Jane Hirshfield is the author of six collections of poetry, including After, Given Sugar, Given Salt, The Lives of the Heart, and The October Palace, as well as a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. She edited and co-translated The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Komachi & Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, and Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets, an honor formerly held by such poets as Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop. In 2012, she was elected Chancellor of the Academy. Her newest work, published spring of 2015, is a volume of poetry titled The Beauty and a book of essays titled Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.

Louise Steinman is the curator of the award-winning ALOUD series and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC. She is the author of three books: The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War; The Knowing Body: The Artist as Storyteller in Contemporary Performance and The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation. She will be a spring 2015 writer-in-residence at the Warsaw Bauhaus. Her work appears, most recently, in The Los Angeles Review of Books and on her Crooked Mirror blog.

Jennifer Clement has studied literature in New York and Paris. Among many honors for her work, the internationally acclaimed novel Prayers for the Stolen was awarded the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Fellowship for Literature as well as the Sara Curry Humanitarian Award. She is also the author of the memoir Widow Basquiat and the novels A True Story Based on Lies, a finalist for the Orange Prize, and The Poison That Fascinates, as well as several books of poetry. Clement’s work has been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Mexico City and was President of PEN Mexico from 2009 to 2012.

Magdalena Edwards is a writer based in Los Angeles and born in Santiago, Chile. Her essays and lyrical experiments have appeared recently in The Millions, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Paris Review Daily. Her work as a staff writer for Chile's leading newspaper El Mercurio led to graduate studies at UCLA in Comparative Literature, with an emphasis on twentieth-century poet-translators from the Americas, including Elizabeth Bishop, Octavio Paz, and Manuel Bandeira. Edwards occasionally translates poetry and prose from Spanish and Portuguese, and she is an editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is working on a book about love.

Sydney Barile is a poet and visual artist currently working toward a Master of Fine Art in Creative Writing at the California Institute of the Arts. She has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Southern California—where she received the Beau J. Boudreaux Poetry Award. Sydney is in the process of completing her first book—a collection of autobiographical poems (confessional, narrative, and lyrical) that speak to the experience of growing up and navigating the space between adolescence and full adulthood. She lives in Los Angeles.

Justin Evans has or will very shortly publish fiction, satire, and/or essays in Bird's Thumb, Santa Monica Review, The Essay Daily, The Point Magazine, and Open Set. He is almost done writing Jerusalem/September, a novel about anarchists and arms manufacturers in Los Angeles. Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well for anyone. If the novel is okay, they might let him graduate from Otis College's MFA program this summer, and he will self-publish The Hate Journals of the Hobo Mawk: Volume I: Some Remarks as a chapbook and ebook.

Melissa Gutierrez is a second-year student in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC, where she is currently studying poetry. Her work has appeared in The Oddity and Nameless Magazine.

Michael Mitchell is a second-year student in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC, with an emphasis on writing for stage and screen. He is currently working on his thesis, a full-length feature screenplay, as well as a historical novel, and recently had his first short story published in FORTH Magazine.

Originally from Michigan, Nicole Olweean is a first-year poet in the University of California Riverside's MFA program. Her work has appeared in Fishladder, Menacing Hedge, and Bird's Thumb.

Niela Orr is an essayist and freelance writer. Her writing has appeared in The Baffler, The Hollywood Reporter, Salon, and KCET’s Artbound, among others. She is currently at work on her thesis project; There Is No Nineteenth Floor, a collection of creative nonfiction investigating liminal space and pop culture across sites as disparate as demolished housing projects in South Philadelphia and the on-stage void evident at a rap hologram performance. She lives in Los Angeles.

Sean Pessin earned an M.A. in English at California State University, Northridge, where he now teaches part-time. He is currently finishing his M.F.A. at Otis College of Art and Design. His work has appeared in Used Gravitrons, Interfictions Online, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, The New Short Fiction Series, and in the Northridge Review. In general, Sean’s works feature the strange and the queer while being highly conscious of fabulist storytelling traditions.

Paula Tang is a writer from Walnut Creek, California, and is a fiction candidate at the University of California Riverside's MFA program. She is a world traveler and a voracious eater and is working on her first book, a novel in stories currently titled Big Baby Little China.

Julian Smith-Newman is a third-year MFA student in Fiction at UC Irvine. With Meriwether Clarke, he is the 2015 editor of Faultline, UCI’s journal of arts and letters. He is currently completing his first collection of stories.

Amanda Rusher Foushee is in her third year in the Graduate Program in Writing at UC Irvine. She will read from her thesis project, a novel currently titled East.

Bill T. Jones is the recipient of many awards, including the 2014 Doris Duke Award; the 2013 National Medal of Arts; the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors; a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography of the critically acclaimed musical FELA! and the 1994 MacArthur "Genius" Award. Mr. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide with his late partner, Arnie Zane, before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982. Mr. Jones is the Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting, and educating.

An artist and curator, Kristy Edmunds is known for both innovation and depth in the presentation of interdisciplinary contemporary and performing arts. As director of UCLA’s public performing arts program, she has formed a creative habitat for supporting artists and presenting their work. Edmunds was the Founding Executive & Artistic Director of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) and the TBA Festival (Time Based Art) in Portland, Oregon. She was Artistic Director for the Melbourne International Arts Festival from 2005-2008.

David Axelrod is a 35-year veteran of American politics and journalism. Prior to becoming a political consultant, Axelrod spent eight years as a reporter and columnist for the Chicago Tribune, including a stint as the City Hall bureau chief. As a political consultant, Axelrod has managed media and communications strategy for more than 150 local, state, and national campaigns. Axelrod most recently served as Senior Strategist to President Obama's successful re-election campaign. He served in that same role in then-Senator Obama's 2008 presidential campaign before going on to serve in the White House as Senior Advisor to the President. After the 2012 campaign, Axelrod founded the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.

