Each residency, in addition to our award-winning faculty, we welcome a full slate of writers, editors, agents, producers and more to help teach our students how to become professional writers. We're pleased to announce our full slate for Spring 2024:
MFA GUEST FACULTY
Karam Abulhusn is currently a partner at Boo Pictures and has over 15 years of industry experience in film finance, production, and development. His passion for filmmaking has led him to work in finance at major studios throughout his career including NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures Entertainment. At Boo Pictures, Karam spearheaded the production of many critically acclaimed films- most notably, the Oscar-nominated film CAPERNAUM, which follows the heart-wrenching struggles of a marginalized minority in Beirut, Lebanon. CAPERNAUM went on to break barriers as one of the first female produced, female directed, and female-led Lebanese films to receive international accolades in 2018. Other films include COSTA BRAVA LEBANON, 1982, SONG OF BACK & NECK, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE, and JOSIE. Karam's values are based on the belief that filmmaking thrives from diversity, inclusion, and gender equality. He is proud to uphold these standards through on and off-screen representation of women and minorities in every area across Boo Pictures' body of work -- from selecting narratives, to storytelling, production, and casting. In 2022, Boo Pictures established a partnership with the WGA’s Middle Eastern Writers Committee to continuously support their efforts to boost visibility and employment of under-represented writers in the entertainment industry. Karam's goal is to tell human stories that push boundaries and are universally inspiring. He continues to empower the next generation of storytellers with the confidence to nurture their creativity. Karam lives in LA with his wife and two young daughters. In his free time, he's playing basketball and coaching girls’ soccer.
Ioannis Argiris is a first generation Greek American writer. He is driven to tell stories about working class immigrants, crime, and mental health. He shows symbolism of larger themes through surrealism because the world is mysterious and abstract. He expresses his stories with lots of color and offbeat visuals–blending his love of Rothko with the weirdness of Cronenberg. ioannis’s short film Blends is making its way through the film festival circuit, picking up multiple wins and selections. He is working on new short stories for his collection Encinal Nights. His work has been featured in the Kelp Journal, Coachella Review, and his zines are in many bookstores across the country (Powells, Silver Sprocket, spectators). He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from UCR Palm Desert. You can find him urban cycling through Oakland while he thinks of new tattoos to add to his sleeves.
Alexandra Barreto has been working on sets for over twenty years as an actress, writer, producer and director. Alexandra’s directorial debut, “Lady Hater,” premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and was named “Top 5 Not-to-be Missed Shorts from the Tribeca Film Festival,” by FORBES. She recently directed the Audible Original Series, “Cut and Run,” starring Meg Ryan, Rachel Bloom and Sam Richardson. She wrote and directed a horror/comedy short film, “Welcome to the 90s,” for the follow up to the popular Shudder anthology, “Scare Package.” Alexandra recently produced the Sundance supported feature film, LATE BLOOMERS, starring Karen Gillan, Margaret Sophie Stein, Jermaine Fowler and Kevin Nealon. An earlier feature she produced, TOO LATE, starring Academy Award Nominees John Hawkes and Robert Forster was released theatrically in over thirty cities and secured a worldwide deal with Netflix. Past projects include writing and directing the first political commercial to air on Comedy Central, and she’s produced seven short films including “The Dungeon Master” which won the Best Short at the Tribeca (Online) Film Festival, and “F*ck the Parents,” starring Pamela Adlon and Rob Delaney.As an actress she’s guest starred and/or recurred on television shows spanning all genres from “Justified” to “Parenthood” to, most recently, recurring on CW’s “All American, a five year run on “The Fosters,” and recurring on the FX breakout hit, “Mayans MC.” She is a Film Independent, IFP and Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow.
Duncan Birmingham is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His short films have premiered at various festivals including Sundance and his feature directorial debut "Who Invited Them" was named one of the best horror films of the year by The Hollywood Reporter. His screenplay Swingles was bought by Paramount and appeared on The Black List. He was the writer and executive producer of the Marc Maron IFC comedy "Maron" and has worked as a writer-producer on various shows including the Starz comedy "Blunt Talk" starring Patrick Stewart and David Fincher's "Videosyncrazy" for HBO. The title story of his short story collection, "The Cult in My Garage" (Maudlin House, 2021), was chosen for the Selected Shorts radio show.
Natashia Deon is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, practicing criminal attorney and author of the critically acclaimed novels, GRACE andThe Perishing. GRACE was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and awarded Best Debut Novel by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. A Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee for Outstanding Fiction and a PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is a professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University. Her personal essays have been featured in The New York Times,Harper’s, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed and other places.
Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission (Fernwood Press 2023). He has work recently in Poetry International, Thrush, Juked, AMP Magazine, Ping Pong, and Typo, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He teaches in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego, CA
Maggie Downs is an award–winning writer based in Palm Springs, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Palm Springs Life, and McSweeney’s, where she writes a monthly column, and has been anthologized in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World’s Best Writers and Best Women’s Travel Writing. Braver Than You Think, her first book, was an instant Amazon bestseller. Her latest book 50 Things to do Before You’re 5 has just been released.
Emily Ziff Griffin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel, LIGHT YEARS which she developed for television with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Currently, she's writing LAST DANCE, a feature for Fifth Season based on her New Yorker essay “The Last Dance With My Dad” with The Hunger Games’ Rachel Zegler set to star, as well as original TV series EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD for Fat City and Anonymous Content, and feature HERE I GO AGAIN for Heyday Films. Previously, she served as a writer on Apple TV+’s miniseries based on the life of legendary screen actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr and developed a teen eco-activist heist show for Makeready and Joey Soloway. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the LA Times, the Yale Review, Self, Culture Trip, Rookie, Refinery29, and beyond. Formerly, she co-founded Cooper’s Town Productions with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a company she ran for ten years. There, she developed and produced numerous projects, including CAPOTE and Hoffman’s directorial debut, JACK GOES BOATING. She is the Co-Founder of the Industry Professional Mentorship Program at Cal State University, Dominguez Hills where she frequently guest lectures. She has run three marathons, slowly, and holds a degree from Brown University in art-semiotics, the study of how images make meaning.
Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last One; What Never Happened; We Lie Here; These Toxic Things; And Now She's Gone; They All Fall Down; and, with James Patterson, The Good Sister, which was included in Patterson's collection The Family Lawyer. A two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist as well as an Anthony, Edgar, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty Award nominee, Rachel is also the author of Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes, and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. A past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, Rachel has been a featured writer on NPR's acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
Matt Horwitz is a a manager at Echo Lake Entertainment. He got his start at Sleeping Giant Entertainment before joining Echo Lake in 2013 focusing on writers and directors in all aspects of TV and film. His clients have worked on such hit shows as AMERICAN DAD, CALL YOUR MOTHER, TACOMA FD, MAGNUM PI, THE YOUNG ROCK, ARROW, THE FLASH, STRANGER THINGS, and THE CONNERS just to name a few. He has set up client projects at just about every network or streamer that you can think of, (and several that you probably didn’t even know existed). Originally from the Washington DC area, he attended Indiana University and has had a passion for TV and Film since a young age when he discovered that people actually made the things he was watching every day, and that passion has helped him guide and build the careers of creative people from the lowest levels all the way to the top.
Amara Hoshijo a senior editor at Saga Press. Her authors include #1 New York Times bestseller Chloe Gong, USA TODAY bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Sascha Stronach, M. J. Kuhn, Rin Chupeco, and Matt Wallace. She loves science fiction and fantasy with a focus on world-building and complex systems, as well as stories with a unique cultural lens. Originally from Honolulu and a graduate of the University of Southern California, Amara moved to New York City over a decade ago, then returned to Los Angeles this summer. Prior to joining Saga Press, she was an editor at Soho Press, where she published Chana Porter’s The Seep, Clarissa Goenawan’s Rainbirds, and Chris McKinney’s Midnight, Water City. She also managed the company’s subrights initiative and is a former Frankfurt Fellow.
Dara Hyde is a Senior Agent at the Hill Nadell Literary Agency in Los Angeles. While representing many types of fiction and nonfiction, her primary focus right now is on adult literary fiction, YA and MG, in both prose and graphic novel formats. Dara has taught or spoken at a number of writers’ conferences and events, including Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, 826LA, BinderCon, New Orleans Writers’ Conference, Pima Writers’ Workshop, PubWest, Long Beach Comic Expo, IWOSC, Antioch University LA MFA, Chapman University MFA, UC Riverside MFA and UCR Palm Desert MFA, Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference, Fallbrook Writers’ Conference, SCBWI, UCLA Extension, and the Literary Editing and Publishing (LEAP) program at USC. You can find her on Twitter @dzhyde and Instagram @dzhyde.
