Featured Author and Moderator:

Tommy Orange

Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.

Bobby Wilson

Bobby "Dues" Wilson is a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota actor, writer, poet, visual artist, and comedian. He wrote on the Marvel series ECHO, wrote and acted on FX’s Reservation Dogs, Peacock’s Rutherford Falls, and he has performed on FX’s What We Do in the Shadows. He is a founding member of the Native Sketch Comedy group, The 1491s, and he co-wrote their critically acclaimed play, Between Two Knees. Bobby is also a celebrated muralist and skilled beader whose work has been featured in Vogue and Hyperallergic.

Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams; the collection of essays Make It Scream, Make It Burn; and the novel The Gin Closet; a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She writes for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.

Sarah Manguso

Sarah Manguso is the author of nine books, most recently the novel Very Cold People, which was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, as well as a story collection, two poetry collections, and four acclaimed works of nonfiction: 300 Arguments, Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. Her novel Liars is forthcoming in July 2024. Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and the Rome Prize, and her writing has been translated into 12 languages. She teaches Creative Writing at Antioch University.

Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti is the author of 11 books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?, which New York Magazine deemed one of the "New Classics" of the 21st century. She was named one of the "New Vanguard" by The New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a top book of 2018. Her books have been translated into 24 languages. She lives in Toronto.

Michelle Tea

Michelle Tea is the author, most recently, of Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My Infertility. She is a creator of Drag Queen Story Hour, a recipient of awards from PEN/America and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the publisher of DOPAMINE Books.

Tess Gunty’s debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, won the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction, the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize. It was named one of twelve essential reads by The New Yorker and a best book of the year by Time, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, People, the New York Times, and others. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Granta, LitHub, Joyland, Freeman’s, and elsewhere. Gunty holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and now lives in Los Angeles.

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of three works of fiction: I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness, Gold Fame Citrus, andcBattleborn, winner of the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Claire is a professor in the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. She lives in Tecopa, California.

Tom Perrotta is the bestselling author of ten works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into critically acclaimed movies, and The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher, which were both adapted into the HBO series. He lives outside Boston.

Albert Berger formed Bona Fide Productions with Ron Yerxa in 1992. Their producing credits include King of the Hill, Election, Cold Mountain, Little Children, and Best Picture Academy Award Nominees Little Miss Sunshine and Nebraska. Their recent films include The Peanut Butter Falcon and Blow The Man Down, and their new film Somewhere in Queens will premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. A graduate of Tufts University and Columbia University School of the Arts, he has owned and managed the Sandburg Theatre in Chicago, written scripts for studios from Paramount and TriStar to MGM, and served as Vice President of Development for Marvin Worth Productions as well as a governor for the producer’s branch on the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Jennifer Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction: Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New York Times Magazine.

Danzy Senna rose to international literary fame in 1998 with her extraordinary first novel, Caucasia. Since then, she has become one of today's most timely and respected literary voices, consistently challenging our culture's defined states of race, class, and gender norms. A favorite with universities and libraries, Senna speaks about her craft as both a memoirist and fiction writer and the timely themes that define her acclaimed books. 

Alex Segura is the SVP - Sales and Marketing at Oni Press and the author of Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall and the acclaimed Pete Fernandez Mystery series. He has also written a number of comic books, most notably the superhero noir The Black Ghost, the YA music series The Archies, and the Archie Meets collection of crossovers. A Miami native, he lives in New York City with his wife and children.

Steph Cha is the author of the Juniper Song mystery series and Your House Will Pay, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and has been nominated for a Young Lions Fiction Award, a Macavity Award, a Lefty Award, a Barry Award, and a Dagger Award, as well as long-listed for the Aspen Prize. She’s an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she edited the noir section for almost five years. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her most recent book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.

Eric Gansworth, Sˑha-weñ na-saeˀ, (Onondaga, Eel Clan) is a writer and visual artist, born and raised in Tuscarora Nation. The author of twelve books, he has been widely published and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Lowery is a Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College; he has also been an NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University. His work has received a PEN Oakland Award and, American Book Award, Printz Honor Award and was Longlisted for the National Book Award. Gansworth’s work has been also supported by the Library of Congress, the Saltonstall and Lannan Foundations, the Arne Nixon Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Seaside Institute.

John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman’s and the author and editor of ten books, including Dictionary of the Undoing, The Park, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and, with Tracy K. Smith, There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Orion, and has been translated into over twenty languages. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York City, where he teaches writing at NYU and is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

Rick Bass, the author of thirty books, won the Story Prize for his collection For a Little While and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his memoir Why I Came West. His most recent book is Fortunate Son: Selected Essays from the Lone Star State. His work, which has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and the Paris Review, among many other publications, and has been anthologized numerous times in The Best American Short Stories, has also won multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes, as well as NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Bass lives in Montana’s Yaak Valley, where he is a founding board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council.

Lana Bastašić is a Yugoslav-born writer. Her first novel, Catch the Rabbit, won the European Union Prize in Literature in 2020 and was published in English in 2021. Mliječni zubi (Milk Teeth), a collection of short stories, was published in Serbo-Croatian in 2020.  

Lina Mounzer is a writer and translator living in Beirut. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review, 1843, Literary Hub, and Bidoun, as well as in Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women and Tales of Two Planets, an anthology of writing on climate change and inequality. 

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of three novels, My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones. She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.

Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award, The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013, and her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, which came out in July 2020, and was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and more, as well as heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and teaches creative writing at USC.