We're kicking off our Fall 2024 residency on Friday December 6th at the Omni Rancho Las Palmas in Rancho Mirage. Our award-winning and best-selling faculty will be joined by 30 guests for an exciting ten days of lectures, seminars, professional meetings, and workshops. If you're interested in sitting in for a day prior to applying, please contact Kathryn McGee at Kathryn.McGee@ucr.edu
Daily Schedule
Friday December 6
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 7
8:00 Breakfast
9:00: All Student Orientation in Salon 5
*Required for ALL students & faculty & staff
10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Shivani Doraiswami, Kim Yau, & Joshua Malkin
Getting & Keeping Representation
How do you catch the eye of the top agents and managers? What are they looking for, what’s selling, and what are the trends? We’ll give you the nuts and bolts, the how-to, and the why.
(Salon 5)
10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Mag Gabbert (P)
Theory of Relativity: Poetry and Quantum Mechanics
Recent breakthroughs in the fields of theoretical physics and the philosophy of mind have upended the notion of “objective reality” and left us to grapple with the possibility that every aspect of the universe—from the moon’s constant presence beside Earth to the pain that accompanies a shattered bone—is entirely subjective, relational, and malleable. In other words, researchers now suggest that reality itself is simply a construction, one formed by our own individual perceptions and interpretations. In this lecture, I explore some of the foundational theories that have led us to this point, including quantum entanglement, relational realism, and the hard problem of consciousness, in order to demonstrate how the elements within poems not only mirror their complex inner workings, but in fact function in concert to create their own microcosms, manifesting new versions of consciousness and reality, thereby allowing each poem to become its own universe.
(Salon 6)
10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Maret Orliss (NF)
Writing the Op-Ed
One of the best markets for your writing is the op-ed pages of major newspapers…including the Los Angeles Times. In this talk, LA Times Op-Ed assistant editor Maret Orliss talks the hallmarks of great topical essays.
(Salon 4)
1:15 Main Genre Workshops
Birnbaum -- Plumeria
Crane/Roberge – Larkspur
Essbaum -- Gardenia
Iglesias – Primrose
Malkin – Hibiscus
Pochoda – Lantana
Rabkin – Jasmine
Schimmel - Iris
Smith – Palms (beside coffee shop)/Lavender for bad weather
Ulin -- Begonia
4:30: Graduate Lecture: Tyler Brouwer
Beyond Show and Tell: Using Stylized Description to Conjure Real Places
Settings aren't just set dressing; they're real spaces your readers inhabit. While conventional descriptions signal where we are, stylized descriptions can fill our senses and create genuine experiences. From subtle viewpoint adjustments to radical experiments in consciousness, this lecture explores how to craft descriptions that transport your readers anywhere you dare to send them – and bring them back changed.
Dinner
8:00: Special Evening Program: Matthew Zapruder in conversation with Jill Alexander Essbaum
Followed by a book signing
Join us for the return of Guggenheim & Lannan Fellow and National Book Critic’s Award finalist Matthew Zapruder, one of the most acclaimed poets of his generation, on the occasion of the release of his new collection I Love Hearing Your Dreams.
Don’t miss this! Literally. It’s required.
Book signing to follow
Sunday December 8
8:00: Breakfast
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Heather Scott Partington (F/NF/P)
Interviewing & Being Interviewed
The art of the author interview…from both sides of the page. Join National Book Critics Circle President Heather Scott Partington as she teaches you how interview authors and how to answer the questions posed to you by people just like her.
(Salon 4)
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Sarah Langan (F)
World Building in Genre Fiction
Writing horror is an act of conjuring. When it works, readers believe in that haunted house, that possessed little kid, those zombie hordes at the local mall, and even that dystopian anti-paradise where women are handmaidens. They feel it. From setting, to tone, to voice, we'll break down the world-building that makes these stories so authentic. (Salon 5)
9:00-10:30am Guest Faculty Lecture: Leena Pendharkar (S)
The Writer-Director Relationship
As a screenwriter, your ultimate goal is to get your movie made, which means that you will, at some point, collaborate with a Director. This session will discuss what a Writer-Director collaboration might look like, and what steps a director would take to bring your story to the screen. We will discuss how a director will look at your script in terms of filming it scene by scene, and thinking about it in the larger context of performance, character arc and visual language. We will also touch what rewrites and edits a director might request, and how this collaboration can be most fruitful. Finally, Leena will provide some tips and tricks on how to maximize your script on the page, if you are looking to attached or collaborate with a potential director.
(Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Lauren Galit (F/NF/P) w/Mark Haskell Smith
The Author/Agent Relationship
From query to representation to a long career…how the author/agent relationship works, how it’s sustained, and why it is fundamental to the publishing business.
(Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Mickey Birnbaum (PL)
Exit, Pursued by a Bear
Ending things is hard, especially scenes. How do we know when a scene is done? How do we get out elegantly, if we're not Shakespeare and there are no bears lurking? How can we create opportunities for our director and actors to create unique and satisfying transitions? We'll look at the endings (and middles and beginnings) of a few great scenes to see how playwrights do it, and we'll consider how the way you end your scenes affects the way you end your play.
(Salon 5)
12:00-1:00pm: Lunch
1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops
Birnbaum – Plumeria
Crane – Begonia
Essbaum – Gardenia
Iglesias – Primrose
Malkin – Hibiscus
Pochoda -- Lantana
Rabkin – Jasmine
Roberge – Lavender
Schimmel – Iris
Smith – Palms (beside coffee shop)/Salon 8 for bad weather
Ulin – Larkspur
4:30: Graduate Lecture: Robert Orantes (S)
Building the bridge between protagonist and audience.
A protagonist can resonate and stay with an audience long after the credits roll. They can cause us to wave our hands around because we are one with the force or to slap an S on our chest with a cape around around our necks so we can save the day! An effective protagonist can even instill values or at the very least prompt someone to think about the world around them as they see it through the protagonist’s eyes. Together let’s examine the elements of the protagonist and not only the impact they can have into telling an engaging narrative, but also on all of us.
Dinner
Special Event! A staged reading of Carolyn Guido Clifford’s play directed by Katie Gilligan
7:00: Doors (with lite refreshments!)
7:30: Performance
UCR Palm Desert
75080 Frank Sinatra Drive
Palm Desert, CA 92211
Monday December 9
8:00: Breakfast
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Greg Mania (NF)
How To Write Humor in Memoir & Essay
In this lecture, we will examine how we metabolize our stories through humor. Students can expect to learn about layering levity into their writing through generative writing exercises, analyzing different approaches to comedic storytelling, and class discussion. (Salon 4)
9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Andrew Chapman (S)
What Showrunners Are Looking For When They Staff A Show
You’ve found that agent. You’ve written a bunch of great pilots that are being shopping around. But you need a job! What do top showrunners look for when they’re putting together the team to execute their vision? Veteran showrunner Andrew Chapman will take you from pilot to episode 100 on long running network and streaming shows to tell you how to land and keep that staff position.
