing down. This lecture will cover each system, what they offer, and what to avoid.

 

 

Dark Night

 

 

Thursday December 7

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00: Graduate Lecture: Rosemary King (S)

Rooting for the Underdog

In this lecture, we’ll ask ourselves why we cheer for Rocky Balboa in Rocky (1976), Team USA in Miracle on Ice (1981), and Billy Beane in Moneyball (2011). Using the lens of noted psychologist Erik Erikson, we’ll look at ways society marginalizes underdogs, many of whom internalize feelings of inferiority. We’ll combine this theory with specific criteria often found in underdog films and assess various sports movies that succeed and fail. Finally, you’ll come away knowing that a powerful underdog story transcends sports and, in fact, just might apply to your next screenplay, essay, or novel.

 

9:40: Graduate Lecture: Tracy Kowalski (S)

Let Them Fuck!  Writing Sex Scenes Post #MeToo.

Writing sex scenes post #MeToo may feel like a sensitive topic, a bit intimidating.  What’s a screenwriter to do?  Skip sex scenes completely or just write, “They have sex,” and let the director, actors and intimacy coordinator work it out?  Better yet, come to this lecture where we’ll go beyond gratuitous sex scenes and discover what makes a great sex scene, whether sex scenes can strengthen your story, and if so, how to do it!  Screenplays discussed include *Blonde, Pretty Woman, Moonlight, Basic Instinct, Bridesmaids and more.  *Trigger warning for one scene briefly discussed.

 

10:00-11:30 The Coachella Review Lecture Series

Behind the Scenes of The Coachella Review

One of the best ways to learn how to get noticed by the readers and editors of a literary journal is to be a reader or editor yourself. How much of a submission do we actually read? What are our submission red flags? How important are those cover letters? In this panel discussion, the editors of The Coachella Review spill the tea about the good, the bad, and the downright ugly of the submissions process. 

(Salon 4)

 

 

10:30-1200: Faculty Lecture: Bill Rabkin (S)

Notes on a Scandal

When Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal premiered in on the ABC television network in May 2012, it was acclaimed as a landmark in television history: the first network drama ever with a Black lead and a Black creator/showrunner. But that turned out to be only the first in which the series transformed American dramatic television. Scandal brought an entirely new pace to TV – each of the show’s episodes contained as much story as half a season of any series that came before it. The result was a thrill-ride style of storytelling that sparked other showrunners to follow Scandal’s lead and increase the pace of their own episodes. By the time Rhimes’ show went off the air, it was clear that it had changed TV storytelling, maybe forever. This lecture will explore how Scandal’s storytelling differed from everything that had come before, how the pacing impacted its stories both positively and negatively, and how other series attempted to follow its lead. The victim is actually the killer! The police chief is actually the head of the conspiracy! She’s my sister AND my daughter! Twists like those used to be enough to keep an audience enthralled, happy and satisfied. But in these story-saturated times, with 600 new series appearing every year, viewers have seen so many stories they can spot just about any plot twist coming two episodes before the writer can get there… and when they do, they’re not going to stick around to be proved right. Is it even possible to craft an original story that can entertain and surprise an audience that has seen it all a hundred times before? Three recent limited streaming series prove that it is. The Diplomat, Inside Man and Rabbit Hole provide a master class in deception, distraction, camouflage, and bluff, and in this webinar we are going to tear apart every piece of deception to see just how the writers pull it off. We will learn the tricks, the gimmicks, and the honest plotting moves that allow these shows to keep even the most jaded audiences in constant suspense.

 (Salon 5)

 

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Liska Jacobs (F)

Want: A Core Narrative Engine

Whenever beginning a new project, I start with figuring out what my characters want. I need to know both their surface level want as well as their deep-down want, which is usually a universal truth (to feel seen, to be accepted, to be loved, etc.). These tend to be in conflict with one another, in fact the bigger the conflict the stronger the narrative engine. In this lecture, we’ll examine how conflicting want manifests in novels by Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austin, and look at examples from some films. Come prepared to discuss your own projects too. 

(Salon 6)

 

 

12:00-1:00 Lunch

 

1:00-2:30 Faculty Lecture: Oscar Villalon (All)

The Last Word In Getting Accepted By Zyzzyva

Zyzzyva is one of the top literary magazines on the planet…and has been for a very long time, by only accepting the best work in the world. In this talk with editor Oscar Villalon, we’ll learn how to move from the slush-pile to the print edition, how you don’t need to seek validation from NY, and how to keep your eyes on the prize, not the scoreboard.

(Salon 4)

 

1:00-2:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Tara Ison (F)
Fact into Fiction: The Joys and Perils of Research
            "The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you 

            what it felt like."

 

            - E.L. Doctorow

 

Let’s take a look at the perils and joys of "research-based" or "research-inspired" fiction - how writers might transform the potentially dry facts and figures of "research" (historical, scientific, biographical, etc.) into resonant characters, metaphorical jewels, nuanced language, and dramatic narrative. 

(Salon 6)

 

1:00-2:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: David Olsen (All)

Starting Your Own Small Press

Do you have that DIY spirit? Do you want to create something larger than yourself? Do you want to publish the kind of work you wish to see in the world? Start your own press! In this talk, David Olsen, the founder of Kelp, gives you the skinny on building your own mini-publishing empire.

(Salon 5)

 

2:30:  Graduate Lecture: Courtney Hunter-Stangler (F)

Crime in Fiction: The Earthquake & The Aftershocks

When we consider crime, we often consider a singular act of violence, a specific instance that has a definitive start and stop. But what about those who are left to live in the wake of a violent crime? What about the descendants of those people and the communities that surround them? Can violence even move past people, resulting in certain places and geographic locations becoming permanently marked? Within crime fiction, authors have, historically, elected to ignore and write around these questions for the sake of including gratuitous violence in their work, violence that many make the mistake of believing will carry more weight. However, the tides are changing, and a recent crop of Edgar Award-Winning Crime Fiction Novels, including Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay, Caitlin Mullen’s Please See Us, and Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird prove to us this is not the only way. The true weight of a crime is not in the earthquake, but revealed in the subsequent aftershocks.

