We're delighted to announce the amazing guests who'll be joining us for our Spring 2026 MFA residency, taking place June 5-14th at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort in Indian Wells. If you're interested in visiting the residency prior to applying, please contact Kathryn McGee at Kathryn.McGee@ucr.edu and we'll happily set up your visit.
Luis Alfaro
Luis Alfaro is a Chicano playwright, poet and performance artist born and raised in downtown Los Angeles. He is the 2025/26 Atelier Samuel Beckett Fellow, traveling to France in 2026.
He is the 2024 World Theatre Artist for Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the recipient of the 2024 award in literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He was the Associate Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group at the Music Center of Los Angeles County (2021-2022, 1995-2005), home of the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson & Kirk Douglas Theaters, where he produced over one hundred and fifty new play commissions, productions, workshops, and readings. He is the only playwright in the history of the Kennedy Center to have received two ‘Fund for New American Play’ awards in the same year. An Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, he is the director of the MFA in Dramatic Writing program. He was previously on faculty at California Institute of the Arts (Cal-Arts), Writers Program at UCLA Extension and a University of California Regents Fellow at U.C. Riverside. He has received a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, popularly known as a “genius grant”, awarded to people who have demonstrated expertise and exceptional creativity in their respective fields. He is also the recipient of The United States Artists; Ford Foundation Art of Change; Joyce Foundation; Mellon Foundation; PEN America/Laura Pels International Foundation Theater Award for a Master Dramatist, among others. He was the inaugural Playwright-in-Residence for six seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2013-2019); Playwright’s Ensemble at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre (2013-2020); Inaugural Imaginistas Latinx Playwrights at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (2021-); and served on the artistic staff for the Ojai Playwrights Conference (2002-2022). His plays include Aztlan, Earlimart, The Travelers, Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, Mojada, Delano, Body of Faith, Alleluia the Road, Black Butterfly, Bruja, and Straight as a Line, which have been seen at regional theaters throughout the United States, Latin America, Canada, and Europe. In 2024, The Travelers was produced at the Magic Theater in San Francisco and won the prestigious Bay Area 2024 Glickman Prize. The production traveled to the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where it was named one of the nine best productions of the year by the Los Angeles Times and is the winner of the 2024 L.A. Stage Raw award in playwriting. Luis spent two decades in the Los Angeles Poetry and Performance Art communities, where he regularly presented at Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Beyond Baroque Poetry Center. His book, The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro, is the winner of the prestigious Greek & British Hellenic Prize and licensed by Dramatists Play Service. Upcoming publications include Fornes in Context from Cambridge University Press, and The Theatre of Luis Alfaro from Routledge Press. He is a local Emmy winner, and Emmy nominated for his short film, Chicanismo, which was produced by PBS, named Best Experimental Film at the San Antonio CineFestival and Best Short at CineAccion in San Francisco. His recording, down-town, released on SST/New Alliance Records, was awarded Best Spoken-Word Release from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. He was a student of the playwright Maria Irene Fornes, performance artist Scott Kelman, and a product of the Inner-City Cultural Center in downtown Los Angeles. Upcoming commissions include, Earlimart (Latino Theatre Company, Los Angeles), Herakles (Getty Villa, Malibu), Aztlán (Magic Theater, San Francisco) and new work for the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles, and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.
Emily Rapp Black
Emily Rapp Black is the author of the New York Times bestseller book Poster Child, The Still Point of the Turning World, Sanctuary, and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. A former Fulbright scholar, Guggenheim Fellow, and graduate of Harvard Divinity School, she is Professor of Creative Writing at University of California-Riverside, where she also teaches in the School of Medicine. Her latest book, I Would Die If I Were You, is a Most Anticipated Book of the Year from MS, Literary Hub, The Millions, Book Page, and more.
Jalysa Conway
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.
Samantha Corbin-Miller
Samantha Corbin-Miller is a writer/producer/showrunner whose credits include ER, The Practice, Crossing Jordan, Lie to Me, Law & Order: SVU, Swagger, Mike, and coming soon from Apple+ 12 12 12.
Martin Cossio
Martin Cossio is a first-generation Mexican American from San Bernardino, California. He won Golden Triangle’s 2021 international haiku contest and hopes to one day win teacher of the year and maybe an amateur bout or two. He lives in San Bernardino’s red light district with his xolo, Squint(ly). His debut collection of poetry Shadow Boxer is out now.