(Salon 5)
9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Perrin Pring (All)
Walk The Walk, Talk The Talk
Ever wonder what all that stuff on a cop's belt is? Ever wonder what an officer's radio is actually saying? Why is it that most media features plain clothes cops or investigators and not uniformed officers? Come to this talk and learn! We will go over the basics of uniformed law enforcement by breaking down the gear, the uniform, the mechanics of using all this stuff, and how it shapes an officer, and more importantly, the characters you will write. We will discuss common things that writers get wrong when writing about cops, and go over things to keep in mind as you craft your police characters. Come with questions! Disclaimer: This is not a political discussion. This is designed to get you the foundational information you need to make the best characters for your story. You can write the story. We will just give you the building blocks to do so.
(Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Gracie Doyle & Tod Goldberg (F)
The Developmental Edit
You’ve just turned in your book. Your life’s work! It’s in your editor’s hot hands. A few weeks later, it comes back to you, marked up. You have six weeks to fix this mess. In this talk, we’ll go through a developmental edit on a book set for press, what that looks like, with living examples no less, what the role of the editor is, the role of the writer, and they work together to get the book from draft to production ready.
(Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Keri Picolla Stanbra (S)
The Heartbeat of Your Story: Uncovering Your Thematic Pulse
Let's dive into the essential role of theme in shaping the tone, mood, and overall impact of your creative work. We'll explore how a personal thematic, rooted in the writer's unique perspective, serves as the emotional core of a story, driving character development, plot progression, and audience engagement. By identifying and harnessing this thematic pulse, writers can infuse their work with a distinctive voice and create a profound connection with readers. Additionally, we'll discuss how to utilize thematic insights to craft compelling visual pitch decks that effectively communicate the essence of a project.
(Salon 5)
10:30-`12:00 Jill Alexander Essbaum (P/F)
Words are Loaded Pistols: The Purpose, Practice, and Pleasures of Weaponized Vulnerability
A weapon wants to rip through skin. To blunt-force bone, or brain through bone. To sever the head from the whole. To bore a hole. To burn, burn, burn. For a weapon is at its best when it wounds. Our weapon of choice is words. And I want mine to hurt you. I really do. I want to poke an awful bruise and scratch a scar into a secret place. I do and I don't speak in metaphor. Of my certain sadism, I am not ashamed. I suspect I'm not alone in this. There's absolute thrill in a killshot. This is a lecture on how to throw a motherfucking gut punch. Practical tactics to disarm your reader to the point of actual, physical feeling. Strategies for conjuring unexpected or uncomfortable or undesirable emotions. How to play to pain. You want to make real people cry real tears? I'll show you how to break a goddamn heart. The pleasure, if perverse, is also irrefutable: a wicked frisson of glee. First the bullet, then the bang. If you don't know how to do it, I'll teach you how. If you're already doing it, I'll teach you how to do it better.
(Salon 4)
12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch
1:15-4:15: Main Genre Workshops
4:30: Graduate Lecture: Fran DiMeo (S)
Smile, You’re Dead! Comedy & fantasy bring a light tone to the serious subject of what happens after death.
What happens when we die? Where do we go? What's it like? Are we judged? If so, how, and
by who? These TV shows and films use the comedy and fantasy genres to explore the afterlife,
and grapple with weighty philosophical questions in an approachable, comedic tone. The
fantasy genre allows us to explore the world of the afterlife in vivid detail (far beyond the earthly
boundaries) filled with metaphors and creativity. When our own world feels like an increasingly
scary and uncertain place, watching a hopeful view of the afterlife can feel reassuring – or at
least entertaining.
5:10 Graduate Lecture: Jonah Gardner (F)
Like & Subscribe To This Lecture
As smartphones and social media apps have taken over politics, culture, dating, friendship, and more, it's become nearly impossible to tell a story about contemporary life without incorporating text messages, DMs, and memes. But how do we write about the absurdities and frustrations of the Internet in an interesting and authentic way? Is it possible to find anything new to say about the pitfalls of TikTok and Twitter? Can we make compelling art out of a world of people staring at screens? We will look at writers who tried to do just that, seeing what works and what doesn’t when using the Internet in our writing.
Dinner
8:00: Evening Program: The Student Reading in the R Bar hosted by the Coachella Review.
Tuesday December 10
8:00 Breakfast
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Kate Hinterberger (NF)
What A Nonfiction Editor Wants
For now, essays are chosen by editors who are people. While it may feel like your submission is entering a black hole, there is in fact a person on the other end of the interweb that wants your essay to be good, to be the shining star of an essay that makes the publication and the editor look really smart and important. And when that person is me, there a few key attributes I look for. This is not a formula; there is still plenty of room for creativity in both form and content, but great essays share common attributes. (Salon 4)
9:00-10:30 Faculty Lecture: Joshua Malkin & John Schimmel (S)
Is There A Future In This?
We’ve come through a long strike, the challenges of AI loom, studios are collapsing, movie theaters are closing, Oppenheimer won best picture, what even IS a TV show anymore? What even IS a movie anymore? Are we in an existential doom spiral? Joshua and John will talk about the realities of the industry today, from the working writer and the working producer’s point of view…and how to navigate what seems to be an industry in flux. (Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.)
(Salon 5)
9:00-10:30 Faculty Lecture: Elizabeth Crane (F/NF)
Turning Your Obsessions into Essays and Stories
Can’t stop thinking about (bees, war, Vanderpump Rules, fountain pens, zombies and or the apocalypse, where does time go, like literally, where does it go, why is your mom like that?)? Ok, those might just be me. Bring a list of obsessions, your laptop or some paper, and I’ll help you figure out how to turn them into essay and short story gold. Or silver. Bronze. These things take time, but we’ve got an hour and a half to get you started.
(Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Gabino Iglesias (F)
Talking to yourself: Writing Dialogue
Good grammer is important, but making your characters talk good is importanter. No, seriously, dialogue can make or break a novel. In this workshop, we teach the voices in our heads to talk to each other.
(Salon 4)
10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Gina Frangello (NF)
My Brilliant Friend…And Other Essays
Using other books and essays and stories as an entry into discussing broader issues of literature. Or: how to write about the world while writing about a book.
(Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Bill Rabkin (S)
Idea to Story
Your next project can start anywhere – an image, a phrase, a sound. But how do you take that source of inspiration and transform it into a story that can sustain a movie, a book, or a series? In this lecture I will trace the inspirations, influences, connections and leaps of faith that allowed me to take a single image and build it into a fully developed TV series.
(Salon 5)
12:00-1:00pm: Lunch
1:15-4:15 Cross-Genre Workshops
4:30: Graduate Lecture: Matt Harrison (F)
The Novels of Natsume Soseki
The groundbreaking early 20th century Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki wrote a trio of novels in 1908, 1909, 1910 during a period of extreme social change in Japan. These are little known in the US…but we have much to learn from them.