Jud Laghi Launched in 2010, The Jud Laghi Agency is a full-service literary agency that represents fiction and non-fiction at every stage of the publishing process. Jud’s hands-on style includes significant editorial guidance on proposals and manuscripts for the strongest possible publisher submission, and an exploration of all potential opportunities for boosting the marketing and publicity of his clients’ books once they have been published, as well as licensing foreign and translation, audio, serial, film, television, and other digital and online rights. His clients include Jaime Lowe, Peter Zeihan, Dakin Campbell, Davy Rothbart, Brian Raftery, Tim Layden, Jason Turbow, Farah Pandith, Sally Hogshead, Justin and Sydnee McElroy, Portlandia star and Sleater-Kinney guitarist and vocalist Carrie Brownstein, all-time Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, and rock legends Gene Simmons and Kenny Loggins.Jud has represented, developed and launched a broad spectrum of trendsetting and bestselling books throughout his career, by authors of narrative nonfiction, journalism, cultural criticism, memoir, popular culture, prescriptive nonfiction and business, as well as select fiction, middle grade and YA. Before forming JLA, Jud worked as a literary agent at LJK Literary Management and at ICM, where he began his agenting career. He is a graduate of Trinity College with a B.A. in English and creative writing.
Boris Kachka is the former books editor of the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was an editor and writer at New York magazine for two decades. He has written profiles of authors including Joan Didion, Toni Morrison and Harper Lee; investigated turmoil at various cultural and media institutions; expanded books coverage across the publication’s many verticals; and covered film, television, theater and book publishing. He is also the author of “Hothouse,” a cultural history of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux; “Becoming a Veterinarian”; and “Becoming a Producer.”
Rosemary King is an award-winning speechwriter who has worked directly for the Secretary of Defense as well as executives of Fortune 500 companies and national nonprofits. Her speeches have been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and USA Today and reached international audiences in Taiwan, Russia, Hungary, Belgium, Mexico, Colombia, Estonia, Macedonia, and Kosovo among others. Rose holds degrees from Arizona State University, Harvard University, and the Air Force Academy. In December, she earned an MFA/screenwriting from the University of CA/Riverside. She was recently accepted to The Veterans Writing Project, a mentorship program run by the Writers Guild of America. Rose is obsessed with stories about underdogs, outsiders, and rebels – characters who are part of a tribe yet feel like they don’t belong.Rose serves on the Advisory Board of the Professional Speechwriters Association, a worldwide network of leadership communication professionals. She is also on the Board of Directors of Rose City Hockey Club, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2013 for girls ages 5-18. Rose lives in Portland, OR, with her wife, Kristin, and their feisty cat, Piper.
David Martinez earned his MFA from University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert, and previously taught English and creative writing at Glendale Community College in Arizona. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Brazil and has lived in both countries as well as in Puerto Rico. His work has appeared in The Coachella Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Broken Pencil, and Automata Review. He lives in Glendale, Arizona. His debut memoir, Bones Worth Breaking, has just been released and was already named a best book of the year by Esquire.
Tiffany Colli Moon is a producer, dramaturg and theatre manager devoted to the development and production of new works. She has been an active member of the Los Angeles and Southern California theatre community for the last decade, working with companies such as Center Theatre Group, South Coast Repertory, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Greenway Arts Alliance, California Repertory Company, and Rogue Artists Ensemble; and previously spent six years in NYC working in various capacities at theatres such as BAM, Summer Play Festival, and Theater for the New City. Tiffany is currently the Literary Manager of Ojai Playwrights Conference, where she has been a staff member since 2012, most recently completing two seasons (2015 and 2016) as Managing Director. Tiffany holds an MFA/MBA in Theatre Management from CSULB, a BFA in Theatre Performance from Chapman University and a Certificate in Musical Theatre Performance from Circle in the Square Theatre School.
Celeste Holben Pecar is Director of Development for filmmaker Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, with whom she is producing several film and TV projects, including an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s bestselling novel, The Fortress of Solitude.
Olivia Taylor Smith is a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster where she acquires literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, and memoir. She is looking for emerging voices with a profound literary talent, inventiveness, and humor, groundbreaking international authors, works of literary suspense, mystery and adventure, and literary fiction that is surprising and unexpected, evocative and hilarious, emotionally impactful and occasionally, unhinged. She is actively seeking to expand her non-fiction list, and is interested in literary memoir, progressive issues, current affairs, and geopolitics. Titles Olivia has acquired and are forthcoming at S&S include Heartwood by Amity Gaige, Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp, At Last by Marisa Silver, Blackcurrant by Kerry Cullen, Oddbody by Rose Keating, and What Hunger by Cat Dang.
