Twice each year, the Low Residency MFA gathers for ten days of workshops, lectures, seminars, screenings, meetings, and a fair amount of sitting outside under the desert sky. We're kicking off our Spring residency on June 6th at our new residency home, the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort, with a slate of amazing guest faculty joining our award-winning MFA faculty. Learn more about them both below:
Guest Faculty
Boni B. Alvarez is a Los Angeles-based playwright-actor and faculty member at the USC School of Dramatic Arts. His plays include America Adjacent, Bloodletting, Fixed, Nicky, Dallas Non-Stop, Dusty de los Santos, Ruby, Tragically Rotund, The Special Education of Miss Lorna Cambonga, Marabella, Driven, The Debut of Georgia, Emmylu, and Refuge for a Purple Heart. His plays have been produced at Center Theatre Group – Kirk Douglas Theatre, Echo Theater Company, Coeurage Theatre Company, Skylight Theatre Company, and Playwrights’ Arena. His plays have been developed/given readings at Chalk Rep, Moving Arts, Artists At Play, The Vagrancy, Los Angeles Theatre Center, EST/LA, The Blank, Pork Filled Players (Seattle), Theatre Rhinoceros (San Francisco), Second Generation (2g, NYC), InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia), and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has been a semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and a Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project, and Clubbed Thumb’s Biennial Commission. Alum of the CBS Writers Mentoring Program, CTG Writers’ Workshop, Moving Arts’ MADlab, Echo Writer’s Lab, Skylight Theatre’s Play Lab, and the Humanitas Play LA Workshop. He is currently in the Geffen Playhouse’s Writer’s Room and a Resident Playwright with New Dramatists. He holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA (Acting) from A.R.T./MXAT Institute at Harvard University, and an MFA (Dramatic Writing) from USC.
Chelsea Benson is a Manager at Echo Lake Entertainment
Alexander Cary is the Emmy-award winning writer & executive producer of A Spy Among Friends, Taken, Legends, Homeland, Lie to Me, and more.
Jesenia Chavez is a Chicanita, poeta, public school teacher, and storyteller. She is inspired by the borderlands, and her parents’ migration to Los Angeles from Chihuahua, México #abolishice. Her poetry collection, This Poem Might Save You (me) is a journey through the streets of Los Angeles that explores intersectionality and the rituals of survival. She has an MFA in creative writing from UCR Palm Desert, where she was the poetry editor for The Coachella Review. Her work has been published in Latino Book Review, DTSL Arts, Air/Light Magazine, Acentos Review, The Coachella Review, and most recently in the Somos Xicanas Anthology. Find more of her work at jeseniachavez.com.
Jalysa Conway is a television writer and executive producer, whose credits include Grey’s Anatomy, the longest running medical drama in history, Netflix’s animated darling The Last Kids on Earth, and the hit FOX show, 9-1-1: Lone Star, starring Rob Lowe and Gina Torres. Her own original work explores themes like self-empowerment, ambition, and aspiration, and spans across action, YA, and other commercial genre fare. She previously sold an untitled coming-of-age television series about cadets in a rigorous ROTC program to Amazon Studios, with Spike Lee directing and co-producing. And she’s currently developing another military drama with Spike Lee, called Liberty, based on an original feature script. A U.S. Air Force veteran who specialized in Cyber Warfare, Jalysa loves chronicling characters that push themselves to their limits and achieve the impossible (or fall flat on their faces aiming for it). She also writes comics and video games, and is a proud alumni of the Low Res MFA program from UC Riverside Palm Desert.
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. AdamDeutsch.com
Maggie Downs is the bestselling author of the memoir Braver Than You Think and 50 Things to Do Before You're 5 and penned the popular McSweeney’s column “Been There, Smelled That” where she explored the world’s scents. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet’s True Stories From the World’s Best Writers, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing anthology, among countless other publications.
Padraic Duffy has worked at theaters throughout Los Angeles., including The Met Theater, The Echo Theater Co., Sacred Fools Theater Co., Theater of Note, Cypress College, The Road Theatre, and Ensemble Studio Theatre LA. His full-length plays include The Illustrious Birth of Padraic T. Duffy, Feet, The Mechanical Rabbit, Tell the Bees, Something is Hidden Inside the Couch, Beaverquest! The Musical!, Puzzler, Copy, and Past Time. He is a proud member of the Playwright’s Union and The Sacred Fools Theater Company, serving as the Managing Director of the latter.