 

3:10: Graduate Lecture: Robert J. Binney (S)

We Get to See How…

As storytellers, we ask questions – but don’t answer them all, leaving audiences to continue the tale in their imagination. Well, Hollywood doesn’t gross anything off your mind’s eye, so they want to fill in those blanks. Enter the Prequel. Some are good and some are… not. Most are unnecessary. “We get to see how the thing became the thing” is hard to make compelling. I’ve recently read dozens of screenplays – and watched hundreds of hours – of origin stories for James Bond, Darth Vader, Saul Goodman, Han Solo, the Joker, Captain Kirk, Galadriel, Norman Bates, and those crazy blondes from King’s Landing, and I’ve learned a few things. Hopefully, after 30 minutes with me, you will, too.

 

7:00 Evening Program: Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation with David Ulin (NF)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer returns with a stunning new work of non-fiction – A Man of Two Faces – which the Washington Post hailed as “Sharp and affecting, this book is both: a weapon, a lamentation.” He’ll be joined on stage by David Ulin for a talk on the art and craft of telling your own story, followed by a book signing.

Required.

 

 

Friday December 8

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00-10:00: Guest Faculty Lecture: Viet Thanh Nguyen (F/NF)

AMA

Ask Viet anything.  

(Salon 5)

 

9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Gina Frangello (NF)

Go Big or Go Home: Breaking Form and Tabboos to Achieve Intimacy in Creative Nonfiction

So you're writing a memoir. Except that you're not going to include ______ because what if your mom reads it and cries? And you're not going to reveal that time your ex did _____, because you might really come under fire from your mutual friends. Well, and clearly you can't include that night you went out with your best friend and ______ happened, because what if someone sues you for revealing_____? And it goes without saying that you aren't going to admit that you ______ because oh my god what if your neighbors read the book and you have to face them every day when you go water the garden? Writing memoir is hard--and putting one into the world is perhaps even harder. But if there is one thing the publishing industry does not need, it's another play-it-safe, make-yourself-look-impeccable, paint-by-numbers and water-it-all-down book. When it comes to memoir, if you aren't taking risks, why do it? After all, you could dress it all up as "fiction" and publish a more no-holds-barred novel, right? But somehow, even knowing that, something about this story being yours matters to you. You know you want to tell it, but you're afraid. You're not sure what's allowed. You're not sure how far is "too far." You're not sure what to include, and what to leave on the cutting room floor. Besides, who wants to read this much about you anyway? In this interactive discussion, Gina Frangello, author of the recent memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason, will walk you through the crucial ins and outs of crafting a memoir that matters, and that also leaves you in one piece after the telling. Tracing the evolution of the Creative Nonfiction genre, as well as her personal experiences, this discussion will cover the sticky debates around emotional truths vs. hard facts, legal issues, the difference between a diary and a "curated" piece of literature, drawing yourself as a complex and flawed character (and throwing the need to be well-behaved and "inspirational" out the window!), using your life as a lens for larger issues, and finally what it means to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed and how your story has the power to achieve that. (Salon 6)

 

9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Clarinda Ross (PL)

Acting for Playwrights: learning how to embody your characters.  

This session with veteran actor/playwright Clarinda Ross (UCR/ PD Class of '17) will include a physical and vocal warm-up, a silent writing session, and an opportunity to get your characters on their feet. Clarinda is a member of Actors' Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and is a SoCal Ambassador for the Dramatists Guild of America.  She directs Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy's Third-Year Advanced Actors Workshop, a vocational certificate program for actors.

 

(Salon 4)

 

10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: AM Larks

The Art of Acceptance: The difference between a yes and no when submitting to Kelp Journal, Books, and The Wave

Managing editor and blog editor, A.M. Larks, discusses what they look for in submissions at Kelp Books, Kelp Journal, and for The Wave. Discussion on why a piece may be declined and tips for submitting and getting accepted.

(Salon 5)

 

10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Alex Espinoza (F/NF)

The Tomas Rivera Lecture: The Writer As Scholar Activist 

The university has always been positioned as “ground zero” for activism and the proliferation of “radical” political discourses that inform our national consciousness. Writers as professors—particularly faculty of color—occupy a unique position in this environment. This discussion will look at the role of the writer as not just a teacher and scholar, but an activist.    

(Salon 4)

 

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

Kill That Cat
Professor Malkin & Professor Schimmel examine a handful of “Unbreakable Screenwriting Rules”… and instances in which they have successfully been, well, broken.

(Salon 6)

 

1:15-4:15 Main Genre Workshops

 

4:30: Graduate Lecture: Alex Wirth (F)

Ideology vs. Narrative. Stories with Conscience: Why the Bad ones are so Bad and How to Fix them.

Did you ever read Dr. Suess' The Lorax as a kid? Did it convert you to perfect environmentalism? Me neither. Let's look at some other works of socially conscious fiction and look at how they balance their ideological aims with their storytelling. Or don't. A lot of them don't and we'll talk about why.

 

 

5:10: Graduate Lecture: Esmeralda Montano (S)

Growing Pains

What if I told you your flaws can change you into a better person? You probably wouldn't believe me at first. In this lecture, we’ll be looking at some contemporary coming-of-age films in which the protagonist undergoes life changes through their flaws. And some elements in those flaws that drive the entire story. 

 

 

7:00pm: Our 15 Year Anniversary Party!

 

Saturday December 9

8:00: Breakfast

 

9:00: 2024 Graduating Student Meeting: ALL STUDENTS GRADUATING Spring 2024 MUST ATTEND  (Salon 6)

 

10:00-11:00 Faculty & Alums From The Distant Past Talk About How We Got Here, All These Years Later!

