Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), and The Dutch House (2019). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and was identified with the San Francisco, California literary and arts community for many years. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their exposition of the queercore community.
Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Howard Foundation Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a MacArthur Fellow, among other honors. In 2011 he won the "Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie", the first American to receive the honor. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
Tod Goldberg is an American author and journalist best known for his novels Gangster Nation (Counterpoint), Gangsterland (Counterpoint) and Living Dead Girl, the popular Burn Notice series (Penguin/NAL) and the short story collection The Low Desert: Gangster Stories (Counterpoint).
Noël Alumit is an American novelist, actor, and activist. He was identified as one of the Top 100 Influential Gay People by Out Magazine in 2002.
Marie Arana is an author, editor, journalist, critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress.
Martin Pousson is an American novelist, poet, and professor.
Mark Sarvas is an American novelist, critic, and blogger living in Los Angeles. He is the host of the literary blog The Elegant Variation and author of the novel Harry, Revised. Harry, Revised was a finalist for the Fiction Prize of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association, and was also a 2008 Denver Post Good Reads selection.
Mimi Pond is an American cartoonist, comics artist, illustrator, humorist, and writer.
Jean Babette Stein was an American author and editor.
Steven M. Lopez is an American journalist and four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist who has been a columnist for The Los Angeles Times since 2001.
Paul Gervais is an American visual artist and writer, who has also published a personal memoir. His novel, Extraordinary People, was nominated for the PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1992.
Victoria Chang is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic.
Leslie Schwartz is an American author and teacher of creative writing. She has published two novels, Jumping the Green and Angels Crest, the latter of which was made into a 2011 film, and The Lost Chapters, a memoir of her time in jail while recovering from alcoholism.
Jeanne Córdova was an American trailblazer of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and proud butch.
Connie Spenuzza is an American author who lives in Dana Point, California also known under her pen name Cecilia Velástegui, she has been collected by libraries.
Scott Blackwood is an American novelist, short story writer, and nonfiction writer. He is the author of three books of fiction and two books of narrative nonfiction on the rise of blues and jazz and the story of the Great Migration. His most recent novel, See How Small, won the 2016 PEN USA Award for fiction.
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American professor and novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a Los Angeles journalist and columnist born in 1962 who has written about black political, economic and cultural issues since 1992. She is a contributing writer to the op-ed section of the Los Angeles Times, and from 2005 to 2007 was a weekly op-ed columnist – the first black weekly op-ed columnist in the paper’s recent history. She has been a staff writer and columnist for the LA Weekly and a regular contributor for many publications, including Salon.com, Essence, and Ms.
Barbara Wilson is the pen name of Barbara Sjoholm, an American writer, editor, publisher, and translator. She co-founded two publishing companies: Seal Press and Women in Translation Press. As Barbara Sjoholm, she is the author of memoir, essays, a biography, and travelogues, including The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, which was a finalist for the PEN USA award in creative nonfiction. She is also a translator of fiction and nonfiction by Norwegian and Danish writers into English, and won the Columbia Translation Award and the American-Scandinavian Translation Award. As Barbara Wilson, she has written two mystery series and has won several awards for her mystery novels, including the British Crime Writers Association award and the Lambda Literary Award. She is known for her novel Gaudi Afternoon, which was made into a film directed by Susan Seidelman in 2001.
