Reagan Arthur is Executive Vice President, Publisher of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, which she joined in February of 2020, after nearly 20 years at Little, Brown. Writers she’s worked with include Kate Atkinson, Ian McEwan, Tina Fey, Ian Rankin, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Joshua Ferris, Nathan Hill, and Bono. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
Michael Carlisle, a founder of InkWell Management, has been involved with the Community of Writers for many years. His fiction and nonfiction client list includes prize-winning as well as debut authors. A former director of the Association of Author’s Representatives, a not-for-profit organization of independent literary and dramatic agents, Michael is an active member of PEN. He directs the Nonfiction Program of the Community of Writers and serves on the Board of Directors. http://inkwellmanagement.com/staff/michael-v.-carlisle
“Laura Cogan is the Editor and Executive Director of ZYZZYVA. In 2011, she moved from her role as ZYZZYVA’s Managing Editor to take on stewardship of the journal. Since then, she has spearheaded a significant redesign of the print journal and two website redesigns; championed the continued excellence of its content; and expanded the journal’s live programming. She has been an invited panelist at a number of conferences, including The Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Litquake, and LA Times Festival of Books. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. from New York University. In 2022, ZYZZYVA was awarded a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize.”
Annie Hwang is a literary agent at Ayesha Pande Literary where she represents voice-driven literary fiction and select nonfiction. In particular, she gravitates toward subversive and irreverent literary fiction and impactful mission-driven narrative nonfiction that grapples with the complexities of our world. As a former journalist, Annie brings a hands-on editorial approach to agenting, taking an active role in the careers of her clients including John Paul Brammer, Franny Choi, Lilly Dancyger, and Sequoia Nagamatsu. A fierce champion of underrepresented voices, Annie is always on the hunt for gifted storytelling that stretches its genre to new heights.
Rebekah Jett is an Associate Editor at Scribner. She was previously a bookseller at Books Are Magic and is a graduate of Columbia University, where she specialized in African American literature. She lives in Brooklyn.
Bonnie is President of the Hill Nadell Literary Agency based in Los Angeles and represent writers of both fiction and nonfiction. The nonfiction ranges from books of current affairs like Pulitzer Prize winner Sonia Nazario’s Enrique’s Journey and Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things To Me to memoirs such as Firoozeh Dumas’ bestselling Funny In Farsi, Caroline Van Hemert’s The Sun is a Compass and David Lebovitz’ The Sweet Life in Paris and natural science writers Rebecca Giggs author of Fathoms and Robert Moor’s On Trails. The fiction ranges from Kate Racculia’s novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts to Kayla Rae Whitaker’s The Animators and all the books by David Foster Wallace.
BJ Robbins established her Los Angeles-based agency in 1992 after a multifaceted career in book publishing, from publicity at Simon & Schuster to Marketing Director and later Senior Editor at Harcourt. She represents commercial and literary fiction, as well as a wide array of nonfiction, including memoir, history, pop culture, and science. Her client list includes award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, Renee Swindle, Nafisa Haji, Max Byrd, J. Maarten Troost, James Donovan, John Hough, Via Bleidner,, Mary Volmer, Mel Watkins, Adam Nimoy, and the late James D. Houston.
Cindy is Co-CEO of Spiegel & Grau, an independent publisher. She was a founding editor of Riverhead Books and later became Co-Publisher of Riverhead with Julie Grau, with whom she went on to co-found Spiegel & Grau at Random House. She has launched the literary careers of writers including James McBride, Khaled Hosseini, Bryan Stevenson, Chang-rae Lee, Gary Shteyngart, Alex Garland, Sana Krasikov, Philipp Meyer, Kathleen Norris, ZZ Packer, Domenica Ruta, Danzy Senna, The Three Doctors (Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins), and Catherine Raven. She has also edited bestselling books by Yuval Noah Harari, Harold Bloom, Steven Rinella, Dan Pink, Sara Gruen, Yann Martel, and Anne Lamott, among many others. She sits on the board of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive and on the advisory board of Columbia Global Reports.
Andrew Tonkovich is the editor of the Santa Monica Review, and founding editor of Citric Acid. He is the author of two story collections, and co-author with Lisa Alvarez of Orange County: A Literary Field Guide. He has written reviews and commentary in the Los Angeles Times, LA Review of Books, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Ecotone, Juked and OC Weekly. He is also the host of KPFK’s Bibliocracy Radio. [F]
David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Thirteen Question Method. His other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time; and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He is the books editor of Alta and the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and The Best American Essays 2020. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles, he is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the journal Air/Light. [F/NF] theshipmanagency.com
Oscar Villalon is the editor of ZYZZYVA, a recipient of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. His work has been published in several publications, including The Believer, Stranger’s Guide, Alta, and Lit Hub, where he is a contributing editor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their son.