 

(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 10

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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Faculty

 

Megan Beatie is a veteran publicist with more than 25 years of experience in publishing, is President and CEO of Megan Beatie Communications (MBC), a book publicity and marketing agency. Megan has forged publicity campaigns for numerous bestselling authors including Linda Ronstadt, Robert Dugoni, Soman Chainani, Tess Gerritsen, Jenny Mollen, Ian K. Smith, Lee Goldberg, Becky Albertalli, Maureen Johnson, Marcia Clark, Melissa de la Cruz, Attica Locke, Tembi Locke, and Neil Gaiman and launched the debuts of many novelists such as Deborah Falaye, Victoria Lee, Robinne Lee, Sandhya Menon, and Amber Smith.  She has represented authors in nearly every conceivable genre including literary and commercial fiction, mysteries and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels, as well as nonfiction books covering pop culture, film, entertainment, health, lifestyle, parenting, and relationships. Representing the fifth generation of a farming family from Southern California's Ventura County, Megan was valedictorian of her high school and graduated from Middlebury College, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, with a degree in English literature.  Afterwards, she joined Goldberg McDuffie Communications as a publicist where she spent nearly two decades, rising to the level of Vice President, Director of Publicity.  While there she cultivated strong, long-standing relationships with editors, journalists, and producers at the most influential television shows, radio programs, magazines, newspapers, websites, and blogs around the world.In 2015, she formed her own namesake agency so she would be able to focus on more personalized strategies and outreach opportunities for authors and books about which she's truly passionate.  Since then, her company has grown to include a talented and hard-working support staff.  All told, MBC has delivered dramatic results for its chosen authors and has promoted dozens of bestsellers. ​Megan is a fitness nut who has completed eight marathons, two Spartan races and one triathlon.  She currently resides in Los Angeles where she's outnumbered in her all-male family by her husband, their two sons, and dog.

 

Grace Doyle is the Associate Publisher of Amazon Publishing, including Thomas & Mercer, 47 North, and Amazon Crossing.

 

Daphne Ming Durham joined Putnam in 2023, and acquires dark, genre-blurring fiction with sharp edges and strong female protagonists. She loves voice-driven, gorgeous, plotty books that readers devour in one sitting, but come away having learned something – stories that upend familiar tropes and push boundaries in horror, fantasy, crime, thriller, and suspense. Daphne was previously at MCD / Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where she published the New York Times bestseller Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone, Ivy Pochoda’s Sing Her Down, Andy Davidson’s The Boatman’s Daughter and The Hollow Kind, Gus Moreno’s This Thing Between Us, and novels by Araminta Hall, Sara Sligar, Rachel Moulton, and Sara Flannery Murphy, and forthcoming books including Louisa Luna’s Tell Me Who You Are and Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts. At Tor Nightfire, Daphne published Johnny Compton’s The Spite House and Jennifer Thorne’s Lute. Daphne also spent more than fifteen years at Amazon.com, in all manner of book-related roles, from Editorial Director of the bookstore to Editor-in-Chief and then Publisher for Amazon Publishing, where she launched and developed core genre imprints and managed acquisitions across all categories, including genre, literary fiction, and children’s books.

 

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, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and BookPage, and has been included on numerous “Best of 2021” lists including at Lithub, BookPage and The Chicago Review of Books. She is also the author of four books of fiction, including A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting, which was included on several “Best of 2016” lists, including at Chicago Magazine’s and The Chicago Review of Books. Now a lead editor at Row House Publishing, Gina also 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, the faculty editor for both TriQuarterly Online and The Coachella Review, and the Creative Nonfiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. 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 her column, “Not the Norm,” runs on the Psychology Today blog. She runs Circe Consulting, a full-service company for writers, with the writer Emily Rapp Black, and can be found at www.ginafrangello.org.

 

Ashley Granillo is a Mexican American author. She has many degrees, including a BA and MA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Fiction and an MFA in Fiction and a minor in Screenwriting from UCR Low Residency program.​  Ashley got her start as a writer from the young age of 5. She was a member of Telfair Elementary’s Student Author Project. This project paired kindergartners with fifth grade students, where they mentored, wrote, illustrated, and promoted their book collaboration.​  Many of the themes Ashley writes about are inspired about her home, family, her love for animals, and music. Cruzita and the Mariacheros (Lerner 2024), is a testament to home, family, and music, as well as her Mexican American heritage.

 

Tara Ison is the author of the novels The List (Scribner),  A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, Inc.), a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Rockaway (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press), featured as one of the "Best Books of Summer" in O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2013. Her essay collection, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, Winner of the PEN Southwest Book Award for Best Creative Nonfiction, and her short story collection Ball, were both published in 2015 by Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf, a novel of life in WWII collaborationist France, from Ig Publishing, has been selected a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her short fiction, essays, poetry and book reviews have appeared in Tin House, BOMB, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Nerve, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, PMS: poemmemoirstory, Publisher's Weekly, The Week magazine, The Mississippi Review, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous anthologies. She is also the co-writer of the cult movie Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead. She is the recipient of 2020 and 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a 2008 COLA Individual Artist Grant, as well as multiple Yaddo residencies, fellowships at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, and l’Ancienne Auberge in France, a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for International Study, a Brandeis National Women's Committee Award, a Thurber House Fiction Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, the Simon Blattner Fellowship from Northwestern University, and a California Arts Council Artists' Fellowship Award. Ison received her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College. She has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Goddard College, Antioch University Los Angeles, and UC Riverside Palm Desert's MFA in Creative Writing program. She is currently Professor of Fiction at Arizona State University.

 

 

Liska Jacobs is the author of the critically acclaimed novels "Catalina", "The Worst Kind of Want" and most recently, "The Pink Hotel" which was a California Indie best-seller and listed as one of the best books of 2022 by Esquire. "The Worst Kind of Want" was long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates award and optioned by Anonymous Content. "Catalina" was featured as a must read in Huffington Post, Elle, Entertainment Weekly, and Literary Hub. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, Alta, The Millions, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. She holds an MFA from the Low Residency MFA @ UC Riverside.