Christopher Farnsworth is a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. His latest book was an instant USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestseller, and his other works have been published in more than a dozen countries, translated into ten languages, and optioned for film and television. He is the author of the President’s Vampire series, which was twice a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards and the winner of an Audie for Best Audiobook — Thriller & Suspense, and of Flashmob, which was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year. He was the co-author with worldwide bestseller James Patterson of Dead Man Running, and is currently continuing the Jesse Stone series for the estate of the legendary mystery writer Robert B. Parker. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
Sara Gran is the author of the novels The Book of The Most Precious Substance, Marigold, Dope, Come Closer, Saturn's Return to New York, and the Claire DeWitt series. Her work has been published in over a dozen countries and as many languages. She also writes for TV and film, including Berlin Station, Southland, and Chance. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now living in California, Ms. Gran has worked with books as a writer, bookseller, and collector for most of her career. Her latest book, Little Mysteries, is out now.
Ashley Granillo is the author of the Pura Belpré Honor Book, Cruzita and the Mariacheros. She is a Mexican American writer and an associate professor of English in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BA and MA in English: Creative Writing from California State University Northridge, and an MFA in fiction with a cross-study in screenwriting from the University of California Riverside Palm Desert. Many of the themes Ashley writes about are inspired about her home, family, her love for animals, and music. Choir Grrrl (Lerner 2026) emphasizes the need for queer, Latina musicians in the world of rock. Pura Belpré Honor Book, Cruzita and the Mariacheros (Lerner 2024), is a testament to home, family, and music, as well as her Mexican American heritage. In her short story, "Besitos," which appears in the Latine/x Anthology, Where Monsters Lurk & Magic Hides, explores the various ways in which young adults experience love.
Scott Horstein directs the Theatre Studies program at Sonoma State. Recent publications include the book chapter "Dramaturgy as Prophecy: Facing Our Truth and Dramaturging the Predominantly White Institution," in Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation in Contemporary Dramaturgy, published by Routledge. In his review of the volume, critic Stephen Greenblatt notes "the diverse and distinctive voices assembled here are agents of radical change in the theater and in the world beyond its boundaries." Prof. Horstein's freelance dramaturgy credits include Denver Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, San Diego Rep, and the Old Globe, where he dramaturged for Arthur Miller on his penultimate play Resurrection Blues. Other freelance credits include Native Voices at the Autry, Alter Theater, Watts Village Theater Company, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, National New Play Network, Greenway Court Theatre, and the Evidence Room. New York credits include Port Out, Starboard Home with foolsFURY at La Mama, and Good Bobby at 59E59 (Off-Broadway). Prof. Horstein was formerly Manager of Play Development for Cornerstone Theater Company and Literary Director for the Black Dahlia Theater in Los Angeles. He has dramaturged productions for leading playwrights including Larissa FastHorse, Sheila Callaghan, Sarah Ruhl, Octavio Solis, David Edgar, Austin Pendleton, and James Still, and for leading directors, including Bill Rauch, Mark Lamos, and Kyle Donnelly. Directing credits include Native Voices, East West Players, and the West Coast Ensemble. He has taught at South Coast Rep, American Academy of Dramatic Arts, American Musical and Drama Academy, UC San Diego, and East West Players. Scott is a proud and active member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA); co-editor of LMDA’s Employment Guidelines and Sample Contracts; and for many years was co-VP for the NorCal/SoCal region. He was the recipient of LMDA’s Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy. He holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from UCSD.
Amara Hoshijo Is a senior editor at Saga Press. She specializes in speculative fiction of all kinds—science fiction, fantasy, and horror—with an eye toward secondary worlds and unique cultural lenses. She first came up as an editor in the international crime fiction space, so immersive worldbuilding and a tightly knitted plot are at the forefront for her, rather than character voice. Thematically, she gravitates toward coming-of-age (at any age!), societal disenchantment, found family, and family legacy. Her authors at Saga include New York Times bestseller Chloe Gong, USA TODAY bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Sascha Stronach, M. J. Kuhn, Rin Chupeco, and Matt Wallace.