Kirsiah Depp
Kirsiah Depp is an editor with Grand Central Publishing. She acquires speculative fiction, historical and contemporary women’s fiction, retellings (mythic and fairy tale), and more. She is also proudly a part of David Baldacci’s editorial team and has previously worked with Freida Before joining GCP, she worked at HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, both in children’s and adult publishing. She holds Master’s in Publishing from NYU and a Bachelor’s in Literary Studies from Bard College.
Adam Deutsch
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.
Noah Eaker
Noah Eaker is the Vice President and Executive Editor of Harper, which he joined in 2019 after fifteen years at Random House and Macmillan. He acquires broadly in fiction and nonfiction. Interests include literary fiction, especially debut, high concept commercial suspense, often with a speculative element, pop culture, particularly movies and music, reported stories, and memoir. Authors he’s worked with include Matthieu Aikins, Leigh Bardugo, Buzz Bissinger, Josh Brolin, Eliza Clark, Joseph Finder, Mira Jacob, Geddy Lee, Dennis Lehane, Will Leitch, Kelly Link, Max Marshall, Hisham Matar, David Mitchell, Graham Moore, Téa Obreht, Ramin Setoodeh, Quentin Tarantino, Maggie Thrash, Hannah Tinti, Sam Wasson, and the Beastie Boys. AREAS OF INTEREST: Literary and commercial fiction (suspense, cross-over speculative), narrative nonfiction, pop culture, pop science and reported stories.
Megan Jauregui Eccles
Megan Jauregui Eccles, author SING THE NIGHT (Grand Central Publishing, March 10 2026), writes dark, speculative fiction and is represented by Lauren Galit of LKG Agency Her writing has appeared in Kelp Journal, Coachella Review, Muleskinner Journal, Jarfly Magazine, Tiny Spoons, and Wild Greens. She is Chair of Creative Writing at John Paul the Great Catholic University where she gets to talk book and story with the next generation of writers. She holds a BA in Music from the University of San Diego and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside—Palm Desert.
Alex Espinoza
Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and raised in suburban Los Angeles. He is the author of the novels STILL WATER SAINTS, THE FIVE ACTS OF DIEGO LEÓN and THE SONS OF EL REY, as well as a book of nonfiction, CRUISING: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. Alex teaches at UC-Riverside where he serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing.
Gina Frangello
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.
Chris Goldberg
Chris Goldberg is a Producer and founder of Winterlight Pictures. He is a former 20th Century Fox literary scout who played a key role in acquiring major bestselling adaptations including Gone Girl, The Martian, and The Fault in Our Stars. After serving as an EVP at Studio 8, he founded Winterlight Pictures, an IP-driven production company with projects set up at A24, Netlfix, Sony/Alcon, and Lionsgate. In addition to producing, he advises companies such as Amazon Studios on IP Strategy and development. An accomplished writer, he is represented by CAA and Untitled.
Jasper Grey
Jasper Grey is a Los Angeles-based manager and film producer, known as the founder of The Vendetta Group, a management and production company established in 2013. He manages careers for writers, directors, and actors, and serves as an Executive Producer for film projects.
Annabelle Gurwitch
Annabelle Gurwitch is a New York Times bestselling author of six books, and two-time Thurber Prize finalist whose books include You're Leaving When? a Thurber Prize Finalist and a New York Times Favorite Book for Healthy Living and the New York Times Bestseller I See You Made an Effort. Her writing appears in The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, Hadassah Magazine, and The Boston Globe amongst other publications. Gurwitch was the longtime co-host of Dinner & a Movie on TBS, an NPR commentator, she was in too many tv shows and movies to name, but she fell into a coma on Seinfeld, didn't die in Michael Bay's Ambulance, she made Candice Bergen's Top 3 list of fired secretaries on Murphy Brown, and as Rabbi Gurwitch on Better Things, she Bat Mitzvahed Academy Award winner Mikey Madison. She performs with The Moth Mainstage and serves as a patient advocate at scientific conferences around the globe. Gurwitch is an unrepentant cat lady, a terrible ukulele player, who lives in Los Angeles. Her latest memoir which was published in March, The End of My Life is Killing Me, is a national bestseller.
Don Handfield
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.