 

Grace Jasmine writes theatre, film, fiction, and nonfiction. Jasmine’s play, The Masher—received The Hollywood Encore! Producers’ Award and was chosen Quarterfinalist, for the ScreenCraft Stage Play Contest for 2021, and placed #4 All Time for the Horror Stage Play on the Red List on Coverfly. Her Screenplay, Get a Life, won Quarterfinalist at the Hollywood International Screenplay Awards. Other theatre writing credits include: Rainbows, Tim Doran, composer (Jasmine wrote, directed, and starred in this show, which was produced first in multiple venues in Los Angeles and then off-off Broadway); The Lover-A Tale of Obsessive Love, Ron Barnett, composer (Lonny Chapman Theatre premier). Jasmine wrote two original musicals that premiered in summer 2017, at the Hollywood Fringe Festival: Sybil’s Closet and F**ked Up Fairy Tales. WeHo Times called the song, “Love is Love” Jasmine wrote (With David Anthony, composer) for F**ked Up Fairy Tales “…an incredible song that it merits a place among the classics of musical theatre.” (WeHo Times, July 2, 2017). Jasmine is currently collaborating with Ron Barnett on her new musical black comedy, SKIN DEEP—which is slated for a 2024 opening. Jasmine holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Screenwriting from the University of California at Riverside, is a native Californian living in Arizona with her family of humans and pack of wild dogs. Grace Jasmine is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and PEN America. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @beautynblog

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of nearly thirty novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Stephen’s been an NEA recipient, has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award, ALA’s RUSA Award and Alex Award, the 2023 American Indian Festival of Words Writers Award, the Locus Award, four Bram Stoker Awards, three Shirley Jackson Awards, six This is Horror Awards, and he’s been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award. He’s also made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels, and is the guy who wrote Mongrels, The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw, and Earthdivers. Up next are The Angel of Indian Lake and I Was a Teenage Slasher. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado.

 

AM Larks writing has appeared in NiftyLit, Scoundrel Time, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Five on the Fifth, Charge Magazine, and the Zyzzyva  and Ploughshares blogs. She has served as a judge for the Loud Krama Productions Emerging Female and Nonbinary Playwriting Award and has performed her stories at Lit Up at Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette, CA. She is the managing editor and blog editor at Kelp Journal. She is the former the former fiction editor at Please See Me, the former blog editor of The Coachella Review, as well as the former photography editor at Kelp Journal.  AM Larks earned an MFA in Creative Writing from U.C. Riverside, Palm Desert, a J.D., and B.A. in English Literature.

 

Brian Lipson is an agent at the Intellectual Property Group.

Katherine MacDonald is an independent producer and movie marketing executive. She was most recently producing a feature at Netflix Animation. Previously, she was Senior Vice President of Animation at Paramount Pictures and oversaw all marketing for that division. Prior to that she held senior executive roles in marketing and research at Lionsgate, MGM and New Line Cinema. She is also the co-author of "The Marketing Edge for Filmmakers: Developing a Marketing Mindset from Concept to Release." She is a graduate of the program (class of 2016). 

 

Anne Marie Mackay An Entertainment Industry producer for over 20 years, Anne-Marie Mackay has been responsible for creating and overseeing the extraordinary successes of Palomar Pictures and Propaganda Films. She helped launch the careers of current movie notables including David Fincher, Antoine Fuqua, Michael Bay, Alek Keshisian, and Alex Proyas; and provided established directors like David Lynch and James Foley with short form opportunities. While representing directors to the record industry, she presided over hundreds of music film projects. At the same time she introduced a fresh view to the advertising world and Propaganda's television commercial division was born. Propaganda accrued annual revenues of nearly $40 million by 1990 in her music division alone. As a result, she is credited as being a major force behind one of the largest and most prolific independent production companies in the world. In 1992, Anne-Marie co-founded Palomar Pictures. Under her direction, the music department produced hundreds of videos and concerts for renowned artists including The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Michael Jackson, Seal and Lenny Kravitz. And again she directed major talent like John Schlesinger, Gore Verbinski, Ben Stiller, Forest Whitaker, Joel Schumacher, Michael Caton Jones, and Sophia Coppola by diversifying their career paths. The same stable of directors were responsible for Palomar's highly successful commercial division which produced the original Bud frogs, Bud Bowl for the Super Bowl, Nike with Michael Jackson, the Anti-Smoking campaign -- a Cannes Gold Lion winner, and various notable spots for Coca Cola, Reebok, United Airlines, Converse, 7 Up, Mercedes, Saab and Skittles. Her work on television includes Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, William S. Burrough's The Junky's Christmas, and the Brian Wilson documentary I Just Wasn't Made for These Times. Anne-Marie has been nominated for multiple Emmys and Grammys, including her nomination for her work as Executive Producer on Stranger Adventures. 

Jacqueline McKinley is the co-Executive Producer of The Neighborhood on CBS and previously served as a writer/producer on over two dozen shows, including The Bernie Mac Show, Are We There Yet, The Quad, Raven’s Home, Sacrifice, and the Ms. Pat Show. She is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA at UCR.

 

Isaiah Mustafa will next be seen starring in the James Patterson adapted series CROSS, based on the best selling series 'Alex Cross' for Amazon, opposite Aldis Hodge. Isaiah previously wrapped the psychological thriller BOY KILLS WORLD with Bill Skarsgard, Andrew Koji and Michelle Dockery for Raimi Productions.  Previously, Isaiah has made his mark opposite A level talent in IT: CHAPTER TWO co-starring Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader and James McAvoy (which became the second-highest opening for any movie all-time in the September/October release corridor, and the second-highest opening for any horror movie all-time).  Additionally, this June Isaiah’s starred in the indie Western MURDER AT YELLOWSTONE CITY opposite Gabrielle Byrne and Thomas Jane as a recently released slave who relocates to the West only to be unjustly accused of murder. Isaiah is equally adept at comedy and has been making his name in such comedies as Happy Madison/Netflix comedy HOME TEAM opposite Kevin James and the Sherry Thomas/NBC comedy pilot BLACK DON'T CRACK.  Additionally, Isaiah had had great turns in iconic half hours such as BLACKISH.  As the long standing iconic face of the Old Spice Campaign and working with such comedy greats as Kevin Hart and created an amazing fan base.  The Hulu ad campaign directed by Craig Gillespie has amassed a whopping 130+ million views on YouTube.  Isaiah’s loyal fan base is also supported by being a series regular for the cult hit series SHADOWHUNTERS, which includes a fanatical fanbase for Isaiah several years after the series has been off the air.