8:00: Evening Program: Nicholas Belardes in conversation with Gabino Iglesias. Join us for a spirited conversation about Nick’s debut novel, The Deading! Don’t miss this! No really. You have to go.
Book signing to follow!
Wednesday December 11
8:00: Breakfast
9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Jade Valenzuela (All)
Public Libraries 101
Learn some basics about how public libraries function and what they have to offer. Plus, get the scoop on how to get your book into your libraries' collections! (Salon 6)
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Rae Dubow (All)
The Public Presentation
At some point very soon, all of you will be tasked with speaking in public…and many of you will be asked to perform in public. We don’t want you to read in poet voice. No one wants that, frankly. In this talk, we’ll teach you the best practices for getting up and speaking in front of an audience, even if you’re scared to death. Tricks, tips, and strategies used by the best in the business. (Salon 4)
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Nicholas Belardes (F)
Monstrous Mashups: Mixing Genres
Why write in one genre when you can blend two or more using horror as your anchor and selling point. Why not give it a try—horror may just be the hottest genre on the block. We’ll talk why and how to find ways to bring darkness to what you’re writing and what you’re desperate to sell. (Salon 5)
10:30-12:00: Guest Faculty Lecture: Jami Brandli (PL)
Aristotle's Six Dramatic Elements
In this seminar we will cover Aristotle's Six Elements of drama: Character, Action, Ideas, Language, Music and Spectacle/Theatricality. We will also analyze one ten-minute play and end with a writing exercise (so please bring something to write with/on!) (Salon 5)
10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Daniel Nieh (F/S)
PORTRAYING PREJUDICE BEYOND REALISM: INVENTIVE APPROACHES IN FICTION AND FILM
Realism-based stories of prejudice often hit the audience right on the nose, eliciting anger and tears. In other modes, such as speculative fiction, satire, and thriller, the target might be the spine, the limbic system, or the funny bone. This craft talk will be an interactive discussion of ingenious cultural critiques including both novels (from Interior Chinatown to The Other Black Girl) and films (from American Fiction to Get Out). (Salon 6)
12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch
1:15-4:15: Main Genre Workshops
4:30: Graduate Lecture: Sean Parado (F)
Manga: A Complex and Entertaining Form of Storytelling
For years, manga, like comics, have had the stigma of being an entertainment medium only. But recently, manga has become more. Join me as I dice into today's popular reads and dissect what makes them literary devices for war, racism and differences in philosophies.
5:10: Graduate Lecture: Jackelin Orellana (NF)
The Courage to Write: Redefining Female Strength Through Memoir
The definition of strength created by the patriarchy has led to generations of silent suffering. However, over the years, memoir has been instrumental in exposing the truth about "strong women," and it has given future generations the chance to redefine what it means to be strong. In this lecture, we will explore various authors and works that have created a space for dialogue and change. Here's to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them, but before we do all that, may we understand the true meaning of strength.
Dark Night
Thursday December 12
8:00: Breakfast
9:00:-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: 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 4)
9:00-10:30 Guest Faculty Lecture: Charli Engelhorn (S) w/Bill Rabkin
The Working Screenwriter
We’ve been lucky to see Charli’s journey from assistant to staff writer to executive story editor as she navigates her burgeoning career in Hollywood. We check in to see what it’s like when you leave the safety of an established show to stake your claim on a new one…and where she goes next! (Salon 5)
10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Peter Houlahan (NF).
Applying Fictional Techniques To Nonfiction Scenes
Using the events outside the bank in the Norco 1980 bank robbery as a case study, we’ll look at how one applies the the elements of fiction to creative nonfiction. We’ll look at how you massage a police report, a 911 call, court transcripts, and interviews and transform/integrate them into a compelling, factual narrative. And we’ll look at and hear samples of all of those! A hand’s on seminar in turning your research into award-winning prose. (Salon 5)
10:30-12:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Bree Rolfe (P)
Fuck Around & Find Out: The Power of Prompts and Playing with Poetry
After spending 18 years teaching high school students who hated poetry, I was often tasked with making poetry something even the most reluctant writers found engaging. And I have come to realize, that the more we fuck around with our poetry, the closer we get to what we need to say. In this generative workshop and lecture, we will try a few techniques I’ve used over the years to let the unconscious guide our work in fresh ways. (Salon 6)
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Robin Benway (F) w/Mark Haskell Smith
So You Wrote A Banned Book
National Book Award winner Robin Benway sits down for a chat about what it’s like when your award-winning book ends up being banned. (Salon 5)
1:00-2:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Sarah Treem (S) w/Joshua Malkin
Writer as Showrunner
There comes a time, if you’re lucky, when you make the move from writing someone else’s ideas…to writing your own. We’ll talk about the move from writer to EP, how to manage the writing, the room, and the network. (Salon 6)
2:00-3:00 Guest Faculty Lecture: Angeline Rodriguez & Daphne Durham (F/NF/P) w/Tod Goldberg
The Book Marketplace
We’ll sit down with a top agent and a top editor to get the low-down on where the book world currently finds itself…(Salon 6)
3:00: Graduate Lecture: Carolyn Guido Clifford (PL)
Staging Community: The Importance of Large-Cast Plays in 21st Theatre
From Ancient Greece to Shakespeare's stage, theatre has long harnessed the transformative power of large ensembles to breathe life into entire communities - a tradition that, despite modern constraints, continues to find artistic success through bold contemporary works like The Ferryman and Leopoldstadt. Cast size can profoundly shape storytelling, with groundbreaking plays using large ensembles not merely for spectacle but to capture the chaotic realism of communal life. Defying today’s minimalist trends, discover how these theatrical works prove that when playwrights populate their stages with full, vibrant communities, they create powerful spaces for audiences to engage with the complexities of 21st-century identity and fellowship.
3:45: Graduate Lecture: Ivo Raza (S)
CHARACTER INTROS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
How to hook the reader with character descriptions.
4:30: Graduate Lecture: Kelly Tseng (F)
Don't Stop for Love
Young adult heroes - the people we cheer for because they take on the world with the bravery and confidence we all wish we had at that awkward age. They deserve to have a partner at their side for when us writers make their lives cold, miserable, and downright hopeless. But what if I told you that this partner has the ability to smother your young adult hero - and by extension the story - like a blinding, toxic relationship? Join me as we look at how love - that innocent, warm, sparkly infatuation - is powerful enough to make or break the stories of our young heroes.