Dara Hyde is Senior Agent at the Hill Nadell Literary Agency and represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, including literary and genre fiction, graphic novels, narrative non-fiction, memoir, young adult, and children’s literature. Her clients have been winners or finalists for the Women’s Prize, NAACP Image Award, Carnegie Medal, Eisner Award, Anthony Award, YALSA Award, Harvey Award, International Latino Book Award, and the Reading the West Award, among others.
Lindsay Jamieson is a writer, editor, and English tutor based in Los Angeles, where she’s raised two kids. Retreat, her collaboration with actress Krysten Ritter, was published by Harper Collins in March 2025 and debuted on the USA Today bestseller list. Her short story “Neighbor North” was recognized in Best American Short Stories: Mystery & Suspense 2024. She has taught fiction at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, currently teaches screenwriting at Ed2Go, and previously served as Fiction Editor for The Coachella Review and Kelp Journal. Before earning her MFA in Fiction and Screenwriting from the University of California, Riverside’s Low-Residency program, she published the novel Beautiful Girl under the pen name Lida James and sold a screenplay to Davis Entertainment.
Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of thirty-five or so novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Stephen’s been an NEA recipient, has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the August Derleth British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, the Western Literature Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award, the American Library Association’s RUSA Award and Alex Award, the 2023 American Indian Festival of Words Writers Award, the Locus Award, four Bram Stoker Awards, three Shirley Jackson Awards, and six This is Horror Awards. Stephen’s also been inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, he’s been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, and the Eisner Award, and he’s made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels. He’s the guy who wrote Mongrels, The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw, Earthdivers, and I Was a Teenage Slasher. Up next are True Believers, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and Killer on the Road. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Rachel Kowal is the Managing Editor of Soho Press.
Stefanie Leder is a TV showrunner and writer whose credits include the MTV teen dramedy Faking It, TBS comedy Men at Work, Netflix’s Boo, Bitch, and the long-running ABC Family comedy Melissa & Joey. Her short story “Not A Dinner Party Person,” was featured in Eight Very Bad Nights and was selected for Best American Mystery & Suspense. Her first novel, Love, Coffee, and Revolution will be released in June.
Dinah Lenney is the editor of the anthology Snapshots. She has played countless roles on stage and television, among them Murphy Brown’s Secretary number three, Eileen/Abraham on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a nun with a gun on Sons of Anarchy, ER’s no-nonsense Nurse Shirley, Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude (in Hamlet), and also his Lady Macbeth (of course). She’s a graduate of Yale, where she didn’t study theater, the Neighborhood Playhouse, where she did, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she eventually joined the core faculty to teach literary nonfiction for almost two decades. Dinah’s taught writing and acting in schools all over the country, and co-wrote Acting for Young Actors with director Mary Lou Belli. The author of two memoirs, The Object Parade and Bigger than Life (excerpted for the “Lives” column in The New York Times Magazine), Dinah served as a long-time nonfiction editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books, and co-edited Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction with the late Judith Kitchen. Her most recent book, Coffee, was published in Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series.
Katherine MacDonald is the head of development at Baobab Studios and formerly was a Producer at Netflix and the Senior Vice President of Paramount Animation at Paramount Pictures, the Director of International Research & Client Services at Nielsen Corporation, Director and Head of Research at MGM, as well as previous executive experience at Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. She is also the co-author of The Marketing Edge for Filmmakers: Developing a Marketing Mindset from Concept to Release: Developing a Marketing Mindset from Concept to Release. She holds an MFA from the Low Residency MFA at UC Riverside.
Laura J. Nelson is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times covering California politics and policy, including the 2026 governor's race and the efforts to clean up Los Angeles County after the January wildfires. She covered Congressional races during the 2024 election, including Adam Schiff's election to the U.S. Senate and the efforts by Democrats to flip three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has also worked as an investigative reporter and as a beat reporter covering transportation and mobility. She was a part of the team that won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the terror attack in San Bernardino, and the team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for coverage of a deadly dive-boat fire off the coast of Santa Barbara. Nelson grew up in Kansas and graduated from USC.