 

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (Oxford University Press, 2002) and the novel The Sympathizer, from Grove/Atlantic (2015). The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), a California Book Award, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. It was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. The novel made it to over thirty book-of-the-year lists, including The Guardian, The New York Times,  The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com, Slate.com, and The Washington Post. The foreign rights have been sold to twenty-seven countries. He is also the author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War from Harvard University Press (2016, foreign rights to four countries), which is the critical bookend to a creative project whose fictional bookend is The Sympathizer. Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, examines how the so-called Vietnam War has been remembered by many countries and people, from the US to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea. Kirkus Reviews calls the book “a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget.” It has won the the John G. Cawelti Award for Best Textbook/Primer from the Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association and the Réné Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Comparative Literature from the American Comparative Literature Association. Foreign rights have been sold to four countries. His most recent work of fiction is The Committed, the sequel to The Sympathizer. Other books include The Refugees, a short story collection from Grove Press (2017, foreign rights to fourteen countries), and The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, which he edited. He has written for The New York Times, Time, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and other venues. Along with Janet Hoskins, he co-edited Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (University of Hawaii Press, 2014). His articles have appeared in numerous journals and books, including PMLA, American Literary History, Western American Literature, positions: east asia cultures critique, The New Centennial Review, Postmodern Culture, the Japanese Journal of American Studies, and Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. Many of his articles can be downloaded here. Most recently, he has also edited the Library of America volume for Maxine Hong Kingston, his former teacher. He has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (2011-2012), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2008-2009) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2004-2005). He has also received residencies, fellowships,  and grants from the Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the James Irvine Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations,  appointed as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, and received honorary doctorates from Uppsala University, Colgate University, and Franklin and Marshall College. His latest book, the memoir A Man of Two Faces, has just been released.

 

Ruth Nolan is editor of “No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California's Deserts”. A former wildland firefighter in the Mojave Desert and beyond, her desert-centric writing has most recently been published in “Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California” (Angel City Press) Boom, California; McSweeney's; East Bay Times; KCET Los Angeles; Joshua Tree: Where Two Deserts Meet (Wildsam Guide); Los Angeles Fiction: Southland Writing by Southland Writers (Red Hen Press;) Campfire Stories Volume II: Tales from America’s National Parks and Trails. She is the author of the poetry books “After the Dome Fire” and “Ruby Mountain”, and is Professor of English and creative writing at College of the Desert. She lives in 29 Palms. She holds an MFA from the Low Residency MFA @ UC Riverside.

 

David Olsen is the editor-in-chief of Kelp and also a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and poet. He is a graduate of Stanford’s OWC program in novel writing and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert. He has published books of poetry, a novel, multiple anthologies, and various work in literary journals and magazines. He is at work on a crime novel series and a linked collection of short stories. He resides on California's central coast where he surfs regularly.

 

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.

  

Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic.  She lives in Elk Grove, California. 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 the president of the National Book Critics Circle, where she has previously served as vice president in charge of the Emerging Critics Program and Autobiography award chair. 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 holds an MFA from the Low Residency MFA @ UC Riverside.

Leena Pendharkar is an award-winning writer and director. Her most recent work is the television movie, A Date with Deception for Mar Vista/Lifetime, and two episodes of the kids’ show, Hello Jack! for Apple TV Plus, for which she was recently nominated for an Emmy award. Leena is an alum of the Warner Brothers, CBS, and Sony Diverse Directors programs. She premiered her sophomore independent film, 20 Weeks, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It was described as an “intimate, compassionate take on abortion” by the Los Angeles Times, and was released theatrically in 10 cities in April of 2018, and on Hulu and a number of other platforms. Leena has also written/directed several-award winning short films, including Dandekar Makes a Sandwich, which was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of LA. She also wrote and directed the short fim, Awaken, for which Parminder Nagra won a Best Actress Award at the South African Independent Film Festival and has been distributed on a number of platforms. 

She is also an Associate Professor at LMU’s School of Film + Television, and has an MFA in Screenwriting from UC-Riverside's Low Residency Program.

 

Jon Lawrence Rivera The recipient of the first Career Achievement Award from Stage Raw, his directing credits include the following world premieres for Playwrights’ Arena: March: A Parking Lot Play (co-produced with the Los Angeles LGBT Center), Southernmost by Mary Lyon Kamitaki, Baby Eyes by Donald Jolly, I Go Somewhere Else by Inda Craig-Galván, Bloodletting by Boni B. Alvarez (also at Kirk Douglas Theatre), The End Times by Jesse Mu-En Shao, Little Women by Velina Hasu Houston, The Hotel Play written by Paula Cizmar, Velina Hasu Houston, Jennifer Maisel, Nahal Navidar, Julie Oni, Janine Salinas Schoenberg and Laurie Woolery (performed in an actual hotel), @TheSpeedofJake by Jennifer Maisel, Circus Ugly by Gabriel Rivas Gomez, Painting In Red by Luis Alfaro, Cinnamon Girl by Velina Hasu Houston and Nathan Wang (also at the 2^nd Beijing University International Musical Theater Festival 2014), Dallas Non-Stop by Boni B. Alvarez, The Anatomy of Gazellas by Janine Salinas Schoenberg, Girl Most Likely To by Michael Premrirat, Bonded by Donald Jolly and Euripides’ Helen by Nick Salamone (at the Getty Villa). Other recent work includes: Anna In The Tropics by Nilo Cruz at Open Fist Theater, America Adjacent by Boni B. Alvarez, and Obama-ology by Aurin Squire at Skylight Theatre; The Joy Luck Club by Susan Kim, The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, and Criers for Hire by Giovanni Ortega at East West Players; Honeymoon in Vegas by Jason Robert Brown and A Class Act by Ed Kleban for Musical Theatre Guild; Bingo Hall by Dillon Chitto, Fairly Traceable by Mary Kathryn Nagle, and Stand-Off At HWY #37 by Vickie Ramirez for Native Voices at the Autry (also at the University of South Dakota) and the landmark Los Angeles Premiere of Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn at SIPA and Kirk Douglas Theatre. Rivera is the recipient of a NY Fringe Festival Award for directing Hillary Agonistes, an LA Weekly Award for directing Sea Change, and 5 Ovation Award nominations.