Dinner
8pm: Special Event! Alex Segura in conversation with Ivy Pochoda. Join us for a special event as we’re joined by Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author Alex Segura to launch his new novel Alter Ego! Not to be missed, literally…
Book signing to follow
Friday December 13
8:00: Breakfast
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Charles Jensen (NF)
Innovative Approaches To Memoir
Not every life is the same, not every memoir should be, either. In this talk, we’ll examine different and innovative approaches to telling your life story. (Salon 4)
9:00-10:30: Guest Faculty Lecture: Don Handfield (S)
The Three Ring Method for Story
You’ve read all the screenwriting books. You’ve saved the cat. But have you tried the Three Ring Method? Probably not. Because that book is coming out next year…and Don Handfield wrote it. He’s going to teach you this method for the first time. (Salon 5)
9:00-10:30 Faculty Lecture: Yennie Cheung (All)
Writing Criticism For the Coachella Review
Our in-house magazine needs you! Plus, you’re required to work there…but more importantly, you want the clips! Executive Editor Yennie Cheung is going to show you how to write book and film criticism for the magazine YOU get to edit. (Salon 6)
10:30-12:00: Guest Faculty Lecture: Annemarie Hauser (All)
Climbing the Ladder: From Intern to Producer (Sort Of)
You have an MFA. You have a manuscript. Now what? Following our dreams in this industry is never easy, but it's more than possible. Maybe you have to climb multiple ladders. Maybe you have to put the manuscript down and find other creative outlets. Maybe you have to go on dozens of coffee runs until someone takes a chance on you for more. In this lecture, we'll talk about navigating creative challenges, how our path to success maybe isn't the one we thought we'd take, what works in the industry, what doesn't work, and how to keep that hope alive. (Salon 6)
10:30-12:00 Faculty Lecture: Tod Goldberg (F)
How to Write A Series Character
The simple answer is: don’t let them get killed. The larger answer is: you have to create a character people don’t have easy opinions about. In this talk, we’ll look at how one develops a character they can use over the course of several books and stories, strategies for keeping the character fresh, and how to not accidentally chop off one of their limbs, unless your character is Luke Skywalker. (Salon 5)
12:00: Lunch
1:15-4:15 Main Genre Workshops
8:00pm: Special Screening: Matthew Harrison’s cult classic RHYTHM THIEF. Join your classmate for a special screening of his 1994 directorial masterpiece, which earned the Special Jury Prize in Directing from Sundance, Best Feature from SXSW, and more. Matt will be joined for a Q&A by Shannon Presby. 88 minutes.
Saturday December 14
8:00: Breakfast
9:00-10:00 Fall Graduating Student Meeting: ALL STUDENTS GRADUATING Spring 2025 MUST ATTEND (Salon 6)
9:30-11:00 Guest Lecture: Jack Novak (PL)
The Setup
The first few pages of your play--the very first image, even--teach your audience how to watch it and what to expect. What's the subject, tone, idiom, form? What are the important symbols? What words and gestures have dramatic significance? Once you've established these expectations, how do you deliver on them without making your work too predictable, and how do you defy those expectations in a way that doesn't disappoint your audience but elevates your work to another level? I'll discuss all this and show you what you can learn from knock-knock jokes and Super Mario Bros. (Salon 5)
(Salon 5)
9:30-11:00 Lecture: David Ulin (NF)
Editing Didion
Through several volumes and nearly 3,000 pages, David Ulin edited the legendary writer Joan Didion’s work for the acclaimed Library of America series, the last volume of which is out now. He’ll talk about working with Didion, the legacy of her books and essays, and the daunting task of completing these books after her death in 2021. (Salon 4)
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 15
8:00: Breakfast
9:00am-12:00: Main Genre Workshops & Final Meetings
12:00: Sad Lunch….and then why don’t you come back in June to meet our new pal Tommy Bahama!
Guest Faculty
Megan Beatie 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
Nicholas Belardes A writer of the American West, Nicholas Belardes’s debut eco-horror The Deading combines elements of literary, horror, and science fiction. Gabino Iglesias wrote in the New York Times Book Review that The Deading “perfectly balances social critique, lyricism and ghastliness. It’s a claustrophobic mosaic of a novel, and an outstanding debut.” Belardes’s follow up, Ten Sleep (2025), blends elements of the gothic with eco-horror and Western fiction. While attending UCR Palm Desert’s MFA Program, Belardes received its Founder’s Award. When not writing, he’s either birdwatching or teaching essay writing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Ethnic Studies Program.
Robin Benway is a National Book Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of nine novels for young adults, including Far From the Tree, Audrey, Wait!, the AKA series, and Emmy & Oliver. Her books have received numerous awards and recognition, including the PEN America Literary Award, the Blue Ribbon Award from the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults, and ALA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. In addition, her novels have received starred reviews from Bookpage, Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly, and have been published in more than 25 countries. Her sixth novel, Far From the Tree, won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the PEN America Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, PBS, Entertainment Weekly, and the Boston Globe. In addition to her fictional work, her non-fiction work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Bustle, Elle, and more. Her newest book, The Girls of Skylark Lane, will be in stores on October 1, 2024 and she's currently working on an adult fiction novel with journalist Omid Scobie. Robin grew up in Orange County, California, attended NYU, where she was a recipient of the Seth Barkas Prize for Creative Writing, and is a graduate of UCLA. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Marnie Chicken.
Jami Brandli’s plays include The Magician’s Sister, The Romeo and Juliet Senior Citizens Project—A Comedy, O: A Rhapsody in Divorce, Technicolor Life, M-Theory, Through the Eye of a Needle, Visiting Hours, The Caregiver's Guide and BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) which was named in the inaugural Kilroys List. Works produced/developed at New Dramatists, New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, Kitchen Dog Theater, Launch Pad, The Women’s Voices Theater Festival, Moving Arts, The Road, Inkwell Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, among other venues. Jami was a participating playwright at Center Theatre Group's 2022 L.A. Writers' Workshop led by Luis Alfaro where she developed her play about female magicians. The Magician's Sister was presented last September as part of CTG's New Works Festival at The Kirk Douglas Theater. The Magician’s Sister recently won the 2023 Jane Chambers Award and the 2023 Stanley Drama Award, and it was workshopped and publicly presented at the 2023 Kayenta New Play Lab in Ivins, UT. It was also a finalist for the 2023 Risk Award. O: A Rhapsody in Divorce is currently receiving a Rolling World Premiere with Mildred’s Umbrella (Houston, TX) in Jan-Feb of 2024, and then with Outside IN Theatre (Los Angeles) in early 2025. The Romeo and Juliet Senior Citizens Project—A Comedy will receive a forthcoming production at Westmont College (Santa Barbara) as part of their International Shakespeare Festival, Spring 2024. Additional accolades: BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) nominated for Best Playwriting for an Original Play; Los Angeles Ovation Awards. 2020 Under Construction Playwright with The Road. 2019 Humanitas Prize PLAY LA playwright. Winner of John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award, Holland New Voices Award, Ashland New Plays Festival and Aurora Theatre Company's GAP Prize. Finalist for the PEN Drama Award. Her short works are published with TCG, Dramatic Publishing Company, Applause Books, and Smith & Kraus. A proud member of The Playwrights Union and The Dramatists Guild, Jami teaches dramatic writing at Lesley University's low-residency MFA program. She is represented by Navigation Media where she is developing film and TV projects. Her plays can also be found on the New Play Exchange.