Jason Nodler founded The Catastrophic Theatre with Tamarie Cooper in 2007. His original plays include Bluefinger: The Fall and Rise of Herman Brood, Life is Happy and Sad, Speeding Motorcycle, Meatbar, King Ubu is King, and In the Under Thunderloo. He has directed more than 50 productions in Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Providence, Pittsburgh, and New York. For The Catastrophic Theatre he directed Song About Himself, Thom Pain (based on nothing), Marie and Bruce, The Pine, Waiting for Godot, Fleaven, American Falls, Endgame, Anna Bella Eema,There Is A Happiness That Morning Is, Crave, Bluefinger, The Designated Mourner, Our Late Night, Life is Happy and Sad, Hunter Gatherers, Spirits to Enforce,The Strangerer, and Big Death and Little Death. Jason was recently awarded the Best Artistic Director Award by The Houston Press, is a NEA/MacDowell Colony fellow, a four-time MAP Fund grantee and recipient of an individual artist grant from Creative Capital. He was artistic director of Infernal Bridegroom Productions for ten years.
Before joining the Transatlantic Agency in the fall of 2020, Amanda Orozco gained a breadth of experience in academic publishing, publicity, subsidiary rights, and agenting. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in Physiological Science and an English minor and worked as a fine art instructor and freelance editor for several years before moving to New York to complete the NYU Masters of Science in Publishing: Digital and Print Media. While at NYU, she worked at the National Book Foundation, Shreve Williams Public Relations, and The Gernert Company; she was also selected to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Beijing International Book Fair. Upon graduating from NYU in 2019, she worked in Subsidiary Rights at Little, Brown, where she helped sell rights for authors such as Michael Connelly, Elin Hilderbrand, and Sarah Knight, until discovering agenting was her true calling. She worked at Park & Fine Literary and Media before moving back to Los Angeles, where she is working with authors such as Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Vickie Vertiz, Dr. Anthony Christian Ocampo, Nick Medina, Tania De Rozario, Raksha Vasudevan, Roya Marsh, Kay Chronister, Shoshana von Blanckensee, and Vanessa Friedman. Amanda is a member of the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA); her aim is to elevate and amplify marginalized voices always.
Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic. She lives in Elk Grove, California. Her criticism and interviews have appeared in major newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, the Star Tribune, and Paste Magazine, as well as top literary publications such as The Believer, The National Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, The Millions, On the Seawall, The Nervous Breakdown, Entropy, Kirkus, and Literary Hub. She is a contributor to Alta Magazine and the inaugural Critic-in-Residence for UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program. She is currently the president of the National Book Critics Circle, where she has previously served as vice president in charge of the Emerging Critics Program and Autobiography award chair.
Matt Pearce is a former longtime Los Angeles Times staff writer and the Director of Policy at Rebuild Local News, the leading nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition developing and advancing effective public policies designed to strengthen community news and information. At The Times, he covered national news, politics and culture and was a contributing reporter for the Times' 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of leaked audio of Los Angeles city leaders discussing redistricting. He also helped unionize The Times and was a co-founding officer and president of Media Guild of the West, representing journalists across Southern California, Arizona and Texas. He attended the University of Missouri, where he was an English major with an emphasis in creative writing, and he lovingly read slush pile submissions at The Missouri Review.
Leanne Phillips is a writer, a paralegal, a professional editor, and a certified book coach. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Coachella Review, Kelp Journal, and elsewhere. Leanne earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California at Riverside, Palm Desert. She earned a BA in English, with an emphasis in creative writing and a minor in history, from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a copyediting certificate from the University of California at San Diego.
Gideon Pine is an agent at InkWell Management. Gideon is a sucker for a good premise whether it is a thriller/mystery/suspense, domestic fiction and literary fiction. If you think your book is destined to be the next book club bestseller or a cult classic that will live on forever, he wants to read it. He’s looking for thrillers in any form, whether they’re commercial or have a healthy literary injection. Strong sense of place is a major plus. Literary novels are always welcome, as long as there’s a plot. Also looking for suburban dysfunction (aka, domestic fiction) in any form, whether it’s suspenseful like Little Fires Everywhere or darkly comedic like The Corrections and The Stepford Wives or even with a dose of supernatural like Lost Man’s Lane, he wants to read it. He is also interested in narrative nonfiction with a compelling point of view, true crime, health and wellness, and long form investigative journalism.
Dan Smetanka is the Senior Vice President and Editorial Director of the Catapult Book Group, and the Editor in Chief of Counterpoint Press. His authors have been winners and finalists for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The Hammett Prize, The Edgar Award, NAACP Image Award, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and others. His authors include Joan Silber, Dana Johnson, Natashia Deón, Ben Ehrenreich, Karen E. Bender, Tod Goldberg, Gina Frangello, Vanessa Hua, Elizabeth Rosner, Nawaaz Ahmed, Abby Geni, Maria Hummel, and Jamie Harrison, among others.
