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.

Lorrie Moore is author of Birds of America, Like Life, and Self-Help and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Anagrams, and A Gate at the Stairs. Her short stories have frequently been reprinted in anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. After serving as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for almost three decades, Moore has been named the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She has received numerous grants and awards, including the Lannan Foundation, the National Books Critics Circle, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Brighde Mullins is a poet and playwright, whose works include The Bourgeois Pig, Monkey in the Middle, Fire Eater, and many others. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012 and has also won awards from United States Artists, the NEA, and the Whiting Foundation for her plays. She teaches in and directs the Master of Professional Writing (MPW), a multi-genre graduate creative writing program at the University of Southern California.

Dinaw Mengestu is the award-winning author of two novels,The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air.He is a graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University's M.F.A. program in fiction and the recipient of a 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation and a 20 Under 40 award from The New Yorker. His journalism and fiction have appeared in such publications as Harper's Magazine,Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant and currently lives in New York City.

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. She is the author of the short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and the novel Secret Son. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Guardian, the New York Times, and in numerous anthologies. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship and is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. Her new novel, The Moor’s Account, will be published in 2014.

Walter Mosley is the author of more than 34 critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 21 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Attica Locke's first novel, Black Water Rising, was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK in 2010 and nominated for an Edgar Award as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Attica has spent many years working as a screenwriter, penning movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox, among others. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a member of the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. Most recently, she wrote the introduction for the UK publication of Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying. Her second book is The Cutting Season, for which Locke recently received The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

Edward Frenkel is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously on the faculty at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and winner of the Hermann Weyl Prize in mathematical physics. His recent work has focused on the Langlands Program and dualities in Quantum Field Theory. Frenkel has authored two books and over eighty research articles in mathematical journals, and he has lectured on his work around the world. He co-produced, co-directed, and played the lead in the film "Rites of Love and Math," which French newspaper Le Monde called "a stunning short film... offering an unusual romantic vision of mathematicians."

Described by Time Magazine as a "televisionary," Chris Carter created one of the most successful television franchises of all time with his award-winning show The X-Files. The show ran a remarkable nine seasons, is still seen today in over 60 countries, and spawned two films as well as a comic book and video game adaptations. Carter also created the shows Millennium, Harsh Realm, and The Lone Gunmen. The impact of Carter’s series is such that in 1997, Time Magazine named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People in America. After a hiatus from television, Carter is about to return to the medium, helming Amazon Studios' very first TV drama pilot The After, which he wrote and directed.

Barry Miles is the author of many seminal books on popular culture, including the authorized biography of Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now; Ginsberg: A Biography; William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible; Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats; and The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963. He also co-edited the revised text edition of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

David L. Ulin is a book critic for the Los Angeles Times and, from 2005-2010, was the paper's book editor. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His essays and criticism have appeared in many publications.

Armistead Maupin is the author of the Tales of the City series, of which The Days of Anna Madrigal is the ninth book and which includes Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, and Mary Ann in Autumn. Three television miniseries were made from the first three Tales novels. Maupin is also the author of Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. A stage musical version of Tales of the City premiered at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in May 2011. Maupin lives in Santa Fe with his husband, Christopher Turner.

Chris Freeman teaches English and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. His first book, The Isherwood Century, won a Lambda Literary Award. He and his writing partner have recently completed a new collection of essays on Isherwood, which will be published in late 2014. They co-edited Love, West Hollywood, an anthology of tales of LGBTQ Los Angeles. Freeman is on the advisory board of the Monette-Horwitz Trust and is a board member of ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

Richard Powers is the much-lauded author of eleven novels, including The Echo Maker, which won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He is also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award. His fiction often explores the effects of modern science and technology.

Michael Silverblatt is the host of KCRW's half-hour radio show Bookworm, where he introduces listeners to new and emerging authors along with writers of renown. He created Bookworm for KCRW-FM in 1989. The complete Bookworm archive can be heard at kcrw.com/bookworm.

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.