Andrew Chapman was born and raised in New York City. He attended the Bronx High School of Science, and then got his BA in history and economics from the University of Michigan. He has worked as a bartender, a bicycle messenger, a bootleg T-shirt salesman and a TV commercial location scout. He moved to Los Angeles in his 20s and starting working in movie production, writing screenplays in his spare time. At 28, he sold an adaption of Jack London’s SEA WOLF to Sony Pictures for $1,000,000. By 32, he had spent every last penny. Andrew has written on numerous movies and television shows. He was the first writer on Disney’s POCAHONTAS, as well as Marvel’s IRON MAN, and has also written for Universal, Amblin, Warner Brothers and Fox Studios. He wrote and directed the indie movie STAND-OFF for Trimark Pictures. For the last decade, Andrew has worked almost exclusively in television. He has written pilots for most of the major networks, including ABC, NBC, Amazon, and FOX. He executive produced and was showrunner for ABC’s THE ASSETS, a Moscow-based spy mini-series. He was a co-EP on TNT’s LEGENDS, and is currently the Executive Producer and showrunner for FOX’s hit medical drama, THE RESIDENT. Under the pen name Drew Chapman, he has published two thrillers, THE ASCENDANT (Booklist, in a starred review: “a must-read for international-thriller fans”) and THE KING OF FEAR (WSJ: “a whirlwind thriller”), which were published by Simon & Schuster in 2014 and 2016 respectively and also sold in a dozen translation markets, including all major European territories. Last year he had his first play produced, 99 TROPES, a dramedy about a writers’ room in disarray.
Shivani Doraiswami is a literary manager at Untitled Entertainment (fka Grandview Entertainment) who works with screenwriters & authors, with an emphasis on handling media rights. She has sold projects to Netflix, Paramount, MGM studios, Fifth Season, Hulu, Blumhouse, Sister Pictures, Luckychap Entertainment, and others. Her clients include: New York Times Bestselling author Rebecca Yarros, whose novel Fourth Wing is a priority TV project at Amazon MGM Studios with Emmy-Award winning writer Moira Walley Beckett showrunning and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society producing; GQ senior staff writer Zach Baron, who profiles the likes of Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt; Christopher Reich, whose Simon Riske book series is in development at Netflix with Oscar-award winner Edward Berger directing; New York Times Bestselling fantasy author Karen Marie Moning, who has sold 9 million copies of her books thus far; and more. Prior to Grandview, Shivani worked under producer Brian Kavanaugh Jones and assisted in the production of various projects, including the Netflix film SHADOW IN THE CLOUD starring Chloë Grace Moretz. Shivani cut her teeth as an assistant in the literary department at Verve Talent & Literary Agency. She moved to Los Angeles in 2019 after graduating Pomona College, where she played collegiate tennis and majored in Media Studies.
Gracie Doyle is the Associate Publisher of Amazon Publishing. She has worked on many bestsellers including Lee Goldberg’s Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller True Fiction, Robert Dugoni’s Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon bestseller The Eighth Sister, and William L. Myers’s “impressive debut” (Publishers Weekly) A Criminal Defense, as well as acclaimed series from Barry Eisler and Matthew FitzSimmons. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Grace began her career as a publicist at Houghton Mifflin, where her projects included the annual Best American Mystery Stories collection, edited by Otto Penzler, and Buzz Bissinger’s New York Times bestseller Three Nights in August. Prior to joining Amazon Publishing, Grace spent several years in the wine industry, promoting the world-class wines of Washington State around the globe. When she’s not reading, she enjoys cooking for friends and traveling in search of the perfect meal.
Rae Dubow In 2013, Rae created Talking Out Loud, a communications company specifically to provide public speaking training in the professional and academic spheres. She has extensive performance training and worked as an actor for many years. This is the basis of her practice, which uses dramatic techniques to help clients relax and speak publicly as their most authentic selves. Public speaking is an enormous challenge for most people, outranking the fear of death. Having experienced her own performance anxieties, she discovered ways to work with these issues and keep them at bay. In addition to Talking Out Loud, Rae has taught at the University of Southern California, Antioch University Los Angeles, UC Riverside, and Woodbury University. Her private clients include actor/activist Edward Asner, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Kahn-Cullors, Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor, and actress Genevieve Angleson. Her corporate and nonprofit clients include The Southern California News Group (SCNG), Dress for Success, and MOSTe, which offers similar training to high school girls from disadvantaged backgrounds who are working towards college admission.
Daphne Ming Durham joined Putnam as Executive Editor in 2023 from MCD / Farrar, Straus & Giroux and publishes twisty, genre-blurring fiction with sharp edges, diverse perspectives, and spiky protagonists. She loves voice-driven, surprising novels that readers devour in one sitting, but come away having learned something—vivid, gripping stories that upend familiar tropes and push boundaries in crime, mystery/thriller, suspense, horror, speculative fiction, and dark fantasy.Daphne edits Megan Abbott, C. J. Box, Robert Crais, Rob Hart, Mason Coile, Susan Barker, Ron Currie, Ivy Pochoda, and Rachel Eve Moulton, and has published the New York Times bestseller Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone, winner of the LA Times Book Prize Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda, cult-favorite This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno and the critically adored graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls. She has worked with acclaimed and celebrated authors Andy Davidson, Araminta Hall, Asale Angel-Ajani, Johnny Compton, Sara Sligar, Jennifer Thorne, Kristi Coulter, and Louisa Luna. Prior to Putnam, Daphne was the founding Executive Editor of MCD / FSG. She also spent nearly sixteen 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 core genre imprints and managed acquisitions across all categories.
Charli Engelhorn Born to a white professor and Caribbean model, Charli Engelhorn stuck out in the sea of white in her hometown of Ames, Iowa. Her struggles with identity drove her to books, television, and movies to escape, and eventually, she started writing her own stories. Charli’s continued struggles with identity led her on a journey of discovery after college. She worked as a book editor in New York, an apothecary’s assistant in Maui, a ski instructor in Breckenridge, and an award-winning reporter in Moab. After moving to Los Angeles and having her first script place in several competitions, she enrolled in an MFA program to hone her craft. Charli’s travels gave her a deep understanding of the human condition, and her work examines the heart of life through characters on their own journeys of discovery. Charli was a fellow in the 2020/2021 WBTV Writers’ Workshop, a story editor on the hit FOX show The Cleaning Lady and is currently executive story editor on NBC’s Found.
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. Her sixth book, on Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, was released as part of IG Publishing’s “Bookmarked” series in July 2024. Gina 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. Her first two books, My Sister’s Continent and Slut Lullabies, out of print for some time, are soon being reissued by Northwestern University Press. 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. Gina obtained her PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Chicago, with a specialization in Gender Theory. She is on the low residency MFA faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and runs Circe Consulting, a full-service company for writers, with the writer Emily Rapp Black.
