Arundhati Roy is the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. Her nonfiction writings include The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Listening to Grasshoppers, Broken Republic, and Capitalism: A Ghost Story, and most recently, Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, coauthored with John Cusack.

Héctor Tobar is the author of four books, including the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Deep Down Dark is published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, by Sceptre in the UK, Harper Collins Canada, and Belfond in France.

Judith Freeman has published a collection of short stories and three novels, including The Chinchilla Farm and A Desert of Pure Feeling.

Alex Raksin is a member of the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times and for many years was a columnist and deputy book editor for the LA Times book reivew.

Alejandro Morales is a novelist and professor of literature at the University of California, Irvine.

Charlotte Innes, a freelance writer, regularly reviews books for the Los Angeles Times Book Review and The Nation.

Dennis Lehane is the author of eleven previous novels, including the bestsellers Live By Night; Moonlight Mile; Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; Shutter Island; and The Given Day. His novels have been translated into more than 30 languages and have become international bestsellers. Lehane was a staff writer on the acclaimed HBO series The Wire and a writer-producer on the 4th season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. In January 2017, Live By Night will be released as a major motion picture directed by and starring Ben Affleck. Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a counselor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. He lives in California.

Attica Locke’s latest Pleasantville is the 2016 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. It was long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction and made numerous "Best of 2015" lists. Her first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her second book, The Cutting Season, is a national bestseller and the winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker’s Lab, Locke worked as a screenwriter before becoming a novelist. She was a writer and producer on the Fox drama Empire. She also serves on the board of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

David Francis‘ first novel, The Great Inland Sea, was published in seven languages. His second, Stray Dog Winter, was Novel of the Year in the Australian Literature Review, a LAMBDA Literary Award Finalist and won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Prize for Literature. His short fiction, articles, and reviews have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Review, Sydney Morning Herald and elsewhere. David’s third novel, Wedding Bush Road was recently released in both the USA and Australia. He is Vice President of PEN Center USA.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.

In 1973, Abdellah Taïa was born in the public library of Rabat in Morocco, where his father was the janitor and where his family lived until he was two years old. He is the author of six novels, including Salvation Army and An Arab Melancholia, both published by Semiotext(e) and Infidels. His novel Le jour du roi, about the death of Morocco’s King Hassan II, won the 2010 Prix de Flore. He also directed and wrote the screenplay for the 2013 film adaptation of Salvation Army. Taïa made history in 2006 by coming out in his country, where homosexuality is illegal. His commitment to the defense of homosexuals in Muslim countries has made him one of the most prominent Arab writers of his generation—both "a literary transgressor and cultural paragon," according to Interview magazine. He has lived in Paris since 1998.

Steven Reigns is a Los Angeles-based poet and educator and was appointed the first City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood (2014-2016). Alongside over a dozen chapbooks, he has published the collections Inheritance and Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida, a Master of Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, and is a ten-time recipient of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Artist in Residency Grant. He edited My Life is Poetry, featuring his students in the first-ever autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBT seniors, and has taught writing workshops around the country to LGBT youth and people living with HIV. Currently he is touring The Gay Rub, an exhibition of rubbings from LGBT landmarks.

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University.

Steve Hely is a writer and TV writer. He wrote the novel How I Became A Famous Novelist, and co-wrote the comic travelogue The Ridiculous Race. His latest book is The Wonder Trail: True Stories from Los Angeles To The End of the World. He wrote for The Late Show with David Letterman, 30 Rock, The Office, American Dad and Veep. He’s a co-host of The Great Debates radio show.

George Saunders is the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers Congratulations, by the way and Tenth of December, the essay collection The Braindead Megaphone, and the critically acclaimed short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation. He regularly writes short stories for The New Yorker and travel pieces for GQ, and his work has appeared in the O’Henry, “Best American Short Story,” “Best Non-Required Reading,” “Best American Travel Writing,” and “Best Science Fiction” anthologies. He’s made special appearances on The Charlie Rose Show, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Colbert Report. Saunders has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation and, in 2006, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013, he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times, “No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders,” and Zadie Smith wrote of his work, “Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.” Saunders has taught in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University since 1996, and he lives in the Catskills. Lincoln in the Bardo is Saunders’ long-awaited first novel.

Anthony Marra is the bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize. This debut novel about the transcendent power of love in wartime was hailed by The New York Times as “brilliant” and topped many “best books” lists of 2013, including New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, NPR, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews, and Publisher’s Weekly, among many others. Marra’s latest work, The Tsar of Love and Techno, is a collection of lyrical interwoven stories about family, sacrifice, the legacy of war, and the redemptive power of art. This collection was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. Novelist Francine Prose wrote of Marra’s stories, “Reading his work is like watching the restoration—the reappearance, on the page—of those whom history has erased.” His work has been honored with the National Magazine Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. He teaches at Stanford University as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe and now resides in Oakland, California.

Phil LaMarr was one of the original cast members of Mad TV and an alumnus of Yale University and The Groundlings Theater. He is known for his work in Pulp Fiction and for his extensive voice-over work, including animated shows Futurama, Samurai Jack, Justice League, Family Guy and Bojack Horseman, and video games like Injustice, Shadow of Mordor and Mortal Kombat X. He can currently be seen in this season of HBO’s Veep and in The Black Version improv comedy show monthly at Largo At The Coronet.