Rider Strong began his career on stage with LES MISERABLES at the age of ten. He became best known for his roles on BOY MEETS WORLD and the cult horror film CABIN FEVER, before moving behind the camera. He wrote and directed shorts that played over 60 festivals worldwide and won audience and juried awards. His commercial for Obama’s 2008 campaign was a viral hit, a MoveOn.Org winner, and the first political ad to air on Comedy Central. He returned to his roots, this time as the in-house director for three seasons of the Emmy-nominated GIRL MEETS WORLD. Rider’s essays and short stories have appeared in The Believer, Bullet Magazine, Whiskey Island, and his play NEVER EVER LAND premiered in 2019. He holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches screenwriting at Chapman University and has served as guest faculty at the Low Residency MFA @ UC Riverside. He created and cohosted the podcasts Literary Disco and Pod Meets World, the latter of which is one of the most popular podcasts in the nation.
Tara Timinsky is a manager at Grandview working with screenwriters, playwrights, journalists and authors and previously held similar roles at Gotham and Anonymous Content.
Brian Townsley is an award-winning writer, as well as a podaster, and the founder and executive editor of Starlite Pulp. He is the author of the crime fiction books A Trunk Full of Zeroes and Outlaw Ballads, the western novella Days of Bone, Nights of Ash, and three books of poetry. His short fiction has appeared in various publications, including Mystery Tribune, Black Mask, Quarterly West, Frontier Tales, Connecticut Review, and many others, and he had a story make the distinguished list in Best American Mystery Stories, 2019. He is a graduate of the Professional Writing Program at USC and is also an alum of the mighty California Golden Bears.
Robin Wasserman is the New York Times bestselling author of Mother Daughter Widow Wife, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner, and Girls on Fire, an NPR and BuzzFeed Best Book of the Year, and ten YA novels, including the acclaimed Seven Deadly Sins series, The Waking Dark, and The Book of Blood and Shadow. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and several short story anthologies. She is a graduate of Harvard College with a Master’s in the history of science. She lives in Los Angeles, where she writes for television, including The Summer I Turned Pretty and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
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.
Emily Rapp Black is the author of Sanctuary, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, Poster Child: A Memoir and The Still Point of the Turning World. A former Fulbright scholar, she was educated at Harvard University, Trinity College-Dublin, Saint Olaf College, and the University of Texas-Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. A recent Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient, she has received awards and fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Jentel Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Fundación Valparaíso, and Bucknell University, where she was the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence. Her work has appeared in Vogue, The New York Times, Salon, Slate, Time, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, O: The Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and many others. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and frequently publishes scholarly work in the fields of disability studies, bioethics, and theological studies. She is currently associate professor of creative writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she also teaches medical narratives in the School of Medicine.
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. Her next book This May Not Mean What Think will be released in 2026.
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 most recent book, Eight Very Bad Nights, an anthology of Hanukkah noir, is a finalist for the Anthony Award. His next book, Only Way Out, will be released this fall.
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, currently a finalist for the Locus Award. 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 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 most recent novel, Sing Her Down, was released last summer and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize while her short story “Jackrabbit Skin” was selected for Best American Mystery & Suspense. Her next novel, Ecstasy, will be released this June.
William Rabkincreator 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 recently wrote the miniseries Estonia: The Last Wave for the Nordic Entertainment Group and has just finished a pilot for them. He is currently consulting on a new series in South Africa.
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 with his wife and fellow Hitchcock Brunette, the writer Gina Frangello, in Wonder Valley.
John Schimmelis 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 and most recently executive produced or 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; the documentary The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatzo, The 14th Dalai Lama, In His Own Words; and AM I, the first generative AI feature film, created and directed by conceptual artist Kevin Abosch and premiering at the Helsinki Art and Film Festivals. John is 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 seven novels with one word titles including: Moist, Salty, and most recently, Memoir; as well as three non-fiction books, including Rude Talk in Athens and Naked at Lunch. His eighth novel, Pura Vida, is forthcoming in 2026 from Editions Gallmeister in France. He has written extensively for film and television and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Independent, Vulture and others. He has really enjoyed being a member of the UCR Palm Desert Core Faculty.
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.