Mag Gabbert is the author of SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS, which was selected by Kathy Fagan as the winner of the 2021 Charles B. Wheeler Prize in Poetry; the chapbook The Breakup, which was selected by Kaveh Akbar as the winner of the 2022 Baltic Writing Residencies Chapbook Award; and the chapbook Minml Poems. She's the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Discovery Award from 92NY's Unterberg Poetry Center, and fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Idyllwild Arts, and Poetry at Round Top. Her work can be found in The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, Copper Nickel, Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Mag has an MFA from UC Riverside and a PhD from Texas Tech. She teaches at Southern Methodist University and serves as the 2024-2026 Poet Laureate of Dallas, Texas.
Lauren Galit is a former editor and since 2010 has been a literary agent at her own boutique agency, LKG Agency.
Don Handfield was the co-creator and Executive Producer of History Channel’s drama series KNIGHTFALL and producer of critically-acclaimed films THE FOUNDER starring Michael Keaton, and KILL THE MESSENGER starring two-time Academy-Award nominated actor Jeremy Renner. Handfield recently scripted an adaptation of the graphic novel UNIKORN for Armory Films (Mudbound, Peanut Butter Falcon) with Debbie Berman (editor of Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Man: Homecoming) attached to direct. Handfield is a partner and board member of top-indie comic label Scout Comics and his original comic series THE RIFT was optioned by Steven Spielberg and produced as the season finale for the Apple + reboot of Amazing Stories. Handfield is a fellow of the WGA Showrunner Training Program, the Film Independent’s Director’s Lab, and was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine.
Annemarie Hauser holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside. She began working for the Los Angeles Times in 2018 as an events manager, and transitioned to the Los Angeles Times Studios department for video production in 2022. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, and she has produced several segments for the LA Times Today show with Spectrum News 1, which earned her an Emmy in 2024.
Kate Hinterberger is a writer, editor, and marketing professional based in Seattle. She is the former non-fiction editor of the Coachella Review where she edited the publication’s first Best American Essays recognition and is the out-going non-fiction editor at Kelp Journal. Her freelance editing work ranges from non-fiction to space operas, and she advises writers on submission. Her writing has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Chinook Observer, and Verily Magazine’s poetry anthology, “Poems About Home.” She holds an MFA from UCRPD, is a recipient of its Omni Award, and has received acceptance and funding from The Community of Writers.
Peter Houlahan is an author, freelance writer, and book review contributor. His work has appeared in CrimeReads, Police1, L.A. Magazine, Criminal Element, Hearst Newspapers, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Daily Mirror, and Southern California Newspaper Group. His first book “Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History” was released in 2019 and was a finalist for the Edgar Award, Hammett Prize, and Macavity Award. The book has been chosen as a New York Times “Summer Pick,” NPR “Favorite Book of 2019,” Wall Street Journal “Readers Pick,” Amazon “Best Book,” and Junior Library Guild “Gold Standard Selection.” Norco ‘80 has been produced as a multi-episode podcast by NPR and optioned for film. His second nonfiction book, "Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice and the Story of Sagon Penn" received prestigious starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist and is an Amazon “Editor’s Pick" for nonfiction. It will be released on July 23, 2024. Houlahan lives and works as an emergency medical technician in Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Charles Jensen wrote Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres, forthcoming in May 2024 from Santa Fe Writer’s Project. His most recent collection of poetry is Instructions between Takeoff and Landing. His previous books include two collections of poetry and seven chapbooks of cross-genre work. The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs designated him a 2019-2020 Cultural Trailblazer, and he is the recipient of the 2020 Outwrite Nonfiction Chapbook Award, 2018 Zócalo Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the 2007 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, and an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Journal, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner, and essays have appeared in 45th Parallel, American Literary Review, Exposition Review, The Florida Review, and Passages North. He founded the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT, which explored creative work on a city-by-city basis. He hosts The Write Process, a podcast in which one writer tells the story of crafting one work from concept to completion. He lives in Long Beach and directs the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.
Jessica Kubzansky is a champion of innovation and artistic excellence, and as such she was invited to be one of two founding artistic directors of Boston Court Pasadena, creating a mission and vision for the company that produces risky adventurous new work coupled with intimate artistic excellence. Now Kubzansky shepherds all the art created at Boston Court, including rich and eclectic music concerts as well as theatre. She is a passionate music lover and also an award-winning director working both locally and in regional theatres nationally. She is committed to illumination of texts and scores to create works that crack open minds and hearts so that people who experience the work walk out changed. Kubzansky creates inventive work across many genres. She is known as a play-whisperer for her ability to dramaturg new plays, breathe powerful life into classic adaptations, and create exciting new takes on old classics; and she nurtures innovative approaches to classic music, as well as urging musicians and composers to innovate their own practices. Her recent work at Boston Court includes staged excerpts of Philip Glass’s Madrigal Opera, a development workshop of Julia Adolphe and Stephanie Fleishman’s new children’s opera, as well as world premieres of Kit Steinkellner’s Ladies, Sarah B. Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened, plus for Boston Court elsewhere, Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles (The Getty Villa), Sheila Callaghan’s Everything You Touch (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre at The Cherry Lane). Recently at other venues: The Father with Alfred Molina (The Pasadena Playhouse), Othello (A Noise Within), Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths (San Diego Rep, Arena Stage), Aditi Kapil’s Orange (South Coast Rep), Stupid Fucking Bird (ACT, Seattle), Most recently she directed a piece for Flash Acts, an international play festival of Russian and American artists produced by Arena Stage in D.C. Kubzansky teaches graduate playwrights and directors at UCLA, has her MFA in Direction from the California Institute of the Arts, and her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and Harvard. She has received many awards and honors, among them the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre.
Sarah Langan is a Columbia MFA graduate and three-time recipient of the Bram Stoker Award, and is the author of five novels, including A BETTER WORLD and GOOD NEIGHBORS. She grew up on Long Island and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughters.
Greg Mania's words have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, Oprah Daily, PAPER, among other international online and print platforms. He is also a contributing editor to BOMB magazine, he hosts The Rumpus’s #ShowUsYourDesk on Instagram Live, and co-hosts Empty Trash, a reading series in Los Angeles. His debut memoir, Born to Be Public, is out now from CLASH Books. He lives in Los Angeles, where he spends his days writing and hanging out with his boyfriend, the poet and TV writer Tommy Pico, whose commitment to the bit rivals his own.
Daniel Nieh is a writer and translator from Portland, Oregon. He earned a BA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania, where he won the Thouron Award, and an MA with Distinction in Chinese Studies from the University of London. Daniel's translation clients include publishers, universities, nonprofits, and museums around the world. He was an interpreter at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and serves as a contract linguist for the US Department of State. He is a member of Gold House and the National Committee on US-China Relations. Daniel is the author of two Victor Li novels, BEIJING PAYBACK and TAKE NO NAMES, both of which were Editor's Choice selections in the New York Times Book Review. He is an executive producer on a forthcoming limited series based on BEIJING PAYBACK. His essays, criticism, and short fiction have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Esquire.