 

BJ Robbins opened her Los Angeles-based agency in 1992 after a multifaceted career in book publishing in NY. She started in publicity at Simon & Schuster and was later Marketing Director and then Senior Editor at Harcourt. Her agency represents quality fiction, both literary and commercial, and general nonfiction, with a particular interest in memoir, biography, narrative history, pop culture, sports, travel/adventure, medicine and health. A member of AALA and PEN, Ms. Robbins has led workshops at UCLA Extension, UC Irvine Extension, the Writer's Pad, and at the Community of Writers Fiction Workshop. On behalf of PEN, she has been guest speaker in numerous cities in the West as part of their Writers Toolbox program, including Seattle, Portland, Santa Fe, Dallas, Las Cruces, Flagstaff and Oakland. She was profiled in Writer's Digest and mediabistro.com. The BJ Robbins Literary Agency has become one of Southern California's premier boutique agencies, having nurtured the careers of a wide array of award-winning and bestselling authors including Stephen Graham Jones, James Donovan, J. Maarten Troost, Renee Swindle, Nafisa Haji, John Hough, and Via Bleidner. Our authors are diverse in category and cultural background, telling stories that teach, entertain, and everything in between.

 

Clarinda Ross was born in Georgia and grew up in Boone, North Carolina, where both her parents were professors at Appalachian State University. Clarinda’s father, the late Dr. Carl A. Ross, Jr., was chairman of the Appalachian Studies Department at ASU and a respected historian. Her mother, Charlotte, is a renowned storyteller of the Appalachian region. Ms. Ross graduated from Appalachian State with a B.A., having majored in Theatre and minored in Dance. Upon graduation, she was immediately cast in the Acting Conservatory Program of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Clarinda worked for many years in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Alliance Theatre, the Horizon Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, Theatre in the Square, and ART Station, Inc. She also spent several seasons as a leading lady with the Atlanta Shakespeare Company. One of the youngest recipients ever, Ms. Ross received an individual artist grant from the National Endowment for the Arts at age twenty-four. She used the grant to create her first play, “From My Grandmother’s Grandmother Unto Me”, which was developed and directed by David Thomas. The play is based on Clarinda’s southern ancestors. “Grandmother” was a runaway hit at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC and was featured in the Olympic Arts Festival in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994 and at the summer games in Atlanta in 1996. Clarinda also starred in the film version of the play for PBS, directed by John David Allen. Her feature film credits include; “Flipped”, directed by Rob Reiner. “Blue Sky”, directed by Sir Tony Richardson and starred Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones. And, “Fluke”, with Matthew Modine and Eric Stoltz, directed by Italian auteur Carlo Carlei. Ms. Ross has had numerous television Guest Star appearances including “The United States of Tara”, and several television movies – most notably the Emmy award-winning “Stolen Babies”. Clarinda recently received her MFA in Creative Writing for Performance from the University of California at Riverside’s Palm Desert low-residency program. While at UCR/PD she was the recipient of the Barbara Seranella Scholarship for Excellence in Creative Writing. She coordinated student play-readings and served as a graduate teaching assistant in playwriting. Her plays have been produced at several Equity theatres and published by Applause Theatre Books, The Coachella Review, and The Kenyon Review. Her first play, “From My Grandmother’s Grandmother Unto Me” just had it’s thirtieth production. Her screenplay adaptation of Lee Smith’s southern novel, “Family Linen” was a finalist for the New York Women in Television and Film Lab series for women over forty co-sponsored by Meryl Streep. Her mother/son letters play, “Love, M.” based on interviews with mothers, sons, and AIDS activists was featured in the Horizon Theatre’s New South Play Reading Series in Atlanta and nominated for the National New Play Showcase. She is an alumna of the National Winter Playwrights Retreat. Ms. Ross is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association having served as a National Councilor for many years. She is a Los Angeles delegate for SAG-AFTRA, and a Southern California Ambassador for the Dramatists Guild of America. She has three children, Clara, Frank, and Gus and is married to the actor/producer Googy Gress. Her family splits their time between California and North Carolina. She is increasingly sure that greed is the problem.

 

Susan Straight’s most recent novel Mecca, was published March 2022 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and released in paperback March 2023. Mecca was a national bestseller, a finalist for The Kirkus Prize, and named a best novel of the year by The Washington Post and NPR, as well as a Top Ten California Book by the New York Times, and winner of the Southwest Book of the Year for Fiction. Her memoir In the Country of Women: A Memoir (Catapult Books, paperback edition September 2020), was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, as well as a Finalist for the Clara Johnson Prize for Women’s Literature, named a best book of 2019 by NPR, Code Switch, Real Simple, and others. It was a Barnes & Noble September National Choice for Memoir. The book has gone into four printings. She has published eight previous novels: Aquaboogie (Milkweed Editions, 1990, 2006, fourth printing; Open Road Media, 2013; Counterpoint Books, 2020); I Been In Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All The Pots (Hyperion, 1992; Anchor, 1993; Open Road Media, 2013; Counterpoint Books, 2020), named one of the best novels of 1992 by both USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly, as well as named a Notable Book by the New York Times, is in its 14th printing; Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights (Hyperion, 1994, Anchor paperback 1995; Open Road Media, 2013; Counterpoint Books, 2020); The Gettin Place (Hyperion 1996, Anchor paperback 1997; Counterpoint Books, 2020); Highwire Moon (Houghton Mifflin, 2001; Anchor, 2002; Open Road Media, 2013, Counterpoint Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Commonwealth of California Gold Medal for Fiction. Highwire Moon was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Los Angeles Times bestseller, and was named one of the year’s best novels by The San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post. It is taught in college and high school classrooms around the nation. A Million Nightingales (Pantheon Books, 2006, two printings; Anchor Books, 2007) was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. It was a Finalist for the 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and published in a new Spanish translation in 2014. Take One Candle Light a Room (Pantheon, 2010; Anchor, 2011) was named a best novel of 2010 by the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Kirkus. Her novel Between Heaven and Here (McSweeney’s, 2012) was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and named a Best Book of 2012 by The Los Angeles Times and The Daily Beast. Her middle grade reader, The Friskative Dog, was published by Knopf in21 2007. Her picture book Bear E. Bear was published in 1995 by Hyperion Books. In 2021, she was named Woman of the Year for the 61 st Assembly District, by Assemblyman Jose Medina, for her thirty years of writing stories of African- American, Mexican-American, Asian-American, and immigrant life in southern California, bringing little-known histories, especially of women, into American books, museums, magazines and libraries. In 2014, Straight received the Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2011, she received the Gina Berriault Award for Fiction from San Francisco State University. In 2007, Straight received The Lannan Prize for Fiction, for her body of work. In 1998, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction. She has published hundreds of essays and articles in numerous magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, O Magazine, Salon, Harpers, Reader’s Digest, The Believer, Orion, and The Sun. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, Alta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope All-Story, McSweeney’s, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, and The Ontario Review, among other magazines. Her short story “The Golden Gopher,” published in Los Angeles Noir, won the 2008 Edgar Award. Her short story “El Ojo De Agua” won a 2007 O Henry Prize, and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2007. Her novels and stories have been translated into French, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, and Spanish. She was born in Riverside, California in 1960, and still lives there with her family. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, where she has taught since 1988.