Michel Martin is heard across NPR programs bringing her 25+ years of journalistic experience to coverage of education, families, faith, race, and social issues. She also hosts NPR Presents Michel Martin, a national live event series. From 2007- 2014, Martin hosted Tell Me More, a daily news/talk show that dipped into thousands of conversations taking place in corridors of power and around kitchen tables alike.

Larry Siems balances writing and activism, having published scores of articles on human rights and serving for many years as director of Freedom to Write Programs for the writers' advocacy organization PEN, in both Los Angeles and New York. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications. He is the author of three books: Between the Lines: Letters Between Undocumented Mexican and Central American Immigrants and Their Families and Friends (1993); The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post 9/11 Torture Program (2012); and the forthcoming Guantánamo Diary.

Nancy Hollander is an internationally recognized criminal defense lawyer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an Associate Tenant with Doughty Street Chambers in London. Her practice is largely devoted to representing individuals and organizations accused of crimes. She has also argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Hollander represents two prisoners at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and is lead counsel for Chelsea Manning on appeal. She is listed in the "Top 250 Women in Litigation in the U.S." for 2012-2014, and was named one of America’s top fifty women litigators by the National Law Journal in 2001. In 1992-93, she was the President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Erwin Chemerinsky is the founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. He has authored eight books, most recently The Case Against the Supreme Court (2014), and more than 200 law-review articles. He has argued several cases before the Supreme Court and various circuits of the United States Court of Appeals.

Reza Safai co-starred in the 2011 Sundance Audience Winner Circumstance, which went on to win key awards at several international film festivals. Since his short film The Mario Valdez Story took home second place at Cannes—he has been a mainstay in the US indie film scene as both an actor and producer. His latest film, produced by Black Light District (founded by Reza Safai and Daniel Grove), is the Sundance sensation A Girl Walks Home at Night, an Iranian Vampire/Western. His next film will be The Loner, neo-noir thriller set in the opium underworld of Tehrangeles.

Patton Oswalt is the author of the New York Times bestseller Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. He has released five TV specials, and five critically acclaimed comedy albums, including two Grammy-nominated releases, My Weakness Is Strong and Finest Hour. Oswalt has also appeared on many television shows and in more than twenty films, including Young Adult, Big Fan, and Ratatouille. Oswalt was the host of the 29th Independent Spirit Awards and the 18th Annual Webby Awards. He lives in Los Angeles.

Matt Oswalt is a writer and director who took his talents writing sketches for Nickelodeon and created the very NSFW and dark web series Puddin’ starring Eddie Pepitone. Having accompanied his brother Patton on numerous outings to the New Beverly over the years, from a double feature of Withnail and I/ Get Carter to a haunting screening of Salò that left them both shaken, he not only witnessed firsthand but got caught up in his brother's obsession with film.

For more than four decades—from Santana's earliest days as a groundbreaking Afro-Latin-blues-rock fusion outfit in San Francisco— Carlos Santana has been the visionary force behind artistry that transcends musical genres and generational, cultural, and geographical boundaries. To date, Santana has won 10 Grammy® Awards, including a record-tying nine for a single project, 1999’s Supernatural, as well as three Latin Grammys. Santana’s new album, Corazón, was released in May 2014 and is his first Latin music album of his career. The arc of Santana’s performing and recording career is complemented by a lifelong devotion to social activism and humanitarian causes.

Primarily known as an actor, a director, and a performer, Cheech Marin is also an avid art collector. His collection of Chicano art is lent to art institutions worldwide, and he has authored numerous books inspired by his collection. In addition to art books, Marin is also the author of three children’s books. His work on behalf of Latinos has been recognized with the 2000 Creative Achievement Award from the Imagen Foundation and the 1999 ALMA Community Service Award from the National Council of La Raza and Kraft Foods.

David Finkel is the award-winning author of The Good Soldiers. A staff writer for The Washington Post, he is also the leader of the Post’s national reporting team. Finkel received the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2006 and the MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2012. He lives in Maryland with his wife and two daughters.

Albert "Skip" Rizzo is a clinical psychologist and Director of Medical Virtual Reality at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. He is also a research professor with the USC Department of Psychiatry and at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Rizzo conducts research on the design, development, and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation across the domains of psychological, cognitive, and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. This work has focused on PTSD, TBI, Autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and other clinical conditions. In his spare time, he listens to music, rides his motorcycle, and thinks about new ways that VR can have a positive impact on clinical care by dragging the field of psychology, kickin’, and screamin’, into the 21st Century.

Thomas Curwen is an award-winning staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he has worked as the editor of the Outdoors section, as a writer-at-large and editor for the features sections, and as the deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He has received an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for mental health journalism, and in 2008 he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

Robin Coste Lewis is a Provost’s Fellow in Poetry and Visual Studies at USC. A Cave Canem fellow, she received her MFA from NYU and an MTS in Sanskrit from Harvard's Divinity School. A finalist for the International War Poetry Prize, the National Rita Dove Prize, and the Discovery Prize, her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies. She has taught at Wheaton College, Hunter College, Hampshire College, and the NYU/MFA in Paris. Born in Compton, her family is from New Orleans. Her book of poems, Voyage of the Sable Venus, is forthcoming from Knopf.

Claudia Rankine is the author of four previous books, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. She currently serves as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Pomona College in California. She is a recent recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, given annually by Poets & Writers, "to an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition."

Maggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include The Argonauts (forthcoming in May 2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Bluets, The Red Parts: A Memoir and Women, The New York School, and Other True Abstractions. Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes and Jane: A Murder. She is the recipient of many awards, including an Arts Writers Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She has taught on the faculty of the School of Critical Studies at CalArts since 2005.