Jack Novak writes plays for adults and young people. His works include THE GREAT LIEUTENANT SPRINKLE DIDN'T SAVE ME (commissioned by Field Trip Theatre), TRANSFERAL (workshops at Spooky Action Theatre and Rorschach Theatre), the collection THIS HISTORIC NIGHT (Capital Fringe Festival), the plays for young actors INTERFACE and FANATICS (commissioned by Imagination Stage), JOURNEYING JACK (co-written with David Novak; Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award), FOX CRIED (Source Festival), CRAZY WEIRD (winner, Dramatic Writing Competition at Adirondack Shakespeare Theatre), and A DECADE OF WANDERING (Agnes Nixon Playwriting Award at Northwestern University). Jack is also an actor, improviser, Mime, and teaching artist. He holds an MFA from University of California Riverside - Palm Desert and is currently a lecturer at Cal State Fullerton.
Maret Orliss is the 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 the President of the National Book Critics Circle. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Alta Journal, among other publications. She lives in Elk Grove, California. She holds an MFA in Fiction from UC Riverside.
Leena Pendharker is an Emmy nominated, Award-Winning Director and Writer. She is currently in the process of making her third independent feature film, Days with Dandekar, which Iqbal Theba (Glee) is attached to play the lead in. Her script for Days with Dandekar was in the Film Independent Script Lab, and Tribeca All Access. Her sophomore independent film, 20 Weeks, premiered 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. For television, she recently directed A Date with Deception for Mar Vista/Lifetime, and episodes of Hello Jack! for Apple TV Plus, for which she was nominated for a Children’s and Family Emmy award. Leena has also written/directed several-award winning short films, including the most recent, Tiny Joy, which played in the Bentonville Film Festival and others, and is currently airing on Omeleto. Leena is an alum of the Warner Brothers, CBS, and Sony Diverse Directors programs. She is also an Associate Professor at LMU’s School of Film + Television, and has an MFA in Screenwriting from UC-Riverside, Palm Desert.
Perrin Pring has worked as a Federal Law Enforcement Officer since 2010 as a National Park Service Ranger. As a uniformed officer, she has worked thousands of cases, ranging from traffic violations to felonious assaults and deaths. Her office just isn't a city, it's the National Parks across the country, where it turns out, people are people and they bring their problems on vacation. Perrin is also a writer, having graduated from the University of California Riverside, Palm Desert Low Residency MFA program. She has a screenplay under contract with Anne-Marie Mackay and is represented by Jud Laghi. Her first novel, Cash and Gravity, is out on submission. Her writing has appeared in The Backcountry Journal, Kelp Literary, and she's written and been a reader for The Coachella Review.
Bree A. Rolfe is a writer, union organizer, and works as an advocate for students experiencing homelessness in Austin, TX. She lives with six cats and Cystic Fibrosis both of which bring her much joy and frustration. Her work has appeared in the Saul Williams’ poetry anthology Chorus: A Literary Mixtape, the Redpaint Hill Anthology Mother is a Verb, Two Hawks Quarterly, The Coachella Review, 5AM Magazine and others. She holds an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College. Her first chapbook Who’s Going to Love the Dying Girl was released in September of 2021 by Unsolicited Press.
Angeline Rodriguez joined WME in 2022 after serving as an editor at Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group, where she worked with a variety of fiction in genre, upmarket commercial, and literary categories, as well as select platform-driven nonfiction. She specializes in speculative fiction and loves high-concept stories that push the boundaries between genres. She is looking to work with writers that have a keen sense of worldbuilding in both real and surreal landscapes and is particularly passionate about highlighting underrepresented voices in new ways. She is first generation Venezuelan American, and now lives in New York.
Alex Segura is the bestselling and award-winning author of Secret Identity, which The New York Times called “wittily original” and named an Editor’s Choice. NPR described the novel as “masterful” and The L.A. Times called it “a magnetic read.” Secret Identity received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, was listed as one of the Best Mysteries of the Year by NPR, Kirkus, Booklist, LitReactor, Gizmodo, BOLO Books, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Hardcover, the Lefty and Barry Awards for Best Novel, the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel, and won the LA Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category. His upcoming work includes the YA superhero adventure Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow, the follow-up to Secret Identity, Alter Ego, and the sci-fi/espionage thriller, Dark Space (with Rob Hart). Alex is also the author of Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall, the Anthony Award-nominated Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery series, and a number of comic books – including The Mysterious Micro-Face (in partnership with NPR), The Black Ghost, The Archies, The Dusk, The Awakened, Mara Llave – Keeper of Time, Blood Oath, stories featuring Marvel heroes the Avengers, Sunspot, White Tiger, Spider-Man and DC’s Superman, Sinestro, and The Question, to name a few. His short story, “90 Miles” was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories for 2021 and won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story. Another short story,“Red Zone,” won the 2020 Anthony Award for Best Short Story. Alex is also the co-creator of the Lethal Lit podcast, named one of the best fiction podcasts of 2018 by The New York Times. A Miami native, he lives in New York with his wife and children.
Keri Picolla Stanbra is a writer, filmmaker, and talent manager. Her recent work includes adapting Kiana Davenport’s best-selling novel The Shark Dialogues, which explores the tumultuous history and landscape of contemporary Hawaii. In 2023, Keri was selected as a NAPALI Fellow by the Pacific American Leadership Institute, which cultivates emerging Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander leaders. She also consults on projects that authentically represent Native Hawaiians in media, ensuring cultural protocols are understood and respected. Keri is currently a Talent Manager at Pop Art Management. She holds a BA in Cinema and Television Arts from California State University, Northridge, and an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside. Keri is also pursuing a second master’s degree in Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Studies at the University of Hawai’i.
Sarah Treem is a television writer, producer and playwright. Treem is the co-creator and showrunner of the Golden Globe-winning Showtime drama The Affair. Previously, Treem was a co-executive producer on the inaugural season of House of Cards. She also wrote on all three seasons of HBO's In Treatment. Treem began her career writing for theater. Her plays When We Were Young and Unafraid, A Feminine Ending, The How and the Why and Mirror Mirror have been produced multiple times over and published by Samuel French and the Dramatists Play Service.
Jade Valenzuela is a Coachella Valley native who has worked at the La Quinta Public Library for the last 11 years. She has hosted numerous book clubs and has run the La Quinta Book Fest since 2019 (which couldn't have happened without the sage advice of Tod Goldberg & Maggie Downs). She is an avid reader of most genres, loves to crochet and yes, owns many cardigans.
Kim Yau Originally from Maryland, Kim Yau began her career in Hollywood in 2011 working at the Cheng Caplan Company. In 2015, she transitioned to Paradigm Talent Agency as a Media Rights Agent, handling the sale of film/TV rights for intellectual property including books, comics, graphic novels, articles, podcasts, blogs, and life rights. Kim continues to specialize in intellectual property at Echo Lake and is particularly passionate about supporting and advocating for diverse voices and creators. Kim served on the Hollywood Radio & Television Society Associates Board from 2017 - 2020. She graduated from UCLA with a BA in English and a minor in Chinese Language.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams, forthcoming from Scribner in September 2024, as well as two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and was the Editor of Best American Poetry 2022. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship in Marfa, TX, and the May Sarton prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among many others.