Phoef Sutton is a New York Times Bestselling author. The winner of two Emmy Awards for his work on the classic television comedy CHEERS and a Peabody Award for the legal drama BOSTON LEGAL, he also wrote for the cult FX show TERRIERS. As a screenwriter, his credits include MRS. WINTERBOURNE and THE FAN, starring Robert DeNiro. He has written several movies for television, including the DARROW & DARROW movies for Hallmark. Phoef has also written plays and novels, among them FIFTEEN MINUTES TO LIVE and his “Crush” mysteries, CRUSH and HEART ATTACK AND VINE and COLORADO BOULEVARD – all of which received starred reviews from Kirkus. With Janet Evanovich he has co-authored WICKED CHARMS and CURIOUS MINDS. His most recent is FROM AWAY. 

He recently served as producer and showrunner of the Hallmark series CHESAPEAKE SHORES.

He lives in South Pasadena, California and Vinalhaven, Maine with his wife and two daughters. 

He also does a podcast with Mark Jordan Legan about weird and unusual cinema: FILM FREAKS FOREVER. His first name is pronounced ‘Feef.’ His website is phoefsutton.net and you can reach him on Facebook and X and Bluesky Instagram.

  

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

 

Chih Wang holds a certificate in Copyediting from University of California, San Diego Extension and a Masters Degree of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from University of California, Riverside in Palm Desert. She served as Fiction Editor and Copyeditor at The Coachella Review and currently copyedits for Kelp Journal. She is a current member of the Editorial Freelancers Association. Before making her passion for writing and editing full-time, she studied at University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Conservation and Resource Studies. Afterward, she decided that science wasn’t for her and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Interior Design from Design Institute of San Diego, which led to remodeling homes for several years. Her path to the creative arts was a circuitous one. A San Diego native, she spends her free time working on her novel, a contemporary fantasy, or training in aerial silks and hammock.

Ryan Wilson is a manager at Anonymous Content. Anonymous Content is a prolific management and production company behind such high-profile films as Best Picture winner SPOTLIGHT, as well as recent projects like SWAN SONG, OUTLAW KING and BOY ERASED. On the television side, they have produced series such as DICKINSON (Apple TV+), MR. ROBOT (FX) and HOMECOMING (Amazon). 

Lilliana Winkworth is an actor and screenwriter based in Los Angeles, CA. She recently wrote for Nick Jr. and appeared in 'Dead Enders' (SXSW, Audience Award 2023). Her comedy has been featured on Adult Swim and FunnyorDie. She was on The Second City's National Touring Company and performs weekly on Harold Night at UCB. She holds an MFA from UC Riverside. 

 

Kent Wolf is founding partner and rights director of Neon Literary, 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.

 

 

 

 

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 and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

 

Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico to parents from the state of Michoacán and raised in suburban Los Angeles. In high school and afterwards, he worked a series of retail jobs, selling everything from eggs and milk to used appliances, custom furniture, rock T-shirts, and body jewelry. After graduating from the University of California-Riverside, he went on to earn an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints, was published by Random House in 2007 and was named a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. The book was released simultaneously in Spanish, under the title Los santos de Agua Mansa, California, translated by Lilliana Valenzuela. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was also published by Random House in March 2013. Alex’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies and journals, including Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California’s Inland Empire, The Southern California Review, Flaunt, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. His essays have been published at Salon.com, in the New York Times Magazine, in The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity, in The Los Angeles Review of Books, and as part of the historic Chicano Chapbook Series. He has also reviewed books for the LA Times, the American Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and NPR. His awards include a 2009 Margaret Bridgeman Fellowship in Fiction to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a 2014 Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2014 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Five Acts of Diego León, and a 2019 Fellowship from MacDowell and inclusion in Best American Mystery & Suspense. 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. His next book, Sons of El Rey, will be released next year.

 

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

 

Tod Goldberg is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books, including Gangsters Don’t Die, 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 Alta, among countless others, and has earned five Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence and 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 was named a top podcast by the Washington Post. 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.

 

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

 

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

 

 

Ivy Pochoda holds a BA in Classics and Literature, with a focus on Dramatic Literature, from Harvard, where she graduated cum laude, and an MFA in fiction from Bennington College. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels These Women, Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and The Art of Disappearing, and has won or been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (twice!), the California Book Award, the International Thriller Award, the Strand Critics Award, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award, the Macavity Award, and others too numerous to list. Ivy is also the author of the YA/fantasy series created by the late Kobe Bryant,  Epoca: The Tree of Ecrof, an immediate New York Times bestseller, and Epoca: The River of Sand, and is an in-demand ghost writer as well. Her nonfiction and criticism appears regularly in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Wall Street Journal, among others. Her latest novel, Sing Her Down, was released 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 four books on writing for television, “Writing the Pilot” (2011), “Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series” (2017), Writing the Pilot: Streaming and, with Lee Goldberg, “Successful Television Writing” (2003) and seven novels. He is the co-creator and co-editor of “The Dead Man,” a 28-book series of supernatural action thrillers published by Amazon’s 47 North imprint. Rabkin is part of the core faculty of UCR-Palm Desert’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. He is currently co-writing the miniseries Estonia: The Last Wave for the Nordic Entertainment Group and ITV. 

