Colson Whitehead is the author of the New York Times bestseller Zone One as well as the novels Sag Harbor; The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/ Hemingway award John Henry Days, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Apex Hides the Hurt, winner of the PEN Oakland Award. He has also written a book of essays about his hometown,The Colossus of New York. A recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in New York City.

Laurie Winer is a long-time journalist who has been on staff at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. She is a founding editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Laurie is inexplicably proud that she has played poker in Vegas, Macau, and every card room in Southern California.

American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a reputation as an unusual and compelling artist with a broad and thought-provoking repertoire. In 2013 he became a MacArthur Grant recipient and was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America. He has appeared as a soloist with many major orchestras in the USA and abroad and regularly gives recitals around the United States. Denk is the artistic director of the 2014 Ojai Music Festival, for which he is also composing the libretto to a semi-satirical opera. He is also known for his witty and personal writing in the New Yorker, New York Times Book Review,Newsweek and NPR Music’s website and for his blog Think Denk.

Jeffrey Kahane, equally at home at the keyboard or on the podium, has established an international reputation as a truly versatile artist, recognized around the world for his mastery of diverse repertoire ranging from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Gershwin, Golijov and John Adams. Now in his 17th season as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, he previously served as music director of the Colorado and Santa Rosa symphonies. He has garnered tremendous critical acclaim for his innovative programming and commitment to education and community involvement and received multiple ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming for his work in both Los Angeles and Denver.

Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is the author, most recently, of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. His first book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, has been translated into thirteen languages and named by Blackwell as one of the hundred most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism), as well as the editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East. Aslan is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.

Jack Miles is a Senior Fellow for Religious Affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy and a Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies the University of California, Irvine. A MacArthur Fellow (2003-2007), Miles won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for God: A Biography, which has since been translated into sixteen languages. He is currently the general editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions.

Robert Pinsky is the first United States Poet Laureate to have served three consecutive terms in the post. His book Gulf Music, is his seventh volume of poetry. His The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and received the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. He is the author of the best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante, co-translator of The Separate Notebooks, and author of The Life of David, a work of prose.

The poetry editor for the online magazine Slate, for seven years Pinsky appeared regularly on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer. He writes the weekly "Poet's Choice" column for the Washington Post. He was elected in 1999 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his poems appear in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, and frequently in The Best American Poetryanthologies. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. He is one of the few members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on The Simpsons.

Marilyn Chin teaches at San Diego State University and is on the mentor faculty of City University of Hong Kong. She has won numerous awards for her poetry, including the United Artist Foundation Fellowship, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio, and the PEN/Josephine Miles Award. She is featured in a variety of anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. In addition to writing poetry and tales, she has translated poems by the modern Chinese poet Ai Qing and co-translated poems by the Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu.

Toi Derricotte has published five collections of poetry, most recently, The Undertaker's Daughter. Her literary memoir The Black Notebooks won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Among her many honors are the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement and the 2012 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry for a poet whose distinguished and growing body of work represents a notable presence in American literature. Cornelius Eady co-founded Cave Canem Foundation. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh and serves on the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors.

Percival Everett is the author of twenty-five books. Among them are Erasure, Glyph, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, and Wounded, all from Graywolf Press. His most recent volume of poetry is Swimming Swimmers Swimming, published by Red Hen Press. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Alice Quinn is Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of the Arts. She was poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987-2007 and at Alfred A. Knopf from 1976-1986. She is the editor of Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop. Her articles on and interviews with writers, poets, and artists have appeared in Artforum, the Canadian National Post, The Forward, Poetry Ireland, The New Yorker, and The New Yorker Online. She is currently editing the journals and notebooks of Elizabeth Bishop.

Nicole Adlman is a second-year student in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC, where she has worked to hone her craft in both fiction and nonfiction writing. She has taught Writing and Critical Reasoning—a freshman rhetoric course—for the university’s Writing Program since 2012.

KT Brown is an MFA candidate at CalArts. Her first novel, Spiral Wares, is an experiment in narrative investigating the ambiguous terrain of memory. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Passages North, and The Review Review, where she is a regular contributor. 

Marie Horrigan is working on a collection of short stories focused on brief moments and their emotional undertones. Before turning to fiction, Horrigan was a political journalist in Washington, D.C., who covered presidential and congressional elections. She will receive her Master of Professional Writing from USC in May.