Jim Head
Jim Head is an award-winning television executive producer/writer and a Tony-nominated Broadway producer. He has produced and written sixty-six movies, mini-series, series, and short films to date. Formerly the Head of Original Programming for TBS, he founded his own company, Head First Productions, in 2001. The range of Jim’s work includes romantic comedy, mystery, thriller, true crime, holiday, and inspirational. His produced projects have appeared on many different networks and streaming services, including Netflix, CBS, TNT, Hallmark, and Lifetime, among others. His film, A Tourist’s Guide To Love, starring Rachael Leigh Cook and Ben Feldman, aired recently on Netflix and went to #1 in the world upon its premiere. Jim creates his own original material and has also successfully adapted books from many #1 New York Times bestselling authors, including Patricia Cornwell, Jodi Picoult, Sandra Brown, Charlaine Harris, and Ann Rule. A member of the LGBTQ community, Jim co-executive produced the independent feature LGBTQ horror comedy Summoning Sylvia, with the movie earning a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and GLAAD and Queerty award nominations. Jim’s most recent Broadway producer credits include Romeo + Juliet starring Kit Conner and Rachel Zegler, Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, and Sweeney Todd starring Josh Groban. Jim is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of Canada, ATAS, the State Bar of California, and the State Bar of Georgia. A Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Vanderbilt University (B.A., J.D.), Jim’s career path is featured in the book, The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, by James M. Citrin and Richard A. Smith.
Dara Hyde
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.
Liska Jacobs
Liska Jacobs, M.F.A., author of the Southern California bestselling novel The Pink Hotel—a dark social satire described by Esquire as a "glittering" take on greed and excess. Jacobs' previous novels, Catalina and The Worst Kind of Want, were both critically acclaimed, with the latter long-listed for the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, and Alta, and she is a contributor to the bestselling anthology Eight Very Bad Nights. Jacobs recently returned to her native Los Angeles after several years in Berlin, where she taught at the Berlin Writers Workshop.
Hannah Joyce
Hannah Joyce is a multi-faceted arts administrator, producer, educator and champion of new play development. As Director of Professional Resources and Education at Playwrights’ Center, a position she has shaped for over a decade, Hannah and her team foster ongoing vitality, visibility, opportunities and connection among theatre creators all over the world. During her five-year stint as the producing artistic director of the legendary William Inge Theatre Festival, Hannah curated multi-tiered opportunities for engagement, honoring major playwrights like two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. A frequent participant in the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival, and recipient of the Kennedy Center's prestigious Gold Medallion Award for extraordinary contributions to the teaching and producing of theatre, Hannah mentors student writers from across the nation. Along her dynamic journey through the arts, Hannah’s worked with The St. Louis Rep, The Black Rep, and That Uppity Theater Company's DisAbility Project, among many others. A proud mother of two and the eldest of eight, Hannah is devoted to the power of story and the many communities from which they emerge.
Sophie Kercher
Sophia Kercher is a senior editor for the entertainment and features sections, including the Book Review, at the Los Angeles Times. She has been writing and editing stories about L.A. for over a decade. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Variety, Vogue, Vulture, Elle, Women’s Health, Los Angeles Magazine and LAist, among other publications. Previously, she was the founding editor of Los Angeleno, a local digital arts and culture publication, and served as a senior editor at Pasadena Magazine. As a culture reporter, she’s covered opera in Tijuana, pawnshops that hawk Oscars, the high desert’s mother of dragon sounds, and performance art aerobics classes. She always reads two books at once.
Dylan Landis
Dylan Landis is the author of the three interlocking books of fiction set in 1970s and '80s Greenwich Village: two novels-in-stories, List of All Possible Desires and Normal People Don't Live Like This, and a novel, Rainey Royal. Her fiction has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Bomb, Tin House and other publications.
Jonathan Lethem
Celebrated for his novels, short stories and essays, Jonathan Lethem is recognized today as one of America’s foremost contemporary writers. Born in New York, he attended Bennington College. He is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, including Brooklyn Crime Novel, The Feral Detective, and Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His six story collections include Men and Cartoons and Lucky Alan, and his short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the Paris Review, among other publications, garnering a Pushcart Prize, a World Fantasy Award, and inclusion in The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Los Angeles and Maine. His latest book, A Different Kind of Tension: New & Selected Stories was released last fall to international praise.
Maret Orliss
Maret Orliss served for several years as 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.