 

Emily Rapp Black  is the New York Times bestselling author of Poster Child: A Memoir (BloomsburyUSA) and The Still Point of the Turning World (Penguin Press), a New York Times bestseller and an Editor’s Pick, Sanctuary, a New York Times Editor's Pick, and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. A former Fulbright scholar, she was educated at Harvard University, Trinity College-Dublin, Saint Olaf College, and the University of Texas-Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has received awards and fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Jentel Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center, Fundacion Valparaiso, and Bucknell University. Her work has appeared in VOGUE, the New York Times, Die Zeit, The Times-London, Lenny Letter, The Sun, TIME, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, O the Oprah Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and other publications and anthologies. She is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she also teaches medical narratives in the School of Medicine. She is a member of the Inequities in Health Care Working Group and an architect of the Medical Narratives minor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the mother of two children: Ronan (2010-2013), and Charlotte.

 

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

 

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

 

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of six novels with one word titles including Moist, Baked, and Blown; and the nonfiction books Rude Talk In Athens: Ancient Rivals, the Birth of Comedy, and a Writer’s Journey through Greece, Naked at Lunch: A Reluctant Nudist's Adventures in the Clothing-Optional World and Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. He has written extensively for film and television. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Independent, Vulture and others. His next book, Memoir: a Novel, 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 a professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary journal Air/Light. Most recently, he has edited Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Didion: The 1980s and 90s for Library of America. His next book, Thirteen Question Method, was released this fall.

 

Hotel & General Information

 

*Check-In at the Rancho Las Palmas is at 3pm. Check-Out is at noon. Please come to the convention center office (located in Desert Suite 1) after checking in to receive your welcome packet and to get info regarding the evening reception.

*You will be given a wristband to wear in order to receive discounted prices throughout the hotel for meals, drinks and services. 20% off food & drinks resort-wide, 10% of spa packages and more.

*New student orientation is Friday night at 5pm. If you’re a new student, you need to be there.

*Our welcome party begins promptly at 6pm in the Sunrise Terrace.

*All Evening Events will take place in Salon 5.

*All Graduate Lectures will take place in Salon 5.

*Morning & afternoon lectures will be conducted in Salon 4, Salon 5, and Salon 6 as noted

*All meals will take place on Starlight Terrace or in Salon 4, depending upon weather.  

*You are on your own for dinner, however the RBar has a special discount menu for our students and you also receive 20% of their regular menu. There are plenty of restaurants within walking distance of the hotel.

*Free coffee, water and snacks will be in the office – located in Desert Suite 1, at the end of the convention hall — from breakfast until the evening readings.

*There will be a computers & printers available all day in the office. If you have any questions or needs, UCR staff members will be there to assist you.

*Please check your email and the white board in the office for any venue changes & messages.

*If you need multiple copies made of a document – more than what could just be printed off easily on a computer – please email your requests to Kathryn (Kathryn.mcgee@ucr.edu) 24-48 hours prior to your copy needs.

*There will be sign-up sheets located in the office for one-on-one meetings with visitors as well as meetings with Tod – All New Students Must Meet With Tod. You will be pre-scheduled for these meetings.

 

Remember: While you are staying at a resort, you are also in school. This means all of the regular rules & regulations of being a University of California student apply. If you have any concerns or need to speak to a faculty or staff member during the course of your stay, all faculty and staff members will be on property for the duration of the residency. 

 

FAQ:

 

1. Do I have to go to everything? No. It would be impossible, as you’ll see. There will be approximately 50 faculty or guest lectures/seminars offered, plus nightly panels/discussions, not all of which are going to be of interest to you, depending upon your genre of choice, expertise and level of complete exhaustion. In essence, the lectures and readings make up the contact hours of your literature component in both your major and cross-genre, so, to be technical, you should attend at least 10 of them. We’d like you to attend all of them that you find compelling, since, well, you’re paying for them and there will be something to be gained from each of them. But you’re adults. We trust we’ll see you at least 10 different times. All students must attend orientation and new students are required to attend new student orientation.
2. Okay, but what do I absolutely have to go to? Specifically?  Your genre workshops and your cross-genre workshops. 10 lectures/seminars.
3. What is there to eat? Breakfast & lunch are provided. There will be free coffee and snacks in our office each day. There are several dining choices at the Rancho Las Palmas for dinner – including room service, the main restaurant and the various bars and cafes which provide bar food faire. Menus have been provided for you in your welcome packet. Remember: all food and beverage you purchase at the hotel will be given a discount.  In addition, there are several restaurants within walking distance from the hotel at the River shopping complex.  You will be provided with a list of restaurants that are nearby that are affordable for dinner and there will be a person in the office who would be happy to set up group dining excursions. Please note: if you have a spouse/friend/guest stay with you and you’d like them to eat with you, you will be charged a per day fee that will be charged to your room.
4. Do I need to bring my computer? Will there be assignments? We consider the residency a time to learn, so there won’t be any assignments per se apart from exercises in class. We will have computers and printers in the office, but only a few, so if you wish to stay connected to your email and all that, a laptop is not a bad idea. There is free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel. Bring a book to read by the pool.
5. What do I need to bring? Clothes. A swimsuit. It will be nice during the day – the 70s and 80s are normal. The evenings are cool.  Your classrooms are usually quite cool. People tend to dress up for graduation.
6. How do I get there from the airport? The hotel is just fifteen minutes from the Palm Springs Airport. A taxi from the airport will be about $35. If you’re flying into LA, depending upon traffic, expect a two-to-three hour drive. If you’re flying into Ontario, expect a 90 minute drive. All attendees receive a $50 resort credit to help offset this fee.
7. How much is parking?  Self-parking is free.
8. What will my room be like? All the rooms are exceptionally nice. If you haven’t looked yet, take a gander at the Rancho Las Palmas website. If, however, you arrive at the hotel and find that your room is not to your liking, the hotel is excellent about changing rooms. If there’s a persistent problem, let Agam know and he’ll make sure you’re taken care of.
9. Do I need a rental car? No. Plenty of your classmates will be driving in from Southern California and will be happy to drive you places. Really. We promise. You’ll all be getting along like one big happy family. Plus, if you tend towards the anti-social, the hotel is walking distance to restaurants and entertainment.
10. Will I be able to buy books? Yes. We’ll have a bookseller on-site all week.
11. What if I need…: There will be a staff member in the office every day during the residency who can help you with whatever your problems might be.