Mike Sonksen is a 3rd-generation Los Angeles native that teaches several course in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department including Conflicts, Journeys, Knowledges, LA Stories, Natures and PPDV. Sonksen earned his Bachelors’ Degree at UCLA in 1997. In June 2014, he completed an Interdisciplinary Master of Arts in English and History from the California State University of Los Angeles. Following his graduation from U.C.L.A. in 1997, he has published over 500 essays and poems with publications and websites like the Academy of American Poets, KCET, Poets & Writers Magazine, BOOM, Wax Poetics, Southern California Quarterly, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Lana Turner, The Architect’s Newspaper, LA Alternative Press, Los Angeles Review of Books, Cultural Weekly, Angel’s Flight, Angel City Review, Entropy, LA Taco, Lummox and many others. Most recently, one of his KCET essays was Awarded for Excellence by the Los Angeles Press Club. Sonksen’s prose and poetry have been published on a building at 7th and Olive in Downtown Los Angeles and on banners on Santa Monica and Venice Boulevards and included in programs with the Mayor’s Office, the Los Angeles Public Library’s “Made in LA,” series, Grand Park, the Music Center, the Friends of the Los Angeles River and Glendale Central Library. On three separate occasions, the City of Los Angeles has awarded Sonksen “Certificates of Commendation” for his poetic contributions to the city. In May 2018, Sonksen was awarded by the Associated Students Organization of Woodbury University for Excellence in Teaching. He has also been a guest speaker at over 80 universities and high schools.
Jaime Parker Stickle a writer, actor, podcaster, and college professor, and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. She is the creator and host of the true crime investigative podcast, The Girl with the Same Name as well as the hilarious and popular podcast, Make That Paper. She is the recipient of the Virginia G. Piper Desert Nights Rising Stars Fellowship. She teaches L.A. Media Studies, Podcasting, and Creative Writing for Montclair State University.
Susan Straight’s most recent novel, Mecca, was a Finalist for the Kirkus Prize and named by The New York Times as a Top Ten California Book of the Year, one of the Best Ten Books of 2022 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and the best book of 2022 by NPR. Her 2019 memoir, In the Country of Women, was a national bestseller, named the best book of the year by NPR and CodeSwitch, and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She has published eight previous novels, including the bestseller Highwire Moon, a Finalist for the National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in O Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, Harpers, and elsewhere. Her awards include the Lannan Prize for Fiction, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Story, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Arabic, Swedish, Polish, and Japanese. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family; she has taught at the University of California, Riverside, since 1988.
Rider Strong After being cast as Gavroche in Les Miserables at nine years old, Rider Strong began his career as an actor, becoming best known for his roles on Boy Meets World and the cult horror film, Cabin Fever. Moving behind the camera, Rider wrote and directed short films that have played over 60 festivals worldwide and won both audience and juried awards. He returned to his roots, this time as a director, for three seasons of the Emmy-nominated Girl Meets World. In addition to his screenwriting, Rider’s writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Believer, Bullet Magazine, Shondaland, and more. His play Never Ever Land premiered at Theatre Unleashed in Los Angeles in the fall of 2019. Since 2022, he’s cohosted the immensely popular Pod Meets World podcast, alongside Danielle Fishel and Will Friedel, and previously co-hosted Literary Disco for a decade. He graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University and received his M.F.A. in Fiction and Literature from Bennington College. He’s taught screenwriting at both Chapman College and UC Riverside.
Sarah Tomlinson is a Los Angeles-based writer and the author of The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers. She has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist, music critic, writer, ghostwriter, and editor. She has ghostwritten or co-written fourteen books, including the New York Times bestseller, Fast Girl, with Suzy Favor Hamilton, and two uncredited New York Times-bestsellers. Her father-daughter memoir, Good Girl, was published by Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster) in April 2015. She has extensive experience serving as a bridge between the creative minds and personalities of her clients and the rigorous attention-to-detail and deadline-oriented demands of the publishing world. She has long turned her passion for music, literature, and pop culture trends into cutting-edge coverage and cultural criticism. Her personal essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in publications including Marie Claire, MORE, Salon.com, Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Huffington Post. Her fiction has appeared on Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Her articles and music reviews have appeared in publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Boston magazine, Spin.com, Billboard.com, Alternative Press, Swindle, Preen, Rockpile, The OC Weekly, and The Willamette Week. She wrote a weekly local music column, “Notes,” for The Boston Phoenix. She has written bios for bands on Virgin, Red Ink/Columbia, and MySpace Records and contributed to the electronic press kits for artists on Warner Bros. Records. After growing up in Maine, Sarah attended the early college, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and then earned a BA in Creative Writing at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. After four years spent writing and buying records in Portland, Oregon, she earned an MA in Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston. While in Boston, she launched her journalism career. Sarah currently writes novels, memoirs, screenplays, TV pilots, personal essays, short stories and online dating profiles for her friends. She has read at Los Angeles literary happenings including Sit ‘n Spin, Vermin on the Mount, Tongue and Groove and Little Birds. Her favorite band is T. Rex. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.
