Leslie Daniels’ first novel, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, has been published in translation in four languages. The novel, now under option for film, fights the good fight of being both literary and funny. Daniels’ stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications. Her background in publishing includes over a decade as a literary agent in New York, as well as serving as the fiction editor for Green Mountains Review. Leslie Daniels lives in Ithaca, New York. www.lesliedaniels.com
2023 Special Programs Staff
Sands Hall is the author of the award-winning memoir Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint). Blackstone Audio produced the audio book, read by the author. Other books include the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Random House Reader’s Circle selection and Willa Award Finalist (Woman Writing the West); and a book of essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. Her stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Alta, New England Review, Iowa Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Professor Emeritus at Franklin & Marshall College, she lives in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada. [F/M] www.sandshall.com
Photo Credit: Tracy Hall
Patricia K. Meyer, a screenwriter, producer, and educator, has sold and written numerous feature screenplay adaptations, from dark comedy to true crime drama, for Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and all the major studios. In addition, she has written miniseries and movies-of-the-week, as well as an original drama pilot for CBS. Her ABC 4-hour miniseries based on The Women of Brewster Place, starring Oprah Winfrey, earned an Emmy® nomination and Image Award.
She also executive produced Nora Ephron’s directorial debut, This is My Life, for 20th Century Fox, based on the Meg Wolitzer novel which she optioned.
Meyer is a longtime member of the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. After ten years teaching screenwriting at the AFI Conservatory, she has spent the past seven years as an Associate Clinical Professor and the Graduate Director of Screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television.
In 2019 she was named one of the top film educators in the country by Variety.
Meyer earned a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Boston University.
Will Richardson has been birding and conducting field research in the Sierra Nevada since 1994, including several seasons working for PRBO Conservation Science in the Mono Basin and elsewhere in the Eastern Sierra. Richardson received his PhD in Ecology, Evolution, & Conservation Biology from the University of Nevada, Reno, studying bird communities in Sierra Nevada aspen habitats. He resides in Truckee and now focuses most of his attention on the natural history of the Lake Tahoe region. He is currently authoring a status and distribution guide for the birds of the Lake Tahoe basin, and is co-founder and Co-Executive Director of a fledgling research, education, and outreach organization: the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science.
Stacy Spruill watched an ungodly amount of television as a child and fortunately, her bad habits paid off. She is a screenwriter, director, and TV showrunner. Stacy has had numerous features optioned by notable Hollywood talent and she has written on both multi-camera and single-camera series for start-up streaming networks. The five short films Stacy wrote and directed have screened at over forty film festivals, including Cannes and Toronto. A proud alumna of U.C. Berkeley and The AFI Conservatory, Stacy lives in Los Angeles and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University.