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 on Saturday night!
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 sixteen prize-winning books, including the acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy – Gangsterland, a finalist the Hammett Prize, Gangster Nation, a Times of London Best Book of the Year, and Gangsters Don’t Die, named both an Amazon Best Book of the Year and Southwest Book of the Year – the novels The House of Secrets, which he co-authored with Brad Meltzer, and Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and three acclaimed collections of short fiction, most recently The Low Desert, named a Southwest Book of the Year and the finalist for numerous literary awards. His short fiction has been widely anthologized, including in Palm Springs Noir, Las Vegas Noir, and Best American Mystery & Suspense, where he has also twice received Distinguished Story of the Year citations. His nonfiction appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Alta and has been widely anthologized as well, including in Best American Essays, and has won five Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence. For his body of work, Tod was honored with the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Tod Goldberg holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College and is a Professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. His latest book, Eight Very Bad Nights, an anthology of Hanukkah noir, is out now.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book critic living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, The Devil Takes You Home, and House of Bone
and Rain. His work has won the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Wonderland Book Award, among others. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Locus Magazine, and the Boston Globe and he is the horror fiction columnist for the New York Times. Iglesias teaches creative writing at the UC Riverside Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program. You can find him online talking books on X at @gabino_iglesias.
Joshua Malkin has written feature projects for Sony, Fox, Universal Pictures among more than a dozen other companies. He also wrote and produced three documentaries: two about the art of puppetry, and the other about underground comics. In 2008 he wrote Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever for Lionsgate. Joshua co-authored top-selling fantasy comic book series The Source (Scout Comics, Publisher – top title, 2018) and the upcoming YA graphic novel, Unikorn. The book and screenplay for Unikorn have been acquired by Armory Films and is slated to be the directorial debut of Marvel editor Debbie Berman (Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Spiderman Homecoming.) Joshua is a professor of screenwriting at the University of California Riverside, an occasional story architect for the video game industry, and the proud – if bewildered - father of twins.
Kathryn E. McGee is the Program Manager for and a graduate of the UC Riverside Palm Desert MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. Her horror stories have appeared in Kelp Journal, Ladies of the Fright, Scoundrel Time, Gamut Magazine, and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Chromophobia anthology. Her story, “Mondays Are for Meat,” was recently optioned for film. “The Creek Keepers’ Lodge” (Horror Library Vol. 6) was an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Vol. 10. She writes about horror books and film for The Lineup. She also co-authored a book about downtown Los Angeles, DTLA37: Downtown Los Angeles in Thirty-seven Stories (Enville Publishing). Kathryn is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and represented by Dara Hyde at Hill Nadell Literary Agency. For more information, visit www.kathrynemcgee.com.
Ivy Pochoda holds a BA in Classics and Literature, with a focus on Dramatic Literature, from Harvard, where she graduated cum laude, and an MFA in fiction from Bennington College. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels These Women, Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and The Art of Disappearing, and has won or been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (twice!), the California Book Award, the International Thriller Award, the Strand Critics Award, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award, the Macavity Award, and others too numerous to list. Ivy is also the author of the YA/fantasy series created by the late Kobe Bryant, Epoca: The Tree of Ecrof, an immediate New York Times bestseller, and Epoca: The River of Sand, and is an in-demand ghost writer as well. Her nonfiction and criticism appears regularly in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Wall Street Journal, among others. Her latest novel, Sing Her Down, was released last summer and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
William Rabkin creator and writer of HBOAsia’s science fiction series Dream Raider, has written and/or produced hundreds of hours of dramatic television. He served as show runner on the long-running Dick Van Dyke mystery series “Diagnosis Murder” and on the action-adventure spectacle “Martial Law” and is currently creating series in Asia and Europe. He has also written a dozen network TV pilots. His work has twice been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Television Episode from the Mystery Writers of America. He has written four books on writing for television, “Writing the Pilot” (2011), “Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series” (2017), Writing the Pilot: Streaming and, with Lee Goldberg, “Successful Television Writing” (2003) and seven novels. He is the co-creator and co-editor of “The Dead Man,” a 28-book series of supernatural action thrillers published by Amazon’s 47 North imprint. Rabkin is part of the core faculty of UCR-Palm Desert’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. He is currently co-writing the miniseries Estonia: The Last Wave for the Nordic Entertainment Group and ITV.
Rob Roberge is the acclaimed author of several books, including the memoir Liar, named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and best of the year selection by Powell’s and Entropy, the novels The Cost of Living, More Than They Could Chew, and Drive, and the short story collection Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life. His short fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized, most recently in Palm Springs Noir and Silver Waves of Summer, and acclaimed by media outlets such as the New York Times Book Review, NPR, and the LA Times. In addition to writing and teaching, he is a guitarist and singer/songwriter in The Hitchcock Brunettes and the seminal LA art punk band, The Urinals, who’ve shared bills with Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, The Dream Syndicate, and the Go-Go’s, and whose songs have been covered by Yo La Tengo, The Minutemen, The Gun Club, No Age, and many others. He also wrote and directed the short film This Regrettable Event. He holds an MFA from Vermont College is an assistant professor and core faculty member of the Low Residency MFA at UC Riverside. He is at work on a new novel and several music projects and lives in Chicago with his wife and fellow Hitchcock Brunette, the writer Gina Frangello, along with their daughter and two astonishingly overweight cats.
John Schimmel is in the middle of an extraordinarily diverse career as a writer/producer. He’s been the President of Michael Douglas’ Furthur Films and President of Production at Ascendant Pictures, an executive at Douglas-Reuther Productions, Belair Entertainment, and Warner Bros, co-penned the Tony-nominated musical “Pump Boys And Dinettes,” published fiction and nonfiction, including his first book, Screenwriting Behind Enemy Lines: Lessons from Inside the Studio Gates. He currently works as Executive Producer for Cloud Imperium Games which is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest crowd funding effort in history. He recently executive produced the films Shaquile O’Neal Presents Foster Boy with Matthew Modine and Lou Gossett Jr., written and produced by his student Jay Paul Deratany; and The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatzo, The 14th Dalai Lama, In His Own Words. John is also part of the core screenwriting faculty at the University of California at Riverside’s Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, providing not just an insight into how to write screenplays, but how to write screenplays that sell.
Mark Haskell Smith is the author of six novels with one word titles including Moist, Baked, and Blown; and the nonfiction books Rude Talk In Athens: Ancient Rivals, the Birth of Comedy, and a Writer’s Journey through Greece, Naked at Lunch: A Reluctant Nudist's Adventures in the Clothing-Optional World and Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. He has written extensively for film and television. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Independent, Vulture and others. His next book, Memoir: a Novel, was just released in France.
David L. Ulin is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times, he has written for Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review; his essay “Bed” was selected for The Best American Essays 2020. He is a professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary journal Air/Light. Most recently, he has edited Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Didion: The 1980s and 90s for Library of America. His most recent book, Thirteen Question Method, was released last fall.