Oscar Villalon is the editor of ZYZZYVA, a recipient of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. His work has been published in several publications, including The Believer, Stranger’s Guide, Alta, and Lit Hub, where he is a contributing editor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their son.
Jennie Webb is an independent Los Angeles writer, dramaturg and playwright. Her plays, including Currency, Yard Sale Signs, Remodeling Plans, Unclaimed Assets, GreenHouse, On Tuesday, Brand New Script, It’s Not About Race, Buying a House, About What Matters, Reach, Smiling Cat Candy Heart and Carry On have been produced locally (by Inkwell Theater, Santa Monica Rep, Rogue Machine Theatre, The Road Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival, EST/LA and others), at colleges and universities across the country and in India, Iceland, Canada and the UK. She has been a part of The Playwright Center’s PlayLabs, Great Plains Theatre Conferences, Little Black Dress INK Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Festivals, Protest Plays Project, the Virginia Avenue Project, 365 Women a Year, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, The Road Theatre Company Summer Playwrights Festivals and Under Construction 1, PlayGround-LA, Moving Arts MADlab, Blank Theatre’s Living Room Series and Rogue Artists Ensemble’s inaugural Rogue Lab with plays including The Complete Story of the War, Rebecca on the Bus, Seperate Loads, Crazy Bitch, Jilt, Into the Gobpile, Not Cake, adaptation.resilience and Footprint; her work is published by Heinemann Press, Smith & Kraus, Next Stage Press and ICWP. Her plays have been named finalist (O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Gulfshore Playhouse New Play and City Theatre National Short Play Awards) and semi-finalists (PlayPenn, Athena Project, Trustus Theatre Festival, O’Neill) in numerous competitions and she is a two-time winner of a Max K. Lerner Playwriting Fellowship. She is currently a member of the Playwrights Union, EST/LA, Honor Roll!, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatists Guild. She is the recipient of a Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award and is co-founder and editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative.
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She is also a researcher of Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. She was a co-convener of Dark Matter: Cosmic Probes in the 2021 Snowmass particle physics community planning process, and she is a member of the National Academies Elementary Particles: Progress and Promise decadal committee. She is the creator of the Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography. Nature recognized Dr. Prescod-Weinstein as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence magazine has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” A co-creator of the Particles for Justice letter against sexism in particle physics and 2020 Strike for Black Lives, she received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics and the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology.
Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her first book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books) won the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the science and technology category, the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Science Award, and a 2022 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. It was named a Best Book of 2021 by Publishers Weekly, Smithsonian Magazine, and Kirkus and was a finalist for multiple awards including the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. The Disordered Cosmos was also longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature. In 2022, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein was the inaugural top prize winner in the mid-career researcher category of the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication. She is now working on her second book for general audiences, The Edge of Space-Time (Pantheon Books), and an academic book, The Cosmos is a Black Aesthetic (Duke University Press). Originally from East L.A., she divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chris Wiley is a California poet and playwright. He has published two chapbooks of poetry: Some Men and Stillness After Thrashing. Some of his recent poetry has been published in Bending Genres and Peculiar. He co-founded Theater Bobo in the 1980s, the first openly queer theater in Washington, D.C. Several of his stage plays have been produced in San Francisco, California; Washington, D.C.; Long Island, New York; Memphis, Tennessee, Boston, Massachusetts and St. Louis, Missouri. He has a BA in English Literature from James Madison University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside.
Ben Winters is the New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award–winning, and Philip K. Dick Award–winning author of Big Time, The Quiet Boy, Golden State, Underground Airlines, the Last Policeman trilogy, and the mash-up novel Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.
Ben has also worked extensively in television. He is the creator of the smash-hit CBS show TRACKER and has served as a writer/producer on the FX cult hit Legion as well as Manhunt on Apple TV+, and he is the creator of the upcoming CBS drama Tracker. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.
Blaise P. Zerega is Alta Journal's editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor and part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, and other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley. Throughout his career, he has helped lead teams small and large to numerous honors including multiple National Magazine Awards. He attended the United States Military Academy, New York University, and received a Michener Fellowship for fiction from the Texas Center for Writers.