Blake Kimzey short fiction has been broadcast on NPR and published in Tin House, FiveChapters, Short Fiction, Puerto del Sol, The Los Angeles Review, and Surreal South '13. He is currently a student in the Programs In Writing at UC Irvine and is working on his first novel.

Eugenie Montague is pursuing her MFA in fiction from the University of California, Irvine. Her story, "Geometry," was featured on NPR as part of its Three Minute Fiction contest, and her story, "Ritual," received Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train's June 2012 Fiction Open. She lives in Los Angeles.

Angela Peñaredondo is a poet and artist from Los Angeles. She is also a recipient of a University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Grant, Gluck Fellowship, and UCLA Community Access Scholarship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sin Fronteras, Thrush, Solo Novo, Ghost Town and elsewhere.

Amanda Ruud holds a BA from Tufts University. An MFA student at UC Riverside, she is currently at work on a collection of short fiction.

Rachel Schramm is a 25-year-old poet living in Los Angeles, working on her MFA at Otis College of Art and Design. Her interests include tide pools, weather systems, and large, stately conifers.

Victor Yates’ writing has appeared in Windy City Times, Edge, and Qulture. Recently two of his poems were included in the anthology For Colored Boys, edited by Keith Boykin. The anthology won the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He is also the winner of the Elma Stuckey Writing Award.

Emerson Whitney is an experimental poet, writer, and journalist based in Los Angeles. Emerson’s writing has appeared in CA Conrad’s Jupiter 88, Troubling the Line: Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry, Work Magazine, Shampoo, Bombay Gin, KCRW’s UnFictional, the Huffington Post, the New York Observer, and elsewhere. Emerson is a 2013 Kari Edwards fellow on behalf of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. And is the author of the forthcoming documentary poetics project, Ghost Box.

Walter Kirn is the author of Thumbsucker and Up in the Air, both made into major films. His work has appeared in GQ, New York, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine.

Richard Rayner is the author of ten books, both fiction and non-fiction, including Los Angeles Without a Map (filmed from his own script with David Tennant, Vinissa Shaw, Johnny Depp, and Julie Delpy), The Blue Suit, Murder Book, and, most recently A Bright and Guilty Place, optioned for film by Christopher Nolan. He writes for the Los Angeles Review of Books, the LA Times, the New Yorker , and other publications as well as for TV and film. He teaches at USC.

Shane Bauer is an award-winning investigative journalist and photographer. His articles have appeared in Mother Jones, The Nation, Salon.com, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. In 2013, Shane received the John Jay/Henry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting.

Josh Fattal, a graduate of Berkeley's program in environmental economics and policy, is an activist and organizer focused on sustainable development. Along with Shourd and Bauer, he has spoken at universities, human rights conferences, and private events to share the experience of imprisonment in Iran.

Sarah Shourd is a writer and human rights activist with the organization United4Iran. She is a regular contributor to Huffington Post and has written for the New York Times, CNN.com, Newsweek/Daily Beast, and other publications.

Arun Rath is the new weekend host of All Things Considered. Previously, Rath was a reporter, producer, and editor, most recently as a senior reporter for the PBS series Frontline and The World® on WGBH Boston, where he specialized in national security and military justice. He has produced three films forFrontline, the latest being an investigation of alleged war crimes committed by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq. Rath also reports on culture and music for the PBS series Sound Tracks.

Singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo has been recognized as one of Africa’s "50 most iconic figures" (the BBC) and one of the world’s "100 most inspiring women" (The Guardian). Among the many honors, she received her June 2103 appointment as vice-president of CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. She now makes her home in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. In 2014, she will follow up the release of her memoir with the release of a new album of original songs distributed by Savoy Records and a world tour.

Lorraine Ali is a writer and journalist who is currently serving as Music Editor for the Los Angeles Times. She was previously a Senior Writer with Newsweek, where she covered culture, music, and the Middle East. Lorraine has written for publications such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and GQ and is currently working on a book about the plight of her Iraqi family following the 2003 invasion.

Richard Rodriguez is a journalist, essayist, and contributor to Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times, and Time. He is the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez; Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Brown: The Last Discovery of America, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. For many years he was an essayist on PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. He is currently a contributing writer and editor for New American Media, a nonprofit news network.

Rubén Martínez, an Emmy-winning journalist and poet, is the author of several books, including Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail and The New Americans. His most recent book is Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West. He holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University.

Photo credit: Timothy Archibald, 2013