Amanda Orozco
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, Dr. Anthony Christian Ocampo, Nick Medina, Tania De Rozario, Raksha Vasudevan, Roya Marsh, Kay Chronister, Shoshana von Blanckensee, and Vanessa Friedman.
Tira Palmquist
TIRA PALMQUIST is known for plays that merge the personal, the political and the poetic. Her most produced play, Two Degrees, premiered at the Denver Center, and was subsequently produced by Tesseract Theater in St. Louis and Prime Productions at the Guthrie (among others). Her play The Way North was a Finalist for the O’Neill, an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Kilroys List, and was featured in the 2019 Ashland New Plays Festival. Recently, Tira completed several new commission projects: The Worth of Water, the 2018 Clutch Productions commission, had an equity showcase production in NYC in October, directed by Mélisa Annis. Tira’s commission for Lower Depth Theater Ensemble in Los Angeles. Safe Harbor, a play about sex trafficking, premiered in November in LA. Tira has also been commissioned to write new work for the UCI graduate acting students. Her play Hold Steady was workshopped at UCI in February 2019, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything was workshopped in February 2020, and in 2021, The Last Time We Saw Madison was performed online with the more recent first-year grad actors. Her other plays include Ten Mile Lake (Serenbe Playhouse), Age of Bees (NYU Stella Adler Studio, MadLab Theater, Tesseract), And Then They Fell (MadLab, Brimmer Street, New York Film Academy) and This Floating World. The Way North, which was developed at the 2018 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, was a finalist for the 2018 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2019 Blue Ink Playwriting Award. The Way North was also featured in the following festivals: The Festival of New American Plays (Phoenix Theater), the Human Rights New Works Festival (Red Mountain Theater), the Page-by-Page Festival (Pioneer Theater) and the Road Theater’s Summer New Works Festival. Two Degrees has been featured in numerous festivals (including the 11th Annual Denver Center New Play Summit, the New American Voices festival in the UK, the Caltech 2014 Mach 33 Festival and the 2014 Great Plains Theater Conference) and had its World Premiere in the Denver Center’s 2016/17 Season. Two Degrees was also listed in the Honorable Mention list for the 2016 Kilroys. Ten Mile Lake, which premiered in 2014 at Serenbe Playhouse just outside of Atlanta, GA, was developed and workshopped in 2012 at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and was a finalist for the 2015 Primus Prize. Tira teaches creative writing at the Orange County School of the Arts, and has also taught at Wesleyan University and the University of California-Irvine. She is a member of the Playwrights Union, the Anteaus Theater’s Playwrights Lab and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Her work as a director and dramaturg includes several seasons at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and the New Territories Playwriting Residency. More info at www.tirapalmquist.com.
Heather Scott Partington
Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic. She is a board member and the recent past president of the National Book Critics Circle. She currently serves as NBCC Fiction Award Chair. Heather is a regular contributor to Alta Journal. Her writing has also appeared in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Elk Grove, California.
Leena Pendharker
Leen Pendharker is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer and director whose work has been described as “heartfelt,” “groundbreaking,” and “brave.” She is drawn to intimate, character-driven storytelling that explores the human experience with nuance and humor, and appreciates creative collaboration with actors and others. She recently completed principal photography on her third independent feature, Days with Dandekar, starring Iqbal Theba (Glee). The screenplay was selected for the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab, and Tribeca All Access, and is currently in post-production. Her sophomore feature, 20 Weeks, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, won Best Feature at the Maryland Film Festival and Best Editing at the Tallgrass Film Festival, and was named one of the best independent films of 2017 by Film Threat. The Los Angeles Times called it “an intimate, compassionate take on abortion.” It was released theatrically and on Hulu. In television, she directed A Date with Deception for Lifetime and episodes of Hello, Jack! for Apple TV+, earning a Children’s and Family Emmy nomination. She is an alum of the Warner Bros., CBS, and Sony Diverse Directors programs. Her short films have screened widely, including the most recent, Tiny Joy, which played at the Bentonville Film Festival and is now on Shorted. Dandekar Makes a Sandwich won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and was a Vimeo Staff Pick. Awaken, starring Parminder Nagra, is featured on Omeleto and ShortsTV. Her debut feature, Raspberry Magic, screened in many festivals, and was released on platforms including Hulu, Starz and Amazon Prime Video. Leena is an Associate Professor at Loyola Marymount University. She holds an MFA in Screenwriting from UC Riverside, Palm Desert, and is a member of the Directors Guild of America.
Gideon Pine
Gideon Pine is an agent at InkWell. Gideon is looking for top-notch thrillers, both commercial and literary, domestic fiction with a dash of suburban dysfunction, dramas of all sorts, and book club fiction. He is also interested in representing writers in the nonfiction space with a focus on health and wellness, cooking, narrative nonfiction, true crime, and long form investigative journalism.
Perrin Pring
A former white water kayaker who competed on the World Cup circuit, Perrin Pring is now a park ranger. She has worked and lived across the U.S., riding horses in the Rocky Mountains, driving Jeeps in the wilds of the desert, greeting the sunrise in Hawaii, and running chainsaws in the Sierra Mountains. She holds an MFA in creative writing and screenwriting from UC Riverside Palm Desert and a BA from Tufts University. Her writing has appeared in Backcountry Journal, the Coachella Review, and Kelp Literary. She lives in the Rocky Mountain West. Her debut, Cash and Gravity, is out now.
Hugh Ryan
Hugh Ryan’s latest book, My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond has just been released. His most recent book, THE WOMEN’S HOUSE OF DETENTION: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, is a queer history of the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village. It is the story of one building: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired. It is the winner of the 2023 Stonewall Book Award/Israel Fishman Award for Nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle of the American Library Association, as well as the 2022 Warren Johansson Award from the W.A. Percy Foundation. His first book, WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER, was called a “boisterous, motley new history” and “an entertaining and insightful chronicle” by the New York Times, who made it an Editor’s Pick in 2019. It was also received the New York City Book Award from the Society Library. In 2019, he was honored by the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association, and the Brooklyn Borough President for his work on the queer history of BK. He received the 2016 Martin Duberman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, several New York Foundation for the Arts grants in Nonfiction Literature, the 2019-2020 Allan Berube Prize for outstanding work in public LGBT History from the Committee on LGBT History at the American Historical Association, and the 2019 New York City Book Award. He has been awarded residencies at both Yaddo and Watermill. Currently, he teaches nonfiction in the MFA program at The Bennington Writing Seminars.
Dan Smetanka
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, Daniel Kraus, and Jamie Harrison, among others.
Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, Longreads, LitHub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and theaters, festivals, and classrooms across the country. She is an acquiring editor at Northwestern University Press and teaches creative writing in Chicago.
Jaime Parker Stickle
Jaime Parker Stickle is a writer, podcaster, and professor of film and television at Montclair State University. She is the author of the gripping thriller, “Vicious Cycle: A Corey in Los Angeles Mystery,” and is the creator and host of the true crime investigative podcast, The Girl with the Same Name as well as the hilarious podcast about side-hustles, Make That Paper. Jaime lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and fur babies.
Susan Straight
Susan Straight’s most recent novel, Sacrament, is currently a finalist for the California Book Award, was named Southwest Book of the Year, and a best book of the year by the Orange County Register, Chicago Review of Books & Kirkus Reviews, among many others. Her previous book, Mecca, was a Finalist for the Kirkus Prize and named by The New York Times as a Top Ten California Book of the Year, one of the Best Ten Books of 2022 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and the best book of 2022 by NPR. Her 2019 memoir, In the Country of Women, was a national bestseller, named the best book of the year by NPR and CodeSwitch, and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She has published eight previous novels, including the bestseller Highwire Moon, a Finalist for the National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in O Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, Harpers, and elsewhere. Her awards include the Lannan Prize for Fiction, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Story, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Arabic, Swedish, Polish, and Japanese. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family; she has taught at the University of California, Riverside, since 1988.
Brian Townsley
Brian Townsely is an award-winning writer, as well as the Executive Editor at Starlite Pulp. He is the author of the Sonny Haynes books Under a Black Flag, A Trunk Full of Zeroes and Outlaw Ballads. as well as the western novella Days of Bone, Nights of Ash (pt. 1) in American Muse, and three collections of poetry.
Oscar Villalon
Oscar Villalon is the Editor of ZYZZYVA, the award-winning California literary journal. His writing has been published in Stranger’s Guide, Freeman’s, The Believer, The Approach, Virginia Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. A former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, he has served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction three times, including once as jury chair, and has served as a judge for the National Book Awards. He lives with his family in San Francisco, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
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.